ni hao!

a couple of months ago allan and i got a chance to travel to china and visit with some good friends of ours.  we didn't do a great job of taking pictures and keeping track of places we visited, but here are some from our trip.  we had a great time seeing old friends and making new ones!

poor amanda had a severe ear infection and we're here at the hospital to get it treated

hot pot lunch

traci, angela, and me

these guys treated us to an awesome "simmer pot" lunch

simmer pot of some sort of fish...yummy!

in front of confucius temple

me and my love

most of the gang

jess and me

gangstas

me and maria

steven's trying to be my height (does he really think i'm that short?!)

normal (this guys speaks awesome british english, btw!)

goofy!

i SO wanted to take this for a spin!

emma turns 6!

our beautiful birthday girl, emma grace

emma is our fun-loving, craaazy, outspoken, silly, sweet, caring, independent, and typical-middle child of a girl. we love her to pieces and she turned 6 this month.  here's a quick list of what she's into: horses and puppies (all animals, really), crafts, drawing, coloring, playing make-believe with her sister and transformers or ben ten with her brother, doing cartwheels, washing dishes, dancing, and wearing a dress/skirt whenever she can.  there's a lot more i can put on this list, but a typical day would include most of these things, if not all.  but she only wanted to do one thing for her birthday...hit the rollarena!  so we did just that and she was so stinkin' cute!  even elise was brave enough to hit the rink!  after some skating, we walked across the street to baskin-robbins and all the kids got to choose amongst the 31 flavors of ice cream (is that really true, or are there less/more?).  it was a simple and easy birthday party for us to throw, and emma had a great time being honored and celebrating with her friends.  i'd say it was a hit!

anja was so excited to give emma her present!

eliana, you've got it!

my cutie-patootie looking like a natural

tory was fearless out there!

the birthday girl showing off her skills!

vicky and owen came to see emma in action

what a great group of kids!

office transformation

a looong time ago i promised to show some pics of my new office. many moons later...ta-da!

from the doorway...

to the left...

a place to sit down to work...

and some lovely shelving for storage.

it's not huge (tiny, in fact) and it's nothing spectacular, but i love it.

when we moved into this house about 7 years ago, the previous owners had turned the storage closet under the staircase into a pseudo-office.  it was an awesome idea - they even had an outlet and a phone line installed in there - but it was very utilitarian, which was fine.  the closet is right off of our kitchen, so it is really nice to be able to do "officey" things like check my email, pay a bill, read a blog post, etc. while prepping dinner.

anyway, a little over a year ago allan agreed to help me transform this storage closet into an office space just for me!  we weren't going to use it for storage of any kind anymore (it had become a hot-spot to drop off our things).  he was super sweet to let me have a space of my own and even more sweet to do all of the work on it.  he painted the room, painted shelves and installed them, put in a new desktop, and installed a new light fixture.  once all of that was done, i put on some finishing touches to make it my own.  it is now a space i love to spend time in, though it is super small, because i can shut the door and go about a task or a phone call as uninterrupted as possible with three sweet kids running amuck!  :)

what school looks like for us

we went to lucas' and emma's student showcase last night for their homelink classes and we all had a blast!  elise loved watching the choir performance so much that she wouldn't leave when the older kids asked to go.  the kids got to play some carnival games and won fun prizes.  we won a prize from the raffle, which was a big deal because we never win raffles.  and, it was really neat to see the projects and art pieces all the kids made in their classes.  elise and i volunteered in lucas' cooking class one afternoon and we (mainly I) taught them how to make wontons.  i had so much fun seeing the kids learn something new.  watching them focus hard on something, looking proud of themselves for what they made, and then tasting it and liking it was such an awesome thing to experience.  many of them even came back wanting more!  this is one of the reasons i love homeschooling my kids.  there are many more reasons, like wanting to spend as much time as i can during these precious short years i have with them.  they are going to grow up so fast.  it's happening already...

lucas in front of the gingerbread house he made with his group in cooking class with mrs. winn

emma's pointing to the bunnies she learned how to draw in her animal art class with mrs. brooke

and these are just some peeks into what
homeschooling looks like for us...

  

christmas 2013 and a new tradition

christmas came and went all too quickly again this year. but, we had a special celebration, nonetheless, remembering and honoring the birth of Jesus our Savior! we had a full house on christmas with my sister and nate, my cousin and her family, and my aunt and uncle from california over to celebrate. we went out and got a tree the weekend just after thanksgiving. the kids were so excited that we even got them colored lights for the tree this year. i gave up my white lights! allan strung the lights and we let the kids decorate the tree all on their own, however they liked. they did a great job! and, i loved every minute of sitting on the couch with my hot coffee watching them dance around the tree trying to scatter the ornaments all over. well, about two weeks after this, we discovered that our tree had died. :(  i was not about to take down all of the ornaments, get a new tree, and put all of the ornaments back on.  plus, the year before, our tree actually toppled over in the middle of the night scaring me and allan to death and causing us some middle-of-the-night clean up duty.  as a result, we decided to start a new tradition of having our manger scene be the center of our celebration and i LOVED it. we set it up more prominently in the room and put our gifts to one another under it. it was a great way for us to remember the most amazing gift of all, our Savior Jesus Christ, whom God sent us over two thousand years ago.  it was a great way for us to fix our eyes on the true meaning of christmas.  and, i think i'm gonna love our new tradition.

 

our manger scene

opening stockings on christmas eve

 

christmas eve dinner...hot pot!

family quiet time

shoeboxes for operation christmas child.  we found out they got sent to peru!  :)

topping off our tree (that died!)

   

light show at senske in kennewick.  the lights are timed to go along with music.  lucas, emma, and allan jumped into the bed of the truck and started dancing to the music!  i was too cold, brrrrr.  elise fell asleep.

 

my sweet aunt...so glad she came to visit!