Abbie's Painting Picked for Display

Out of all the 2nd Graders at her school. Abbie was one of six 2nd graders art to be chosen. We got a note home that said," Abbie's painting, inspired by the work of artist, Wassily Kandisnsky's is on display with other student artwork at the Blue Valley Library. The display is open to the public until Friday, February 22nd. Congratulations Abbie!"

For family night, we went to see her artwork.

Abbie found her artwork! So excited to show the family! 

You can see the six that were chosen. The other artwork is from different grades. So proud of you Abbie for always trying your best!

Her artwork inspired by the artist, Wassily Kandinsky's.

So proud of you Abbie! We sure love you!

Basketball with Dad

This was a warmer day in January. Yes, it was cold but, as you can see NO SNOW and a great day to play basketball. We went from no snow to TONS of snow. We are due for another Snow Storm today! Man, some weird weather. You can also notice the oak (I assume it's oak) tree in the back that hasn't lost it's leaves yet. Yep, most trees lose their leaves in fall and others in spring. Different Eh? We were excited last fall for these leaves to fall (would be a huge leaf pile). Even bought the special bags to recycle the leaves at curbside and we are still waiting for them to fall.

MY KARATE KIDS

Isaac, Abbie and Kaden are taking Karate and L-O-V-E love it!! We went to sign them up for spring sports and some of the sports are played on Sunday so, we looked into other activities. We signed up Kaden and Isaac for Karate but, having Abbie, sitting and watching that first week,while everyone her age is doing Karate, we decided to admit her to the class too. Why not her learn these skills too? She was already there every Saturday while her brothers were in the same class. So, Abbie is doing two activities this spring, Karate and Gymnastics.

The kids have been taking for two months now and still love it! They are learning new skills every week and even defensive moves. My favorite part is when leader tells them. You better hug your mom EVERY day! I love that! He is teaching them life skills along with karate skills. He talks to them as they are practicing their moves. So great! Even helping them to count to 50 in Japanese. But, even after hearing it every week, it might be a while before we get that one down.

So, every Saturday morning we are at the Bushidokan taking Karate!

New Year's Puzzle

The kids were determined to stay up until midnight. We put together a puzzle! I found a puzzle that was three seperate puzzles that went together to make one bigger puzzle. Each child got their own section (age appropriate since the three sections were in three different puzzle numbers. Some puzzle pieces were larger than another set.)

The kids had the puzzle put together before I got home from work. It was fun that they all stayed up until midnight. Although, Kaden was asking to go to bed as soon as midnight hit. It was so funny! This was the first year he stayed awake until midnight! He definetely is my morning person, child.

We even put together another puzzle on New Year's Day that was 500 pieces! The kids loved helping me with the bigger puzzle. What a great tradition! So fun!

Merry Christmas 2012

This Christmas will be remembered as simple and happy. This was our first year with Reed in school and it was very different being both away from family and also being really frugal with gifts. 

Our family got some new games, and the kids especially love the new wii game, skylanders giants.

Isaac got a Pogo stick, skylander character and ninjago lego set.

Abbie got a furby, an accesory, and crayola color designer.

Kaden got a ninjago lego set, an angry bird game and a skylander character. 

I was really worried about the kids getting gifts like socks, underwear and family games but, they didn't mind at all. They loved the gifts and were very thankful for what they recieved. 

Abbie loved her snowball furby and the kids had a schedule for babysitting through the entire christmas break. They even took turns who was going to have it sleep on their pillow at night. It was a favorite toy of this Christmas season. 

Brooklyn got her very own Lala Loopsie doll that she named Lucy. Now both of the girls have their la la dolls and Brooklyn plays with both dolls all the time. 

Brooklyn wanted to eat everyone's candy, she kept finding it no matter where the kids put their candy. 

The Hughes family had our name for Christmas and gave us games that Allisha and I used to play as kids. The kids opened the box and I was so excited, they wanted to know what was so fun about these games. So I told them about how we used to play games as kids. The kids were very excited to play these games.

This year (me being the bread-winner), I was able to surprise everyone with a surprise gift. Even Reed didn't know about this one. If you know my kids, you know they love playing with Nerf guns. The problem with most of them is that they are hard to use for the younger kids. They aren't strong enough to set the spring so they can shoot, so these new nerf guns come with batteries that does the hard part for the kids. They just have to pull the trigger and to make it even better, the bullets are glow-in-the-dark. So, we turned off all the lights downstairs and had a nerf war. IT WAS AWESOME!

They were SO surprised! 

Abbie was really excited that I got one for her too, since usually she has to borrow one of the boy's nerf guns. So we took Sharpie marker and they named their guns (also so they couldn't get confused as to who's was who's). The names went as follows Reed- THE DADINATOR   Isaac - The Straight Ace   Abbie- The ABBIENATOR  Kaden- The Destroyer

The boys LOVED that they got a new game! This is a game that they have only played when at a few friend's house. They were so excited with their character's and something new to play. 

The day ended with us being able to skype with family. Boy, that made me homesick. We are always with SOME family and this was really different. Modern technology made it possible for us to be there when my parents opened their gifts from all of us kids. There was two of us on two different computers being skyped in. One from Kansas  (us) and Pennsylvania (my sister's family). It made it a little better being able to join in the celebration. We missed family terribly this year and it was a really different Christmas. But, we realized how strong we are as a family and know that we can do anything when we have each other.

Merry Christmas 2012

Sky Zone (Christmas Break Activity)

We stayed in Kansas for Christmas. So we let the kids choose 2 activities they REALLY wanted to do over the Christmas break. They chose ice skating and going to sky zone, an indoor trampoline park.

They have half of the entire facility covered with trampolines, even the walls have trampolines. 

There are three other areas besides the main jumping area. There is a trick area where you jump from a trampoline into blocks of foam.

Abbie is fearless. 

Kaden loved the foam blocks. 

Isaac and Abbie also tried the dodge ball areas. There were two dodge ball courts that constantly rotated. They had a lot of fun! 

Sky Zone is Huge 

Then Isaac was off to try the basketball dunking area. 

Isaac dunking the basketball 

Brooklyn finally woke up from her nap in the stroller, just before the time was over. So, Brooklyn and I didn't get to jump but, it was still fun to watch the kids have so much fun. 

Abbie dunking the basketball 

And this is Reed showing off his mad skills. He would do some crazy tricks. He said it was really hard to get out of the block pit, it was quite the work-out. The kids were so thrilled that they got to do this activity and it made their Christmas break exciting! It was really different not being with family for the holidays but, we made the best of it and found some fun family activities to do together!

Snow Day

The last day of School before Winter Break ended up being a SNOW DAY!! The kids were excited and sad because they were going to have their parties that day! This was Brooklyns first time being in the snow this year!

Brooklyn all bundled up and ready to play

The slide was really fun for the kids all packed in snow.

Even Brooklyn was able to try the slide in the snow. The kids had a blast playing in the snow.

The slide is really fast with snow on it.

Abbie stayed out so long that we had to keep giving her new gloves that weren't wet. She went through three pairs of gloves before she finally came in from playing in the snow.

 

This was a very fun FIRST snow day!