FHE Lesson on Paying Attention

Our girls have a tendency to not pay attention to their surroundings, which has led to broken things or people getting hurt. So Eddie decided we needed to do an activity to teach them to pay attention better. I went online to find something, but if you type in "teaching kids to pay attention", instead of activities, you get articles after articles about dealing with ADD kids. *sigh* I just wanted a simple game/activity!

So I just made one up.

First, I went through our cupboards and grabbed 24 various bowls. I separated out 8 of them and set them aside. Then with the remaining 16, I taped a tack to the bottom of each.

Then I put a tissue in each bowl, poking the points of the pins through so they were just visible.

In the 8 other bowls, I put a tissue in as well. These were our "safe" bowls.

Then I filled 8 water balloons for each of the girls and explained to them the rules. They were going to be timed to see how quickly they could place the balloons in a bowl. We told them that they needed to look at each bowl because there were only 8 bowls that were safe to put balloons in and that the other ones would pop them. Their goal was to try not to pop any, which would mean they needed to pay attention to the sharp pins sticking up.

Here is Lexi's trial. She did very well.

 And Carissa just didn't get it, but she had fun. 

We explained that when we aren't careful, things get broken. 

Lexi said she'd try to be more careful from now on :-)

Random Hike in the City

Last Friday, my friend, Alicia, called me and asked if I'd like to do some exploring. Since I had two little kids, begging to watch TV, I jumped at the chance to get out of the house. She's kinda spontaneous because with her health, she either is go go go, or bed ridden, but doesn't know until she wakes up which one. We did more walking just trying to find this path, since it was hidden behind a mortuary and cemetery. It was a nice, peaceful little stream, so you forget you are right by the main roads of the city. 

As we were walking back, I had Carissa in my arms as we passed over a muddy section and I barely slipped. Unfortunately, a big jagged boulder caught me on my thigh... putting me into a lot of pain for the next few days. Got to love my bruise!

Attempt at getting Christmas Dress pictures

Sorry Grandma, this is the best I could get out of the kids in the Christmas best :-( 

Our First Stitches...and some other Randomness

Even with all the scary antics Hunter likes to try, it seems he really mangles himself doing just something not so exciting. Two weeks before Christmas, we were all playing in the living room and watching a video with some music and Hunter caught the edge of the rug and face planted into the TV stand. He has probably had much worse falls, but this one hit just right to give him a nice gash in his eyebrow. Ed said immediately he would need stitches, so to the ER we went. The worse part was I was two feet away, playing with him! I wasn't even preoccupied looking at something else or making dinner. I guess it's good that I saw exactly what happened, but it doesn't make me feel any better.

Waiting in the ER before they came to clean him up

After being restrained and getting 7 stitches :-(

He wouldn't keep the bandaid on past the first day.
After going through 3 of them in an hour, I figured it wasn't worth it.

And some other Randomness:

A snapshot on Thanksgving

Here are the girls "freezing" because the temperatures dropped below 70 and it had rained the night before.
We are in so much trouble when we get back to the mainland.

Carissa is still my napper that can fall asleep anywhere.
She crawled right onto Ed's lap and crashed.

A small nativity I came up with for my activity day girls to make.
The girls that were patient had much better results, obviously. 

Lexi decorated gingerbread cookies at school

Since this girl has had so many concussions since we moved here, this seems like the most appropriate place for this sticker, though Hunter could get away with wearing this as well. *sigh*

One of the few pictures I got of the kids with a Christmas present.
Mother of the year, right here.

A week that was not necessarily to remember

Note: If you want to read a fun post, just skip this one. It's pretty lame, but this is my journal, so gotta have the ugly with the good.

We made reservations at the Disney Aulani resort back in September because they had discounts for military and since we didn't want Lexi to miss any school, we decided to do it as a early family Christmas treat. So we packed our bags and headed 20 minutes away to this resort, which we knew would be a once in a lifetime thing. Despite being discounted, it was still pricey.

The first day was overcast and rainy, which in Hawaii isn't all that bad, but for our poor family that was used to the temperatures here, it was a little too chilly to do what all the tourists were doing. So we just rode the lazy river and eventually discovered the hot tubs, which were much nicer.

The next morning, we had reservations for the character breakfast, but Lexi just did not want to get up. She just was miserable. Here's our picture with Mickey:

She wasn't interested in the food except a little milk and strawberries, and no sooner than we sat down to eat, she crawled onto Ed's lap and proceeded to empty the contents of her stomach EVERYWHERE. That explained the grumpiness. The two of them went back to our room to clean up and get Lexi to bed, and I attempted to enjoy our breakfast, which we didn't get a chance to really get our money's worth out of the buffet because of Lexi's episode.

We did catch Goofy as we were leaving for a photo:

The activities we had planned for the kids now had a wrench in them, since Lexi couldn't do anything in the kid's area (no one could stay if they had thrown up in the last 48 hours) and because of the delay, we were too late to get Carissa signed up for any of the special activities. She didn't even want to stay and play by herself for the first part of the day, but she didn't want to do what the rest of us were doing either, so I got to just sit on the beach chairs with her...sitting. Ed finally convinced her to go play in the kid's place while we hung out and Lexi fell back to sleep on the beach chairs while we did the water slides and river. Eventually, we all ended up back in the room with Lexi asleep, Carissa decided she was done when they told her she had to use the evil self flushing toilets, and so I went and got her, and she fell asleep. Hunter fell asleep and Ed wasn't feeling so good, so I just went and relaxed in the hot tubs by myself. We paid for a vacation and now we were all sitting in the room, watching Disney Channel. So I needed to do something.

I come back to find Eddie is now throwing up, and Hunter has a high fever. Lexi woke up hungry so I got her some food and then we spent the rest of the night just watching TV. Middle of the night, Carissa pops up and throws up. Then again. and again. Then I join her. We both ended up making a bed in front of the toilet with towels because we had no where else to sleep that we didn't have throw up on. By morning, I was completely delirious from lack of sleep and nutrients and water. I could hardly move. Ed mustered up enough strength to take Lexi to the open play at the playhouse, but that only lasted for an hour before I called it and said we needed to go home. Carissa went from place to place as we checked out, just passing out on the floor whenever Ed stopped. We made it home by 11 am (we had intended to stay til 4 pm) and after Ed got some ginger ale and crackers at the store, we both passed out. Quite literally. Lexi was left in charge of feeding herself and her siblings, so they ate alot of cereal and fruit snacks. Meanwhile, we just sat/laid there, unable to move. Hunter managed to pick off a bag of saltines over the course of the day, and grind half of it into the rug and couches. Lexi ended up throwing up again. It was quite a sight when we got our home teacher over for a blessing on everyone in the family. That was definitely a first.

I had plans with my friends that night. That wasn't going to happen.

So because our vacation was such a bust, we told the kids we'd take them to the Polynesian Cultural Center to see the lights, but due to a miscommunication, instead of leaving for an early time and getting home sooner, we ended up being out really really late and the kids were cranky and it spilled over to Sunday since we had 8 am church. Lexi was making small things into huge deals and my patience was definitely wearing thin. But we managed to have a successful (finally, something went right!) night caroling with some friends on Sunday evening. 

Christmas was fun, and although we invited a coworker of Eddie's for dinner on Christmas eve, I think I like things better with just our little family. This time of year is always hard when family is so far away, and this year was just so much harder. I did not enjoy it as much as I should have for it to be a wonderful time of year. So because one of my best friends had had a crappy week as well, we took off on Wednesday and saw Les Miserables. It was great and very well done, and I was feeling much better... until we went to go home. Yup, my car got broken into. Just another perk of living in Hawaii. And you thought the prices for the cost of living were high here... add on a car repair bill to that.

Well, I'm determined to make this year much better. It has to be. We are finally leaving Hawaii, so maybe I can see more of my family! Now I can see why prisoners were sent away to islands... that's quite a punishment.

Christmas Decorations

Last year, I put off decorations until a week or two after Thanksgiving because I was still recovering from having a baby and then Eddie had a business trip the day after Thanksgiving, so I just did it to help get in the spirit since the weather wasn't helping any. This year, the day after Thanksgiving, I was decorating as much as I could while I had Eddie home! It eventually took a few days, and we had cut back on what we knew would inevitably get destroyed by Hunter, but I tried my darndest to make it feel like Christmas!

 

This year, the chimney was in the corner under our coat rack so we could actually hang our stockings, which also matched for the first time ever!

A little snow here and there on the TV

Not gonna lie; It'll be nice to decorate more on the outside next year. We just were not wanting to have bugs all over our decorations!

Climbing Climbing Climbing

Eddie was a climber when he was a little boy.

Hunter is obviously his son.

He climbs on and in E-VER-Y-THING!

 We usually keep a gate up blocking the dining room because of this:

He crawls right into the bathtub now with little problem.

He can scale the ladder up to Lexi's bunk bed just as fast as her...and even climb down with ease.

His favorite indoor toy is our slide (it would rust outside), which also is something he actually doesn't get in trouble for climbing! And all the practice makes him quite adept to the playground at our weekly park trips. He manages to climb ladders that I've seen much older kids cry when they attempt. Not Hunter. He has no fear!

It's definitely a different experience baby proofing for this kid than his sisters before. He had already defeated many of my baby locks on the cupboards, months ago. He even knows how to unlock every phone he gets his hands on in the house. He likes to keep me on my toes!

The Color Run

The beginning of November, a bunch of ladies from my ward signed up for The Color Run, a 5k that was more fun than your typical 5k. Here I am with my two besties, Kristi and Andrea.

Waiting at the Starting line

Carissa and Suzy (and Kenna)

Janie and I

Every kilometer was marked by a group of people, chucking and squirting colored cornstarch at you and in the end, you look like this:

Making Memories :-)