Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentines Day! Just in case you did not know, today is my favorite day of the year! It is my favorite holiday, red is my favorite color and I love hearts. It is very important to me to tell those I love, how much I love them and how much they mean to me. Yes it is something to do everyday but it is really fun once a year to say it in some extra special ways.

Naomi and I were surprised on Saturday when we got 2 boxes delivered. They were from Darrick: a heart bamboo plant for me and pink roses for Naomi.

One tradition that we started last year was that Darrick gets the girls presents and I get the boys presents. Nothing crazy but just a little something to say I love you and you are special to me.

I started out today attempting to make heart shaped pancakes for the kids. I first tried pouring the batter into cookie cutters on the griddle but that was a huge mess. So I went with pouring them free style. I also whipped up some mango, blackberry and banana smoothies.

At lunch I made PB&J sandwiches with heart shapes.

And dinner marked our 2nd annual Candle light Valentines Day Dinner. The kids were super excited!

What would dinner be without Flat Daddy?

I served bow tie pasta with a choice of Alfredo sauce or marinara, salad, homemade bread and a choice of sparkling apple cider or grape apple cider.

For dessert we had some awesome homemade treats! Chocolate covered strawberries or frozen chocolate dipped banana slices.

After dinner we played two rounds of kids Cadoo. It was really fun.

Darrick was able to call today. It was so good to hear his voice. I miss him so much today. I miss him more today then I did at Christmas. But he had good news. He booked and purchased his ticket to come home on leave. He will be here in 3 weeks!

Some Organization

Here are two ideas I have incorporated into our family lately. I found these cool colored cube boxes at Target. Micah is blue, Jake is green and Naomi is purple. As I am picking up through out the day, if I find anything that belongs to the kids I put it into their cube. They are responsible to put the stuff in their cube away by the end of the day. It has been working awesome and saves me a lot of picking up. Naomi's is always the fullest.

Second idea is cups. I cannot tell you how many cups the kids go through a day. It seems like every time they want a drink they get a new cup. We found these cool cups at Bartell Drugs. They are BPA Free and have straws and lids. The only down side is they cannot go in the dishwasher. They each have a color and they use that cup all day. Then I wash them at the end of the day and they are ready to go again for the next day.

Never Say Never

This afternoon the kids and I went to see the Justin Bieber movie "Never Say Never" in 3D! We got there early which was good because it was pretty full.

Naomi was all decked out in her finest: Justin Bieber T-shirt, Tutu, purple tights (Justin's favorite color) and silver sparkly shoes. She fit right in with all the other girls. There was a good amount of boys there too.

Naomi has never seen a movie in 3D. It was so cute. She would giggle and then say "Justin is looking at me" or "Justin is pointing at me" but the cutest is when she asked "Why can't I touch Justin? I keep trying!"

If you like Justin and his music you will like this movie! We all did!

Celebrating Micah

I can hardly believe that Micah has turned 10! We started the morning cuddling on the couch while I told Micah about the day he was born and how much he means to our family. Then I prayed for him and his upcoming year.

He opened gifts from us through out the day. In the late afternoon my parents watched him open the gifts from them over skype. In the afternoon Kayla and Hendrik came over to play and then Josh, Jenn and Logan came over around dinner time. We ordered some pizza for dinner and then Micah opened a gift from the Timmermans.

While we waited to have cake Darrick played with Micah's new toy.

I forgot to buy candles but Micah was a ok with that. He just pretended to blow some out.

We made a chocolate cake from Trader Joe's, with a pudding middle and chocolate ice cream. It was delicious! I highly recommend it.

And our homemade ice cream was incredible!

Happy 10th Birthday Micah!

Willow Smith - Whip My Hair

Second try at Veil Style

Last night I tried the veil style again. I LOVE the way it came out this time. I left the back in box braids because they were still neat and I just redid the front. I used smaller rubber bands this time and did more braids at the end where before I just did one.

Naomi loves it and so do I! In the morning after she wakes up sometimes the braids are going different directions depending on the way she slept on them. Sometimes we wet them but I just found this new product that I LOVE.

A lot of the ethnic hair products they have for kids smell way too sweet to me and I don't like them. This one smells minty and fresh.

Many people ask me what Naomi does while I braid her hair. Lately she has been watching you tube. She loves to watch Willow Smith's new song "Whip My Hair". We listen to it over and over and over. It has grown on me.

Making Birthday Ice Cream

Micah's birthday is coming up and since we are trying to eat chemical and preservative free we thought we would make his birthday ice cream. He picked chocolate ice cream with peanut butter cups.

We have a Cuisinart 20 qt. Frozen Yogurt-Sorbet and Ice Cream Maker. We really like it and have had it for a few years. It came with its own recipe booklet so we used the recipe for Simple Chocolate Ice Cream. We went to Trader Joe's and bought organic ingredients: cocoa powder, sugar, brown sugar, whole milk, heavy cream and pure vanilla extract and peanut butter cups.

You add the peanut butter cups the last 5 minutes. You can eat it right then but we are saving it for his birthday so we scooped it into a container and stuck it in the freezer! We actually made 2 batches. It should be good!

Women's Retreat

I am leaving in a little bit for an overnight Women's Retreat...can't wait!

HALF WAY!!!

The beginning of February marks the half way point of this deployment! We have made it. When Darrick left in August, the year ahead of me seemed to stretch on for miles. I give all the glory to God for arriving at this point because there is no way I could do this in my own strength.

It has been a crazy six months. I had times that I laughed so hard my side ached and times I was face down on the floor crying and asking God to help me. The kids and I have traveled along the roller coaster of emotions from one extreme to the other. I am so proud of each one of them. I know what it is like to have my husband deployed but I have no idea what it is like to have my Daddy deployed. It is interesting to see how they handle the stress. Micah is emotional. When he misses Daddy he cries. Jacob and Naomi are fighters. When their feelings of missing Daddy get too big for them to handle they explode. They stomp, throw things, yell, they do physical things. And every time I am right there to pick up the pieces and love them through it.

I am so proud of Darrick. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be the one to leave for so long. As hard as it is for me, I would rather do my job any day. He deals with loneliness, missing special events, missing daily things, worrying about us and much more. He has a job to do and he needs to do it well.

So we are now on the downhill slope and heading to the finish line. We are no where near done but at least the end is in the distance.

I am so blessed to have amazing friends local and far away who support me however they can. And our family holds us up and keeps us strong during this time.

Last night at Bible Study on the video we watched Beth Moore said "after every death comes a harvest". That really struck me. God is always calling us to deny our self, pick up our cross and follow Him. I believe God uses times like these in our lives to clean the stuff out of our lives that does not need to be there and takes our focus off of Him. It is hard and painful to let those things die but God promises us that there will be a harvest in our lives.

I don't know why this year long deployment is happening to us but I have faith that God knows and He sees us down the road and knows how things will turn out and He is preparing our family for something He has planned ahead. What will it be? Only God knows right now but by going through this time I believe we will be prepared when we get there.

New Style

Last night I was searching on You Tube for some instructional videos for styles to try with Naomi's hair. I found Styles by Katelynylyn. She also has an awesome website called Keep Me Curly.

I decided to try a style she demonstrated. It is called Veil Style with Box Braids. She is very happy with it and said she feels like a princess!

HSA Open House

Last night HSA had their Fall Open House. The first semester has come to an end. The boys really enjoyed their classes. Micah took beginning Spanish, Sun, Moon and Stars and TaeKwonDo. Jacob took beginning Spanish, My place in Space and TaeKwonDo.

Families are encouraged to set up a table displaying some of the work they have been doing at home. We had a nice display which included Flat Daddy. We got a lot of questions about him. I also had a slide show playing which shows pictures of things we did at home. It is posted below.

Next families are encouraged to visit the classrooms and see the work displayed. They always do such amazing things. We are SO blessed with great teachers.

State of the Union Address

One thing I am trying to do this year is make my kids aware of things going on around the world. It started with Darrick's deployment and why he had to go and what his job would be.

Yesterday night an opportunity presented itself so I thought I would give it a try. If you didn't know last night President Obama gave his State of the Union address. I realized that I have never sat down and watched a full one-what kind of American am I? So I thought if I am going to watch it, I am going to have the kids watch it too.

Thankfully we have DVR so we could pause it every time the kids had questions. It was 1 hour and 1 minute and the boys sat through the whole thing and listened. Naomi...not so much...she lasted about 20 minutes. The boys had some interesting questions:

• What is a Democrat and what is a Republican?
• Why do they stand, then clap and sit so many times?
• Why is there an empty chair for Gabbie Gifford and what happened in Arizona?
• How much does college cost?
• What is illegal immigration?
• Why does the government spend more then it takes in?
• What does it mean to freeze money?
• What does gay mean? What did he mean "because of who they love?"

I really hope that this can become a yearly tradition for us. So if you haven't watched it you should because our children follow our examples.

Kindergarten or not-that is the question!

While visiting with other moms at HSA last week I discovered that in WA the cut off date to enter Kindergarten is September 1st, meaning the child must be 5 by September 1st to enter Kindergarten. Naomi has a September birthday but it is a few weeks later.

So what is the big deal, you may wonder since we home school. Well not too much except Naomi was really looking forward to being in kindergarten and taking classes at HSA like her brothers. So I found out that we do have options, well 2 to be exact.

1. Don't put her in Kindergarten this year.
2. Get her tested by the state and if she passes, she can enter Kindergarten this year.

So I talked to Darrick about it. By the way, do you realize how hard it is for us to talk about important things? We hardly get to talk on the phone, skype has not been working and trying to have a serious discussion over email is hard and takes way too many emails.

We have come to a basic decision but plan to talk about it more while Darrick is on leave.

What are your thoughts?

Still Practicing

Have you seen the new Karate Kid? Well we are huge fans of it. Every time I watch it I look at Jayden's hair and think "I wish I could do that". So I decided to start practicing. Now mind you that I cannot just practice whenever I feel like because the head I am working on has to be in the right mood. Some days she does not want me to touch her hair. And when you are trying to learn a new skill it takes practice and some bribing. I told her "Do you want Mommy to do your hair like the Karate Kid?" This was followed by giggles and "Yes Mommy!"

I notice in the movie that Jayden has his hair parted around his ears and the bottom is braided separately from the top. So that is what I attempted. Well as you can see the bottom of Naomi's hair looks nothing like Jaydens but I do think that I am getting better on my corn rows. I know that they are not fabulous but I think they show improvement.

So what do you think? I can take it...