Holloway Family Adventures

Happy Valentine's Day!

2012-02-14T20:41:00.003-05:00

We finished the book we were reading each night and have moved onto the Story of the World. Friends of mine that homeschool using the Classical Conversations recommended this book and the accompanying study guide when I mentioned that we were reading an ancient Greek book. We're now reading the section about the Ancient Egyptians and journaling about it.

We're enjoying the Egyptian history and have found a few great National Geographic videos streaming on Netflix to watch.

Keith and the kids came to join me for a quick lunch Saturday, since I was working. Sadly, I work every Saturday this month, because I needed to take some week-days to head over to Ormond Beach to attend doctor appointments with my mom. She has been diagnosed with Stage III Small Cell NeuroEndocrine Bladder Cancer. We are taking things one day at a time and this week and next will be busy with CT Scans and a full body PET Scan and then the follow-up to determine if there are any other cancer sites in her body. For now, she looks great and feels great, so it's hard to think that she's "sick" when she's just the same as she's always been.

Our usual weekend plan is for me to take one of the kids with me out for breakfast on Sunday morning. With three kids close in age, I rarely get to spend time just one-on-one with anyone. Last week, it was Megan. This week, I talked Daniel into coming with me to Einstein's for bagels. It was very cold, but not too cold for the new baby ducks to be out behind the store.

That's Daniel's shadow. I can to redirect him into the store, he wanted to go catch a "fuzzy, yellow one" for Megan.
Back in the car with our bagels and coffee. Yikes, it was cold.

Monday morning continued with the cold streak. The kids all wore hats and gloves to school. Then amazingly, today the high was 80 degrees. I actually sat out in shorts and a t-shirt by the pool reading for a little while.

All dressed up for Valentine's Day.

Me: Joshua, why aren't you wearing your red shirt?

Joshua: I decided to go with brown, like chocolates. I'm still Valentine-y.

I left my honey a card on his computer, since he usually studies in the morning while I take the kids to school and hit the gym (on the days that I'm off work). Then we met up for a fabulous lunch at our favorite sushi place.

The kids all came home with all sorts of candies, trinkets and note cards. My favorite was this craft from Daniel that says "I love my dog because it's a dotsine" Which should be dachshund.

Kicking off February

2012-02-08T17:37:00.003-05:00

This month started off with the fun anticipation that Groundhog's Day brings. The kids' teachers are really into celebrating every single fun little holiday.
Above is Daniel's classroom project. He came home and told me we had 6 more weeks of Winter. Well, if 80 degree days and 60-ish degree nights are Winter, sign me up for 6 more months of Winter!

SuperBowl Sunday was very eventful. Megan and I left the house at 7:30am to go to the grocery store, since we knew it would start getting really busy. We got all of our shopping done and were home in time to make breakfast about an hour later. Then the kids played and Keith studied, while I went to the gym to burn off some calories before indulging in way to many football snacks.

Megan was all geared up for the game. Although, she misplaced her Patriots shirt, so she put on her Georgia Bulldogs shirt.

Daniel helped make the snacks and he snacked so much during the cooking, that he ended up just eating some celery and eggs for dinner.

Joshua loved watching the game and some of the funny commercials. I was pretty pleased with how family-friendly the commercials seemed this year. Megan liked the dancing during the half-time show and then it was bedtime for all the kids. It was an intense end of the game, and sadly, the Patriots lost. There's always next year.

As I was driving the kids to school yesterday, Joshua and I had a funny conversation...

Joshua: Mom, we're learning a new Ozzy song at school.

Me: Oh, really? (Inside my head: huh?? Ozzy? Really? Like Ozzy Osborn?)

Joshua: Yeah, in music class we are working our way around the world and are now in Australia.

Me: Ohhhh...an Aussie song. Like kangaroos and boomerangs and stuff. I gotcha now.

Their music teacher is really fabulous. The kids all came home and told me about Chinese New Year and how they played drums in music class. So fun!

Art is a favorite for all the kids. At their school last year, they didn't have a designated art teacher, as it was incorporated into the classroom curriculum for the main teacher. This year, I'm loving that the kids are learning about different artists, different types of art mediums and are being allowed to try out their own art creations. Daniel tells me that the kindergarten kids are learning about sculptures and that he's been working with clay.

Megan's artwork above is from her art class. She's been learning about the impressionists.

Another thing that's new for the kids this year is the media teacher. Their last school had a great library, but didn't have a designated library class for the younger grades. Here at the new school, the kids each have Media mixed in with their LAMP rotation.

L = Life Skills (teaches things like community involvement, responsibility, anti-bullying, the DARE officer talks about drugs, it's really fabulous that they talk about these things on a repeated basis)

A = Art (each grade level has a different emphasis, starting with Kindergarten, it's Megan's favorite class)

M = Media (the Media teacher teaches the kids how to behave in the library, use the computerized card catalog, some computer skills, and the kids get to check books out of the school library to bring home)

P = Physical Education (PE has 1 coach and 2 teachers that help the kids work towards the goals on the Presidential Physical Fitness Test, and teach organized games like Capture the Flag, so fun!)

I love, love, love how broad their knowledge base is becoming this year. Everyone kept telling me that public schools do nothing but "teach to the test". The test being the FCAT, part of No Child Left Behind. This has not been our experience, but I can imagine a lot has to do with each teachers' individual teaching philosophy and this year we've been blessed with awesome teachers. Joshua will take the 3rd Grade FCAT this year, and other than soccer practice being cancelled for FCAT week, he's really not too bothered by it.

With Daniel's reading coach at school, he's been reading Mo William's books about Pigeon. I love these books, they are hilarious! Daniel picked out two at the Altamonte Springs Library today after school.

I made Brussels Sprouts!

2012-01-29T21:24:00.003-05:00

Last week, I made fish, quinoa/rice and brussels sprouts. I didn't really follow a recipe, I just washed them, trimmed them, and cut them in half. I tossed them with olive oil and salt/pepper. I roasted them for about 25 minutes at 375 degrees. They were yummy just as they were, but I really wanted something more flavorful on them, so I reduced balsamic vinegar and a dash of sugar to toss on top. I put a few cranberries on the the kids' plates.

Is than an almost clean plate I see?

Weekend Fun

2012-01-29T20:59:00.003-05:00

It feels as though life is moving in fast forward these days. The kids all seem so big and independent lately.
Joshua is just about finished reading the Harry Potter series. He has only one book left to go. I'm so amazed at how thick these books are and how fast he's going through them.

Here's a cool art project that Joshua completed in school last week.

Also, in school this past week was the 100th day of school. Daniel made this cool hat in Kindergarten. He wore it all day, even to the Fresh Market to get fish and veggies for Friday night's dinner.

I worked all day Saturday, and I have no idea what happens on work days. I do know that Keith took the kids to church and that there was perhaps some cereal served for dinner that night.

I woke up this morning to Megan poking my shoulder asking me what was for breakfast. It was 8am, which is about 3 hours later than I usually sleep. I told her to go find Daddy (who was in the livingroom) and rock-paper-scissors him for breakfast. If he won, he'd make breakfast, if she won, I'd take her to Dunkin Donuts. Megan won, so I dragged myself out of bed and we went to DD for some donuts, bagels and coffee.

Then we tidied up the house and got ready for lunch at Grandma's house. Keith's long-time friend Jeremy, and his wife and kids were in town and we all had lunch at Keith's parents house. I did not get any pictures. I wish I had, Megan was thrilled to have two sweet girls to play with.

Tonight, my sister was bored, so she came over for dinner. I ordered up pizza and we had so much fun sitting around chatting and eating.

The boys had so much fun together. I think Pam's boys want to move in with us. It was hard to see them go. I'd love for them to move just a little closer to our neighborhood.

They all have Nintendo DS systems and were playing a group game together. So fun!

Basic Green Smoothie

2012-01-25T22:24:00.002-05:00

There's nothing too special about this smoothie. All I did was add a couple of handfuls of fresh spinach to my usual smoothie.

1 c. berries

1 frozen banana

1 c. orange juice

1 handful of spinach

6 ice cubes

Blend well. It's pretty tasty. I didn't even taste the spinach.

Pineapple Orange Banana Smoothie

2012-01-25T22:12:00.002-05:00

This one earned me a thumbs up!

1 cup orange juice

2 peeled oranges

1 cup chopped pinapples

2 frozen bananas

6 or so ice cubes

Blend well, and enjoy! The kids loved their drinks.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2012-01-25T21:17:00.004-05:00

As soon as the kids went back to school, I started attacking their bedrooms. *sigh* Megan has been a pack rat forever. As scared as I was to go under her bed, it must be done. Wow, I found enough clothes to do an entire load of laundry, as well as her jacket and a half dozen of naked Barbie dolls. Note to self: must make more Barbie clothes.

Of course, then I find this, and it made things just a little bit better.

Once I finished with the cleaning of Megan's room, I strolled around Costco by myself. Wow, so fun! I got lost in the book section for a while and almost came home with tons of stuff that I didn't need and then I got back on track and got my veggies.

I spent a couple of hours pureeing veggies for smoothies. So yummy! It reminded me of years ago, making all that baby food. I now have freezer baggies full of spinach cubes, cherry cubes, kale/apple cubes, greek yogurt cubes and banana cubes. Makes grabbing a morning smoothie so much quicker.

Joshua woke up with a cough on Saturday morning, and so we opted to hang out at home instead of go to church. We spent some time sitting outside around the pool reading and pretty much had a quiet day.

Sunday morning, I took the kids to the park, so Keith could get some studying done for his classes.

It wasn't as crowded as I thought it would be, with the weather being as gorgeous as it's been. The kids had a blast.

I sat around clipping coupons and making the weekly menu.

The kids ran around with the walkie-talkies that Megan got for Christmas. They were hiding form each other and giving clues to find them. So funny! I love to see them play so well together.
I wore them out and then came home to make some snacks for the football game. It was an awesome game that resulted in the Patriots going to the Superbowl.

Monday was my birthday. Keith and the kids made me a cake and we met Keith's parents for dinner at Jason's Deli.

Don't look to closely at my messy kitchen!

Thirty-six candles. After blowing them out, we had to open up a few windows to be sure we didn't set the smoke alarms off. We have very sensitive smoke detectors.

The kids came home from school with their Progress Reports and I'm super-proud of all of them. Joshua earned all As. Daniel earned all Ss. Megan earned 2 As, 2Bs and 1C. Her C was just 1 point away from a B. Such an improvement over the beginning of the school year. We're about half-way through the school year, and I have to say that I'm still loving their school. Daniel gave me a penguin today and explained that he had to write two complete sentences about his penguin.
What is this glob on the corner of the kids' bathroom sink? It's what happens to Ivory Soap when it's put in the microwave. I would recommend cutting the bar in quarters and only microwaving for about 45-60 seconds. We may need to share this fun experiment with Grandpa, he's always looking for fun little tricks to use for Object Lessons.

Tomorrow, Daniel's class is having a 100th day of school celebration. He has to bring in 100 of one thing and give 3 clues to what it is. He chose macaroni. His clues are: it's twirly, it goes with cheese and it's yellow. He came up with this whole thing by himself.

Yummy Winter Salad

2012-01-25T21:04:00.003-05:00

I made this salad when Keith's parents came over for Christmas lunch, and we've been eating it at least once a week since then.

Super-easy...

* 1 container of salad greens

* 2 avocados

* 1 bottle of mandarin oranges

* 1 handful of craisins

* 1 handful of walnuts

I like to use a pomegranate vinaigrette salad dressing. Doesn't really matter which kind, as long as it doesn't contain Sodium Benzoate.

If I have some grilled chicken left over from dinner, I'll toss that in, too.

Tom Brady vs. Tim Tebow

2012-01-15T20:29:00.004-05:00

In our house, we've been Tim Tebow fans since the Gator days. We like his sportsmanship and his skills. Last year, Keith and the kids bought me a Tim Tebow poster for my sewing area out in the playroom.

Friends that know that I'm a Patriots fan had been teasing me all week, wondering how I'm going to survive Tim Tebow being up against Tom Brady for the big game. The kids are Patriots fans as well, and so the boys busted out their Patriots shirts as soon as we got home from church.

The local high school's mascot is the Patriot as well, so the boys get plenty of wear from these shirts.

We had some yummy football snacks and settled in for a late football game. Until Keith went missing. I found him in the kitchen snacking on the buffalo chicken dip and working on something secretive.

Keith came out of the kitchen in his very own Tebow shirt to cheer on the Broncos in a living room full of Patriots fans. So brave and so handsome!

It was tough to see Tebow have such a bad game. But it was a great Patriots victory! We enjoyed our football snacks and had a great time watching the game. The kids passed out after the first quarter and I struggled to stay awake until the end of the game, knowing that I had to get up bright and early for work the next day.

Fun at the Dentist Office

2012-01-06T14:39:00.003-05:00

With Winter Break coming to an end, and a new calendar year beginning, it seemed logical to get the kids all in for their winter teeth cleaning. We switched to the Maitland location of Greenberg Dental and are very happy with the switch. At first, I was concerned because we hung out in the waiting room for about 45 minutes after the first scheduled appointment. Then the hygienist explained that they were trying to get all 3 kids in close proximity so that I didn't have to go from room to room to see them. It worked beautifully! There were chest-high dividers between the dental chairs and I was able to stand in Megan's area and look over at each of the boys. Here's our super-boring visit to the dentist. It's not exciting around here all the time, sometimes we do normal things like floss...

I was the most concerned about Megan, since she is our closet sweets eater...literally. The last time I moved furniture around in her room I found tons of granola bar and treat wrappers in her room. Fortunately for us she had a great visit today with zero cavities! The dentist did comment that she should not be drinking any juice (as a general kids shouldn't drink juice, nothing too specific to Megan), or anything dark in color. We're pretty guilty of doing the occasional grape juice or even worse V8 Splash (which isn't even juice at all), but within the past few weeks we've moved to just water with our meals. He complimented her on her no cavities and then asked if she is very detailed with brushing her teeth and then he looked at her socks and said, "nevermind". Ha, ha!

Joshua did great, too! He also has no cavities. I asked the dentist about Josh's need to always have something in his mouth. He's always chewing on something - his nails or gum. And he grinds his teeth. Dr. Dentist said that those things are not having a negative effect on his teeth and that sugar-free gum is okay for Joshua's nervousness. After doing much research over the past few weeks, I went ahead and decided to get Joshua's back molars "sealed". I'll likely have Megan's done within the next year, too. Funny thing about Joshua at the dentist is that he talks so much that it's hard for him to just lay there and let the hygienist clean his teeth. His literally took twice as long!

Little Daniel-bug hadn't really had the full-on dental visit until today. In the past, he has had a light cleaning and exam, but today is the first time I agreed to the xrays and fluoride treatment. He did great! He also has no cavities and loved the water sucker. In the picture above is what he looked like when I left him to go check on Joshua's sealants. Daniel had just gotten his fluoride applied and was supposed to be sitting with the sucker keeping his teeth dry. As I looked over the wall back at Daniel...this is what I found...

So funny! No, he hasn't had any funny-gas, this is just the way Daniel is. In the end where he shoves the sucker back in his mouth is because he hears the dentist coming.

I'm sure the dentist office is looking forward to us returning for the 6 month check this summer!

Baby, it's cold outside!

2012-01-02T22:12:00.002-05:00

The boys helped me change the sheets on their beds today. After that was done, we emptied the Dyson and took out some of the dirt for a closer look.

We saw dirt, and some oil and a couple of hairs. So cool and gross all at the same time.

Then we had a plan that we would go to the park. So I piled them into the minivan and down to the castle park in Winter Park. Unfortunately, we only lasted about 2.7 minutes, since the wind picked up and the temperature was dropping by the second. The kids were all in shorts and short sleeve shirts, and my toes were freezing in my flip flops. So, back to the house for a wardrobe change and we were off again.

We ran into Wal-Mart to return a 3 duplicate games that we got for Christmas. It was quick and painless to return items, but I did have to pick up a few things, and that's where it gets ugly. Wal-mart is so dreary and busy and loud. Really, does there need to be televisions at the check-out stands blaring advertisements? We got the cat litter we needed and got out as quick as we could.

We went to the "fish" park and played there for at least an hour. I didn't realize how late it was getting, since my watch band is being repaired and I left my phone in the car. The next thing I knew someone walked by us and told his kids it was 5pm and time to go home. Oh no! I've got to get dinner going.

Daniel as king of the playground.

Sweet, sweet siblings.

Megan on the fish...why the park is the "fish park".

We still had to make a few stops on the way home and ended up dawdling in Chamberlain's for way to long, so when we got home it was already 5:30. I whipped up some chunky chicken noodle soup and called it a night.

We read the Brothers Grimm version of Sleeping Beauty tonight and the kids really enjoyed it.

Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup

2012-01-02T21:57:00.002-05:00

After a chilly afternoon playing at the park, something warm for dinner was in order. It was already 5:30pm when we walked back into the house, and dinner needed to be on the table right now. I've stopped buying canned soups because the sodium content is too high. And it looks as though my crazy obsession with BPA-free containers seems to be catching on, at least to the folks at Harvard, or so says NPR.

Super quick supper...

1. Bring two cartons of chicken broth to a boil.

2. Add chopped chicken.

3. Add noodles (I used adorable shaped gluten-free rice noodles.)

4. About 10 minutes later add some carrots and celery.

5. In the time it takes to have everyone wash hands, seek out clean bowls from the dishwasher and feed the dog - dinner is ready. Dish up, and enjoy.

Happy New Year! See ya, 2011!

2012-01-01T05:41:00.004-05:00

New Years Eve means two things at our house... bad take-out Chinese food, and games. Megan and I went to our local little hole-in-the-wall take-out place to pick up our yummy dinner, while the boys played air hockey on their new air hockey table. Once home, we all settled around the table laughing about the lack of chop-sticks skills some family members possess.

Megan finally got it, and let out a little during-dinner victory dance.

Dinner was take-out and on paper plates...yay, no clean up tonight! After dinner the kids worked on a worksheet all about 2011.

Daniel in deep thought. Everyone filled out their sheets, then we weighted and measured the kids to write down their measurements. So funny as Daniel is such a solid kid, he nearly weighs as much as Megan, but she still has a couple of inches of height over him. Joshua is getting pretty tall, and I feel like I'm buying him new pants all the time.

You should be able to click on the kids' pages to make the view larger if you are unable to read it as it is posted.

Happy New Year to everyone! I'll be celebrating the day at work today, while Keith hangs with the kids at home. Daniel woke up at 4:30 complaining of a stomach ache (likely from the take-out), and is on the couch watching cartoons. Hopefully, the big kids will sleep a little later this morning.

Did you know...you can clean a penny with taco sauce?

2011-12-29T21:21:00.005-05:00

One of Joshua's Christmas presents was a science kit with 10 pre-packaged science experiments with all the ingredients, tools and instructions. It was so fun to put together and really inexpensive.

Tonight, he pulled it out to work on an experiment. Tonight's experiment was using taco sauce to clean pennies. Simple, but fun!

I found the grimiest pennies I could find and some extra packets of taco sauce.
Put a few drops of sauce on each penny and rub in. Let sit for 5 minutes, then wipe off with paper towel.

Our first attempt left a somewhat dirty penny. But our second attempt yielded a bright shiny penny! Look...it's from 1973 and it looks good as new!

We like Steve Spangler's Science for fun hands-on learning activities.

Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2011-12-27T14:58:00.001-05:00

Another blast from the past...

Ingredients:

2/3 cup butter softened

2/3 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 1/2 cups old fashioned oats

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

6 oz package of craisins

2/3 cup white chocolate chunks

1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. Using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar together in a medium mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs, mixing well.
3. Combine oats, flour, baking soda and salt in separate mixing bowl. Then add to butter mixture in several additions, mixing well after each addition.
4. Stir in craisins and white chocolate chunks.
5. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 10 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Makes 2 1/2 dozen.

The kids love them! They are a good mix of sweet and savory.

Creamy Broccoli Casserole

2011-12-27T14:56:00.001-05:00

Ingredients

16 oz. broccoli

2 tbs butter

1/4 tsp salt

2 tbsp flour

2 c. milk

8 oz cream cheese cubed

1 c. crushed buttery round crackers

1. Prehead oven to 350.

2. Steam broccoli.

3. Melt butter over medium heat, stir in salt, flour and milk until thick and bubbly. Stir in cream cheese until melted.

4. Remove from heat, stir in broccoli.

5. Sprinkle 1/2 cup crushed crackers in pie plate. Layer with broccoli mix. Top with remaining cracker crumbs.

6. Bake for 30 minutes.

Yummy! Quick and easy. The kids loved it.

Sweet and Sour Meatballs

2011-12-27T14:53:00.001-05:00

Ingredients

1 lb. ground turkey breast

1/4 c. dry bread crumbs

2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

2 tbsp minced onion

1 egg

1 16oz can jellied cranberry sauce

1/3 c. ketchup

1/4 c. chili sauce

1. Combine turkey, bread crumbs, parsley, onion and egg. Mix well and shape the mixture into 24 meatballs.

2. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 min.

3. Combine last 3 ingredients in large pot. Gently mixed meatballs in sauce.

Delicious!!

Resurrection Biscuits

2011-12-27T14:49:00.001-05:00

Here it is the day after Christmas and I'm posting recipes for the Easter season. Notice that chunky little hand a couple of pictures down!

Ingredients:

Grands biscuits

Melted butter

Cinnamon Sugar

Marshmallows

1. Flatten out each Grand biscuit. Brush with butter and place marshmallow inside. Discuss the relation between the while marshmallow and the purity of Jesus. Annoint with spices and seal up tomb by wrapping biscuit around marshmallow and pinching to seal. (I brushed tomb with more butter and sprinkled more cinnamon sugar.)

2. Cook according to biscuit directions (350 degrees for 18 minutes worked for us). Take out of oven and let cool - if you slice them too soon, they will collapse, they need to cool for it to work right.

3. Once cooled (about 20 min or so for us), slice in half. Notice that the marshmallow is gone. Discuss why the tomb is empty.

Banana Carrot Muffins

2011-12-27T14:45:00.002-05:00

The kids and I made these recipes quite often up in Alaska in the winter time. Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

5 bananas

1/2 cup orange juice

2 cups shredded carrots

4 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

1tsp salt

1 cup butter

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In medium bowl, combine flour, soda and salt.

3. In mixer, cream butter and sugar.

4. Mix in eggs and juice.

5. Mash bananas.

6. Mix carrots and bananas into the egg-sugar mixture.

7. Stir in dry mix

8. Put in lined muffin tins

9. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes.

Makes 24 muffins. I sometimes add some chopped walnuts if I have them on hand. I first made these for the kids in November 2008.

Peanut Sauce Chicken and Veggies

2011-12-27T14:42:00.001-05:00

Here's another recipe from back in 2008. Yum!

Ingredients:

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 clove of garlic, chopped

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp honey

1tsp water

Whisk all these things together (except the chicken - that'll mess up your whisk!), and pour over the chicken. Place in fridge to marinate anywhere from 10-60 minutes.

More ingredients:

1/2 cup chickpeas

1 tbsp peanut butter

2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp water

dash of Frank's

Toss all these things into the food processor and blend until very liquidy...I added about 1/4 cup more water through the top to make it very liquidy so it was easier to use as a stir-fry sauce.

1. Brown chicken, add stir fry sauce and whatever veggies you want.

2. Enjoy!

Stirred into the chicken tonight I used a 1/2 yellow onion (that's all that caramelized yummy goodness sticking to the chicken and veggies in the picture!), one cup of carrots, and one cup of broccoli (that I added about 2 seconds before serving, since I like my broccoli very crispy.)

I like this meal alot. The chicken had a great flavor to it and the stir fry sauce wasn't too sweet. But if you add enough Franks to anything, it's going to come out good!

Buffalo Chicken Dip

2011-12-27T14:34:00.002-05:00

I'm working on carrying over some previously posted recipes. So cute to see the pictures of the kids when they were a little smaller! Here's one from April 2008.

Okay, so I never said all of our snacks were healthy. This is far from a healthy choice! However, it's one of Keith's favorite things to snack on. Ingredients:

2 cans of chunk chicken, drained

2 packages of cream cheese softened

1 cup ranch dressing

3/4 cup Franks

1 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

There are two different ways we make this dish. I like it this way -

1. Heat chicken and hot sauce in a skillet on the stove over medium heat. Stir in cream cheese and ranch dressing. Cook stirring until well blended and warm. Mix in half of the shredded cheese and transfer to slow cooker, top with remaining cheddar cheese.

This keeps it in the slow cooker nice and warm for parties.

Keith, on the other hand, makes it this way -

1. Take all the ingredients, dump into Kitchenaid mixer, mix with paddle blade until well mixed, toss into baking dish, cook on 350 for 30 minutes.

It doesn't come out nice and smooth like the crock pot method. When it's baked there are still pockets of cream cheese, and it isn't blended as well. But, hey, he's in the kitchen cooking, so what am I complaining about? :)

Serve with celery or tortilla chips or Chicken in a Biscuit crackers or in Keith's case, just a spoon will do.

Awww...I miss when the kids used to eat off of character melamine plates. I think this picture was just a few months after Megan gave herself her own haircut!

Christmas Festivities

2011-12-26T22:10:00.005-05:00

We celebrated our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, which means our usual traditions were a day early. The kids woke up and waited for the okay to go find the pickle.

We have a glass pickle ornament that Keith and I hide on the tree on Christmas Eve and on Christmas morning the child that finds the pickle gets an extra gift. This gift is usually something gender-neutral and wrapped with the tag of "Pickle Gift".

Notice Megan is already dressed for church, and Daniel is running around in his PJs. Megan was the lucky Pickle winner this year.

She was pretty excited!

The only present that was opened that morning was the Pickle Gift (which was a Harry Potter game for the Wii and $5). Then it was time to eat and get out the door for church. Church was wonderful, although I do believe I'm teaching in the warmest room in the church - or perhaps it's just the energy of the 20 or so 4 year olds!

Back home after church, I put together the rest of lunch. Christmas menu this year:

* turkey breast (I made it in the crock pot - super easy!)

* gravy

* mashed potatoes

* winter salad (recipe to come soon)

* roasted carrots (recipe to come soon)

* dinner rolls (made by the Fresh Market)

* pumpkin pie (at Daniel's request and made by the Fresh Market)

Keith's parents came over for lunch and when we were all stuffed, it was time to exchange presents.

Grandma and Grandpa brought a really big present for the boys!

All Daniel asked for was a sword with a holder. In the Santa wrapped box there was a...
whole Roman soldier set! Incidently, the Party Store is the absolute funnest place to Christmas shop at!
Grandma and Grandpa Holloway got Megan an Easy Bake Oven. Which will be fantastic to make treats for the beautiful tea set that Grandma and Grandpa Ketchum got Megan.

Yippee! An ice cream maker for Grandma's house. Get it ready, I hear we are having a hot summer!

Grandpa and his new Georgia Bulldogs yard gnome.

Joshua and his new Georgia Bulldogs t-shirt.

Daniel with is Pillow Pet, reading the directions to his build-your-own-fort kit.

Saving the best for last, the kids attacked the big present from Grandma and Grandpa. It's an air hockey table.

There's Keith hiding behind the tree playing with the open presents!

Daniel hiding in his newly created fort.

Megan reading about the different things she can make in her Easy Bake oven.

While the girls were in the kitchen getting snacks ready, the boys put together their new lego sets.

Tada! It's a pink cookie sandwich with yellow icing.

Kale Chips

2011-12-26T21:49:00.003-05:00

We have a bearded dragon, Walle, and he loves dark leafy greens. Sometimes it causes some serious mommy-guilt that one of our pets eats more nutrient-dense foods than my kids sometimes! While I was in the kitchen planning our Christmas Eve lunch, I came across a recipe for Kale Chips. Bunch of Organic Kale

1 tsp EVOO

Pinch of salt

1. Pull kale leaves off of hard stock. Tear into potato chip size pieces.

2. Toss all kale chip leaves in bowl with EVOO and salt to ensure even coverage.

3. Bake at 350 for 6-8 minutes.

Reviews:

Daniel crushed them all up in his bowl.

Megan tried to drown them in water.

Joshua ate a few and asked for an orange.

The hubby scarfed down his bowl and ate all the kids (even the ones Daniel crushed) and asked for more.

I thought they were great and will make them again soon.

I think the biggest problem isn't the taste, or that they are green, or that they are vegetables...I think the biggest problem is that I can't compete with this....
the plate full of junk food that came home from just one classroom's holiday party.

Be sure to check out the tab at the top of the page. I'll be going through the blog over the next few days to label each of the recipes and merge our old recipe blog onto this one to share our tasty treats (and some flops) with everyone.

Merry Christmas Eve (eve) 2011

2011-12-23T22:30:00.003-05:00

You would think after living 10 years of the Semper Gumby scheduling of the Coast Guard, we'd be used to creating Christmas traditions on days other than December 25th. Funny how now that Keith's parted ways with the Coast Guard, we're still struggling with trying to infuses some normalcy into the holidays. This time it's my schedule that's throwing us for a loop. I'm working Christmas day, which means I'll be gone from 0615-1945. That's my usual work time - first one out the door before everyone is awake, and I'm usually walking back in the door as kids are brushing their teeth and climbing into bed. It's not always ideal, but it's only 3 days a week, so the 4 days a week off work are so, so worth the 3 long days. Anyhow, we moved our Christmas lunch to Christmas Eve, which makes tonight our Christmas Eve. And just for confusion, the kids woke up to filled Christmas stockings this morning.

Bananagrams! So fun! The kids had a blast digging into their stockings and thoroughly investigating every item.
Megan putting her new ornament on the tree.

Our in the playroom, Megan worked on a paint-by-number Tinkerbell painting. While Daniel and I went to Publix (which was absolutely crazy) and Fresh Market (which wasn't as busy as I thought it would be).
When I came home to unpack groceries, these headless erasers were waiting to greet me at the table.

Each of the kids got an awesome color changing cup from the Science Center inside their stocking. Daniel got a fun straw construction set, which he is here sharing with his brother and sister.

Daniel is really wanting to believe that Santa is coming to our house. Now, we've already talked about this and we watched the Veggie Tale movie about the history of Santa Claus as well as read stories about the "spirit of Santa", etc, etc. Tonight, he tells me that since we are celebrating Christmas tomorrow, we should let Santa know. He asked to spread his reindeer food on the lawn (he made this is school this week), so that Rudolph will know that we are ready for him. Hmmm...I was a little confused, but I pulled out the reindeer food.

And there he is fresh from the tub, outside sprinkling the oatmeal/glitter concoction on the lawn. We'll see if Santa makes an appearance tonight!

I got these awesome lollypops at Ross. They are so yummy and have no artificial dyes in them. Yay! Also, while I was there this week, I scored some adorable pillow cases for $1.99. Because the kids really liked the pillows I gave the cousins for Christmas, I whipped up some of those tonight.

Teacher's Gifts - Done!

2011-12-18T21:05:00.003-05:00

Today we worked on the teachers' gifts for school. Having a child in kindergarten, second grade and third grade means that I needed 3 classroom teacher gifts. But what about all of awesome LAMP teachers?

Life skills

Art

Media

Physical Education

So, in the end, we decided to put together 10 gift bags to bring to school. Megan and I formed an assembly line around the dining room table. (Why yes, that is a pile of laundry behind Megan that's nearly as tall as she is.)

We had two different projects going on. One project was adorable popcorn snowmen, inspired by a really cute blog Shakespear's Stage. These snowmen came out so cute - some are for the teachers and some are for the neighbors.

The other project was the snack gift bags for the teachers. They each had 2 hot cocoa packets, a pack of dried fruits/nuts from Target, a few Dove chocolates (milk chocolate and dark chocolate), and some peppermint patties. The 3 classroom teachers each also had a nice gift card enclosed. The bag is tied to a snowman popcorn along with a personalized note for each person.

For the teachers, we wrote out their last name and used the letters to write words that describe the teachers.

For the LAMP teachers, I started an open-ended sentence for the kids to finish. I covered the first kids' answer so that each of the other children think about the sentence and finish it with their own thoughts. They came out so cute. Apparently, there must be a game called "chicken and fish" during PE, because the kids all included that on their PE card. I think it's important for the teachers to know what a huge impact they have in the children's lives. It's really cool to ask the kids to regurgitate what they learned, or what they liked, or why they enjoy going to a certain class. I sure hope the teachers like the feedback from the kids, it's just as sweet as the treats!

Wednesday is our last day of school before we are out for Christmas break. The kids are so excited to give out their gifts!

Thankful for the Imperfect Moments

2011-12-12T21:22:00.004-05:00

I have to admit, it's been kindof fun having Joshua slowed down with a broken arm. We've had to look for quieter activities other than trips to the park and bike rides. We've enjoyed reading some stories together, and playing lots of board games.

Today was the day that the cast came off!

Here he is a little nervous getting ready to get the cast off. Safety goggles on!

And here it goes...bzzzzz.....
It vibrated his arm, and so he giggled the whole time!

Down to the Radiology department for the follow-up xrays. Then back up to the physician's office for the official word that everything looks great. He was given an order for taking it easy for one more week. She also have him a paper copy of his xrays shrunk down; I told Joshua I would laminate for him so that he can use them as bookmarks.

Megan worked really hard on her spelling word sentences today.

Joshua got a remote control spider for Christmas from my mom. The cat seems to really like it!

We are working on having the kids help us make some of our Christmas gifts. There are blogs out there with kids making perfect crafts - this is not one of them. :) I often joke about how the Hallmark Channel has set unrealistic expectations about Christmas activities with the kids. Funny how on tv when kids decorate the Christmas tree, it comes out fantastic and everyone is happy. However, at our house when we decorated the tree, there were tears about Josh putting his ornament too close to Megan's, and serious grumpies over why we don't have candycanes on our tree (we have candy canes, they just happen to be still in a box in our kitchen). So I find myself often having to pause to check myself to make sure I am not placing an unrealistic expectation on how I want the day to turn out, because surely I will end up sadly disappointed and in the process miss the magic of the imperfection of our family.

I don't know how it ended up that we don't really emphasis the Santa part of Christmas. I guess the kids just learn what they live, and when they were littler, our church in Alaska had great Christmas Eve and Christmas Day activities, and so it was so easy to keep the focus of the holiday where it belongs. Now that we live in more main-stream culture, it's hard to not be bombarded with all of the commercialism of the season. I'll confess that I love to walk around the mall with a yummy warm drink and window shop, but sometimes I feel like the small Christmas gifts we've chosen just aren't enough. Fortunately, keeping our tiny budget in check is really easy this year since we are using some of Dave Ramsey's plan. Another thing that has really helped us (um, more like me, Keith isn't really the Christmas present shopper in our house) is putting a bit of a limit on gifts. I can't remember where I read it from, but a few years ago I started thinking less about getting "stuff" and more about really putting thought into the kids gifts. I take no issue with folks that go out for Black Friday and purchase stuff just because it's a good deal. I used to do that, too. It's fun and I did enjoy the hustle and bustle of it. Somehow, it just seemed to me that I was buying stuff because it was a good deal, and not necessarily because it was something that one of my gift recipients would really truly like.

For each of the kids, I usually follow the guidelines of:

*Something you want

*Something you need

*Something to wear

*Something to read

It's worked out quite well for us and it helps to balance out items acquired throughout the season. A few of the kids presents are home made presents this year.

As far as the big guy in red, he really doesn't get much credit for things around here. The kids all know that Santa the person doesn't exist, but that the spirit of Santa is a part of the season. We also pretend that Santa fills stockings, in the same way that we pretend about the tooth fairy. When I was a child, I grew up with a "drugstore stocking" - deodorant, hairspray, chapstick, lotion, etc. I tend to put a few necessities in the stockings (a new toothbrush is a must!), but I will say that I tend to go all out on stockings, with some of the small gifts inside wrapped as well. I collect fun little things all year long so that at the end of the year, I probably have more trinkets than can fit in the stockings. I keep all these things in a box in my closet and pull out a trinket for special prizes during the year. Keith and I both grew up with an orange in the toe, and so that's always a must. I prefer mine to be a chocolate orange, but Keith thinks those are gross.

Speaking of home made gifts...the kids are working hard on putting the finishing touches on some presents this week.

Daniel's class continues to learn about Christmas around the world.
Today's contribution was the Dreidel song - over and over again in the truck on the way home.

Megan's homework tonight was to write a sentence using each of her spelling words. Read #10. I usually help correct her work before she hands it in, but tonight, I'm leaving this one alone. We'll work harder on the spelling list and correct meaning of "pasture" later in the week.

And tonight I leave you with Daniel in his 2 sizes too small Orlando Magic pjs telling Pepper goodnight.

Bug Exhibit at the Science Museum

2011-12-12T20:58:00.005-05:00

Sunday morning, we played some board games in our PJs for a couple of hours after breakfast. Even Pepper got into the playful spirit with the usual attacking of the carpet in the front hallway.
The weather was getting rainy, so we decided to venture down to the Science Museum to check out the holiday laser light show. We got there in time to watch the electricity show with the large tesla coils.

After the show, the scientist stayed behind and answered a bunch of questions from us about humidity and electricity in the air. She was so wonderful. Still having about an hour before the light show, we went to race cars.

Megan and Daddy lining up their cars....and they're off!

Then we moved onto the driving simulator game. All that Wii Mario Kart is really paying off, the kids drove like champs.
Daniel was able to drive this time, since he can reach the gas. Last year, he could only watch, so this was hugely exciting for him!

Over in the bug exhibit, I showed Megan why we can't eat anywhere but the kitchen - bugs, bugs, bugs. The roaches gave me the heebie-jeebies.

There was a screen with butterflies flying, and when you stood still, the butterflies sat on you. So interesting.

Down on the first floor, we always check out the reptiles.

Standing in line to see the laser show, one of the guys from the gift shop came around with flying balloons. Clever marketing, as we were sucked into paying $10 for rocket balloons - and we've gotten our money's worth - they are so fun!

The laser show was cute. And the kids had a great time.

Tesniere Family Christmas Party

2011-12-10T20:50:00.005-05:00

My sisters and I had decided that we weren't going to exchange gifts between families this year. However, I just can't arrive at the annual Tesniere Christmas Party with empty hands. So, I came up with the idea of a practical gift and bought new pillows for my 5 nieces and nephews. Some inexpensive (thank you, Marshals!) pillow cases and some quality time with my sewing/embroidering machine later and voila!...inexpensive, fun something new for the kids.

Here's a shot of the kids this morning as we are on our way out the door for church. We came home from church, had a small snack, changed clothes and loaded up the minivan for the ride over to Nana's house in the Daytona Beach area.

Not to being able to give up the weekly Sabbath nap, Daniel passed out cold in the back of the van.
Daniel brought Nana one of his Sabbath School crafts. She loved it! Then we moved out onto the porch to have lunch with the other grandkids.

Say cheese! What a goofy group. The ran around like wild Indians outside with the weather got cooler and cooler.

Mom let me borrow one of Bill's old jackets - brrrrr....

Nana's second Christmas tree. Her house is very festive both inside and out.

Alexis opening up her new pillow. I think all the kids liked them.

I've seen these three stockings for years and years - they were our stockings from when we were kids.

The Christmas tree in the kitchen. So cute!

Megan was so excited to open up a basket full of Madeline stuff. How exciting.

Joshua really likes his aircraft carrier.

Oh my goodness....is that a Superman snuggie?

Oh, yes, it sure is.
That's right, ladies. He's all mine.

Daniel likes his Big Foot dinosaur thing a lot.

Then we walked next door to check out Pam's house.

I see Chewbacca is all decorated for the holidays.

Austin was telling me, "no, you can't have our tree".

We had a great time. It's always so much fun to see Nana and my sisters and all the cousins.

It's the most yummiest time of the year!

2011-12-07T21:41:00.003-05:00

This time of year is so much fun! We've been a little non-stop, but it's been so worth it! This is such a fun time of the year to spend with our friends and family.

Last week was the annual Adventurers Christmas party. Just like last year there were games, songs, snacks and crafts. The kids all had a blast.

Daniel especially liked the cookies and cocoa part of the night. He shared 2 of his 4 cookies with me, so sweet!
There's Daniel, right up front watching Pastor Barb.

Joshua went out tonight with some of the high school students that Grandpa works with. The plan was for him to go go-carting, but unfortunately the cast was a problem and he wasn't able to participate. Grandma picked him up and spent some time with him instead. In the mean time, it was spirit-day at Chick-Fil-A today, which means that CFA partnered up with Forest City Elementary to donate a percentage of tonight's profits to the school. The CFA cow visited the kids today and all of the kids were pretty excited about it.

Keith and I took the remaining two kids to CFA, and it was packed! Daniel and I sat at one table and Keith and Megan sat at another.
The kids handed in their Box Tops for a chance to spin the big wheel.

It was so fun! Yummy food, and great company....what more can I ask for? Except maybe this sign for my driveway...
We are almost finished with the last few Christmas projects we are making for presents. Fortunately, I've got a clump of days off and can hopefully get all of the remaining projects completed and wrapped. I've been taking pictures, but can't post them until after the holidays are over, and the recipients have opened their gifts.

Our trusty artificial tree fits perfectly in our livingroom. Because we don't really do Santa (but don't worry, our kids know not to say anything) - the presents are put under the tree as they are wrapped. Because I have to work on Christmas morning this year, we are still trying to figure out when to sit around the tree exchanging gifts.

Every year we try to look for a fun way to count down to Christmas. This year, we are doing a Lego Advent calendar. The kids take turns popping out the little window on the box and putting together the lego part and then adding it to the winter scene.

We are also moving the star along out Advent quilt. In years past, I've put trinkets or notes for different activities in the pockets. This year, I've hidden some money in some of the pockets.

In my hurry to finish putting out the Christmas decorations, I left the manger scene on the kitchen table until I could get the piano top cleaned off to put the manger up there. But then I noticed the kids were playing with it and retelling the story, and so on the kitchen table it stays. Although, tonight's retelling had an extra large cow outside the stable.

Daniel's teacher sent home a notice informing the parents that the children will be learning different Christmas traditions from all around the world. Above is a wooden shoe he made for St. Nick's Day. Today, Joshua's class learned all about Pearl Harbor. I'm really pleased with the kids school.

I just have to brag on Megan. Look at the neatness in her handwriting. She's working so hard! I know she was discouraged to have 2 Cs on her report card, but she's showing such great improvement we tell her that all that counts right now is that she's doing her best.

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-12-02T20:07:00.002-05:00

This year for Thanksgiving, our day started of with watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade with our pillows and blankets on the couch...so fun! Then we loaded up for our 2 minute drive over to Grandma and Grandpa Holloway's house. Each of the kids had Thanksgiving celebrations at school this week, and during Daniel's classroom celebration, they made costumes.
Daniel's Indian name is Gentle Wind. Of course, between Keith and the 3rd grader, I'm not sure who got more laughs out of this.

Grandma went above and beyond for lunch. Everything was amazing - from the table to the food to the weather (yeah, we'll give her credit for that, too!).

Keith helped carve the turkey in Grandma's awesome new kitchen. While Grandma finished putting the rest of the food together. If you look really close, you can see that Lilly is supervising this whole thing to see if any scraps fall her way.

Resting away the post-turkey sleepiness.

The kids all got their report cards last week. Joshua earned all As and an Honor Roll certificate. We are so proud of him. Megan earned 2 As, 1B and 2 Cs. I'm so pleased with how much she's been able to bring up her grades. I'm still baffled at how little progress she made in school last year. She's getting lots of extra help at school to bring her up to speed. Daniel earned all Ss.

In other news, we are really enjoying the Coast Guard Alaska show on the Weather Channel. New episodes air on Wednesday nights. It's really cool to watch and remember how much we enjoyed living there (sometimes).

Keith is wrapping up his semester of school in the next week or so, and has been studying in most of his spare time. He's registered for a challenging 13 credits next semester, eek!

Around the World in 7 Hours

2011-11-24T09:40:00.006-05:00

Whoo hoo! I won 8 tickets to Legoland from the hospital's competition. I picked up the tickets last week with plans to take the kids as soon as possible. One small issue...Joshua's broken arm is still in a cast, and I think Joshua would rather have full use of both arms to enjoy all of the hands-on aspects of the park. So after discussing it as a family (while Daniel and Pepper romance sleep together on the couch), we decided it was time to use our Christmas present from the Ketchums by going on a trip around the world.

We got to Epcot shortly after it opened, and made our way through the turnstiles as the kids oooh'd and aaah'd in anticipation.
The weather was perfect and the park was decorated for Christmas.

The first thing we rode was the ride in the big ball. I had the boys sitting with me and Keith had Megan. Daniel was very apprehensive of the dark areas, but we made it through once he realized the black light made his shoe laces glow. Nearing the end of the ride, there is a choose-your-own-adventure on the screen as we descended back to Earth. The boys chose all of the adventures, and the computer created a story in which Daniel breaks his arm snowboarding. It was very cute.
We enjoyed the Land and the Sea and all of the sights to see with both of those. The kids LOVED the manatees.

I asked them to make a scared face, like the shark was going to eat them. Megan's face is priceless!

Megan and Daddy are "ride buddies", and so they always seemed to sit in front of me and the boys.
A nine-pound lemon. Try squeezing that into your water glass!

We saw the Captain EO show starring Micheal Jackson from back in the 80's. Daniel freaked-out during the show, so I reached over and pulled his 3-D glasses off his head and scooped him into my lap, where he quietly sobbed into my shoulder for the rest of the performance. He doesn't like anything that's too graphically intense. He's also not a big fan of really loud sounds, and so when in Imagination, it sounds like a huge train is coming up from behind, he started crying again. I realize it sounds like he had a terrible time, but really he loved it, just a few small reminders of how much of a tender-hearted little boy he still is.

I was amazed at how much technology EPCOT uses now, compared to when I first went - which incidentally, I was in the 3rd grade just like Joshua. In the picture above, Joshua is using his body to make the figments on the screen do different things.

We also loved the fountains that jump across the walk-way. The kids played with these for a while...insert a shriek from me, "don't get your cast wet!".

What's different about this waterfall? The water flows up!! So cool.

Moving on to World Showcase...

We enjoyed each and every world. Some had rides, some had shows to watch outside. We enjoyed the movie Canada in the 360 degree theater. There was just so much to take in!

We came across Sleeping Beauty and Megan got in line for a picture.

Me: "Hey guys look this way"

And people wonder why we can't seem to send out photo cards for Christmas.

Every girls' dream....two beasts. They look so ferocious!

Hanging out in Morocco. Keith said, "get a picture of me near this sign". But I couldn't resist getting the kids in there, too. They just make themselves at home wherever we go!

Megan's getting hot, so a cool snack was in order...fast! But first, a historical show at the Hall of Presidents. I've always loved this show, and am so glad to see it maintain most of it's originality. About 2 minutes into the show, Daniel was not only sleeping, but snoring. The family sitting beside me were chuckling.

We got a little distracted by the train, and all the small buildings. So cool! The little houses were all decorated for Christmas.

We sat down to watch the Chinese acrobats. Not only did we sit where we got attacked by the flag, but I managed to get the kids the messiest ice cream ever. Ugh...it was such a bad combination, but at least the show was awesome.

On to Norway to look for trolls on the boat ride.

The huge troll in the gift shop was so adorable. I wanted to take him home and find a place for him in our backyard.

The kids had other plans.

After checking out a few other cool things, we hit the gift shop. We got our obligatory magnet for the refrigerator, and I picked up two new pins.

It was a really fun day! Thanks, Ketchums - this was such a thoughtful gift, the only thing missing was having you guys here to enjoy it with us!

Happy Veteran's Day!

2011-11-13T11:15:00.003-05:00

The kids' school had a big Veteran's Day celebration on Friday.

It was cold (for Florida) at about 65 degrees, and the program was outside in the front of the school.

The Altamonte Springs Police Department Color Guard came to present the colors. A stilt-walker dressed as Uncle Sam came from EPCOT Center.

There were members from all branches dressed in uniform enjoying the production that the kids put on.

Megan (in glasses and pig-tails) held her part of the big flag the second and third graders created during their number.

A few community veterans spoke telling each of their stories. It was really great, and all the kids listened very intently.

Daniel with the Uncle Sam had pulled down over his eyes, listening to one of the speakers.

The AMERICA dancers.

Joshua listening with his class.

The area was packed and had such a sense of community.

Francis the bald eagle came out to visit with the students. Here he is bravely saying hello to the Kindergarten classes.

It was a really great program. The marching band, chorus and cheerleaders from Lake Brantley High School came to perform. As well as a fly-over from some military planes.

Joshua Breaks His Arm

2011-11-13T10:29:00.002-05:00

I worked Saturday and Sunday of last weekend, and my assignment was incredibly challenging. While it is an amazing blessing to be able to help care for the tiniest patients in the hospital, it also extremely difficult some days. Sunday was one of those days. At around 6pm, I saw a text pop up on my phone from Keith telling me to call him right now. As I was putting the finishing touches on my charting for the day, I called Keith to hear that he's planning on loading up the kids and coming up to the hospital to have Joshua seen in the ER. It took a few minutes to sort things out, but I got some wise advice from some of the more experienced moms/nurses and called Keith back with a plan to go to Night Lite Pediatrics, a walk-in after hours clinic. By the time we had a plan, it was going to be about 20 minutes or so until I got home, so in the end, I ended up being the one to take Joshua up to the clinic.

So why this urgent care visit?

Joshua decided he was going to try to ride Grandma's beach bike, and when he started to topple over, the bike was too tall for him and he couldn't put his feet down, so right down he went. I came home and checked him out and was pleased with the ace wrap that Grandma had put on him. When I took the wrap off, he had some localized swelling accompanied by quite a bit of pain holding his arm up off the pillow. So off we went to the clinic.
While we waited in the exam room, we made up all sorts of silly ways that he could have hurt his arm, including being attacked by the scary looking zebra on the wall. Notice that right arm - he was fine with bending the wrist, but the arm itself was bothering him.

After a series of 3 xrays, and some tears with the karate chop view, the physician came in to reveal that he indeed has a fractured right radius. The medical assistant was fantastic and was teasing Joshua that he was going to have to give him a pink splint.

The next morning, we went to the pediatric orthopedist to have the arm properly casted.
I can't say enough great things about the doctor that saw Joshua on Monday morning. The entire office was so nice and we were in and out without feeling rushed.

The doctor showed Joshua his xrays and Joshua thought he had shattered his hand. :) Then after looking a little closer, he saw the fracture line. He picked out a blue cast, and will have to wear it for the next 28 days.

Joshua's cool short-arm cast. He can still write and use that had.

The ortho doc's office is in the medical plaza of the hospital, and so since we were in the area, we stopped by to see Grandma's office in the hospital and she gave Joshua a smiley face on his cast.

We also stopped by to see the lego creations in the gift shop. This creation is mine. The hospital is having a contest to win tickets to Legoland. I couldn't get any of my peers to enter the contest with me, so I entered all by myself. I was given a tote of legos and had to only use what was in that tote to create something based on the mission, vision or values of our hospital. The square thing is a crib with a mobile and a baby - since I work in the NICU. I had no idea the hospital was full of such creative people, there were lots of great submissions for the contest. I don't know when the final numbers will be tallied to see who has won the Legoland tickets.

Einstein Pumpkin Book Report

2011-11-13T10:19:00.002-05:00

During the week of Halloween, Joshua's class had to turn in their fall book report. He had to read a biography, write a report and decorate a pumpkin to reflect the subject. Joshua chose to do his report on Albert Einstein.
Joshua wrote some equations and some hard math problems on the back of the pumpkin before putting on the messy hair.

He did a great job decorating his pumpkin. He earned a grade of an A on both the report and the pumpkin.
I couldn't resist adding this picture of Megan. Evidently, the cat and dog think my bed is their bed.

Happy Hallo-week!

2011-11-01T22:21:00.005-04:00

This past week has been a blur of activity! Wednesday night was Adventurers at Forest Lake Church. The amazing mom that lead out in Daniel's group taught about the human body. Daniel is studying his shirt to give his "person" an Eager Beaver shirt, as well.

So sweet! The finished product says, "my body is a temple".

Moving on into homework time. We are still taking turns working with Megan. Keith has been doing math flashcards with her almost every night. She's showing huge improvements in math and in spelling.
Studying at the kitchen table. Grandma and Grandpa Holloway got a new dining room set and so we were lucky to get a larger table out of the deal. Our smaller kitchen table will go out in the garage for the kids to play on.

We kicked off Thursday night with a halloween-themed dinner. The kids started to make plans for Dress as Your Favorite Book Character day (the school's activity on Monday).

Sabbath morning found us with 2 sniffly kids and one with a horrific cough. So we opted to stay home from church and spend some time resting. Then we brought the kids to the park to fill up on Vitamin D and fresh air.

After the park, it was tub-time. Saturday night I put some glow sticks in the bathtub and let Megan have a special glowing bath followed with some cold medicine and she slept like a champ that night!

Sunday, I spent the day helping the boys clean their room. I put Joshua to work putting together spice racks from Ikea - they make awesome book shelves.

Up into the loft bed to hang the new shelf.

Daniel's finished shelf.

Joshua leveling his shelf.

The finished product!

That wasn't our only home improvement project. The rains pulled a gutter off the front of the house, and Keith had to go out to work on it.

Which brings us to Halloween day. While there are many different alternatives to trick-or-treating, we choose to visit our neighbors and socialize through the neighborhood. We've been committing ourselves to getting to know our neighbors better and have been spending time sitting around the firepit in the front yard at night.

A little pre-trick or treating dinner before Tinkerbelle goes to visit with Grandma and Grandpa.

Even Lilly gets into the spirit.

We visited a few of Grandma and Grandpa's neighbors to say hello, then we went around the corner to Keith's old neighborhood to visit some of the neighbors that watched Keith grow up. Finally, we hit up some of our neighbors that we are friends with. Overall, we probably visited with about a dozen families.

Keith stayed home and passed out peanut butter cups and glow bracelets.

It was a fun night.

Family Date Night - October Style!

2011-10-24T21:49:00.004-04:00

We went out on a family date tonight. It's been a long time since we've gone out to dinner just the 5 of us and it was so nice to just be together. Every other week or so, we order pizza from a locally own shop, Proccolinos. It is authentic New York style pizza and everything is so fresh - it's amazing! With the weather cooling off, we decided that instead of ordering take-out pizza, we'd go down to Proccolinos and eat out on the big deck.

It was so nice. The weather was in the 70's, the sky was clear and the Italian music was fabulous. We seemed to have the whole porch to ourselves, so we were a little crazier than usual.

Our pizza was fantastic. The pizza maker came out to see us and ask how things were, and then the owner came out and chatted with us for a while. Then is was time to head over to the pumpkin patch to pick up pumpkins.

Joshua needs to do a biography book report using a pumpkin, and so he was in search for an Einstein-looking pumpkin. Megan needs to bring a small pumpkin into class and so we picked out one for her, too. Then we ended up with two large pumpkins for the house.

After loading up the wagon with our choices, we took some time to be silly!

It was fun! Then it was time to get everyone in bed for school in the morning.

Progress Reports!

2011-10-18T21:20:00.002-04:00

The kids brought home progress reports from school last week. Joshua has all As and 1B - the B is in Science. I asked him why he thought his science grade was different than his other grades and he tells me that he might not be writing neat enough on his observation papers. I told him that it sounds like he knows what the problem is, so we'll see what things look like on the actual report card. Keith and I are both so proud of Joshua - those are great grades for starting a new school year at a new school with new friends and very new expectations. This will be our first year of the FCAT and the test preparation is a huge part of the classroom curriculum. I have a parent-teacher conference with his teacher next week.

Daniel brought home all Ss. He loves school. His teacher has a calendar that she sends home every day for parent's initials. If the face on the calendar is smiling, then Daniel had a good day, if it is a sad-face, then it means there was a discipline issue. So far, all happy faces! Shocking really, since he's such a little free-spirit!

Megan brought home 1 A (Science) 2 Bs (Math and Social Studies) and 2 Cs. Her Cs are in Reading and Language Arts. We can actually see the progression of her grades getting better as she's becoming more adjusted to her new glasses. A few weeks ago, the teacher decided to start printing out the slides from some of the classroom activities, and putting the slides on Megan's desk so that Megan won't have to look up at the screen - focus - read the words - look down at her paper - focus - write the words. Quite a bit was getting lost in translation. I was able to meet with Megan's teacher for a full hour on Monday to talk about some ways that I can build up her reading/writing skills. We are taking every opportunity we have to read/write around here. I've also pulled out some of the homeschooling materials that we've used in the past, and we are playing lots of games to help reinforce some basic skills.

I've inserted all of her spelling words into www.spellingcity.com and allow her to "play" that on the computer when she's done with her homework.

For all of the kids, the school focuses on answering questions both orally and written with complete sentences. So if the question is, "what did Paul eat for dinner last night?" the answer only gets half credit if the kids write or say, "pizza". The correct way to answer is, "Paul ate pizza for dinner last night." or "Last night, Paul ate pizza for dinner."

Megan uses her fingers for math still, and her teacher is trying to emphasize memorization of basic math facts. The second graders have these Math Minute sheets that they do - completing as many basic (1+2, 3+7, etc) math sums as possible in one minute. She's score in the lower third of her class with this. So tonight we made a math mobile to hang in her room and we'll update it every few days with more math facts as she continues to learn.
Monday there was no school for FCE. No school = no homework! There was zero humidity and the weather forcast has been calling for storms to come in tonight, so we knew this was the right time to get outside! The kids rode bikes with Daddy, while I went for a run. Then we all sat around the fire pit grilling hot dogs and making smores.

Adventurers Pine Lake Retreat

2011-10-16T19:13:00.009-04:00

It's that time of year again when we head out to Pine Lake Retreat for food, fun and fellowship with our Adventurers group. I was feeling a bit under the weather on Thursday, but after some rest and lots of fluids, I perked up enough to head out with Keith and the kids on Friday afternoon. We brought two vehicles because of all of our gear, so I had an easy way of getting back home if I needed to.

First stop was the Deininger's house, so that we could caravan with them to the camp. We went to the Cracker Barrel for dinner and met up with the rest of our camping crew: Allen and Braelyn, all five Grodacks, all 4 Deiningers, Jennifer and Blake (minus any super yummy treats!); and then Allen's parents, beautiful wife and adorable twins also joined us for dinner.

The ladies rocked and discussed the upcoming weekend festivities...

while the boys played checkers.

Joshua and Luke clowning around before dinner. We had a great meal - who doesn't like BFD (breakfast for dinner)? Then we set off again to caravan to the camp. It was dark by now, and I don't have a Sunpass, so I had to actually stop to pay tolls while everyone else just zipped along. Then I'd have to merge back into fast lane and punch it to catch up with everyone else. And every time, Megan would say, "are we lost?".

After some confusion at the retreat sight, we finally found our cabin and got all 7 vehicles parked, only to go inside for more chaos about which kid is sleeping where. Fortunately, we had mapped this all out a couple of weeks ago at Canadian Thanksgiving, so we had a great starting point for stowing gear and settling down the kids.

We didn't make it in time for camp worship. Lisa had brought along her Bible Story books and read to us for worship in the cabin.

Sleepy Megan looking ready for bed during the story. We all slept pretty good and were awake early enough to chit chat before breakfast was served.

Keith slept out in a tent, and the weather was just gorgeous for that. If I wasn't such a chicken about bugs, I would have joined him.

Megan put her shoes on and went out for Daddy's wake-up call. He was awake and had brewed coffee already.

Our house number.

My little posse dressed and ready for Sabbath morning breakfast and worship.

After breakfast there was some down-time before worship was ready to begin, so the kids were all free to run around and do whatever. Megan had just learned how to ride her bike without training wheels the day before so she was stoked to have some opportunities to get out her wheels and feel the wind in her hair.

Our house, with the cars, bikes and tent. We had quite the set-up.
We gathered again back in the meeting area for family worship.

Me and my sweet little Eager Beaver. I'm co-leading the Eager Beaver group this year.

For family worship, we discussed the Armor of God and then created our own family shield.

Even though Joshua doesn't look pleased, we were all rather impressed with the final product. I think maybe it was too bright for him.

The Builders (Joshua's group) were responsible for serving lunch.

Joshua and Adam teamed up to serve side by side.

After lunch, there was plenty of time to rest. Daddy set up his awesome hammock that he got on a trip to Ecuador when he was active duty.

A quick group kid picture before Luke had to leave. We were only missing the 2 littlest Grodacks.

As Luke was leaving the camp, Megan yelled out, "hey Luke, you wanna ring my bell one more time?". So sweet!

The parts of our group that signed up to go canoeing left to make that drive, which left me, Megan and Daniel behind.

My and the little ones went on an Alphabet walk. I gave Megan a notebook with A-Z written out and she and Daniel had to observe things on the walk and write them down...
C is for cow.

It was then time for dinner, which the Eager Beavers and Little Lambs were helping to serve haystacks.

There seemed to be quite a few families for dinner and so midway through serving, Lisa and Keith took over to allow me and some of the little kids a chance to eat.

Sabbath sunset made for a spectacular sky!

Worship that night was about acts of kindness. Groups took turns acting out stories depicting kindness and the congregation had to guess which story it was. Megan, Braelyn and Blake acted out the story of the inn-keeper giving Mary and Joseph a place to stay. Notice Blake holding Megan's hand. So cute!

Megan and Daddy. I just love that smile!

Moving on to a hayride around the grounds. So fun!

After the hayride, it was time to go jump in the bouncy house! In order to keep our family together, we kept Joshua back to ride the hayride with us which then meant he was to bounce with the little kids. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best idea, since it was tough for the bigger kids to really enjoy themselves when they were trying to be mindful of the younger kids.

Keith helped some spot some of the younger kids while they were making their way up the rope.

She promptly came down the slide and handed me her glasses - she was afraid of breaking them.

Then it was time to make smores by the fire. Yum!

That night, after the kids were put down for bed, the adults stayed up and played some card games. It was so fun! I'm going to need to work on my Dutch Blitz skillz.

The following morning (today) I had to get up early again to help serve breakfast with the Sunbeams. Megan was tired as were many of the other Sunbeams, because not too many of them showed up.

Megan was on cereal duty helping to hand out cereal for all the hungry campers.

After a victory lap around the camp sight, it was time to pack it up and head home. We needed to be back to pick up the dog so Keith's parents could go out of town.

After one last walk through of the house, it looks like all belongings have been packed.

We had two of these bunk rooms. One room had the 2 oldest boys (Adam and Joshua) and their brothers (Luke and Daniel). The other bunk room had Blake, Megan, Jennifer and Me, and we snuggled Braelyn in there, too. There were also to rooms with full size beds - we put Allen in one room and the Grodack family in the other room.

Our kitchen and card game playing area.

The house had a total of 4 pull out couches in the 2 connecting living rooms. Lisa and Rob slept on one of the couches.

Overall, the accommodations worked out really well. It was quite fun. But sadly, it was time to pack it up.

Heading off the property, Megan, Daniel and I made a prayer stop (and then I promptly cleaned my front windshield).

We had a great time and look forward to coming back again next year.

In Celebration of Columbus Day...a Lesson on Immigration by Megan - Grade 2

2011-10-12T09:31:00.003-04:00

In Megan's Friday folder this past week, I found this wonderful breakdown of how people from other countries came to America through Ellis Island.

Save money to come to America.

Pack small bag to carry with them.

Take a long ship to North America.

Go to Ellis Island.

Put their heavy bags on the first floor.

Doctors check on them to see if they were healthy.

Exchange their money for American money.

They left Ellis Island to America to get jobs.

In other news, the kids, Keith and Grandma and Grandpa Holloway all went to Family Night at school last night for the Scholastic Book Fair. Everyone came home with good books to read. Joshua got a Percy Jackson series, Megan picked out some pink princessy books (likely because they came with a matching necklace) and Daniel got 2 Star Wars books and a Phineas and Ferb book. I came home from work to find them all on the couch reading.

Party Animals!

2011-10-10T21:48:00.004-04:00

I'm pretty sure Daniel's birthday celebration has been going on for about 2 weeks now! When Grandma and Grandpa Ketchum were in town, we had them over for a pre-birthday dinner complete with presents!

The happy little fellow loves legos and enjoys legos that have people/story lines. With two new sets of Harry Potter legos, Daniel was in heaven!

Later on that week, taking advantage of the decreasing humidity, we met some friends at the park for bike rides and a picnic dinner.

Notice that we are a family of 5, but we travel with only 2 bikes. Megan has been afraid to ride her bike, and Daniel has a strong dislike for his bike. He just doesn't like to get on it at all. It's hilarious - he'll just stand beside it and have a stare-down with whoever it is that suggested riding bikes.
Seriously, how can you get frustrated at this sweet face? He'll ride his bike someday, right?

Joshua was pretty excited to get out on the trail to ride with his friend Adam and the dads.

And they're off! Joshua tells me he had a blast. While the rest of us played at the playground.

Megan and Daniel climbing on the playground.

Each family packed their own picnic dinners. I had help from my little minions picking out what they wanted to pack. They did great, even remembering to pack plates and napkins.

We left the park right around sundown and went to the Isidro's house with the Bergherms and Deiningers for some yummy smores.

Catching up to this week....I helped in Daniel's Sabbath School class, and had the wonderful privilege of being present while Mrs. Deanna sang happy birthday to Daniel. It was raining cats and dogs (Joshua is studying idioms in school and so we are now inserting them into conversations as frequently as possible - makes for some great silly conversations!). After church this weekend, we napped then went over to the Deiningers house for a celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving. The food was the same as "our" Thanksgiving, but there was a lot of red-wearing. :) The food was amazing and the kids were all well-behaved and our hostess really outdid herself with crafts and awesome organization. I was so stuffed, I couldn't even think about eating breakfast at 5am on Sunday morning when I got up for work. I had to split this past weekend, to be off all of next weekend for our Adventurers camp-out.

I worked all day Sunday while Keith, the kids and Grandma and Grandpa Holloway went in search of something fun to do indoors, since it was still raining outside. (Pictures to come soon, I think they are on Keith's phone.)

That brings us to the big day today...Daniel officially uses two hands to count his years. Our baby has turned 6 years old.

The boys playing their DS games, while Megan played on Spelling City on the computer. This bought me about 30 minutes to get things organized for dinner tonight.

Well, I thought I had everyone occupied and out of the kitchen, until the biggest kid of all came in to try to eat some of the homemade cream cheese buttercream frosting for the pumpkin chocolate muffins I made today.

Those sweet, sweet dimples. Daniel's teacher gave him this hat to wear today and made a huge deal of it being his birthday.

I still can't believe he's SIX years old! Wow. He's growing into such an amazing young man.

As the night wound down and Grandma and Grandpa Holloway got ready to go home, Joshua and I zipped up to the bookstore to get a Biography for his October book report for school. He is now reading a book about Einstein.

Adventurers Induction

2011-10-05T21:46:00.003-04:00

Fortunately, the kids get out of school one hour earlier on Wednesdays. We try to use this time to catch up on any school projects and spent extra time on the weekly spelling lists. Today, we worked on Megan's science project. She had to follow a recipe to make clay and then sculpt an animal. She will bring it to class on Friday and discuss the animal with the class.

Megan and Daddy worked on the clay recipe, which ended up becoming clay - but a super messy version of it. In the end I grabbed some crayola clay that we had sitting around the house and had her use that for her sculpture.

Joshua worked on his multiplication and his spelling words.

Today was Adventurers Induction. The goal was to be there at 5:45 to do a rehearsal before the ceremony at 6:30. Unfortunately, we didn't even make it out of the house until just before 6pm. It was a tough decision, but really homework has to come first. We made it on time for the ceremony, and it was very nice.

Daniel is an Eager Beaver this year, and I help lead in his division. It's like trying to herd wild cats - these kids have so much energy and so little impulse control! They are fun and sweet.

Megan was ready to get things moving.

Joshua and his friends.

Joshua passing along the candle during the ceremony.

It was a great night.

Megan's science project - she made a dog.

We've got spirit, yes we do, we've got spirit...how 'bout you?

2011-09-30T20:56:00.004-04:00

Today is Lake Brantley High School's Homecoming Day! Daniel was sent home with a notice earlier in the week informing us parents that the kids would be lining the street for the parade and that the teachers would be working the afternoon curriculum around the things the kids would see in the parade. For example, Daniel told me he was going to be looking to see if the picallo is an instrument in the school band.

The kids were decked out in their Red, White and Blue (LBHS colors) for Spirit Day today.

I made Daniel a little shirt with a football player on it that says: LBHS class of 2024. Can you believe it? He said everyone loved his shirt today.

The parade started with a wonderful representation of all the branches.

The band was awesome. They played lots of great marching tunes.

The parade route circled around the carpool pickup lanes of the elementary school, where the sides of the road were lined with kids. The band stopped and performed for the kids, as well as the cheerleaders.

The high school kids were so creative in their parade planning. This year's homecoming theme is a Carnival. The entertainment during the parade was so fun! The boys loved the Blue Man Group float.

The football players got a good-luck high-five from nearly every student! It was so cute. The cheerleaders gave out plenty of high-fives, too.

The Sunshine Club kids gave out candy to the kids. All the kids came home with one or two pieces and were excited.

I really liked the Sunshine shirts.

This was the shot I got on the way out the door this morning.

We considered actually going to the football game, but it was pretty late for us to be going out on a Friday night.

Overall, it was really fun to watch the parade. Brings back lots of fun memories of me being in that exact same parade! It was neat to talk to the other parents that were there for the parade.

Disney's Hollywood Studios

2011-09-30T10:28:00.010-04:00

Grandma and Grandpa Ketchum took us to Hollywood Studios yesterday. The kids (oddly) had a teacher work-day yesterday so there was no school county-wide. At the ticket counter at DHS, the lady there recognized the city we live in from our driver's license and was excited because her grandkids were also off of school today. Turns out they go to school with our kiddos - such a small world!

We got to the park with a plan. First on the list was to split up and send Grandpa Ketchum to get fast passes to the Toy Story ride, while the rest of us went in the opposite direction to sign the kids up for Jedi training.

Checking out the map together. Evidently, everyone that gets up this early to be at the park at "rope drop" also comes with a plan, because it was crazy when it opened. We even ran into our neighbors, from the circle in Alaska (who we had seen the night before for dinner at our house, so we knew they would likely be around, we just didn't expect to actually see them in the sea of people). We exchanged quick greeting with the Dorvals, for it looked as though they, too, were on a serious mission.

Whew! We waited nearly an hour to get the kids signed up for Jedi training, and I was getting scared that it might not work out, because the times for training kept getting later and later. Finally, we made it into one of the last groups of the day and it was SO WORTH IT!

We walked over to Star Tours after signing up for training, and were delighted to not have more than a 10 minute wait. It was cute, during the ride, they talked about a Jedi spy or something like that, and then showed Daniel's picture up on the screen. Megan and Joshua thought it was hilarious. The ride was a simulation ride and might have been a little too real for Megan and Daniel, because they both cried during it. Afterwards, Daniel said he liked it, but Megan is like her Daddy - they don't do roller-coaster type things.

They each hopped up for a picture...

From there, we had planned to go see The Little Mermaid, but the timing just didn't seem to work out right, so we walked through a beautiful display all about Walt Disney. The pictures, costumes and castles were really cool to look at.

Somewhere in there, we stopped for bagels, because everyone was feeling hungry. Then we hustled over to Toy Story Mania to turn in our fast passes. Keith and I have stood in this line for over 2 hours on previous visits. It continues to be one of the most popular Disney park rides.

It's a 3-D arcade adventure.

Keith standing by some of the artwork on the walls decorating the waiting area.

My arcade partner.

Keith sending a quick text to a friend that he accidentally "butt dialed" during Star Tours. Oops!

After Toy Story, we were walking across the park and caught the last few minutes of a High School Musical themed show. At the end of the show, streamers fly out into the crowd, so naturally, my kids ran to get some, because they are kids and do these things. Keith saw Mrs. Dorval (our friends are smart and bring Grandma/Mimi along with them to help entertain their toddler). She seemed to be trying to get a streamer, and Megan had plenty, so they ran over to give her some.
While Daniel danced in the street with his lucky find!

Back moving forward again, we missed out on seeing the Indiana Jones show because it was full, so we sauntered over to the Muppet show. We love the muppets.

The show was cute and it was fun to watch the kids react to the 3-D effects.

Heading out of the show, we saw Phineas and Ferb. We considered waiting in line to see them, but I think everyone was getting anxious to move on to see what's next.

We made our way to the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground and let everyone play for a bit, since they were going to need to sit still for another show. With strict rules about sticking together, we sent them off to play in a spider web.

Then it was time for what Keith had been waiting for - Lights, Motor, Action! We went to the baking-hot stadium and settled in for a spectacular show.

The big boys loved it. Megan was jumping out of her seat the whole time, watching the hero escape from the bad cars.

Even Lightening McQueen made an appearance.

Daniel doesn't like fire, and was nervous with some of the fire-related special effects.

Then we tried again to see the Little Mermaid, in the time we had between the car show and when we needed to check in at Jedi training school. The time of the show wasn't going to work out for us, and so we went in search of some characters.

We've managed to get a Mickey picture in each park that we've been to!

Then we made our way over to Winnie the Pooh. I think they are both mesmerized with each other. It's amazing how much you can communicate even without the ability to say anything.

Then it was finally time for Jedi training!

With our tickets in hand, we arrived to the air conditioned waiting area.
The kids were robed and given a quick lesson.

I am shocked and amazed that no children were whacked during this training.

The Jedi Master was hilarious! As each kid stepped forward, Darth Vader would ask them if they are going over to the dark side. Megan's little squeaky voice said, "no!"

When she defeated Darth Vader, the guards started approaching her, and so she "used the force" to force them back.

She took her role very seriously!

Then it was Joshua's turn.

Awesome! Daniel's turn I actually video'd but the website is not cooperating right now. It's on Facebook, but I'll transfer it over here, too, soon.

After taking an ice-cream break. We tried for the 3rd time to cut across the park to see the Little Mermaid show, but then got distracted by the show in front of the hat. It was the same show that we only saw a few minutes of earlier in the day, and Megan really, really wanted to see it. So we stayed. Towards the end, they asked for volunteers from the audience to come up and dance. She raised her hand and was picked! I also have video of this.

After signing, "We're all in this together" from High School Musical, the streamers flew, again!

A couple of group shots, and it was time to head home.

The kids did awesome today, even when they were hot and tired.

We had a pleasant boat ride back to the Beach Club, where the Ketchums are staying.
And from there it was about a 30 minute drive home.
I'll try to work on fixing these videos later today.

Joshua's Interest Inventory - 3rd Grade

2011-09-24T11:40:00.002-04:00

As an ice-breaking activity, Joshua's teacher asked the kids to complete an interest inventory. Below are the prompts and Joshua's answers...

1. My favorite foods are - subs.

2. My favorite eating places are - Publix and subway.

3. My favorite snacks are - apples.

4. My favorite TV shows are - Fetch with Ruff Ruffman.

5. My favorite TV characters are - Jay, Marco, and Willie (mom note: contestants on#4).

6. My favorite movies are - Star Wars.

7. My favorite actors are - Luke, Solo.

8. My favorite actresses are - Padma.

9. The best book I ever read is - Calvin and Hobbes, and the Hardy Boys.

10. My favorite music group is - Loree Berkaner (Laurie Berkner)

11. My favorite song is - Jumpin' in my Soup.

12. My favorite sport is - soccer.

13. My favorite school subject is - math.

14. I know I am very good at - bugging my sister.

15. When I am alone, I like to - be lazy.

16. My favorite thing to do with my friends is - play tag.

17. My least favorite thing to do is - lose.

18. My favorite thing on a Saturday or Sunday is - to be lazy.

19. The thing I fear most is - my mom.

20. If I had a million dollars, I would - be lazy.

Back to School!

2011-09-02T09:58:00.003-04:00

It's been so hot and steamy, that as soon as I walk outside - my glasses and my camera lens steam up. Ick. I won't even mention what it does to my hair. Mentioning hair, it was time for back to school haircuts for the boys. Keith set up shop out back, and down to business. After two clean cut boys cuts, and one cute little bang trim, everyone under the age of 10 ended the day looking neat and tidy.

They boys are such gigglers that it took forever to get hair cuts.Megan recently saw our new eye doc and he did an amazing job during her eye exam. She got a new prescription for glasses and picked out two adorable pairs. Here she is in her favorite of the two.
Megan is in the second grade now. She really likes her teacher. I, also, really like her teacher. Mrs. Smith is already working with Megan and her reading/writing issues.

And her classroom is in the pink hallway! Grandpa and I attended Open House night for the second grade kids. We were both impressed with the curriculum plan for Megan's class this year.

Joshua's classroom is really cool, too. He was excited over having an actual desk and not a table. It's the little things in life that make him happy! Grandma and Keith attended Open House night for the third graders and they were also very impressed. Joshua's teacher is teaching the children how to read and write in cursive writing this year. Another big skill this year is using an organizer/assignment book to document every night's homework, the weekly spelling words and other important items. I really like that there is an emphasis on owning his work.

The library is awesome. It is huge and there are many different computers and resources available.

Daniel is in kindergarten now. He really likes his sweet teacher. She's been teaching K at the school for over 20 years. Her organization is top notch!
Daniel and Joshua checking out the kindergarten classroom.

Somehow, we ended up with a couple of new additions. Keith picked up some mice at the pet store, and they have been a constant source of entertainment.

They are cute, but noisy little things. Their wheel makes a lot of noise, and they prefer to run at night.

We spend our nights playing games or reading stories when everyone is done with homework. It is a big incentive to finish the homework in a timely manner so that each child can participate in playing.

Our first day of school pictures!

The first day of school went wonderfully. They were all nervous at first, so we parked the van and walked them to where they needed to be. Security is tight on campus and the amount of teachers and other adults offering assistance is awesome. Everyone morning and every afternoon, they have all hands on deck helping to keep the kids moving along.
A shot of Daniel at his desk on the first day of Kindergarten.

For our really observant family members, you'll notice that the uniforms of last year are missing from this year. Keith and I had to spend quite a bit of time contemplating what our school-related goals are for the children, and in doing so, decided to move them into a different school this year. It's a decision that was made in the best interest of our family, but the primary driver came down to academics. Megan is in the early stages of testing for dyslexia and early intervention services are not offered at private schools, but are offered at public schools. As we researched more into what was offered at this particular public school, we became at peace that all three children would thrive academically in this setting, based on their personalities and current academic abilities. There were other factors in the decision: finances, time of classes, ability for extra curricular activities and increased community involvement. We're happy and the kids are happy.

OSC - Guitar Exhibit

2011-09-02T09:42:00.002-04:00

A couple of weeks ago before school started, we went to the Orlando Science Center to check out the guitar exhibit. Megan checking out one of the guitars.

We played with the display showing different wood types and their sounds. Any opportunity to bang on stuff makes for a great day.

There was a giant real working electric guitar.

Keith read about every guitar in there. Even Daniel found a guitar he liked...there was an air guitar display!

The kids gave us a performance.

Megan tried to dress Daddy up. The picture is very blurry - there was a lot of giggling going on.

Happy 9th Birthday, Joshua!

2011-09-01T22:32:00.003-04:00

Wrapping up the month of July with Joshua's birthday. My sweet young man is now 9 years old.
Sadly, the virus that had been making it's way throughout the house had finally taken me down. So it was a quick meal and a store-bought cake to save the day. Megan helped write Joshua's name on the cake.

We had Grandma Sandi and Grandpa Joe over for lunch (which at the birthday boy's request was chicken pot pie).

After lunch, we moved onto presents!

A basketball hoop for the pool!

And a mysterious package that came the week before from Grandma Mary Grace and Grandpa Frank.

After lunch and presents, we all played in the living room together. Some played...
...and some napped.

As the sun came out, we decided to give the hoop a try. Breaking into a game of boys vs. girls, the competitive nature of some of the adults in our house came out.
Never fear, I had Megan on my team, and what she lacks in skill, she makes up for in her squirrel-like defense technique.

Unfortunately, she did not block the shot, and the ladies remain defeated.

After drying-off, it was time to check out the rest of the mystery package. It contained Jabba the Hut's Sail Barge in a bazillion legos waiting to be put together.

It was quite the family affair getting the barge complete. It is so awesome!

My sweet little boy fresh from the tub and playing star wars.

Partying with the Cousins

2011-08-03T18:05:00.003-04:00

Nana, Auntie Pam and Aidan and Austen came over for a visit two weeks ago. We had a blast! Nana and Joshua having a good-bye hug.

Aidan and Joshua hanging out together.

Megan and Nana.

Auntie Pam and Joshua having a Mythbusters show-down. It was truly a meeting of the minds.

Our little slice of heaven was packed full of happy, giggly kids.

Daddy and Megan having a lazy day.

Nana - she's found her new vacation spot!

A wild, rowdy bunch enjoying their meal together.

Even the littlest in the group had a great time!

It's almost school time again!

2011-08-03T17:57:00.003-04:00

The kids are registered, the school supplies are bought, and the first day of school outfits have been picked out. The countdown to the first day of school is TWELVE DAYS!!

We were given a wonderful tour of the kids new school last week.

Disney's Animal Kingdom with the kids

2011-07-10T19:51:00.005-04:00

We were blessed with an opportunity to spend the day at Disney's Animal Kingdom. The kids were so very excited! We got up early and planned to arrive early but had an adventure along the way. Oddly, Keith asked me to drive (which I never do when we go out as a family). So here I was zipping down I-4 just before the Princeton St. exit, when we saw cars that had just bumped each other and were pulling off to the side of the road. As all the surrounding cars were slowing down, Keith shouted for me to brake. I hit the brakes as he jumped out of the minivan. There was an injured kitten under the truck beside us. Keith swooped it up and got back into the van. Lots of people honked and gave us thumbs up. We brought the kitten to an animal hospital along the way and they let us know the preliminary injuries were likely at least a broken leg. At this time, the kitten is still in the animal hospital convalescing, but they are actively looking for a home for it.

Now for the rest of our day...

The ride on the tram from the parking lot. The kids were just giddy with anticipation. They had never been to Animal Kingdom before and this was only their second time going to a Disney park.

Notice Keith is wearing an Expedition Everest t-shirt. It was quite a conversation starter with the Animal Kingdom workers. Everyone wanted to know if he ran the race.

We entered the park and went straight to Camp Mickey Minnie. There were so many cute things to see there! This is definitely a slow-down and enjoy your walk kind of park.

Daisy and her boys out for a hike through the woods.

Mickey and the guys fishing.
Donald caught a shoe!

After we walked through that area, we went to the Lion King show. It was fabulous! The kids loved it. The acrobatics were amazing and the music was awesome. Daniel, ever the safety-freak, was very uncomfortable with the pyrotechnic part of the show and climbed up into my lap.

After the amazing show, we stood in line for about 15 minutes to say hello to Mickey and Minnie.

As we were standing in line, the rain clouds started to come in. Joshua helped Daniel fold his map up really small and put it in his pocket.

Mickey and Minnie, as usual, were fantastic! The kids couldn't help laughing and smiling the whole time.

It started to sprinkle as we were walking away from there, and so we decided to venture off for someplace to sit inside and eat lunch. Keith and I both agree that we would rather do a theme-park in the pouring rain, then to do it in 100 degree/100% humidity, usual July weather. So our apologies to all of the other Disney guests that day, but we secretly had hoped for rain, and the sky did not disappoint us!

We had lunch at the Yak and Yeti. Our waitress was so wonderful. She was describing all of her favorite animals on the safari and gave us some tips on the kid-friendly areas of the park. After we finished lunch, the sprinkling had stopped, and so we were off again to walk around. We came across a rickshaw and the kids immediately knew what to do, even though they had never seen one of these before.

One of the things I loved about the park was that the cast-members were so great about explaining things to us. This lady was telling Daniel all about the monkeys and how to tell which ones are boys vs. girls by their coloring.

While walking along one of the trails, we saw lots of tigers. Daniel said, "come here mom, very quietly so you don't wake up the tiger."

A group shot on one of the walking paths.

I liked this sign and find it to be true of both wildlife and children. :)

Once again, the rain picked up, only this time there were no light sprinkles. This was a full-on deluge. We could see it coming our way, and so we make a run for the Dinosaur ride.

I was thinking 5 year old dinosaur fan + ride about dinosaurs = happy 5 year old. Well, fortunately, while standing in line for the ride, there were some loud noises and Megan decided she was just done, she was full-on sobbing that she was afraid (she doesn't like loud noises). Keith said he would take her outside and Daniel decided he was going to go with Daddy, too. At this point, I still thought this was a mild ride about Dinosaurs. Joshua and I were ushered into the first row in our car and then we were off. About 2 seconds into the ride he was cutting the circulation off of my hand. Another 2 seconds later, he was screaming. So, the end result is that Dinosaur in absolutely no way is a little kid ride! I was so glad Daniel did not ride the ride with us, as he probably would have needed a change of clothing mid-way through the ride.

Joshua and I met up with Keith and the littler kids at the end of the dinosaur ride. It was pouring raining outside, so we put on our foul-weather gear.
Daniel was so cute! Just a little face sticking out of his poncho.

We had a plan to head over to the safari and then go home. Well, the safari was all the way across the park, and we had to pass the Tree of Life to get there. The boys noticed a show about bugs, and so inside we went. What could be more fun than a 3-D show about bugs hosted by Flik? The first part was adorable with 3-D butterflies, but then Hopper the giant grass hopper comes out and tells the audience that the bugs have had enough and are going to exterminate the humans. So then the auditorium goes dark and fills up with fake fumigation, which sets Daniel into a near panic attack. The gigantic spiders descend from the ceiling and there is a loud buzzing which causes Megan to bury herself into my chest. The show ends on a positive note and then when Flik excuses the audience, there is a sensation of bugs crawling on the seat between your bottom and the seat itself. Megan was not pleased with that at all. Joshua thought it was pretty cool.

From there, we went over to the Safari. Riding the safari in the rain is awesome! The animals are all out playing in the rain. It was so cool! We sat in the back row and the kids absolutely loved it. Megan pointed out the animals and then found them on the placard hanging down from the top of the jeep.

The excitement of the safari.

We had an awesome day! The kids were so well-behaved all day. We learned a lot and saw a lot of really cool things. The kids were wiped out by the end of the day and they were all asleep in the van on the way home.
Some of our animal friends from the safari...

Look at the baby flamingos! They are so cute!!

The elephants loved the rain!!

It was an awesome day! We are so glad we went.

Happy 4th of July!

2011-07-10T19:34:00.002-04:00

Our original plans had me working on the 4th of July. That is, until the phone rang at 5am putting me "on call" for the day. I was glad to be able to stay home, but I didn't really have anything planned. So I went to the grocery store with the rest of the last-minute non-planners. It was a zoo!

When the sun started to go down, we went outside for some sparkler fun. Daniel is afraid of sparklers, and so he was our water boy - watching over our bucket of water.
Here's our fire marshal Daniel with his trusty bucket.

The sun was setting and it was time to have some fun!

Daniel liked the snappy-things that are thrown to the ground and make a "pop" sound.

Dueling with their sparklers. My crew can turn anything into a light-saber.

Throwing more pop-its.

Lilly was getting mad that she wasn't invited to the party, and she got stuck in the front gate trying to make an escape.

A quick hula-dance (for no reason at all), then it was off to bed.

Hope everyone had a Happy 4th!

Do you know how to make a gummy bear grow?

2011-07-10T19:12:00.003-04:00

Earlier this week, we learned about osmosis.

First we measured our gummy bears. Then we put them in a bowl of water overnight. Before going to bed, we predicted if the gummy bears would shrink, stay the same, or grow larger.
Our gummy bears grew about 25% larger, in fact, one of them exploded! Using osmosis, we were able to grow our little gummy bears into larger gummy bears.

Brown's Gym

2011-07-10T18:57:00.002-04:00

Last week, Megan and Joshua tried out their "free class" at the gym down the street from our house. Megan wanted to check out a gymnastics class. Forgive the poor-quality pictures - they were taken through the observation glass.The coach has the girls work out with some sit ups as they warm up. Megan is in the middle wearing pink (of course).

There she goes! She is hopping down the long trampoline.

A view of the whole gym. Once Daniel saw the gym, he wanted to sign up for gymnastics, too. So we'll have to see what they have for his age. He might try a 30 min karate class that then becomes a 30 min gymnastics class.

Joshua tried out an indoor soccer class for kids ages 5-8. Unfortunately, there were mostly 5 and 6 year olds in the class, and so it just wasn't a good fit for him.
Megan all smiles, and loving her time in the gym.

Our newest addition...Pepper

2011-07-10T18:47:00.002-04:00

Sadly, our beloved Meow-meow passed away in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago. She was howling and flopping about in the dining room and before we knew it she was gone. Fortunately, all of the kids were in bed and did not witness the sadness.

Keith and the kids buried Meow-meow the following morning, while I was at work.

We went a few days in deep discussion about looking for another feline to add to our family, and decided to look on-line at a local shelter and we came across this little sweetheart. We picked him up a day or two later and he has fit right in with our family.

Pepper is just a few months old, and shares Megan's birthday.

June Fun!

2011-07-10T18:33:00.003-04:00

Summertime in Florida means hot, sticky days. When it's not hot and sticky, then it's thunderstorming. With the mix of rain and then sunshine, one would think that my front lawn would look fantastic. Unfortunately, that is not the case - there are quite a few weeds that seemed to have come out of nowhere. I enlisted the children for help with pulling weeds out of the flower beds, and instead turned around to find them all amazed by the bugs.

Lilly loves to come outside to work on her tan. She cries and cries at the door just waiting for someone to let her outside to bask in the sun.

The kids have been working on their basketball skills.

Megan drew a picture for our anniversary.

Daniel has not learned to not stand under the basketball net.

Lucky Number 13!

2011-06-07T16:26:00.002-04:00

Happy lucky number 13 to us!

Thirteen years ago, at 1030 on a hot, hot Sunday morning, Keith and I tortured our friends and family by making everyone stand out in the sun while we tied the knot.
We met in the fall of 1993, went out on our first date in February 1994, and married June 7, 1998. We had planned to get married a year earlier, but slowed down and decided to wait until I had finished college.

We had a fantastic wedding at Lake Lilly Park in Maitland. It was beautiful and many, many people gifted us with their talents to help us pull off a memorable day.

Dancing together

In our 13 years of marriage, we've moved 14 times - between me being a Travel Nurse for a few years, and Keith joining the Coast Guard. We've also survived periods of little communication during 8 weeks of bootcamp, nearly 2 years of Keith being stationed on a 2 month out/2 month home ship, 3 different Air Stations with their scheduling/deployment variabilities, and a handful of Coast Guard schools that would take Keith away from us for anywhere from a long weekend to a couple of weeks, 3 months and 5 1/2 months. Not to mention the full year that Keith went "geographical bachelor" living near the Clearwater Airstation, while the kids and I lived here in the Orlando area. Learning to live apart was rough, and then learning to live together again proved to be even rougher! We've lived in some awesome cities - Boston, Atlanta, Chapel Hill (NC), Falmouth (Cape Cod, MA) and Kodiak (Alaska) have been my favorites.

Leaving to go on our honeymoon. We're both so practical, we actually stopped to get the car's oil changed on the way to the island.

We've bought a house, sold a house and bought another house (hopefully this is our last!). We've been through a few cheap-pay-cash-for vehicles, and yet somehow, our trusty green 4Runner that we bought a year after we got married is still hanging in there.

So typical - Keith's checking out my plate to see if I got anything to eat that he might be interested in.

When Daniel was born, Joshua was 3 years 2.5 months old; Megan was 17.5 months old. And here we were with a newborn? What were we thinking! We were living in Alaska and Keith was working the 4pm-midnight (or whenever the work got done into the wee early hours of the morning) shift. And I was working 8am-3pm at a fabulous medical practice. It's funny now to think of how chaotic our life was then - to add into the mix, Daniel absolutely refused to take a bottle for Keith, so the baby would nap most of the day and then stay up all night to nurse. I'm sure I was extremely pleasant to be around during that time!

And now here we are with a nearly 9 year old Joshua, 7 year old Megan and 5.5 year old Daniel. Our kids are gaining their independence, and Keith and I are finding more time to hang out together. It feels as though we've circled right back around to where we started 13 years ago - I'm back working for the same Hospital, although in a much different area. Keith is back in college and for a while was on the same campus he went to straight out of high school. And we live a few streets over from the house that Keith's parents have lived in for many, many years.

It's been an awesome 13 years. I'm excited to see what's still ahead for us. Our wedding ceremony ended with this blessing...

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Daytona Museum of Arts and Science

2011-06-02T21:41:00.006-04:00

On Tuesday, the kids and I picked up Nana and took her to the Museum of Arts and Science in Daytona Beach. Our science museum passes got us in free! The museum had a big open-house a few weeks ago to reintroduce the giant sloth.

There were a lot of really cool things inside the museum. Statues and doll houses and tapestries and teddy bears and coca-cola memorabilia. There were also pictures from old Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey circuses, and old indy race cars and an old pharmacy set up in the museum. Most of what we saw was in a "no photography" area. We did get to go outside and see two private train-cars that are now part of the museum.

The kids took off pretending to be at the train station.

Getting ready to board the train.

Waving out the back!
The boys were ready to go back inside, but Megan was really into looking through every window.

Once back inside, we came across the Pirate Room.

Daniel trying to "aim" the cannon to fire.

Joshua's the pirate.

Such a ham! Joshua's pretending to be attacked by the shark, on the way to the Children's Wing.

In the Children's Wing, Megan pretended to be a radio DJ.

Nana and Joshua made tennis birdies fly.

The kids all made pretend pizzas.

Oops! Good thing it's not real. Somebody was high-sticking and lost the pizza off the end of the pizza peel.
Megan playing the electric harp.

Joshua riding the bike to create energy.

Daniel raising the Jolly Roger flag on the pirate ship, singing "yo ho, yo ho, a pirates life for me".

These chairs were awesome. You were supposed to pull the rope, it pulls the chair up and you raise up into the air. Megan needed help pulling hers up.

Joshua pulled his up and then let go of the rope to fly back down.

Daniel couldn't pull on the rope hard enough to raise his seat when he was seated in it. So he got off and pulled the rope to move the chair...genius!

Taking a ride on a Harley.

It was a great time. Lots of fantastic things to see! It was great to spend time with Nana, too.

Yogurt Snack

2011-05-31T21:24:00.002-04:00

I will confess that I made my children throw away all of their socks and school shoes a few days ago. The playground at school is a big dirt/sand field, and now that school is over, it's time for some new (clean) shoes. Off we went to Target for new socks for everyone. It was ridiculously hot out and we needed to run by the craft store, so we stopped for some yogurt on the way. I had never been to a make-your-own-yogurt-sundae place and so I wasn't sure how the whole thing worked. The kids really liked the variety and the opportunity to mix flavors.
Daniel is eating a chocolate yogurt with maraschino cherries, mini-marshmallows and fruity pebbles on top. Mine was very ordinary: cheesecake yogurt with jimmies.

Yuck. Megan likes too many flavors at once for my taste! She had chocolate yogurt, rainbow sprinkles, chocolate sauce, mini kisses, mini peanut butter cups and popping bobas.

Joshua had a citrus yogurt with strawberries and pineapples.

So what exactly are these popping bobas? They seem to be a new thing and the kids thought they were very fun! And they tasted pretty good too.

Into the craft store, we purchased glue-sticks and crayons for the "busy boxes" that we keep in the dining room. This keeps craft stuff always around to occupy little hands.

And just because I feel like we look so perfect in our blog postings - allow my to include a picture of Megan fresh out of the shower with one of my t-shirts on. Why is she wearing one of my t-shirts?....Because she had no clean jammies. That's right, I'm crazy behind on laundry. So much so that I proudly wore Christmas socks to work one day last week. Although, I did iron my scrubs (because they had been sitting in a ball in the dryer for two days!).

End of School Year Activities

2011-05-31T20:57:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago, Joshua and Megan's grades were doing their award ceremony at school, and Daniel's class had an end-of-the-year party scheduled for the same time. So, I took Daniel to the award ceremony first, then to his party.

I also remembered right before we were leaving the house that morning, that Megan's class was having a "water party" that afternoon and she was supposed to bring a swimsuit and towel.

Megan waiting patiently for her award. She earned an Excellence in Math Award.

Here she is shaking hands with one of the Vice Principals.

She's so proud of herself! She worked really hard this year.

Joshua is so funny. He seemed like he was just too cool for the whole situation. He also earned an Excellence in Math award. He loves math almost as much as he loves reading.

At 9:40 the awards ceremony finished and so it was time to race to the pool party. The pool party was held at Errol Estates, about a 20 minute drive from the school.

Daniel had a blast playing with his friends.

He got very excited to see Fritos and he thought we were having haystacks (taco salad) for lunch, and was so very disappointed. It was quite funny how he didn't eat any pizza, but instead had two bags of Fritos for lunch.

We stayed at the party for a little while after eating, but then needed to move on to the next event. Back in the minivan, I gave Daniel an apple so that I would feel better about his lunch!

Daniel's Pre-K Graduation

2011-05-23T21:39:00.005-04:00

Daniel graduated from pre-K two weeks ago. The commencement ceremony was simply adorable! Decorating the stage were pictures that each child drew. They were supposed to reflect what the child wants to be when he or she grows up. Most kids chose one of their parent's professions...Daniel chose a NINJA!

Marching in to Pomp and Circumstance.

Daniel's speaking part.

Megan and Daddy watching the program.

A brief period of chaos while everyone decides who will speak first.

The graduate receiving his diploma.

Attempting a group shot, but being trumped by a hat with a mind of it's own.

Awww...that's the group shot I was trying for! He's so grown up!

Daniel proudly standing near his picture.

Discussing the cake and punch with Grandma.

Daniel and Grandma.

Daniel and Mommy.

Daniel and his teacher, Mrs. Tenorio.

A sweet, sweet boy with such a big future ahead of him!

Final FLEC Chapel Session

2011-05-23T21:17:00.003-04:00

The last Chapel Session of the school year was a performance from the pre-K - third grade classes.. The program was cute.
A video of one of their performances....