Sunday, December 26, 2010

Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas


We spent Christmas Eve at my (Anne's) sister's house with my family.  Christmas morning after breakfast we open gifts at our house and then we go over to Tim's mom's house for Christmas dinner.  Claudia and Mayerly sang a song with the other kids in their Sunday school class for the Christmas service at church this morning.  They had to hold up letters that spelled out CHRISTMAS.  Claudia had the letters R and I, Mayerly had M and A.  The only part of any of this that I have pictures of is opening gifts at our house.

Before the ripping mayhem...

Mini remote control helicopters


Why do I need these?!?! (elbow and knee pads) 


Roller skates all around for the girls


Even Hanai and Hank get a little raw-hide sumpin'-sumpin'.


Flying a tiny 'copter


The "big kid" takes a turn; and Hanai wants to catch that "dragonfly"!

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Buy a Calendar

The Woods family is pursuing a second adoption from Colombia.  They are going to get a 6-year-old girl this time (they adopted 3 siblings the first time).  If you haven't already, consider buying a calendar ($20) from her blogsite (link below).  The proceeds will be used to support the family's adoption expenses.  I already bought mine!

http://iwillnotleaveyouasorphans.blogspot.com/

Make it a Merry Christmas for them by helping them achieve their sales goal before the end of the year!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Life Lessons from Rover and Fido

For Oscar's birthday this year he got a hermit crab habitat.  Eventually, we bought him 2 crabs to go in it (took awhile because - we're kinda busy).  One of the first crabs we bought died the day we brought it home, so we replaced it.  The crabs were named Rover and Fido (why not).

Crab life was relatively uneventful.  They ate, they drank, they played at night (we found out they are nocturnal), they took a bath once a week in the bathroom sink.  Not a bad life for a crab.

This morning we awoke to tradgedy.  Rover had killed Fido.  No one could figure out why.  It all seemed so senseless.

Oscar took Fido and prepared him for a burial at sea (don't have to spell that one out do I?).  After said burial, he took Fido's old shell and was cleaning out what he thought were left over crab parts so he could put it back in the crabitat for future use.  Then he noticed that the parts were moving.  Then it all became clear - there were baby crabs inside the shell!  Unfortunately, he killed a couple of them before he realized what they were.  (Hermit crabs will allow themselves to be pulled apart before they allow anyone or anything to remove them from their protective shells.)

We talked about how sometimes male animals eat their own babies.  We talked about how Fido (I guess we should have named HER Fida instead) fought to the death to protect her babies.  We talked about how sometimes we have to be careful when we think that one thing has happened (because we rarely know exactly why things have happened) and that we sometimes cause more harm by making assumptions and moving too quickly without all the facts.

Now we have one adult male crab and one baby crab of unknown gender.  Oscar said, he has a lot of work to do now(having to keep them separated until the baby gets a little bigger).  It's rough being the new adoptive father of a baby crab :-).

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Small Blessings

Diana started to say "right" instead of "cierto" this week.  Don't know where she was when it finally clicked, I'm just glad it clicked!  Just another small victory in the Spanlish war.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard "Cierto mommy?" over the past 22+ months... times four...

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Saturday Kumite

Oscar was in his first karate competition this past Saturday in Topeka, Kansas (about an hour and a half from our house).  There were two other boys on his team there also.  Everyone did really well.  Oscar got 2nd place for his kata in the 12-13 year-old novice division (beat only by his teammate who is a green belt - which in case you don't know, is two ranks higher than Oscar's yellow belt).  He beat out another green belt and an orange belt from other teams to get second place.

He got 1st place (same division) in sparring.  Once again beating out the green and orange belts.  We think he did a great job!  He even had other kid's parents cheering for him :-).


Here he is getting ready to do his kata for the judges...

Here he is getting ready to get his 2nd place trophy...

Here he is getting ready to accept his 1st place trophy... notice orange belt isn't clapping - Oscar beat him twice and he was a real sore loser about it.

Here's the team:  Marcus (in the white), Sinsei (Tony), Conner (red helmet) and Oscar in front.

All together they got five first place trophies and one second place trophy.  Conner got disqualified in his sparring match, so only got 4th place there (should've gotten 1st, but the brown belt - higher rank - he was fighting had a huge football-esque looking face-guard on his helmet and Conner got called for face contact because he kept clipping the kid's face guard with his kicks - he's got a killer hook kick).

I actually had a pretty good time and I'm not a sports fan :-).