Halloween 2013

Our neighborhood celebrates Halloween the Saturday before, which is wonderful.  We get to stay out late, eat lots of candy, and not worry about school in the morning.  The neighborhood goes all out with bonfires all over.  We LOVE Halloween here.  The weather was beautiful and Shawn and I just walked around while the kids ran from house to house this past weekend.

Halloween School Activities

We spent the past week celebrating Halloween with the kids at school.  We had fun doing pumping math with Liv's class.  We had to weigh and measure the pumpkins, then gut and count all the seeds.

We also had the Halloween Hop and costume Parade.  This year, since Ethan is a 5th grader, he got to participate in the drum circle.  He was rather embarrassed that I took pictures.

Here is a short video clip:

This is Liv and her good friend, Ashley, who were both beautiful butterflies.

We finished off the week carving pumpkins. Ethan wanted a scary man, Cole a Greenbay packers helmet, and Liv wanted an owl.

Bad Blogger

Man, I've turned into a bad blogger.  Sorry!
 Life is busy and everyone is alive and happy.

We are in the last week of soccer season, Yahoo!!  My boys are so fun to watch play.  They are both so different in their abilities.  Ethan is more skilled in his footwork and is a very technical player.  He practices daily and loves playing.  Ethan is very disciplined and works hard.  Cole is the total opposite.  While he too is a great player, he is pretty clumsy and spends a lot of time on the ground.  He is so feisty and aggressive, but laughs and giggles the whole time.  Whenever he is on the field he adds a little burst of energy and spunk and livens things up.  They both are having a fun season.  Here is a little video of Ethan, with some highlights, of his indoor game list past week (he is in the red jersey #12).  Sorry I scream and holler a bit in the video, can't help it :)


We had parent teacher conference last week.  All of my kids had great reviews.  It was wonderful.  They all have such great teachers and are having a great year.  Liv and I put together all her halloween treat bags for her class party last night, and later I will make treats for the boys classes.

Shawn continues to work hard and love his job.

It is getting cold really fast.  We have enjoyed many days outside, but those days are dwindling.

The house is moving along.  Shawn and I continue to meet with vendors weekly and choose stuff.  We are working on the tile flooring and custom closets this week.  It is so much fun, but pretty exhausting.  We sat in meetings with contractors and vendors for almost 5 hours yesterday.  The yard is all staked out ready to start digging.

In addition to teaching the youth sunday school class at church, I just got called to be the Wolf Cub Scout leader.  It's a rowdy group of boys (including Cole) but lots of fun.

We just had the primary program last week.  The kids all did great.  My boys even sang most of the songs.

Liv is still on the Hot Shots team in gymnastics and doing great.  She is also a wonderful reader for a 1st grader and is loving school.

That about sums up our life lately.

First Tooth

Liv lost her first tooth on Friday.  It happened while she was brushing her teeth.  She was so excited to finally loose a tooth.

Pumpkin Patch and Pies

We spent the day at the Elegant Farmer.  They had a large pumpkin patch, apple orchard, train rides, and lots of fun things.  But our favorite was the pies, the famous Apple Pie baked in a bag.  We ended up getting four pies because we couldn't decide our favorite (Apple, Peach-Apple, Blueberry-Apple, and Caramel Apple).

Triathlon

The kids participated in their school Triathlon this past week.  The three events they competed in were the scooter board, jump rope, and running.  It was a lot of fun and they did great.

Fear

Despite the loud craziness that comes out of Cole, he is my most shy child.

He is always avoiding public speaking and rarely volunteers for things.

Ethan on the other hand is always the first person to volunteer, to offer help, or to speak in public.

In Tae Kwon Do the higher belt kids take turns leading the class warm-ups each day.  Ethan volunteers regularly and he leads the class with such wonderful confidence.

Cole has avoided this opportunity like the plague, until last week when one of his instructors called on him to lead the warm-up.  Cole instantly turned bright red and told his instructor "No".  Well, you don't tell Tae Kwon Do instructors no.  The class received a huge lecture.  Cole insisted he was not comfortable to do this and so the instructor asked someone else, but not before Cole was so embarrassed he was in tears.  The instructor pulled him aside and talked with him for a while about doing hard things and overcoming fears.  He challenged Cole to volunteer to lead warm-ups for the next class.

The next class was today.  Cole practice all weekend long leading our family in the warm-up exercises (it's basically running some laps, jumping jacks, and stretches, but all in Korean).  Cole was nervous and kept telling me his stomach hurt.  We talked more about facing your fears and I offered a bribe of a Wendy's Frosty after class :)

When the time came, Cole quickly volunteered and lead the class through warm-ups.  His voice started out quiet and shy, but rose with confidence toward the end.  He did it!  

It was so hard for me to watch him last week feel so uncomfortable in class, even to the point of tears, because he was nervous and shy.  But, man it was rewarding to watching him squash that fear and do something that was hard for him.  So proud of you Cole!