Gingerbread Jesus

So, one of the things I love about our new place is the kitchen, and it's showing with an increase in cooking and baking again! The kids and I had a great time making a Gingerbread Nativity for the dessert table at my ladies' Bible study program on Tuesday and I just had to share 'cause I think "Gingerbread Jesus" is pretty adorable:



and the three wise guys travelling from the East:



the Holy Family with their donkey, OK so it looks a little like a unicorn, but gingerbread is not quite as easy as clay...




and the best part is that it tasted pretty good too!



and I get to do it again later this week with a couple of ladies who expressed an interest in learning how to make one! I did get the recipe from a Martha Stewart Living magazine a few years ago, but the design was for a house not a stable...

Thank you!

I love November and seeing everyone's lists of things they are thankful for and I also like writing one so on those days when I feel like complaining, I have something to come back to and remind myself of all that I have to be grateful for! So here's a list of my thank you's for this year.

Thank you God for:

getting us through this past year of transitions and moves and school changes and living together as a family again.

my husband, who despite his deep seated need for 'peace and quiet' loves us enough to keep up with our loud, rowdy bunch and a wife who likes to talk.

my Big Boy, who is mature beyond his years, still sweet and a great big brother even to other little kids. I'm thankful for his sense of humor that gets him through the tough spots.

my Big Girl, who is smart and funny and creative and can belch like a man and then laugh hysterically.

my Little Girl, who is a ray of sunshine from the moment she wakes up until the moment she doesn't get her way! Sunshine is a force to be reckoned with when it doesn't take "No" for an answer!

my Little Boy, who tries so hard to please and cannot tell a lie. Sometimes this gets him in trouble too as he hasn't yet learned that the truth hurts, but I love his candor and his imagination.

teachers who show a real interest in our children and a desire to see them succeed.

old friends I miss so much. I am thankful to have a means of communicating with through facebook and email and phone calls and an occasional letter. I'm thankful for the memories and the impact they have made in my life.

new friends and the chance to get to know more people who will become old friends!

my health improving this past year. I'm no longer on blood thinners and have been cancer free for 3 years!

my ladies Bible study group. I love getting together with 'real' ladies who aren't afraid to show who they are in Christ.

parents who had a concern and love for my eternal salvation and taught us about God's love and forgiveness.

for our recent safe travels and time spent and memories made with our family in New Jersey.

the kindness of strangers to offer us a rental home when we were visiting family for a much reduced rate!

a comfortable home and plenty of food and the means to share with others.

my family cookbook with Uncle Russ's amazing pumpkin pie recipe. I just made 6 pies, 4 ramekins and a bread pudding with what I thought would make 4 pies!

my Cuisinart and my dishwasher and an oven big enough to bake 4 pies at once! I'm thankful that the joy I get from cooking and feeding people has reappeared after a year long hiatus.

my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and aunties and uncles and cousins.

for Your beauty and splendor and wonderful climate to enjoy it here in Hawaii!

so much more...

Love is a Four Letter Word?

So far, LB has had a pretty rough start to his public school education. First week of school he had an 'encounter' with the counselor because he made his 'angry' face in class when his teacher wouldn't let him sit next to a little girl he wanted to be friends with. I talked to the counselor and told her, yeah, he doesn't have much of a filter, but we're working on it... Anyway, by the third week, we had a meeting with the Special Services Counselor to get him evaluated for speech therapy as his teacher and other classmates are having a hard time understanding him. However, Mrs. T has no problem understanding when he uses the word "love" and has taken exception to that and told him not to say it anymore. Kid can't catch a break! I'm not sure what the exact context was but 'love' happens to be his favorite word right now and he 'loves' everything and everyone! It's a sad world that twists an innocent 5 year old's view of liking something a whole bunch into something ugly and dirty because they have a narrow-minded view of love! Sooo, how much can we confuse a kid? No, don't show your anger and don't be too loving either! I know it's going to be a challenge teaching him honesty while still maintaining respectfulness and love towards others. I had a long discussion with him after he went up to a little kid in the dentist's waiting room the other day and pointed at him and said "I don't like you and you can't play with my toys" completely unprovoked! So I know the frustration his teacher is faced with but it still made me sad that he was told he can't use the word 'love.' It's times like this that I consider homeschooling... But, obviously I didn't do too great a job prior to this or he wouldn't be having some of these issues! I'm praying that it will work out to have a new teacher next week when we change schools. LB seemed fine with that, but wanted to take Jordan and 'Brosario' and Max with him to his new school, so at least a few kids put up with his quirks...

Back to the Blog

...maybe! Facebook has a feature on it now with updates from this day in 2010 or 2009 and I realized how much I am missing by not writing stuff down here instead. I'm not great at, ok really not good at scrapbooking or journaling or even printing many of the pictures I take, so this blog was a good source of archiving our lives for a while and I'm missing a lot! So, maybe it's time to start writing more regularly again...

So, this time last year I wrote about moving into a house and being on the housing waiting list just in case we couldn't hack it 'off post' and I'm not too proud to say we couldn't do it! We're signing for a brand new, five bedroom house on Fort Shafter on Monday morning and I'm pretty excited! Here's a few reasons why we're really looking forward to a new house and neighborhood:

1. A dishwasher! I can't express how much I have missed having one and I think the eczema on my hands will be a thing of the past also!
2. Central air conditioning. I love the climate here, but paying $500 a month to run two little window units just so we have a couple of cool rooms to hang out in when the rest of the house is a sauna is a bit crazy. And it would be nice to actually hang out as a family all in the same room on our...
3. Sofa in the living room! I've been disappointed since we discovered when our stuff arrived that we could not fit our sofa into the living room and it's been in the boys' bedroom for the last 10 months. It will be nice to not feel like I'm walking into a college student's house with a beanbag and futon in the living room.
4. Some space to spread out and a garage!
5. No more nasty white carpet that doesn't come clean!
6. Neigbor kids to play with and adult neighbors for us grown ups too! We live in a decent neighborhood, but there are not a lot of kids close by and the kids have really missed running around outside with friends. I've noticed also, that even the adults when they are home around here tend to not come outdoors much.
7. Our own driveway and outdoor space. While it's been nice having our landlords to interact with and they are great people it will also be nice to feel like we're in our 'own' house and not have to worry if we don't shut the 'compound' gate, etc...

and so that brings me to the things we will miss about living here:

1. Our lovely landlords who are really great people and really seem to enjoy our children.
2. Our outdoor planting space and all the lovely fruit trees especially the yummy lemons! I'm going to have to buy lemons again and the kids will miss their swing on the mango tree.
3. The location to the kids school and J's work has been pretty ideal. We're going to have to walk a bit further to school or maybe even pay for the bus and J will have to commute about 10 minutes but with parking will be missing his coming home for lunch that he's enjoyed this past year.
4. The kids will be leaving a pretty good school and starting at another good school, but changing schools is never easy and as BB put it the other day "I was just getting used to this school." This will be his 6th school since kindergarten and he's only in 5th grade!

There's been ups and downs to our first year in Hawaii and I will say that the transition here has been harder than any other move in the past. Maybe it's a good thing I haven't written much this past year so we can forget the hard parts and move on to enjoying the next two years here!

Random kid updates...

Riding in the car today, LG pipes up from the back seat, "Daddy, I will miss you when I grow up." J asked why and she said "because I will have my own house." She was relieved to know that she could still visit even when she has her own house and babies and 2 dogs named "Jenny and Jenny Tuesday, who is a boy dog, but Jenny is just a regular girl dog with spots." She is growing up way too fast! She wanted me to straighten her hair last night, so I obliged and this morning when she woke up she came in our room crying because her hair was curly again.

LB is keeping us BUSY! I think I've lost much of the gray hair grown when he was a two year old! We went to the zoo last week and he had a great time climbing on the rocks next to the trail through the African Savannah exhibits. So, LG asked me to take her picture on one of them and the other 3 kids went ahead to look at the baboons. In the 20 seconds that took, LB had climbed on the rocks between the baboon and lion enclosures and was spotted by a zoo official. I got him down rather quickly and he was in no real danger as he wasn't even close to the top and there was a high fence on the other side of the rocks. But as the zookeeper said when she came and yelled at me, "we don't want to tempt the lions and give them any ideas that there is something better outside their enclosure." I said, "yes, ma'am" and took a firm grip on LB's backpack harness that I had the forsight to put on him but obviously not use! Why is it that the most impulsive kids are also the fastest. It's like he has a thought and in the same moment is executing! Thankfully, his favorite part of the zoo was the koi pond with the tunnel through the middle of it, with one way out and one way in...

BB and BG had a pretty decent spring break between the pool, the zoo, the movies and lots of lazing around. They're currently tied together with a rope and working 'together' on the daily chores because they've also spent a lot of time bickering and being mean to each other! Anybody else have any ideas for getting siblings to work together? We went and watched "Rango" the other day and both of them complained about going to see what they thought was a baby movie. It was nice to see BB glued to the screen the whole time and BG enjoying it too between the bathroom breaks! When am I going to learn that they don't need drinks at the movies?

I also enjoyed "Rango" but could have done without the lizard's suicidal walk across the highway, because of course that is what LB picks up on! He asked me, "why he walking by the cars and trucks" and after he falls over unconsious "why he dead?" But at least he knows you're not supposed to walk across a highway full of cars and trucks!