Last Day of School

Another school year, full of excitement, homework, learning, and growing has finished!  All the kids did great and are more than ready for summer break.

Kindergarten Show and Party

Fire had his Kindergarten show and party just a few days before school ended.  He was so excited to be wearing matching shirts with his class and to be on stage with them!

The End of the Baseball Season

Fire just finished his first season of coach-pitch baseball.  He had a great time playing and can't wait to do it again.  He learned so much in these last few months and really fell in love with baseball.  I'm so happy that he's found a sport that he enjoys and is good at.  Fire will be going to baseball day camp for a week this summer with friends and then we'll find another team for him next spring, since the rest of his team will be moving up to regular little league.

Meeting Their Heroes

The Tucson Children's Museum hosted a Super Hero night and all the boys were in heaven!  They're naturally pretty shy so it took a little bit for them to warm up seeing their actual heroes, right there in the museum..

Step one: make your big brother go with you and start with a little wave

Fire's 6th Family Day

Six years!  Fire has been home with us for six years!  This sweet, wild boy keeps life interesting and I'm so thankful for every high and low in those busy years.

2018

A Night at the County Fair

April is county fair time here and we look forward to it every year.  I love this family tradition and it gets more and more fun every year as the kids get bigger and can do more.

 If this kid is anywhere near a horse, he wants to ride it.  Earth loves all animals but has a soft spot for horses.  He had a great time on this little pony and was so mad when the ride ended!

Citizenship for Earth

We're wading back into the citizenship process for this wild child!  We tried once before shortly after we moved to the US but were rejected because of missing paperwork.  At the time, I had a hard time finding the correct information about the process we needed to follow for him- Sky and Earth's process we pretty straight-forward but Earth's is little more convoluted.

In Pictures

 This boy wants to do everything Daddy does, including starting the grill!

Finding His Joy

Shortly after we moved to Tucson, Sky tried gymnastics and loved it.  It was her joy, at least for a little while, and she was excited for every class.  We've been hoping we could find something for Fire that he loved just as much and we may have finally found it in baseball.

One of his good friends invited Fire to join his coach-pitch team and Fire is having a great time!  He looks forward to every practice and game and asks to practice at home.  I'm so glad he has something he can be excited about!

All the Awards!

Look who won an award at school!  Fire was recognized for academic progress at the third quarter awards ceremony.  His teacher was really impressed by how hard he's been working lately and felt that he had made huge strides in learning this year.  Receiving attention is a love language for Fire so he was thrilled to get to stand up in front of his class mates and get his award.

AWANAs Derby

Sky and Fire participated in AWANAs this year at a local Baptist church and had a great time!  As a year-end event, their AWANAs group held a derby.  Sky and Fire built and painted their own cars and both ended up taking third- Sky in design and Fire in speed.

Spring Break Getaway: Mt Lemmon

D and I did a lot of reading about the Tucson area before we moved here and one of the family activities that we kept coming across was hiking on Mt Lemmon.  Since we loved hiking as a family, I can't believe it took us over two years to get things together enough to drive up for a hike!  We finally did it on the last day of kids spring break.

Spring Break Getaway: Phoenix Children's Museum

For the last few years, we've traveled to Puerto Penasco, Mexico for spring break but since we're saving for a big trip to Pennsylvania this summer, we decided to stay in the area this year.  To break up the week a little bit, D took Wednesday off of work and we drove up to the Phoenix Children's Museum.  While I had some reservations about the cost (it was $72 just for admission for our family), the museum was amazing and the kids had a blast!

Easy Egg Fried Rice

  I have been craving fried rice lately and finally decided to make some for lunch the other day.  I glanced through a few recipes online but couldn't find one that sounded good.  I ended up just throwing some things together that I knew I would like and it turned out delicious.  Egg fried rice is a great way to use up leftover rice and vegetables and you can throw in any leftover meat you have as well to make an even heartier meal. 

Kids, Toys, and the Inevitable Mess

 It's almost as certain as death and taxes, at least in our house: kids have toys, kids play with toys, kids toys turn into a mess.  What's the best way to handle it?  Do you create a special place for your kids toys to live and have them play there, possibly away from the rest of the family, or do you have the mess and chaos of toys in your living space and have your children nearby?

Considering Foster Care

 Whenever D and I think about growing our family these days, we get the solid feeling that our family is done.  We don't feel like there are any empty spaces anymore, not like we used to before Water and Earth came home. That being said, we still feel the pull to help kids and we've always talked about fostering.  We're not rushing into anything but we're talking about it more and have found an agency we want to work with.

Tucson Women's Half Marathon

I did it!  I ran the Tucson Women's Half Marathon and finished!

Before the race, with the starting line in the background

Speech Therapy Update

Earth, playing (and working hard) with his therapist

Half Marathon Training Week 6

Just finished my sixth week of training for the Tucson Women's Half Marathon!
Total distance this week: 26 miles
Longest single run: 10 miles
Weeks left before half marathon: 2

Rainy Day

 Someone's excited for a rainy day in Tucson!

Fire's 6th Birthday

Happy Birthday, Fire!  I can't believe you're six!  You've grown so much in the last year and we had so much fun celebrating the start of a new one with you!

Half Marathon Training Week 5

The fifth week of training for the Tucson Women's Half Marathon is in the bag!
Total distance this week: 25 miles
Longest single run: 9 miles
Weeks left before half marathon: 3
This sweet boy photo bombing my wrap-up photo is six today! Six years of loud, screaming love and many more to come!

Half Marathon Training Week 4

Just wrapped up my fourth week of training for the Tucson Women's Half Marathon!
Total distance this week: 21 miles
Longest single run: 8 miles
Weeks left before half marathon: 4

Life Lately, In Pictures

It's past time for a photo catch up!

Batman versus Superman, junior edition...

A Day in the Life

We are overdue for a "day in the life" post here!

 It has been really warm here lately so shorts and a sweater were the mom-uniform of the day

Half Marathon Update Week 3

Third week of training for the Tucson Women's Half Marathon finished!
Total distance this week: 20 miles
Longest single run: 7 miles
Weeks left before half marathon: 5

Honor Roll and Achievement Awards

Sky is killing it in school this year!  She loves her teacher and class mates and we haven't had any of the behavior issues we had last year.  Sky loves reading and has a great grasp of the math concepts she's learning in class.  She's also an awesome speller.

 This is the second time this year that Sky has made the honor roll and received an Achievement Award.  We're so proud of her and how hard she's working in school!

Mohawk!

This boy needed a haircut and insisted that it be a mohwak!

Pacifier Weaning is Hard!

  We love our pacifiers around here!

Half-Marathon Training Update, Week 2

  Another week of training for the Tucson Women's Half Marathon is in the bag!
Total distance this week: 16 miles
Longest single run: 6 miles
Weeks left before half marathon: 6
I had a little partner on my run this morning, since he was up anyway.  We're weaning Earth from his pacifier and it was a rocky first night, so we gave up trying to sleep around 4am and he and I hit the trails.

Half Marathon Training Schedule

  A friend asked about my training schedule for the half-marathon I'll be doing and I thought I would share it here in case anyone was curious.  I found it on the internet and decided to use it because it worked with the training window I had and because I have established routes for all the weekday distances (which will make it easier for me mentally).
  After I started, another friend told me that the best way to scale up your running is to add 1/3 of a mile to your short runs and 1 mile to your long runs each week and happily, it looks like this schedule does that.
  I'm only a little over a week into training and my favorite days are already Monday and Tuesday- the two days I have off in a row!

Half Marathon Training Update, Week 1

I just finished my first week of training runs for the Tucson Women's Half Marathon!  I've been thinking about signing up for the run since I heard about  it a year ago and finally decided it was time.  I'm ready for a new challenge and excited to have something that I'm doing just for myself.
  Here's this week's stats:
Total distance this week: 15 miles
Longest single run: 5 miles
Weeks left before half marathon:7

A Visit from the Godparents

Our kids' godparents, their Auntie Mo and Uncle Paul still live in the Marshall Islands so when they told us they'd be in Texas and could stop by on their way back home, we jumped at the chance to spend a few days with them.

Water's First Day of Preschool

Water and his teacher, Miss K

Tinker Crate 1: Catapult Game

D's parents got Sky and Fire a subscription to Tinker Crate for Christmas.  I think these will be the perfect gift, especially for Sky, since she loves to build and invent things.