Good Boy :)

The following pictures will only be funny to you if you know his big sister Joy and her passion for all things "appropriate!"

Joshua got a really neat book from the library that is all about Star Wars. Each character has a two page spread all about them. He has really been enjoying it and we have all learned so much more about Star Wars (except Daddy, he already knew everything about it!)

Anyway, one evening everyone was kind of doing their own thing and Peter was sitting across the room from Joshua who was quietly looking at books. He caught these adorable pictures when the little man didn't know we were watching him. The first one is the page all about Han Solo and he's just enjoying the book like normal...

The next pages are all about Princess Leia. Notice the hand covering one of the pictures in the book? It's the picture where she's in her slave costume and minimally covered. He kept his hand covering it the whole time he was on those two pages, then turned the page quickly when he was done. We couldn't help but laugh! His sister must have gotten to him and told him what's what about immodestly dressed women, which she isn't shy about telling anyone! (laugh!) :)

We never asked him why or what he was doing, we just let it be. But we saw him do the very same thing again when he was reading it another day that week. No complaints from this Mama, all I can think is 'Good boy! Please keep it up!' but I thought I'd share cause I know a few of you will probably get a chuckle from it too.  :)

Winter Sensory Bin

The kids absolutely LOVE boxes and bins full of tiny things to hunt for and dig in. Our bean bucket is always a huge hit and we've done bins of rice in the past too with little things hidden in them that they have to hunt for like shapes, letters or another theme. So this month I wanted to make a winter theme bin for them to explore but I had to use whatever I already had in the house. I couldn't find many 'winter' things for my bucket, so I decided to go with wintery colors and filled it with white and blue things of many different textures and fun items to explore. As I searched through the house for tiny things, all I could think about were the isles full of choices I would have if I were back in the U.S. near a Michael's Craft, Ben Franklin or Hobby Lobby....Oh I miss those places! But, we made due and though it's not as 'wintery' as I'd hoped, the kids still enjoyed exploring and sorting and playing in it all.

I ended up using white rice, white beans, plain popcorn, blue and white straws cut up, blue and white and silver pipe cleaners cut up into different sizes, tiny pompoms and some big soft ones, some blue and white lids, foam shapes, tiny blue math cubes (the kids always like to pretend are tiny ice cubes), and buttons.

It just looks like a big mess of stuff, but the little ones love it! These bins of random things are very entertaining for them. The first thing Faithy did was pull out all the shapes. I don't give any direction for this time, I just let them explore, but it's always fun for me to see what they start doing on their own; how they begin organizing, sorting and playing with the items.

I sat down with Samuel and let him have a turn with the bucket. At first he wouldn't touch anything in it, he just kept looking at it and looking at me like, "This isn't for me, is it?"

After a little encouragement and assurance that it was indeed okay for him to play with all these tiny things, he began to explore. Right away he started trying to hand me everything! He's very well trained to bring Mommy all the tiny things that he's not suppose to have, so this was a little confusing for him I think!

He really liked the soft, fuzzy pipe cleaners and collected a bunch of them to feel and examine for a bit. 

I put a couple of the big blue pompoms in a little bowl and told him to put them in there to see if he would get it and he did! At first he started picking out the poms and giving them to me and then I told him to do it and he started dropping them in there!

Of course I praised him for it and encouraged him to keep finding more. It was kind of an exciting moment for me...our first experience sorting together! :) He's getting so big already! :(

He was quite proud of himself!

He seemed to really like the feel of the rice, he kept moving everything over so he could dig into it at the bottom. I think I'll need to give him a box with just rice in it to play in next time.

Ice Skating at Mokdong in Seoul

It's been awhile since we ventured out, but we decided that Peter's extra day off today was a perfect one to get out and go do something fun! We drove up to Seoul and went Ice Skating at the Mokdong Ice Rink. It was a blast, but very cold!
The trip up there wasn't all that fun. This is Peter's "I hate driving in Korea" face...

And for good reason...

After we finally got up there though, it was TONS of fun!!! Faithy got the CUTEST tiny ice skates I've ever seen!

We went with the Cook family and all the kids loved it!

I was a little worried about Faith or Joshua getting out there once, slipping and then being done, but ALL of the kids (except Samuel! :) kept trying and made it around the rink several times!

Here's Faith Elaina heading out with Daddy to the rink...

Joy and Mrs. Cook having fun...

Joshua was so brave!

He never wanted to stop! (A lot of the pictures are a little blurry because they were taken through the window of the rink.)

Mr. Cook and Mr. Adams skating with the Cook girls...Our pictures from today kind of remind me of the 'Where's Waldo' books....can you find the Americans in the crowd?  :)

Taking a forced break, but still happy, knowing they'll get to go back out on the ice soon!...

Faith skated with Mommy several times...

Then went around again with Mrs. Cook...

The grown ups had a great time, but our feet were sore! The kids just kept going and going and they were all a little sad when it was time to go.

Part way through, everyone had to get off the ice and we got to watch the zamboni which was pretty exciting. Of course we only knew we had to get off when after the announcement, made of course in Korean, everyone else started moving to the exits!  :)

Samuel had fun watching everyone too! He spent some of the time outside the window with Mom or Dad and some of the time in the warm lobby since it was SO COLD in there!

Since we drove so far, before we went skating we also spent some time at Yongson and visited their huge PX and library and enjoyed a yummy lunch out eating some Mexican style food...it was delicious!

And a VERY fun day!!  :)

Crayon People and What Happened to the Minoans?

Completely unrelated, but these are the two favorite projects we did this week.

First, the crayon people. I received an awesome little gingerbread man baking mold in my stocking this year. (I've got an awesome Santa.)  =) AND the kids got new crayons in theirs. So, we decided it was time to clean out the crayon box and recycle all of those broken bits and pieces. I thought the stocking treasure and recycling chore combined would make a fun project. 

We started with a little peeling action...

After about 2 minutes of this fine motor practice Joshua announced, "I DO NOT want to be a crayon peeler for my job when I grow up!" (I laughed at that one even hours later when I remembered how serious he was.) =)

They kept it up (with help) and enjoyed it much more once I started each of the crayon papers for them. 

We divided them up into my new fancy mold...

Then after about 7 minutes in the hot oven and another hour to cool down and harden, we had adorable little people crayons!

The kids LOVED that they turned out all swirly and will make multiple colors on the paper at once. They often try and hold onto several crayons at once to make the same rainbow effect that these do much   more easily. First they colored...

Then they discovered that the people crayons could stand up...

AND stack and balance! Which just made them THAT MUCH COOLER!

Now about the Minoans...We had a fun project that we wanted to do to go along with Joy's history for this week but we REALLY wanted to wait for Daddy to do it with us, so we had to wait until Sunday night when he was home. Joy built her project ahead of time so it would be all ready and dry when he was ready to do it.  

(It's made of model magic around a bottle and she's painting it so carefully!)  =)

Daddy read to us the final section in the chapter all about 'The Mysterious End of the Minoans.' Historians think that many of the Minoans left the island of Crete because of the volcano that erupted and sank the entire island of Thera which was nearby. It caused huge tidal waves that swept the shores of crete and created large clouds of ash, dust and smoke that ruined the air, land and crops. This one disaster helped bring the first great civilization of Crete to its end. 

Then it was time to set off our own volcano!

The kids squealed as our volcano oozed and bubbled...

They LOVED it!  =)

And then it was over...very quickly. Faith was sad that it was over and, making this face, said she wanted to see it again. 

So Joy got a turn to pour in the vinegar this time...

It surprised me that they were just as thrilled about it as the first time we did it. 

Faith Elaina was delighted to see it spew again.  =)

It didn't seem to matter how many times they had already seen it, they still reacted the same way...

Then Daddy mixed some in a clear bottle so that they could watch what was happening inside their volcano. 

We ended the experiment with one last 'eruption' and then it was done. 

'No One Has More Fun Than The Adamses!'