Lulu's Cital

Larkin's First Dance Recital:  Christmas in Hawaii

Larkin had lot's of different outfits...hmmm just like every day at home.

She had a hard time because she didn't like the bracelet on her hand.  She said it was too big.  So what did she do?  She moped the rest of the recital.  (actually, these are pics from rehearsal.  We filmed the recital.  She did awesome at the recital...hardly any moping and lots of paused dancing to run and give mom and dad high 5's!  The best was when she glared at at little boy in the audience who was being distracting.) 

There was a whole dance with just twirls.  But my favorite was when she did the hula and shook her little hips like a mad woman.  So stinking cute!  

At the end of the recital, Miss Heidi, Larkin's teacher gave a card a candy cane to each girl.  She then spent a couple of minutes explaining why each girl was special.  Some girls had great dance moves and learned a ton.  Then there was Larkin.  She said, "Larkin is spunky."  For all you moms out there with "spunky" children...you know what this means really.  Yes...NAUGHTY.  I loved it!  The week before the recital, Larkin got put on a timeout for squeezing someone's arm and then putting her hands around her neck.  When asked what she was doing, she said she was giving a hug.  Let's hope that was true and that Miss Heidi mistook the alleged "hug" for strangling!  I'm not sure Larkin will ever be a prima ballerina, but she sure loves it.

Sock Bunny Underpant Hat

Noah's an inventor.  Sadly most of his ideas never get built.  We don't have a welder, a lathe, (I busted my soldering iron), or many other tools it'd take.  But this one we had the materials in hand and the tools necessarily to build it.

Materials:

Underpants

Socks

Thread

Tools:

Needle

Invention:

Sock Bunny Underpant Hat

This requires a crazy little boy to pull it off.

Just a disclaimer here.  The spittle is my fault.   It's hard to keep the juices in when spinning at the g-forces I was asking for.  "Spin a little faster Noah...faster...faster...click,click,click". 

 Hi.  Remember me?  It's Sarah.  I haven't posted anything on this blog since May.  Aaron has been the hero who has kept up on all the excitement that happens around here.  Blogging may not be a priority to me these days, but these cute kids sure are. 

 Arwen is 8, almost 9 and is my favorite thing ever, lately.  Seriously, Arwen has the kindest, sweetest soul.  She is still playing soccer and kicking lots of butt!  I so enjoy watching her play.  It's one of the highlights to my week.  She has an amazing coach with a stellar group of girls on her team.  She also enjoys going to Valiant Girls, which is an activity night at church for girls 8-11.  She loves it! 

 This picture of Arwen sums up my little girl lately.  After entering a lottery, and winning, Aaron and I have had the opportunity of putting Ar and Noah into a Spanish Immersion Charter School.  It's amazing.  I love it.  Spanish now makes up 80 percent of their day.  They only hear English in English class and in math class. Arwen loves her teachers and all her classmates, but has been struggling a lot.  She gets extremely worried that she won't be able to do the things asked of her, before she even tries to do it.  There has been lots of tears and heartache around here.  Most of the other 3rd graders have been at the school for the past 2 years, and have a firmer knowledge of Spanish.  Arwen worries that she is behind and that she will never catch up.  But, after meeting with her teachers, I found out she is doing splendidly.  She is an obedient child and always gets her assignments done on time and does well on them.  All of her teachers tell me that she is leader and is very kind to all of the kids in class who have a hard time with their behavior.  She is patient with them and helps them stay on task.  She is starting to become more confident and I love that!  I think I have worried about Arwen more that Arwen has :)  She told me she has a few boys in class who have crushes on her.  Oh no!  She's too darn cute!

Noah is 6, but will be 7 in just 2 weeks!  I think the appropriate words to describe Noah are spunk and pizzazz.  He is my wild child at home, but to my astonishment is calm and collected while at school.  His teachers tell me that he too, is a leader and participates a lot and is doing quite well.  He has taken to the Spanish Immersion program and is flying with it.  I love to hear the Spanish things he says and listen to all of his cute Spanish songs he sings for me.  He is doing quite well in math.  They placed him in the 2nd grade math class, although he's in 1st grade.  Good job, Noah!  Last I checked, he couldn't draw all of his numbers facing the correct directions...but I guess he is able to grasp the concepts, so that's what counts, right??  I'm afraid he spells as well as his Dad, which is not too great, to put it kindly :)  I make him do his spelling words every day, even though he insists that his English teacher says he doesn't have to.  He did come home with a perfect score on lasts weeks test, but this weeks practice tests have been pretty bad! 

 He is playing soccer as well.  Aaron is his coach.  I think they have lots of fun together.  It's hilarious to watch their games.  The kids have more fun playing in the mud than they do playing ball.  Noah has fun.  He's scored a few times this season and that sure makes him happy.  I happened to comment on a player on an opposing team who scored at least 12 goals in one game.  I told Noah that kid was a super star.  Noah ran out and scored a goal and then shouted to me, "Am I a super star, too Mom?"  Of course, Noah!  You're the best!  Noah is so neat.  Anytime things are scary or someone is having a hard time, he's so quick to suggest saying a prayer.  And I love how it always turns out okay and that he points out that it was because of his prayer.  He has such an amazing amount of faith. 

Joshua is 5.  Josh started kindergarten at our regular public school this fall.  The charter school does not have a kinder program.  Joshua loves everything about it.  He loves learning about the alpha friends and the sounds and actions that go along with them.  He tells me about all the pretty girls in class and how he likes to sit by them.  He also told me about Ivan, who is chubby.  Josh really likes Ivan, because he IS chubby.  Joshua loves when Arwen calls him chubby.  Silly, sweet boy.  I get to help a couple of times a month in his classroom.  I like to be there, but I'm finding out that Josh is kind of lazy when it comes to coloring and cutting with scissors.  I tried to encourage him to do better work, but he just ignored me.  His teacher told me that he is emotional...yes, I know!  But he's a good kid.  She thinks that by Christmas he'll have everything figured out and won't be so emotional about things.  Good luck...I've been wishing for that the last 5 Christmases! 

Joshua is doing really well at home with his reading. I asked his teacher when they were starting reading groups at school and she didn't even know if they could do them this year because they have some many kinders who don't even know their letters and sounds, let alone how to read.  That makes me sad.  He does great here, but I think he'd really rise to the challenge in a reading group at school.  Josh is playing soccer too.  He is super competitive and freaks out if the other team scores.  I keep trying to tell him that it's okay and we need to be happy for the other team, but he's not falling for that nonsense.  It's been good for him and he really looks forward to his game every Thursday night.   Josh is still my sweetheart who tells me I'm the most beautiful thing ever.  He melts my heart with the caring things he says.  I love that he's only 5 and loves to say nice things to make others happy.

 Larkin is 3, going on 16.  Seriously, that's what she tells us. All. Day. Long.  "I'm not little, I'm big."  I don't even know how to describe this little thing lately.  Here are the things she tells me quite often.  "Mom, you're old."  There are two gates you can walk through to exit Arwen's soccer field and she makes me go one way and her and Arwen get to go the other way.  "Mom you have to go the ugly way and Me and Arwen get to go the pretty way."  "Why," I ask her.  "Because you're a little bit ugly."  She's quite the character and always has us in giggles.

But I really do love this little twit.  I love how tiny she is, even though she hates to be called anything but big.  I love how she tells me that I'm her best friend forever.  I love when she's sleepy or hurt and will crawl onto my lap and let me put my arms around her and allow her to be small for a short time.  I love watching her prance around in her little leotard and tights on ballet days.  Cutest. Thing. Ever.  I have loved having her hair cut sassy and short for so long.  I mentioned that I was going to make an appointment to get her hair trimmed.  She then informed me that she is growing it out, because long hair is beautiful and she wants to be beautiful like Arwen.  I love that she has her own opinions but I will miss her sassy hairstyle.  I adore it short.  Even though she says some pretty questionable things, I'm glad she's mine! 

Duck-Soup

Noah has been working on the duck sculpture for days.  I don't think I got it's best angle. It was pretty impressive.   I asked Noah how long it took him to make it and to tell us a little about it.  His reply:

 "Three days, three days.  I gave it a special feature.  It's wings and it's nostrils, and it has fur.  And if you're Grandma and Grandpa and your listening to this, it's Noah Nielsen's."

Somehow everything we thought we planted this year was actually tomatoes.  I have a suspicion that we actually planted other stuff but seeds from last years wind fall tomatoes took over.   Larkin has been loving it.  She eats tomatoes like candy.  Here's a yellow/red tomato soup I built.  Perhaps next time I'll consult an actual recipe but Sarah said it was really good.   

First Day of School

AT SCHOOL

Arco Iris - Spanish Immersion School

Dad:      Tell me about school.

Arwen:  Uhhh? It's Spanish.

Dad:      Anything else?

Arwen:  We do very hard math.   And we do recesses once or twice a day.  And I...um...um...DADDY! NO! NO!  (Laughing).  

Dad:      Anything else? Do you have any friends?

Arwen:   My friends are Sajl and Cruz. 

Dad:      Tell me about school.

Noah:    Do you mean on Friday?

Dad:      Sure.

Noah:    It was great on Friday because I painted a picture of Egypt.

Dad:      Anything else?  Do you have any friends?

Noah:    One, Lilly.  She's one of my friends.

Dad:      If she's one of your friends who are the others?

Noah:    Even, and Kendall...that's all.  

Dad:      How about your school work, how is it?

Noah:    Good.  I do for my school work stuff like doing the...learning the vowels in Spanish the first one's 'A' the second one is 'E' then 'I,O,U'.  We also do for school work, we cut out little stuff and put it in our books and write the letter of what it starts with.  And we write a little story that my teacher writes down on the board.

Dad:      What's your favorite part about school?

Noah:    Math and Art.

Butternut Creek Elementary School

We have to draw letters, and circle the letters, and first we write our name.  Then we circle a letter if it's an "A" or if it's a lower case "a" we put in another box.   It's kinda hard for me to do crisscross apple sauce.  I have a blue folder and I go to gym at first and we go in a line so we don't loose anybody.   And we draw pictures of people and we're star students...but it's not my turn yet.  Soon I'm going to be one.  My friends are Ashley and Frankie.  I love School.  

~ Love, Joshua.  

BEFORE SCHOOL

BALLET SCHOOL

Larkin: My ballet school was about talking and being a doll and dancing like a doll.   Any my teacher said when people come out we go back in our box.  

Dad: How do you like it?

Larking: Meghan was biting the other girl and the other girl and me when the ballet again and pulled my hair.  

Dad: Anything else?

Larkin: And we dance, and have a nice day, and mom picked us up, and the teacher gives us water, and Maren's mom she picked us up and we comed home, and that... and we comed home.. and we uh... drink.

Soccer

Soccer season has begun, three kids, one car, and so much fun!  

Here are some pictures from some of their first games.

JOSHUA

ARWEN

NOAH

The Rock

If you say "that doesn't look all that heavy".

Then let's pretend that most of it's buried under ground.

Noah and Joshua had fun trying to make themselves invisible.  They are pretty proud of their first attempt.

Hot Springs - Bubbles

 We went swimming at the hot springs on Memorial Day.  It was fun.  We've been there perhaps once a year because we're camping down there or just because for the last three years or so.  Three years ago when I was looking for a geocache I found a huge rock with a hole in it by the river.  I tried to bring it home to landscape with it but could not lift it.  Last year I did quite a bit of exercising and still hand no luck.  This year out of pure stubbornness I muscled that thing up the bank and hoisted it into the van.  It's now in our front yard.  And I'm still sore.

Smile Lulu...or just do what ever that is, it's cute too.

Noah brought the bubbles and had a blast.

  

 Got him to share with Arwen.

 

Nice goatee of foamy bubble blowing spit Noah. 

 If Larking didn't have a rock in her hand she had one in her mouth.

Noah got tired of running around trying to catch bubbles in his mouth and just had Joshua blow them straight in.  It didn't take him all that long to figure out that bubbles look better than they taste. 

 What a good little guy Joshua is.

 Nice bubble Noah.