random pics

starting to plunge back in...once again. enjoy!

a castle that lucas built.

elise the giant next to lucas' castle.

i bought these clear plates and bowls from target for $0.44 each and love them! now, i don't have to ask the kids to see how much food they have left in their bowls during mealtimes. i just look over and say, "finish your zucchini." and, i get to see their cute faces through them!

lucas and emma enjoying some milk and biscotti. how refined.

sisters being silly.

i knitted these ponchos for the girls. they're still a little big for them,

but they'll grow into them in no time.

princess emma posing for the paparazzi

with lucas and elise trying to get in on the action.

to wrap up october 2010, here we are after a fun night of trick-or-treating and dinner with vicky and nate.

journal entry by lucas

this week, part of lucas' language arts assignment involved journaling. he had to, without any help from me, write a journal entry describing his thoughts or feelings about something that happened to him recently, that he's looking forward to, or that he observed, etc. the assignment was only to write a journal entry. he didn't need to worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar, or penmanship (like i said, no help from me was allowed). it was a "creative expression" assignment only, and this is what he wrote...



can you decipher it? i thought it was the cutest thing ever when i read it and realized what he had written, especially his spelling of the words. kids are so darn cute!

i LOVE my sweet boy lucas and i love doing school with him at home. it started out a little rocky, but i am thoroughly enjoying homeschooling and really look forward to it everyday. it is so exciting to see lucas learn and retain the things that i teach him. the really neat part is that i am able to reinforce the things that he is learning throughout the day or week as we are doing our normal/natural things together because i know exactly what he is learning; i am the one who is teaching it to him. i wasn't sure how homeschooling was going to go this year, but i have been blessed by it and we are only in our seventh week!

i wanna awana

a few years ago, when lucas was about two years old, we went to check out my little niece and nephew at their AWANA program. lucas was still too young to be part of the program, but i told myself that i would enroll him when he hit the minimum age requirement, which is 3. well, with being pregnant with emma and elise back-to-back, it seems, i never got around to it. so, finally, we enrolled both lucas and emma into a local AWANA program this year and they are LOVING it!!! i'm loving it as well. AWANA stands for "approved workman are not ashamed" and is taken from 2 Timothy 2:15 in the Bible. i love that lucas and emma are learning and memorizing scripture; impressing God's words into their hearts and their souls. i love that they are learning to know, love, and serve Christ. i praise God for His infinite wisdom, goodness, and grace, and i can't wait for elise to be old enough to join her brother and sister in learning God's word through this awesome program. check out the darling duo in their cubbies and sparks vests...they look so proud!

1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . cheese!

getting into the fall spirit

i am usually very eager to pull out my box of fall decorations and don the house with all kinds of red, yellow, and brown-colored goodies. but this year, i seem to be having a really hard time getting into the fall spirit. nothing is up and we don't have even one pumpkin on our front porch. we usually have about 6 or 7. to remedy this, i took the kids to the country mercantile pumpkin patch that's here locally and we had a blast, as usual! a friend of mine from another church sent out an invitation to join her MOPS group who were going. for only $3, the kids got to go on a hayride, pick a pumpkin, go through a hay maze and climb a giant haystack, see some animals at a petting zoo, and even got juice and a cookie. what a deal!!! i think i will do it again next year.

posing for me

us on the hayride

jess and levi on the hayride

holding hands, how cute!

brother and sisters, awww!

near the top of the haystack

kings of the mountain!

victorious!

me, elise, and rudy the reindeer

levi, keeping an eye on rudy

a very cute piglet

time for a break of juice and a cookie

the loot!

a rut, it seems

okay, so it seems like i've been in a posting rut here. i'm just never in a posting mood anymore...not sure why. um, let me think. maybe it's because i am so BUSY????? at least that's how i feel. our schedule this fall is crazy. on top of it all, homeschooling lucas in kindergarten is taking more time than i anticipated. i'm loving it, though, really. not only is he learning a ton, i'm (re)learning right along with him. recently, we've learned about conservation of mass, the egyptians, the romans, weather...interesting stuff i tell ya. do you remember how many points there are on a snowflake?

i have a lot of catching up that i'm going to attempt to do here in the next week or two. for a start, i had the pleasure of taking a group of foreign exchange interns to seattle over the summer. i had a great time getting to know them, especially the girls, and hearing about their lives over in china. they are all top-notch students from excellent universities and i am excited for them to come back to the states to attend grad school. i miss hanging out with them and practicing my mandarin! as part of our seattle expedition, we got to go on the famous seattle duck tour, visit the space needle, go SHOPPING!, and go on a "special" tour of the UW athletic department. it was special because we got VIP treatment. it was personally-guided and we got to see/do some neat stuff like see the crew boats that were sent to the olympics in beijing, go through the football tunnel and step onto the husky stadium field. neat for me. here are just a few pictures from evelyn's and summer's cameras since i didn't have mine with me.

the whole gang

me and evelyn (such a cutie!)

me and summer at the hec edmundson pavilion at UW

at dinner with our new friends (look at elise the goofball!)

sweet lucas and emma posing for miss summer

emma's first horseback ride at our friend heather's house...she loved it!