Ears holed

Owa has been begging me to get her ears "holed" since she was three. I held her off for the last four years but finally relented when all she wanted for Christmas was her ears pierced. I figured she was not going to give up on this and now was good timing (between soccer seasons). Ever reluctant Addi wanted to get her ears pierced too, so we set the date for a couple days before Christmas.

I didn't get my ears pierced until I was 22 years old! I was SUCH a tomboy and never even had a desire to pierce my ears. I had returned from my mission and one of my best college girlfriends was getting married. She gave all the bridesmaids a pair of pearl earrings and gave me a pair with the condition that I get my ears pierced, and I did.


All the pictures I have of Addi trying something new her
face looks like this!


(before)

miss priss "during" (she didn't take after me!)


After


And now Addi's turn..... Owa hid behind a rack of earrings
because she was afraid Addi would cry. And she did. But
Not to much. I kept telling her she didn't have to go through
with it but she insisted!

before


Eli helps Addi put a smile on



After

The More I Learn

I had to state my "educational philosophy" on an online application recently.  Really--it was a required field.  When I applied as an undergraduate to BYU I had to do an essay on education and the first thing that came out was this poem.  I chickened out of actually submitting it as my essay back then, but I've basically remembered it to this day and I used it for my statement of educational philosophy for this app yesterday:


The more I learn
The more I know
The more I see
The more I grow

The more I grow
The taller I stand
The farther I reach
My doing hand

The more I do
The happier I am
The more I help
The more I can

And when I can
Do so many things
There's a word for me
"Freedom" rings.

The teaching job, by the way, is as an adjunct professor of Multimedia Production in the Music Technology department at Kansas City Kansas Community College (KCKCC).  I'm excited about the class.  It's basically about creating content for the web, namely websites, graphics, and video.

'Tis the Season

Christmas is definitely coming. 

On a less shameless-commercialization-of-Christmas-y note, We put up our tree much to the excitement of the kids and at their insistent votes and pleadings.  And they even decorated it all by themselves (the day after we got it--it was late at night and we made them go to bed).  They did the lights and all, basically before I or Amy had a chance to put our stuff from work down and oversee anything.  You've never seen a tree get all decorated up so fast.  But it doesn't look half bad.  And it smells good!

With some extra strings of Christmas lights, the kids also decorated their own rooms.

Thanksgiving Vokis

Addi's class created Thanksgiving vokis and our family followed suit last night for family home evening. Clayton let the kids design his and I love the fro!

Eli's Veterans Day Card

I just loved Eli's heartfelt card he made for our neighbor across the street who fought in World War II. He's a very sweet man and gives them ice cream and stuff all the time. He's 85. He loves them and they love him. We've talked about what he did in the war and it's wonderful to see they understand something of the meaning of what he did.

Treehouse

So after a couple of years of talking about it, and after promising the kids that this would be the year, we have built a tree house.

These kids aren't just posing with the drills, they were actually drilling holes and putting in screws with them. I was going to take them to the park, and they all voted to stay home and work on the treehouse. We made some good progress.

Jaime, our neighbor, was a great help and is seen here doing some measuring and marking for the vertical pieces.

We still have to do the railing on the west side, and add a rope bridge to connect to our nearby play structure, hopefully a pole to slide down on, and maybe a rudimentary pulley for hoisting stuff up and down. One day a zip line, I hope. The kids have a password for getting up, I can't tell you what it is, though. They'll tell you, if you come.

Addi and Jaime being pals.

Buoyancy

"I'm studying buoyancy!!" Olivia beamed and dashed back into the bathroom.  She kept showing me things she was going to test for their buoyancy and then went back in.  Here you see some of her experiments.

In other news, the other day the kids made a kite.  I'm afraid it never flew, and I talked to them about some things that would improve it (stronger material, instead of pieces of paper taped together, and a lighter string (they had rope).  The colored side was beautiful, though.  They'll get it.