5th Grade History Fair

Bud for the 5th grade history project had to pick a famous person. He initially chose Benjamin Franklin but after some slight persuading chose Albert Einstein. I figured choosing a physicist when we have a physicist in the house (N8's degree is in physics) would be a better choice.

It's been a month long project with a written report, including a bibliography, cover and title page as well as a presentation board and oral report.

Last night was the history fair and parents are students could come and see the presentations boards. Students could dress up as their famous person for extra credit.

Here's the board in the making.

And it's complete (and trying out the costume!)

A little silly!

Another boy in the other 5th grade clase (who happens to live on our street) also chose Albert Einstein!

He did an awesome job!!

A basketball player in the making...

Mo really wants to play basketball, but don't quite have the arm strength to make a basket. Today I had what I thought was a brilliant idea! All it took was hanging a hula hoop off the basketball hoop.

And the result-success! Although he isn't making it through the basketball hoop, he is learning to aim and seeing success!

Happy Long Weekend!

This past weekend was a 4 day weekend. N8 ended up spending Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon at a YSA (young single adult) activity down in he Big Bear area since he is the High Council Rep for the YSA. I made sure he wore his "My Wife Rocks" Tshirt so there was no confusion that he as a YSA!

Here on the homefront, we had some friends (Megan, her sister, Danie & Katie) over for pizza and a movie. The kids had a great time and it helped the evening pass by with fun!

On Monday we decided to take the kids on a little hike. Emma really was wanting a friend to come and play so we took her friend Kirsten along on the hike with us. It was a beautiful day and we were able to do some small video clips to make a commercial for the upcoming Blue & Gold Cub Scout Banquet. All in all a great long weekend. We'll see what happens with the Sequestration. Maybe we'll be having a lot more long weekends for a while!

A day in LA (to eternity and beyond!!)...

When we say we're going to LA (Los Angeles), it almost always means one thing-going to the temple. Yesterday I had the sweet opportunity to travel down to the LA temple with a great friend and attend the sealing of another great friend to her husband. The day was long, the lunch had less than satisfactory service, but it was wonderful! What a blessing we have to be sealing for time an all eternity and to be able to have family and friend surround us for this wonderful experience.

Congratulations to Lyn and Tim!!

Lyn & Tim

Lyn & Tim with their family

Tim and his daughter

The crew from Ridgecrest

Megan, Lyn and me

Rachel, Megan, Lyn and me

What adds to this day is the fact that N8 and the kids all headed up to Bishop,CA for N8 to speak in the Bishop Ward today. I came home (about 8pm) last night to a quiet house, went to church without any children and am home blogging without anyone here. It's strange, nice, but strange. A break every once in a while is nice, but I'm ready for my kiddos to be home harassing me! Maybe tonight at bedtime I'll be singing a different tune.

Crazy Hair Day...

This past Friday was crazy hair day for school spirit day. Emma was super excited for crazy hair!

It's pretty hard to get crazy with a buzz cut, so Bud just went as is!

Mo has switched from his Santa hat obsession to his dog hat obsession. That's crazy enough for me.

Henry just wanted his picture taken!

A Sunday afternoon....

I am so glad that we're back to having church at 9am rather than 1pm. We have the entire afternoon to be together, relax, bake, read, etc. N8 still has meetings and whatnot on a few Sunday's a month, be he's home a lot more now being on the High Council instead of in the Bishopric. So this is how Sunday afternoon looked for us this week:

Emma and I baked some Oatmeal Banana Muffins for a goodbye party for some friends moving this week:

Then we baked our standard chocolate chip cookies:

While we were baking Paqo became enthralled with the bubble screensaver on my computer!

I made some garlic roasted cauliflower to take to dinner at Ricky and Kim's:

And ground some wheat to make whole wheat pizza dough for today's dinner:

N8 is in charge of the Sunday's services once a month at an elderly care center so he and Bud went to that and then he got a rare moment on the couch working on his tablet

And Henry got in a Sunday afternoon nap:

The kids also played on the tablet, colored pictures, I blogged, called my parents and did some reading. Yay for having Sunday afternoons again!

A beautiful day in the desert...

Yesterday was such a beautiful day in the desert. N8 and the kids went to the Home Depot Kids Workshop (I stayed home and worked on setting up my new laptop).

Then we all went out and did some geocaching. N8 had picked up a travel bear while he was on travel this last week in Maine. The bear did some talking at the telephone pole!

And got placed at the "geo" station:

Then we drove out to the desert to a fun rock and cache!

These non windy, great temperature days are wonderful and I'm glad we took advantage of it and went out into our desert!