Spelling

Now that Amelia is in first grade she has spelling words. Her favorite way to practice the words is by doing a "spelling dance," in which she spells out the words while dancing around. The other night the boys decided to join. They came up with routines for each word.

Here's the routines for rip and for:

Nana Kim

We has some very sudden tragic news last week: Nana Kim died. Mike found her on a Tuesday, Sept. 11 in the afternoon. Mike was able to get a hold of Dan, who came home right away. After giving Dan some love we told the kids. I think the suddenness of it caught everyone off guard. I didn't want to confuse the kids by saying "Nana Kim is gone" so I said "Nana Kim is dead." It sounded so harsh but I wanted to make sure the kids new exactly what had happened.
I watched a curtain of sadness come down in Jacob's eyes and his body tense up. Jack started to cry and I was able to comfort him in a hug. Amelia just sat there in shock not quite sure what to do or what it all meant. We prayed as a family thanking God for giving us Nana Kim, that she will be restored and for comfort for all of us.
As we were leaving, I was running around packing, Dan suggest stopping at Taco Time on the way over for some food. Jack immediately started crying because that was the last place we saw Nana Kim. He said it made him too sad to go there. Dan was able to comfort him with a big hug.
Once we were settled at Umma and Uppa's the next day I sat down with the kids to talk more about what was going to happen next. I reassured the kids it was ok to be happy and sad, and that it was ok to be "normal." I could see that gave Jacob a lot of relief because he wasn't sure how he was suppose to act. Jack said he was happy most of the time but sad sometimes.
As the next days went on, the kids brought it up briefly with Umma, since she was taking care of them while we dealt with other things. I feel so grateful and blessed to have Umma help; I trust that she can care for their feelings and give them space to talk about whatever they need.
Next Saturday will be the funeral service. We gave the kids the choice of going; all of them said they wanted to. It will be their first funeral service. I am hoping we can get there early enough to give them space to look around, ask questions and be together as a family before everyone gets there. Funerals are hard so I am relying on God's love and wisdom to guide me to help the kids process this.

For all the "mother-in-law" aspects to Kim and I's relationship I really did try to get out of the way so the kids and her could build their own relationship. Grandparents are really just pure love and joy to a grandchild; I wanted to make sure the kids felt that from Kim. Her love for them, and Dan, will be missed.

Sushi

We had a sushi night! After playing the game Sushi Go at the lookout tower this summer I bought the game. To make it fun we thought we would try sushi as a family. I was going to just go buy some sushi to try but a new sushi place opened up so we went. Jack loved the salmon, Amelia liked the sesame balls (but nothing else), and  Jacob didn’t really like any of it; he was a good sport and tried a little of everything though. What everyone loved was the conveyor of sushi that went around the restaurant. They thought it was so fun that they could just pick a plate up off the conveyor.

As we were leaving the restaurant I told the kids we were going to go home to make our own. Jack was excited about that, Amelia not so much, and Jacob not at all. Well the surprise about the homemade sushi was that it was going to be made out of candy. We had marshmallows for the rice, Swedish fish for fish, fruit by the foot for the seaweed wrap, green frosting for the wasabi and high-chews for veggies. The kids loved that! As you can see from the pictures they all did a great job making their "sushi."

As the munched their sushi we played the Sushi Go card game. Of course Dad won again but no one cared since we had sushi to eat!

Jack

Jacob is now playing the trumpet for the school band. Of course Jack wanted to try out the trumpet so he did. He asked who played the trumpet. First guy I thought of was Louis Armstrong so I showed Jack a video of him playing the trumpet and what the trumpet was actually suppose to sound like (not farting noises). After watching the video Jack asked if he was related to that astronaut guy. I was like no. Now I am not sure if Jack has ever seen a picture of Neil Armstrong but he definitely just saw Louis Armstrong so he could see Louis was a black man. I love Jack's pure color blindness to the boundaries race puts on a person. I think it must be that he sees families we know of mixed race so it just makes sense to him that the color of someone skin doesn't hinder your family connection.

The Dishwasher

For over a year now the kids have been in charge of emptying the dishwasher. Each boy took a rack, top or bottom and Amelia was assigned the silverware since she was too short to reach any of the cupboards. Well for a while now Jack has been complaining that it wasn't fair Amelia was still only doing the silverware since she is almost as tall as him. I agree but didn't really care to change it so I told him he needs to bring me a written proposal with at least 3 reasons why it should be changed. Jacob and him teamed up: Jack wrote the rough draft and Jacob created a power point presentation.
I have to say I was super impressed with the power point. It doesn't really show in the video because of the glare of the tv but the chart Jacob created and his graphics for each slide were pretty awesome. Jack did a great job presenting it.
I will say this is their second presentation. I had them revise the wording of one of their reasons into "I statements" instead of a blaming statement and they had to come up with another reason. Of course we changed the way we empty this dishwasher to "first come first empty" with the stipulation that if there is any arguing we go back to assigned racks.