Raising Kingdom Trained Champions: Way Behind!

In the beginning of the year, I chose to blog every moment immediately after it happened and well, there was a very good reason for that! Five months later and I'm just getting back to life.

Life in the past several months has felt like we've been living in the fast lane, almost tornado like. I feel like we have had a good handle on stuff and wham to crumbles it has gone. We are slowly picking up all the pieces and still living strong. Through it all, I'm just thankful to serve a loving God who is gracious and just to be through every moment of our lives.

I left you all around September right before our fall break.
During that time, Kirby's family came to visit and took us to Disneyland where we spent one day there and one day at California Adventure. Cars Land was a blast! Carsten surprisingly made it on the race way and if I can get the video, it's priceless. He was a little freaked out, but did ask to go again. Unfortunately due to height, we weren't able to get him back on. :( The final day of our trip was spent at the ocean. It was the best ocean trip we have taken. If we had an umbrella, we would have stayed forever. So relaxing.

For Christmas, we spent the season here at home and it was so nice. We were able to celebrate all the festivities in a somewhat slower paced environment.

Some of our favorite events included:

-Keaton's Birthday celebrations of course! The Friday night before, we hosted our annual Thanksgiving dinner for several families at our church. Several of Keaton's friends spent the night after that. The next morning we bravely toted 9 boys and met up with two of his cousins at the bowling alley where we bowled, ate pizza and played a few arcade games. On his birthday, we took the boys to see Frozen. Some great celebrations for a great 7 year old little boy!!

-Grapevine's The Birth Of Jesus Study. We loved this. It took us through every detail of Christ's birth. Each lesson, they drew a different part of the story. The boys enjoy to draw and are visual learners so I think they enjoyed it a lot. We also did a little bit of Buck Denver's Christmas program which I bought last year. It had some great videos on how specific Christmas traditions such as the tree began and answered some really great questions. The best part about it was the countdown to Christmas. Each day we had a fun family activity to do!

-Christmas Around the World. To go along with our Expedition Earth studies, we discussed 9 different countries and their Christmas traditions. We decorated our school Christmas tree with different ornaments that represented each country.

-Christmas Lights. We visited several streets that we typically hit every year, but this year we visited an area for the first time where the last house was one we probably won't miss again. It was pretty amazing.

Another new light tradition we started was one night after the boys dressed for bed, they found a golden ticket to ride the mini van express on their pillows. We had so much fun as we snacked on popcorn and hot chocolate and checked out the lights around town.

We also visited Zoo Lights with my mom and their cousins.

-Sugar Cookies and visiting Santa of course!

-Gingerbread decorating at our friends home.

-Hosting a birthday party for Jesus. (An event I hope to repeat.) It was complete with friends, games, and a cake that had different colored stripes hidden inside that represented Jesus.

    -black...the sin we are born with
    -red...His blood that redeemed us
    -green...a reminder to grow in Him.

-A visit from grandpa and grandma, trip to Build A Bear and the arrival of our newest niece.

-Our favorite gift of the year was Cristal, our beautiful new hamster. She's so great for the boys. So calm!

During the season, Trey has participated in wrestling and is really enjoying it. He's doing so well that he's even placed first at a few of the tournaments. Either way, he's so proud of himself as are we!

School has been chugging along well. I have noticed a huge growth in the boys in terms of remembering history/science stories I've just read, answering questions about it and being involved in the discussions we have about history or science related topics. It's been fun to see them more interested. I think the break rejuvenated us.

T was so excited to be able to bring their class pet, Deeogee,home. He went to the science center, skating rink, car, bed and pretty much EVERYWHERE T was. After he returned him, T told me the very next day, "Mom, I miss Deeogee." It was so sad. Thankfully he had plenty of other stuffed animals to fill his spot.

Quick Subject update:

-Spelling: Both boys completed a level in their spelling books and are doing well in their new levels. I am so proud of them!

-Science- K and T participated in a lab where they dissected a type of shark. Pretty cool! As a family, we visited the science center where we participated in a class about germs in our body. We've also kept up at the zoo to follow our animal studies. Our latest animals were a beaver, kangaroo and Koala. Our favorite part is learning how to draw them. Unfortunately our zoo had neither to look at. :(

-Expedition Earth: We finally finished our Asian countries (China, South Korea, Japan, India, Israel, and Thailand) and have just began Europe. (Took us a while to get started back up after our break!) We are studying Russia this week and will look at Greece next week. Perfect timing for our Olympic studies that will begin next week. We are participating, for the first time, in a co-op with a few other families. I can't wait to update you on all the fun events we do for that!

We are super close to 100 days and will be celebrating that very soon with some fun new activities!

This was all updated from my phone. I do want to upload some Disney and birthday pics! I will do that soon (hopefully!)