Blue Dolphins Swim Meet

Today was Jackie's first swim meet. While she had serious anxiety last night, this morning, and immediately before the race, she still swam all her events today!

Jackie had personal best times in all 3 events. Here she is with her good friend, Kristin, before the meet. This is a homeschool swim team and they raced boys against the girls. There were 34 swimmers today.

 Pre-race meeting with head coach, Stephanie, to get the swimmers ready for the meet.

 Deane and I were timers during the meet and Ken & Holly were in the cheering section with Cameron & Lucy. DaddyO was at a cadaver lab, but watched the videos of JBird swimming.

Gotcha Day!

We adopted another puppy! Bear came to us from a neighbor, who was his foster home. While Bear is only 10 months old, he's had 3 homes already. We are his forever home. #4.  He's been welcomed by all, including Happy and Spanky. Bear is bigger than Happy & Spanky, but we think he's a 'tween', which is mix of a standard and a mini dachshund. He acts ever the puppy! More pictures to come.

Visitors

A few weeks ago, we had some friends visit from Indiana. 

They have 3 kids all about our kids age, so it was a kid festival.

 Lucy quickly became BFF's with Ava, who also eats, breathes, and sleeps princesses. Ava spells her name AVA-heart-smiley face. So now Lucy spells her name LUCY-heart-smiley face.

 The boys were non-stop and wore us all out

Jackie was smitten with Sam, the 10-yr-old boy, but clearly STILL the leader of the pack. It was a great weekend and we look forward to seeing our friends again this summer at the beach.

The cookies are here!

Karen and I picked up 278 boxes of cookies this week. We've personally eaten 4 boxes. Cameron LOVES the 'chocolate' covered Thanks-A-Lot's which are made entirely of chemicals and non-natural food, which is why he can eat them. If you'd like any, I ordered a few extras. Now the fun of delivering and collecting money begins.

Pajama Day

While most days are unofficial pajama days at our homeschool, this was a designated pajama day. And for whatever reason, the kids were super wired about it. Also, the additional seating was a big hit. Eventually, we'll have as much adult seating as we do kid seating in our house.

BTW, these are camera phone photos.

Cramming

Our unit celebration dinner is next Friday, so the Project Manager, Deane is hard at work getting the plethora of projects done before then!

Since I'm so very, very behind on blog posts

Deane took the kids to the Santa Train (early Dec), where they got to ride the train to the North Pole of Durham, NC to meet Santa and Mrs. Clause. They also had face painting. Cameron was soooo excited to be the tiger, but too tired to take off his face painting before bed. It was worth the mess.

Jackie and Jonah (mid-December) during recess.

Like father, like son, left femur.

Daddy-o crashed on his bike this past weekend.

Piano Recital

Yeah, this is from early December, so bear with me here. Our good friend, Braxton (Beth and Tim's son) also take piano lessons from Mr. Randy, the world's most patient man.  

 Here, the kids are cramming for their performance in 10 minutes while the dads are entertained by the burping baby.

In an effort to get comfortable with public speaking, we had the kids announce the recital last year and this year. Cameron chose to speak on his own this time. Eventually* we** will upload their performances.

*Probably
** Dave :)

ALL BETTER

Cameron had a follow up appointment today with the surgeon.  His bone is healed completely.  No more follow up is required unless the rods need to be removed which happens about 50% of the time usually after 1 year.  He's been released to all activities and got on his bike as soon as we arrived home.  Go Cam-o!

Merry Christmas, Part 1

 Per tradition for the past 7 years, we celebrate Christmas Eve with the Messicks, marking the beginning of the gift exchange extravaganza.

 

 The past few years, we have grown in family and friends-also-known-as-family and look forward to this evening!

 They are possibly saying 'Ho Ho Ho' here, but the decibel was deafening that night, I couldn't tell for sure.

golf shot

This picture was taken from the front tees of a par three today.  That's Cameron's ball closest to the hole, mine and Grandad's to the near right and left.

Unit Celebration: USA

We spent the last 6 weeks studying the USA, writing poetry, and learning about body systems. Our unit celebration was Friday night and the kids had fun showing off their hard work.

As usual, the projects were the result of Deane's hard work.

First the first time, Lucy presented her work: Navajo sand art.

Holiday Madness

 There’s a sweet little Korean girl (American name Emily) in Lucy’s class who she has literally talked about every day (and Isabella too). And she’s asked weekly to have her over for a playdate. So I finally got around to scheduling that playdate from September, as if the holiday season isn’t crazy enough.

There was a bit of a language barrier with Sunyoung (Emily's mom) and I, but the girls had a universal language of princesses and more princesses. Jackie was a sweet babysitter big sister and made the girls' crowns, wands, and helped contain the princess dresses.

Like every good Korean mom (myself included) the kids are all in the picture, but never the mom!

Sunyoung was such an amazing woman with her Korean dishes she made for us. As if our endless list of food allergies, aversions, and vegan preferences were a challenge, she made a traditional Korean rice cake that all of us could eat (but of course only Lucy and I did). What a wonderful day with a new friend! Now it's time to schedule that playdate with Isabella. (Poor third child!)

BFF's

These two have been getting along lately. 

Luckily, I had my camera phone on hand during the peace treaty.

Writing Frenzy

Super Lucy is writing her name in cursive here. Practice, practice, practice! Got to hand it to this little one for determination. 

 She decided it was time to send out her Christmas cards. There must be 30 completed cards stacked next to her.

Please forgive my delay in posting. After 4 yrs, I've run out of 'free' space on my blog. Dave and I have been busy deleting (and copying elsewhere) early posts to free up space, but to no avail. I will likely have to link to another blog site rather than pay a monthly fee. If you have any suggestions, please let me know!

Christmas card photo shoot

This year's photo shoot resulted in 4 decent shots and 189 deleted ones. Here are a few that didn't make the card, but were cute. The most successful way to get laughs out of all 3 kids is the tried and true method used by generations of familes... fart, poop, and pee jokes. It never fails.

Candy documentation

Clearly the OCD gene lives on....

Cameron decides which piece of candy he will eat for dessert, then checks it off his list....just to make sure it's all properly documented.

Coca-Cola Factory

Jackie and I headed to the Coca-Cola factory for a tour and taste testing.

 We breezed through the factory tour, vault of the secret recipe and the rest of the facility to get to the taste testing area. Each kiosk had the most common flavors of the continent. 

Korea's favorite flavor wasn't that bad. Some of them were just pure sugar syrup, which was clearly awesome to Jackie. Her favorite was Bibo from Africa. It was a kiwi mango sugar concoction.

She literally spent 30 minutes tasting every variety offered (even Dasani water with flavor boosters, translation more sugar).

 After a day full of sugar, we had a nice long walk with the babies.

My American Girl

We arrived at the American Girl store in Atlanta the minute it opened. Jackie cleaned house with her birthday money and then some. 

We celebrated her birthday with lunch at the bistro with her new babies.

 Meet Jack and Megan, born Nov 9, 2010.

 We took the kiddos for a stroll in their new wagon and picked up some dinner.