Happy Gotcha Day, Lucy Sooryeo!

Four fantastic years ago, we got our little baby girl.

School's Out For the Summer.....

We finished up a few weeks ago, which is a good thing b/c we ALL got spring fever!

 ...and weren't getting much work done.

Ninjas

Since the infatuation began with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Lucy (and therefore CamO) have been all about martial arts. We signed them up a month ago for Tae Kwon Do, since it's from Korea (& located so incredibly close to our house). Cameron & Lucy have been loving it. It took a few weeks for them to figure out it was actually Tae Kwon Do, rather than karate, or Twi-khan-do, but they got the hang of it.

Lucy's eye surgery

A few weeks ago, Lucy had eye surgery on both eyes. She was all giggles before the surgery. She did remarkably well during and post surgery.

For a few weeks, she was seeing double since she was cross-eyed. She has come so far and now only sees 1 of everything! Although I see 2 superheroes.

Night time routine

Bear and Lucy

The puppy energy back in our house has been delightful. We  love how puppies, like babies, can fall into a deep sleep any where, at any time.

For Easter, the girls and I took the dogs on a walk on the Tobacco Trail and had a picnic at the end. It was nice to have the girls to myself and the two of them NOT arguing.

Monster Jam

A few weeks ago, Dave, Cameron, Grandad, and a few friends went to the Monster Jam in Raleigh.

While this was a huge hit with the guys, the ladies were happy to have some down time.

Even Caleb was awed by the monster trucks. Dave took these pics w his phone.

Life is never, ever dull

Jackie was invited to join the 'team' in gymnastics. She's over the moon. Practice will be 4 hrs/wk, competitions, uniforms, etc. I'm trying to coordinate the kids gymnastics classes so we are only going to/from the gym 2d/w. Did I mention that we also have soccer, swimming, math class, science class, piano, and girl scouts? (HATE my scheduler). CamO was also moved up in gymnastics, but there's no boys competition team at this gym. He's the littlest and youngest one by years and 6 inches. Lucy will forever be in preschool gymnastics-even in high school. We have scheduled her eye surgery for May 8. They will do both eyes at once and she'll temporarily be cross-eyed. Once she can see the apparatus, I suspect Lucy will also get moved up in gymnastics.

The best part of the week was the emergency visit to the vet. Bear got a hold of Happy's rimadyl (thankfully only a few pills). A few hundred dollars, medicine, IV fluids, and one gassy dog later, Bear is out of the woods. Now that he visited the ER, Bear is an official member of our family.

In all seriousness, Holly's mom and Karen's dad could use your prayers. We pray for peace and acceptance for them and their families. 

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!)