A little family gush...

In my opinion, my kids are THE BEST!  This may be the first time I mention it.
I have really grown to love my little people more and more. I do have to put it in perspective - they are now all able to fully communicate, have mastery of most of their emotions, and are fairly independent.  In fact, a while back Faith was voicing a pretty convincing argument for children to be treated as adults by age 6 (according to some logic she had internalized from the book "Bud, not Buddy" and her own understanding of the world).  By age 6, argues Faith, kids are not expected to be 'cute' like babies anymore but they don't get all the independence of an adult.  We reasoned that we could make some more opportunities in the family for responsibility and independence because the real mark of an 'adult' is someone who is responsible for their independence.  And the kids have taken to it beautifully!  I love that we all respect and love each other and can have such conversations.

In other cool and amazing things that they do: they entertain themselves simply and happily.  Most of the time they really love playing with each other too!  These are the blocks that we made for Faith when she was not quite two years old, and they still love them!

Even though sometimes I bunch them all together, they are all so unique and amazing.  They have some innate special gifts such as Viv's amazing monkey skills:

All of them are patient and happy to be trucked around to the others' lessons.  Faith and Danny are here working together on a sticker matching Star Wars book while Viv has gymnastics.  

While Faith is in tap and Viv is in gymnastics, Danny and I have a full hour together, he has recently preferred to build with cards after having mastered Slap Jack, Russian Ratscrew, and Go Fish.  His maze building is awesome!

Although sometimes clumsy walking around the house, Faith is a natural dancer.  Josh took her to her class field trip and commented when they got home "I know she is excited about something when she pirouettes!"  Her teachers likewise comment how she will take impromptu dance breaks between her work if she is enjoying it.  

Danny is our baseball enthusiast.  He is thrilled to be going to T-ball every week and loves sitting and watching any baseball game we go to (which sometimes is as exciting as watching golf).  Josh thinks his heart rate is slower than most human beings because when he is in you lap, you automatically feel relaxed.  I say he is my namaste. 

 Every night the day ends with them willingly getting through their nighttime routine and sitting quietly on their bed in different stages of reading.  Faith zooms through reading.  Viv is sounding out the words out loud and Danny will work through the words with me.  They are currently working through the graphic storytelling of all the Standard Works.  And the get it!  The love telling me about the stories in the scriptures.
I love seeing the world through their eyes!

We Are Spartan - Family Style

April 26th was a long awaited date for this family.  I had given Josh the gift/challenge of entrance in the Indianapolis Sprint Spartan.  The gift was that I would train with him and run with him, the challenge was for us to train together (he is a morning man and I am not).  We fit it all in and planned an extra special day for the whole family.  My parents scheduled their annual trip out to visit us that same weekend so we could take the kids down and they could be the official photo takers.  My sister Jill joined us as well, she is going for a Trifecta of Spartans this year and we kicked off the season together.  It was my first race, Josh's second.  Our first Spartan race we signed up for in Arizona I got sick two days before so my older brother ran with Josh.  I have been jealous ever since.

It was honestly the most perfect weather or a race day.  It was not too hot, not too cold.  We certainly were not racing anywhere near Indianapolis, but if they had published the real podunck Indiana town in which we raced the whole world would have had no idea what region we were in (Midwest folks).  We raced at an ATV park, which is a perfect location for a Spartan! Plenty of hills and mud.  

 Our starting coral time was 9:45am.  We got there barely in time since we had driven down from Fort Wayne that morning.  I hate waiting for race starts anyway so I was grateful.  Jill was right to advise us to go at an early starting time so the course would not be as sloppy.  I loved it!  We started out running up and down wooded hills.  I felt like I was back home in the mountains.  As a kid our parents took us on tons of hiking trips, and like most kids, we got bored just walking so would often run the trails just to get the hike over with.  I still had the latent mountain goat skills for hopping up and down the slopes on sure footing.  We then swam through a creek and army crawled up a muddy hill under barbed wire.  Once past that obstacle course we headed over this bad boy:

 It gets a bit tricky walking on 2x4s when your shoes are sloshing, but on we went.  Around the lake until we got to this spidey thing:

After that we were in the hills for a good while running up and down creek beds and ravines, climbing over 10 feet walls, dragging cement on a chain, carrying 25lb sacks on our back, more walls, flipping over tractor tires, then back around to the main area where we tried to throw a javelin into a hay bale, which was the first obstacle I missed and had to do 30 burpees for, then hoisted 30lbs up to the top of this tower (which I thought was fun and finished before Josh and then went to help him):

Finally we ran past our kiddos, at the end of 4 miles of running and such, just to the last 3 obstacles; climbing up a rope, which I gave up on and just did the burps, then this wall, which I shamelessly cheated on by using the top of the wall and did not do burpees (using the excuse in my head that the kids were going to start their race soon).

 And lastly over this wall.  This was the only part of the race where I really just felt like crying.  Really, you want me to grip this slimly rope and walk up a slippery wall just so I can jump over fire on the other side?!  No way! I am exhausted.  I attempted once and then just waited and whined until Josh was on the other side and came to pull me over.

 Josh and I ran the whole race together which was a great push-me-pull-you collaboration.  I have much better endurance and he better strength.  I was happy to run through the middle and pushed him to run and he helped me get over big walls.  I can proudly say we did not walk any of the parts where we could run (sometimes you are bogged behind people and you can't help but walk) and we stayed together.  I think our finishing time was around 1hour 35minutes.  I set that as something to meet or beat someday but really don't care about our time, heck, we finished!

 Jill lost us back in the swamps and finished like a champ and 5th in her age division.

Not long after we finished our race, the kids were to start theirs.  I had to promise Josh that I would not talk about taking the kids to Disneyworld for a full year if he let me spend the money to enter them into this race.  I am glad I made the bargain because the kids absolutely adored this race and all the anticipation that surrounded it!  I signed them all up for the mile course, even though the official entry said only kids 7 and older could do the mile.  It was a half mile course repeated twice so I figured I would get them all starting together and if Danny and Viv wanted to opt out after the first lap, they could.

 Faith got herself literally at the front of the pack at the starting line. There were kids up to 12 years old, but she figured since she was one of the 5 seven year olds, she should have an advantage at the front.  She didn't remember that she had been instructed to stay with her siblings.  Ah well.  Let her take the advantage!  Josh was in charge of keeping an eye on Faith around the track and I went alongside Danny and Viv.  The two were so cute at being encouraging and helping each other.  Danny was a bit hesitant with the obstacles the first time around, but was totally fine the second time around.

 These mud pits were by far the kids' favorite part!  They would not stop talking about it, and I get it, I liked playing in the mud on purpose too!

 The second time over, the mud was so sticky that Danny lost his shoe.  It did not phase him at all!  He went right on running.  Lucky I was there where he left the shoe and dug around in the mud until I found it and put it on him later in the race to prevent puncture wounds.

 Here is their last obstacle - You can see that Viv is eying the finish line but being a supportive sister and waiting for Danny to get off.  They had gone around the course twice, what no other 5 and 6 year old would do!  I was mega proud of them.

 It was a fun day for us all as a family!  The kiddos loved that they got their own medal and head band and completed their first race.  We could all talk together about the shared experience and it was AWESOME!  I might even say more fun than Disney (but I will reserve that judgement until we get to go all together in another year).

At the end, for all the racers, they have a spraying station.  Just a lot of hoses and a lot of mud coming off people.  I skipped the power wash option and went back to the calmer hoses to strip my kids to their skivvies and wash them off.  I was glad to have Josh to tag team, as I got one down to the undies he would rap them in a towel and whisk them away behind a tree to clothe them, not that anyone cared about muddy little kids on this day. 

 Here we all are, all finishers!  What a Spartan Fam!

Easter 2014

Although it was difficult to have to with until the 20th of April this year for Easter, it did give us time to get in a bit of green grass and do some home improvement to the front of the house. 

My beautiful matchy family after Easter Church services.

 Josh is now working 50-60hours a week, thus the kids and I waited until almost the last moment to get the Easter eggs wrapped and painted.  Truthfully I have had some suspicious health issues that make me cranky and unenthused about many traditions, and then having to do them alone drags them into a realm of procrastination all their own.

Nevertheless and notwithstanding the personal issues, I had been reading a fabulous chronology of the final week of Christ's life to the kids as their bedtime story (yes, it was a bit over their head, which makes it the ideal bedtime reading because they just tune it out after I give them the highlights and go to sleep) which had emphasized the symbolic reasons we do all the egg/candy/bunny stuff.  It was a perfect year to to be talking about the true meaning of Easter with the kids and they really were interested in knowing about Palm Sunday, Passover, the Last Super, Good Friday and all the rest as we incorporated them into our daily discussions.

 Grammie and Grampie sent us beautiful shrink wraps with Ukranian designs and each of the kids chose some of their dozen boiled eggs to wear the beautiful dress.  It killed me to use them because they were so beautiful and going to be destroyed so soon.  Then it was outside to the backyard for coloring the eggs.

 What a difference a year makes! This year the kids were all about coloring their eggs on their own with no input from me, and they turned out marvelously!  They stayed focused for more than 10 minutes even and I got to sit back and marvel and this lovely stage in their life.  I remember coloring eggs as a kid and being totally enthralled with each color and how deep I could set the dye.  With six kids in the family, Mom must have had at least 3 dozen eggs boiled, it strikes me that we only got 6 eggs each, which may have contributed to my intensity with each one.  My kiddos got to have a full dozen each and did a lot with them!  Yeah for spring weather too, so it could all be done outside without threat to my kitchen or carpets.  Although, they didn't spill any dye this year!  Miracles do happen each year.

 Sunday morning the Easter bunny had traded the eggs for a picture of the Risen Christ and left some Sunday lovely wear for the kiddos.  The kids were waking up before dawn to see if the Easter bunny had come to hide their eggs.  They were anticipating this Ressurection day more than they were Christmas!  I believe so much of it was because of our meaningful discussions during the week.

 We made the kiddos wait until he Sun did rise before they could hunt the eggs in the backyard.  The Easter Bunny knows now he is going to have to be a bit more cunning next year in the hiding places because the hunt was over fairly quickly.

 We had plenty of time before the 11am services to peel all the eggs and make them into the colorful and traditional creamed-eggs over toast.  I loved, again, how much different it was this year having the kids help and their recognition (remembering) which eggs they had painted and even lamented a bit having to peel them.  We made a lot of eggs that day.  Our fridge was full so we needed to eat all 3 dozen boiled eggs.  What we didn't eat for breakfast got added to the luncheon as Sundayed (not deviled, it didn't seem appropriate for Easter Sunday) Eggs and salad.  What a feast.  What a day.  What a reason to celebrate!

Probably the best part of this 2014 Easter Season was listening to the pure and simple faith and testimonies that my children have in the Risen Savior.  Each one, at various parts of our studies and discussion would declare unabashedly that they knew that He was the King and that He was their Savior.  He is risen and our Lord!  What a wonderful thing to learn from my Children.

Not since January???

Wowzers! that has been a hiatus.  I have returned in order to keep up my writing skills and catalogue all the mega amazing things (and some crummy) that happen in our family for our own history purposes.  So....where to start since January?

January-April we had some super cool house buddies: my favorite hair dresser and her two kiddos were hanging in our basement while some legal stuff was clearing,

It was a blast to have the Goose in the house for everyone to remember what it was like having little people around.  She learned to walk when the first moved in and was running around by the time they left.  Super fun.

Most of January was spent hanging at home and enjoying A LOT of snow days.  Josh even got snowed in from work one of the days.  Even though the snow was nothing to an Idahoan, they don't have the plow power to get the streets scrapped.  Lucky that somebody (me) had the forethought to insist that we have an all wheel drive vehicle so Josh could get to work.During the Olympics (because we watched as much of the olympics as possible thanks to the following two projects and A LOT of snow days) Josh helped me finish the mega-family tree project I had started in October with the kids.  I had the additional impetus of using this project for one of my graduate courses.

The other winter time project was a totally hand stitched quilt that I was working on with the Oak Farm middle school.  I was on the committee for the annual Gala fundraiser and volunteered to be a helper with 3 classrooms for their class made projects.  The middle school project was by far the most intensive, but all three kept me busy.  With the snow days, which were A LOT, I didn't have as many days with the students to do the stitching so I brought it home and let everybody have a go at quilting.  The pattern was up-cycled fabrics from the students that they designed in a pixeled tree in all four seasons.  I thought it was awesome and turned out beautiful! The batting was the wool form the sheep on the farm that the middle school students take care of and sheer and everything.  I really like the project, but those last few days before the Gala auction were gruesome!  Thanks to all our housemates for pitching in (we were not looking for skill since it was a 'student project' so I could coerce anyone into stitching).  It earned $750 at the auction.  The other projects I helped with/made, chess set and throw pillows, made about $1000.  I felt good about my contribution.  I certainly can't give that much money to the school, but I can give my time. 

Speaking of school: Auntie Jill came out for a weekend to do some Melaluca stuff and spent part of one day hanging with the kids in their classrooms.  She does such a fabulous job of making each one feel special.  She let Danny teach her how to add numbers to the thousands.

She let Viv teach her how to match sentences and picture illustrations.  And then she had lunch with Faith in her classroom.  The kids love bragging now that their classmates know everyone in their family; brothers, sisters, Mom, Dad and Aunt!  

 St. Patricks Day came and those sneaky leprechauns left some fun green stuff for the kiddos.  Green being Danny's favorite color, it is not surprise that he was loving his digs from the little green dudes.

 Beginning of April we got some free tickets to see our local NBA feeder basketball team, the Mad Ants.  I was super glad that we got tickets with our friends because the kiddos had their buddies there to make the game exciting.  The girls yelled "GO MAD ANTS!" in chanted rhythm for the entire 3rd quarter.  They make the games super kid friendly.  After I got over the fact that these guys are just between high school, college and real basketball players, I could settle in and enjoy the skills they had (I hated to be snooty but the last ball game I went to was Lakers vs. Jazz).

And that is how fast a recap of four months can go.  Wowzers.  Now as my focus shifts from graduate school assignments and keeping kids healthy and warm I will have the time to enjoy some more family moment keeping on the bloggo for everyone!