Things have been focused on packing and getting ready to move this week, but it wasn't without it's breaks for some fun and sun! Jeremy's brother and his wife came to visit so we had lots of fun going out to play. We only took one picture, believe it or not, at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory. Last Friday night was the convocation for the school of Social Work. Sparing minor details, I'm glad we went because Jeremy isn't walking in graduation so this was the most official kind of thing he'll experience. I'm so happy for him to have accomplished so much and have his master's degree! He, on the other hand, is very ready to get on to the next thing! Truth be told, the kids and I didn't hear basically any of the convocation. They just weren't in the mood. So I jetted down to Don Quihote where I could pick up nihon no pan that I've been craving- nice perfect japanese sweet bread. Lucy fell asleep on the way to the store and was pretty groggy when I put her in the cart. I put Willie next to her and she cuddled right up, and Willie felt like a proud brother. It was so cute cute! These two are like ... well, I don't know the simile, but they are either at each other's throats or best friends. I like the times of the latter best!
Hmm, the letter Yy...kinda difficult, but kinda done at the last minute. ;) Making our bodies into the letter Yy, and practicing writing Y on the back of the person in front of us.Yoga for kids! This was the warrior pose And down diggity down dog down! Yellow is a primary color that can make other colors. We added yellow ice cubes to clear, red and blue water to see what colors they make.And the results: Yellow collage and bookmark Yummy Yogurt Pops for snack! We also tried, yams and a trick egg yolk (actually made from marshmellows and a dried apricot). So, this picture it doesn't look like we're doing anything really... which is a pretty fair description as far as the kids were concerned, but I was trying pretty hard to get them to sing a yodeling camp song. We watched a youtube video of a cute little yodel girl. Then tried to sing with a rhythem hand jive the song. Yeah, no luck, I really needed visiuals on that one, when I have time to make them... next time. How many Years old is a tree? Learning to count the rings of a tree. Mr. Yuk. Organizing a group of random items into categories of "yummy" or "yucky." The Letter Memory Game. We had four pictures for "bases" on the ground. We said the picture, aka: yarn, and the child ran to the picture of the yarn. Then after awhile we turned the pictures over to reveal just the letter the word started with, then played again. We ended up doing one at a time, instead of a race kind of thing. Kids just get a little too pushy for that. Yakety-Yak Game. A letter Y version of "Don't eat Pete!" You have nine squares with a marker (candy, bean, cereal, etc.) on each square. One child goes out of the room and the rest decide on the secret "yakety yak" square. Then the child comes back into the room and takes, one at a time, a piece from whatever square. When the child takes the piece from the yakety yak square, all the other children say, "Yakety Yak" and the turn is over. The child gets to keep the pieces she already has. Refill the board and send another child out! 3 year olds can do this, it might take a few rounds to completely catch on to everything though.
I'm going to ramble on for a little bit about... me. You did want to hear what I've been up to every now and then and not just the kids, right? Something like that. Anyway, this has actually been a very busy month of accomplishments for me. I have been studying the organ and played in church for sacrament meeting for the first time last week. I have to say a big thank you to my husband who supported me in babysitting while I went to practice. I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't play better given I had 2 months to prepare. But practicing once a week for an hour or so, and learning as much as I did- well, it was kind of a lot of work. It was exciting to learn a new instrument! I even played pedals and everything! I still feel pretty intimidated by the organ- there's so much to learn. Another thing I learned is how much you have to prepare just for prelude! The thing is, I didn't prepare for prelude- I was so worried about my 3 songs. The first 2 were pretty good, the closing could have been better. But prelude, I just was winging it and that's not good, because you're winging it through about 7 songs! Holy cow, can't believe I had to play that many. It's probably because I notoriously play very fast. The other big thing I had going on was for our ward playgroup I was planning. I did a Smile Party and talked to the kids about the important of teeth and cleaning them and the dentist is. I decided to open it up to the stake (or mostly just the 3 wards in our building). And we had a great turn out. I think there must have been over 40 people there (from smalles to oldest!). I think there were 29 kids, and then however many moms who came with them. There are a couple of cute pics on our playgroup blog from our circle time. We did circle time, a craft: making crocodiles out of egg cartons and brushing the teeth with white paint, I had a tooth pinata we didn't end up doing, and then we ended with the dentist comeing to visit the kids and we presented each child with a certificate and goodie bag with new toothbrush. It was way fun activity. I also had to talk in church yesterday, and then taught preschool this morning. So it was a very busy month. Getting ready to move is only going to get more busy, but I'm sure we'll be packing in as much fun as possible before we leave! We're excited to have Jeremy's brother and wife come to visit this week!! Well, I guess that's enough rambling about me for awhile! love, Courtney
We needed (I needed;) a break from normal routine, so instead for a new adventure on Tuesday, we went to a Botanical Garden in Kaneohe. I don't know how I've missed this cool place for so long. I felt like the first time ever, that I was actually in that lush tropical island like you see in so many pictures. I was loving the landscape! Once a month, the HBG puts on a nature hour. We went a little early to doddle, and we're so excited to see ducks! It's one of the only places in Hawaii where there are ducks I think, most everything is salt water around here. Sealing Wax Palm. I thought the red at the top was so awesome! This goose looked pretty fiesty.I thought this was a super funny looking bird/duck thing! :)
Nature Hour featured spiders this month. The woman did a great job telling about spiders and doing tons of fun activities. The kids pretended to be net spiders, who throw "nets" onto their prey. Throwing flies and insects into the spider's web. Spinning a spider web by running around the cones, except the little boy had all the cones stacked up and not in a circle. Looking at real spiders. Jumping spider... jumps onto his prey. Some kind of fishing net spider, who lowers a web kind of fishing line and catches his prey. Craft time: playdough spider. I love the split pea eye balls!
Last Saturday was Healthy Kids Day put on by the YMCA at the Bishop Museum, which meant it was free for kama'aina (locals). Couldn't miss it... glad we didn't. But it took some effort. We searched around downtown by the palace thinking we were supposed to find it, for about an hour, and finally found out from someone that we were in the totally wrong place. oops. We're local, yeah, we are. We finally got to the museum, luckily we had packed heavy on the snacks. We actually did not see hardly any of the museum, so we'll have to go back. But we were totally into all the little health booths and games and activities going on. It was pretty hot, but such a fun family thing. Jeremy is even laughing at me because of course I managed to come home with a prize- I won a T-shirt and Crayola marker set from the EMCEE at the very end for being the first to find a tube of sunblock. It was awesome! ;)
There are a lot of pictures in this post- I guess you could say Easter was pretty fun! We had to dye eggs... princess style of course- poor Willie, everything's princess style. We did something a little different; I've never done it before at least. We dyed empty egg shells this year. I really like how cool it looks to see the inside and outside of the egg dyed. This idea all started with Freecycle back in November or so. A spanish teacher had posted wanting a few people who could help her save their eggshells for her class. For Easter, she wanted to do a spanish tradition (which I can't remember the name of this tradition, or where it's done, or even the link that she shared about it) where people crack a confetti-filled egg over another person's head for good luck (or some reason?) for the Easter holiday. Neat, I thought and offered to save my eggshells for her, I thought it was the least I could do for the freecycle community. So for a couple months I learned how to perfectly crack egg shells just on the top, rinse them out, and save them. Then, the teacher sends me an email that she's decided not to do the activity with her class. So, what was I going to do with dozens of eggshells? Well, I didn't know exactly. But I kept on saving them and thought, maybe I'll do the activity... I had acrued quite a lot of eggs, so I had to do something with a group. The best group to use them on was our playgroup. But, I didn't know how smashing eggs on the heads of 2 year olds would fly with the mamas. I wanted to do at least an egg hunt, so I still prepared the eggs. Our playgroup the week of Easter was a park playdate, so I thought, hmm, I can do an egg hunt outside and I'll make the eggs completely biodegradeable so we won't worry to much about clean up. Hence, the eggs filled with Fruity Pebbles, not confetti (stroke of genius if you ask me). Except, again with 2 year olds it's a little diferent story, as some of them were confused and actually bit into the egg shell to try and eat it. (yikes!) I also decided that we wouldn't encourage the kids to smash them over each other's heads, but just smash them open to find the prize. So I had prepared about 72 eggs with a little sticker inside and filled them with fruity pebbles. The park playdate was canned on account of bad weather, so we ended up having the egg hunt at the TAB and also had time to have the kids make little easter baskets to hunt with. Here's the TAB egg hunt: That weekend, there was an egg hunt at the park next to us, hosted by the community library and a local church group. We took the kids to that and although the hunt was probably finished in under 2 minutes, it was fun. Happy Easter!
