Baby Shower

We had a great baby shower last night! Thank you so much to Carmel's visiting teachers, Beth Wampler and Katherine Parker.

These were some of the party guests. . .

Venita Dimmick and Aleshia George:

Mandy & Sarah Dimmick and Liesle Winters:

Kimarie Howard (her back towards the camera), Melissa Duncan (looking down), Venita Dimmick, and Carmel:

Ellen Roberts, Annelle Griffin, and Dina Roberts:

Jules Orme, Mylinda Butterworth, and Judy Bowden:

One of the games was naming baby animals from a list of the adult animals. Most of them were easy, but some were quite difficult. Here, everybody's trying to figure out the answers.

Another game was to make a baby out of bubble gum. It was actually difficult, and Carmel thought her gum baby looked like an alien. Carmel got to be the judge of the babies. She was so surprised when she looked at the bottom of the winning plate and saw Anuhea's name. Anuhea won! She got foaming hand soap from Bath & Body Works.

This picture shows Anuhea's gum baby. It's on the pink plate at the left of the picture.

We got A LOT of gifts. Everyone was so generous. There were clothes, towels, things for the car, a diaper bag, and lots of other goodies.

The party favors were so elegant. They were chocolate dipped pretzels.

The party favors each had a cute charm on the end, which may be hard to see here, but it says, "It's a girl!"

Memorial Day

May 26, 2008

Happy Memorial Day!

http://www.history.com/minisites/memorial

We are so grateful for those people who have fought for our country, The United States of America, and for those people who are still fighting now. They help us maintain our freedom. We have recently been reading in the scriptures about Helaman and the Stripling Warriors. It was a great way to explain to the children about people who fight for liberty, and for fighting only for good purposes.

We went to Friendship Park in Oviedo this morning. The children enjoyed playing on the slides and other things that were at the park. Nalani also took her rollerblades are skated for a while. It was hot, but the sun kept hiding behind the clouds so that helped us keep a little cooler. We also took peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, carrots, and apples to eat if we got hungry.

This evening we had a delicious dinner. Jason barbecued pork ribs (on our indoor electric grill), Carmel made baked potatoes and corn on the cob. Mmm! For dessert we had dutch apple pie with cookie dough ice cream. . .also wonderful!

4 more weeks!

I have 4 weeks to go in this pregnancy. It seems to be taking forever now. I want to get this baby out and to be able to stop saying, "Ouch!" every time she kicks me. I'm hoping our daughter will come a week or so early, but I want her to at least wait until my mom comes so we'll have her help with our other children. Hurry up, Mom!

I've been getting very annoyed when I've gone out lately. People actually have the gall to say, "You look like you're ready to have that baby." I mean, yeah, I'm near the end, but do I really look that bad? One cashier at a store asked if I was going to have the baby in her aisle. I still had 6 weeks to go at that time! Ugh! I think the reason I'm most annoyed is because I do look huge--to me and my family, because I'm normally not fat--but these other people have never seen me before. I look like any other pregnant woman, and maybe not even as big as some. Come on!

You don't look 11!

Anuhea is our oldest child. She is only 11, but when people see her they almost always make the comment, "You don't look 11" or "She's only 11?" We can't believe it either when we see her. Sometimes she acts her age, but sometimes she is much more mature than most 11-year olds. When she's not frustrated with her sisters, Anuhea is a great big sister and a big help for her mom and dad.

11 Year Olds

Carmel teaches in the Primary program in church. She teaches the 10-year old girls who have or will be turning 11 this year. There are 18 girls on the list for the class. 12 girls regularly attend class, with one or two missing on occasion.


Today there were only 8 girls in class, and that's probably attributed to the fact that this is the Memorial Day weekend--a long weekend. It wasn't as crowded, noisy, and chaotic. It was also the last day for one of the girls. She's moving away with her family. We had our regular lesson and everyone signed a card for her that Carmel made. We also gave her a small carnation bouquet. She was a great girl who tried to do what is right, listened and participated in class, and always had a smile. We'll miss you, Maile!

Fruit Lovers

Our family loves fruit. We usually have a lot of apples or grapes, but recently a lot of other wonderful fruit have been in season and reasonably priced. The fruit doesn't last long (which is good, because we don't want them to go bad & get thrown out), and we sure enjoy eating it all.

BING CHERRIES



STRAWBERRIES--look at that HUGE one in the middle!


RED SEEDLESS WATERMELON

Cupcakes

May 24, 2008

We bought cupcakes because the price was reduced. We, the females, were so excited--SUGAR! There were 24 cupcakes on the tray. They were chocolate cupcakes, decorated with patriotic colored frosting & sprinkles. Mmm!



Hokulani got onto the table to get the sprinkles that fell off the cupcakes so Jason took pictures of her. What a silly girl!

Gardening 2

If you read a previous post about Gardening, then you know that Hokulani has been growing a lima bean plant. She faithfully waters her plant every day, twice.

This picture shows the first flower (picture taken on 5/20/08), but now there are 2 blossoms that will hopefully turn into beans.

Great job, Hokulani!

Kindergarten Helper

May 21, 2008

Every Wednesday I go to Hokulani's Kindergarten class to help her teacher with cutting, filing, and other things she may need help with.



Today, in Hokulani's class, they talked about elephants. The topic for this week is Zoo Animals. Here are pictures of Hokulani and her classmates making their elephant hats.

Hokulani's in this picture below, on the right side, with the pink jacket:

After helping in Hokulani's class I eat lunch with Hokulani. Lunch is at 10:30am, which is quite early, but it's good for me during my pregnancy. Each grade takes turns eating lunch so Kindergarten has to eat early to be sure the 5th graders will have time to eat lunch later. Parents need to eat outside with their children. All of the other children are inside the cafeteria.

Kindergarten Program

May 20, 2008

Hokulani is nearing the end of her year in Kindergarten. She has thoroughly enjoyed everything she has done over the school year, and she likes her teacher, Mrs. Pate.

Tonight the Kindergarteners put on a program with an "Under the Sea" theme. Each class performed songs with actions that they'd been practicing for at least a month if not more. We'd been hearing those songs every day as Hokulani felt inspired to sing them at home.

This was the backdrop for the performances:

Anuhea got to be the photographer at the program. Here are some pictures. We have a video too, but I'm having trouble uploading it. Maybe I'll be able to add it later.

In this picture, Hokulani and her classmates are getting ready to begin one of the songs. Hokulani is in the middle with a pink & orange swimsuit, a red pirate's cap, and orange & yellow shorts.

Each child could use whatever they wanted to decorate a paper fish. This is Hokulani's fish that she worked on with mommy.

Each child got a bucket with fun things inside. Here's Hokulani:

This is Hokulani with her teacher, Mrs. Lisa Pate:

I can dress myself

Hokulani can choose her own clothes with no problem and has been doing it for a while. However, she often gets into moods where she wants mommy to choose her clothes for her. For church on Sunday, she decided to choose her own clothes and wanted to wear a shirt with a skirt.

We weren't too thrilled with what she chose, but decided to let her wear it anyway. Here it is. . .

Fruit Lipstick

The girls were eating grapes as a snack. They decided to eat the fruit and save the skin for last. Anuhea and Nalani put the skin on their lips and it looked like plum-colored lipstick. We didn't get a picture of Anuhea's "lipstick", but here's Nalani's (on her bottom lip).

Guard "dog"

May 18, 2008

We were expecting our Home Teachers to come and visit our family. Nalani wanted to wait by the door so she could open it for them. Since she was sitting on the floor, Jason said she looked like the guard dog so we took a picture of her.

When the Home Teachers arrived, Nalani opened the door and hid behind it so they couldn't see who had opened the door.

Chili Cook-Off

May 17, 2008

After Chinese school (on the west side of town), we drove across town to the Oviedo Ward Chili Cook-Off (on the east side of town). The cook-off was at Lake Mills Park in Chuluota, which is still 10 minutes more to the east than our house is.

There were so many different types of chili and they were all delicious! I'd say there were 15 or so pots of chili. We enjoyed trying the different varieties, but the children just stuck to mommy's. Other people also made cornbread/muffins and cobblers and pies. Mmm!

Hokulani received a long bubble tube from her Chinese teacher, and enjoyed playing with it at the park. Here is a picture of Jason and Hokulani playing with the bubbles. Other children later joined in the bubble-popping fun.

Carmel used her mom's chili recipe, and won the chunkiest chili award. (Everyone who made chili got some kind of award.) We weren't sure why it was called the chunkiest, but Carmel thought it was because there were kidney beans, corn, and tomato chunks from the stewed tomatoes (as opposed to just tomato sauce).

This is the certificate.

Rather than a trophy, winners received a bowl of chili (fake) with beans piled on top.

We can take the beans out and use the bowl for salsa!

End of Chinese School Year

May 17, 2008

Chinese School is over for the 2007-2008 school year. Every Saturday we've been going to Winter Park for Chinese School, and the classes are 3 hours long! The children study the Chinese language in different grades for 2 hours, and then they are in a cultural class for 1 hour.

Anuhea has been in the 7th Grade Chinese class, and took 3-D Origami (for the culutural class).
Nalani has been in the 5th Grade Chinese class, and took Martial Arts.
Hokulani has been in the Kindergarten Chinese class, and took Chinese Folk Dance.

Since it was the last day today, the classes were only 1 hour long, and then there was a closing ceremony with performances and awards.

In this picture Hokulani received the 2nd place academic award for her Kindergarten class. We thought that was great, but so funny, because she knows less Chinese than her older sisters and they didn't get anything.


This is a picture of Hokulani's trophy. She was so excited to receive it--very proud.


This is the Chinese School Principal, Conchita Hsu.


The children were all seated and waiting for the ceremony to begin. Can you see Anuhea, Nalani, and Hokulani? Anuhea is in the middle left, wearing a white or yellow shirt. Nalani is next to her on the right (or it may look like the top). Hokulani is more to the right of Anuhea, wearing purple and has pigtails in her hair.


Here's a broader view of the waiting audience.


Hokulani's Folk Dance class performed a dance called Village Girl. Their teacher is Salinda Chen. Hokulani's in the purple outfit in the front row.