landscape maintenance

that's what it's called in the oc.
you may just call it yardwork. today, jojo learned about it. here he is, my little guy, helping daddy mow the lawn!

thanksgiving

we are so thankful for the amazing blessings that God has bestowed upon us this year! the biggest has to be sy coming out to join us. it’s also been amazing to watch each of our kids grow and learn so many things. jojo is truly understanding so much of what our faith in Jesus is all about – what a blessing. here’s the cousins gathered in phoenix!

Soccer!

we have LOVED soccer this year! jojo & kiki are both on the same team and s is coaching it! even ky “gets her soccer gear on” on saturdays to go to the game.

photo opportunity!

i have figured out that whenever i want to take a picture the kids won’t smile – they make strange faces (they call them “silly” but i call them strange) so… when i want a good picture, i must first take a crazy photo and tell everyone to make a silly face. only then am i allowed to ask them to say cheese and actually get smiles out of all of them at once! these were taken on a recent "field trip" to the Long Beach Aquarium...

name change

ok. so i’m a little slow. i knew i didn’t want to use the kids names, but the initial thing is a little annoying so… j is now jojo. k is now kiki. kj is now ky. and si is now sy. s and i will still be s & t or more likely “s & i” jojo & kiki are the names the boys called each other before they could say each other’s names. so it’s fitting even if it doesn’t make sense to you.

halloween!

aren’t they super cute??? j- dog, k- firefighter, kj – ladybug, si –lion awwww.
s & i talked about not doing halloween. in the end we decided to go ahead. we weeded through our decorations and got rid of all witches and ghosts – even the cute ones – which i was surprised to find on so many of my things. we enjoyed going to the pumpkin patch, but our evening walk in the neighborhood brought questions from our kids as we passed houses decorated with various evil and cute-evil scenes. since our kids aren’t too familiar with the cartoons and shows “regular” families watch which would have previously exposed and desensitized them regarding ghosts, witches, etc. we had some explaining to do. it seemed like there was constantly a choice in my mind to “call it what it is” or tip-toe around the issue. then, how in-depth should i go with my answers?
on the 31st, grandma was here – that was a special treat. we did the pumpkin patch then in the evening we trick-or-treated around our neighborhood. easy enough. we’re in a small neighborhood with few kids, but the first trick-or-treaters who came to our door (a 11yr old boy and his 5yr old sister) scared kj so that she attached herself to my leg and was slow to put on her costume and venture out. while we were out, even the boys were afraid a couple times of other kids’ costumes. to be honest, it made it not fun. we just pushed through, but i feel like that was just desensitizing them. i know at some point they need to be not scared, but when?

even more fun info... i tried something i don't remember, but i've heard my mother did for/to us. on november 1st i let the kids have their candy. we talked about getting a stomach ache from too much candy and then i let them have at it. it was an incredible evening! at least i knew their excuse for being insane! grandma thought i was crazy. i think she was right. but then they picked a couple pieces each to keep for the coming days and threw the rest "out" (this means mommy ate it for a while - "waste" not? - i think i NEED to waste this stuff). in any case, they were happy with their couple pieces and i was happy not to deal with them asking for candy until christmas.

WHY do we celebrate halloween again?