Spring Fling

Of all the holidays, Easter is the one that I have the most fun with.  We take our kids to a community egg hunt or two where it is a free for all.  Plastic eggs filled with sweets are just lying on the ground.  When they get the signal, the kids run around grabbing as many eggs as they can before another kid does.  There are tons of kids at these events, getting tons of candy and tons of happy.

Then we have an egg hunt at home that is just for our family.  We hide our eggs and vary the difficulty by age.  Each kid has two colors assigned to them and they can only collect eggs with their colors.  Each kid also has the same number of eggs to hunt so all is fair and square.  …except for the golden egg with cold hard cash in it.  There is only one of those, and finders keepers.

Since the kids have already gotten more sugar than I would ever wish for them to have at the free hunts, our family hunt is a sugar-free event.  Instead of sweets, I fill the eggs with little toys and trinkets I have picked especially for them.  I enjoy the challenge of shopping for fun things to put in their eggs.  I try to be as creative as possible for as cheap as possible.

Last year while shopping, I spotted some ceramic eggs.  They were pots that were pre-packaged with dirt and seeds, just add water.  Oooh, they were so cute!  And I was so tempted!  But $3 per egg filling is my limit and these were $5 and change.  It gave me the idea to use seed packets as an egg-filler though.  Those are under $1.  I picked out the perfect one for each kid; cucumber seeds for Ethan, sugar snap pea seeds for Daniel and wild flower seeds for Asha.

As expected, the kids were super excited when they found seed packets in one of their eggs.  They wanted to plant them immediately.  I told them to wait and finish up what we were doing and then we would head out to the back yard to plant them.

Asha did not hear this because she had already ripped open her packet and, in a flash, was twirling around in the middle of our front yard, squealing with delight, as she flung the seeds across our lawn.  I looked at her in stunned silence, my mouth agape, as she excitedly asked, "When do you think they'll bloom?"

I would be a much better parent if...

...it weren't for my children.

It is much easier to know how other parents should parent. And it was much easier to imagine how I would parent before I had my children.  Before having children, it was easy to imagine the perfect scenario: This is what I will do, and consequently, this is what they will do. And then I actually had children. As it turns out, you may or may not do what you imagined based on what you and your children are actually capable of doing. You are busier than in your perfect scenario. You are way more tired than in your plan, your kids more active and less compliant than the ones you parented in your head. And consequently, they may or may not do what you imagined either.

There is a LOT of parenting advice out there; books, articles, seminars. I have found that people are very fond of giving unsolicited parenting advice too. But often the advice they give uses their family as a base line, and doesn't leave room for variation. This can make the person receiving the advice feel like they are doing something wrong if their experience doesn't measure up. Or make them feel superior if they think their experience is better. But let me suggest that maybe it's not better...or worse. Just different.

In general, people are all the same. But individually, they are all... well... individual. And individuals are what make up a family. And that makes each family individual as well. There are parents (mom and/or dad) who have different personalities, capabilities, responsibilities, etc. Then there are kids with different personalities, capabilities, activity levels, etc. Consider how the combination of all those different qualities makes each family unique, or... individual.

My brother's daughter was one who would announce that she was tired, go to her bed and sleep. My daughter views going to sleep as just shy of torture. The more tired she is, the more tortured she feels when I tell her it's bedtime and a 'take-no-prisoners' bedtime battle ensues. Both of our daughters go to sleep, but how they get there is a very different experience. So if my brother were to give me advice on bedtime based on his family make up, I would fall short of living up to his experience. He obviously does a better job than me, right? Sure, I could improve my daughter's bedtime experience. But there is nothing I could do to change her into a person who says "I'm tired so I'm going to put myself to bed." instead of one who says "I shall never surrender!"  In this case, it is not the parenting skill that is the difference, but the personality of the child that is.

I'd like to give some unsolicited parenting advice here. My parenting advice is this: Take it all! Listen to all the parenting advice... and then sort it out. Is there anything in that advice that you can apply to improve your parenting?  Use it! Then set aside anything that does not apply to your family and leave it for the family that it does apply to. Don't let it make you feel superior if your parenting surpasses it. You may have more capabilities and/or easier children. On the flip side, do not let it sit on your shoulders as guilt, thinking that your parenting does not measure up. You can only do what you can do. So if you can do better, do it! If you can't do better, then you may already be doing your best parenting. Your kids are blessed to have a parent who is doing their best. Just let parenting advice be what it is. Advice.

Merry Christmas!

Family Pictures Christmas Eve 2012

Herping

I chose the house we are renting in Alabama mostly based on the fact that there is a creek that runs across the back of the property.  And as I had hoped, the kids were in love with it from the day we moved in.

 

Weekend before last, the kids and I went down there again.  I had brought a bucket and trowel in hopes of bring back a few ferns for planting, but when we got to the creek, we quickly discovered an abundance of tadpoles, frogs, and little fish that needed catching and subsequent transportation to their new home on our deck.  Of course the kids were more than happy to provide them safe passage with my bucket.

 

 

(Don't tell anyone, but I think I may have had more fun that the kids. :))

Top Ten Tuesday: Korea

We have been stationed at Osan Air Base in the Republic of Korea for a year now.  In two nights time we will fly back to the states and make our way to our new station in Alabama.  I did not want to be sent here, but it has been such a great experience living here.

The top 10 things I have enjoyed while living at Osan Air Base in Korea:

1. The view from our 10th floor apt.  In the early morning hours, the kids and I loved to snuggle out on the patio wrapped in blankets, drinking hot coco and coffee and watch the sun rise.  At night, the lights of two different cities that twinkled in our view was stunning.  Though I often tried, I could never get pictures that adequately captured how beautiful those two times of day were.

 2. Being within walking distance to everything on base.  The chapel? 5 min.  The school?  The grocery store?  The indoor pool?  8 min!  The gym was 15 min. but the walk added to our exercise!  Don't feel like walking?  Call the base taxi.  $2.30 will get you almost anywhere you need to go on base.

3. Taking groceries from the car to the kitchen in shopping carts.  So convenient!  The carts are also convenient for anything else you need to take up or down.  And for playing in too...

4. Having a trash chute.  Its not that I mind taking the trash out to a trash bin, its that I can never remember to take the bin to the curb on trash day until I hear the garbage truck pulling away!  Not looking forward to that again.

5. The restaurants.  The main strip full of stores and restaurants right outside the main gate has just about any cuisine you could ask for, and we enjoyed them all.  Ok, the Mexican wasn't that great because they never had limes, but the Italian was fantastic.  The Meat restaurant was a family favorite for Korean food because they cooked it right on your table.  The Indian/Pakistani restaurant that opened not too long ago was really goo, and the Turkish one was our favorite of all.  Yum!  There was also Brazilian dining, Japanese sushi, Thai, Chinese...and those are just the restaurants off base.   On base there was Chili's, Oriental House, Flying M Steak House (where kids eat free on Tuesdays!), Checkertails, Popeye's, Pizza Hut ,and various other fast foods, and almost all of them delivered.  What will we eat now?

6. Speaking of good food, we loved to hop in the car and head to E-mart or Home Plus.  Kind of like a cross between a Super Walmart and a department store.  We would always stop at the food court first and decide what to order from the display.  Most of the time, we didn't really know what we were ordering, we just hoped that it was something that we would enjoy.  They had the coolest stuff too.  And the best produce!

7. The mountains.  Most of our favorite memories here involve mountains.  They are beautiful and we have enjoyed seeing them and hiking them throughout the various seasons.

8. The rest stops.  The rest stops here are fantastic!  They are master-planned with restrooms, food court and convenient store.  There is usually a playground for the kids too.

9. Safety.  The kids got a lot of attention from locals here.  Everyone wants to give them candy or take a picture with them.  The youngest has started to say 'Cheese!' anytime anyone even looks at him.  It's very safe to allow that here but they are in for a big surprise when we get back to the states.

10. Experiencing Korean culture.

Little gifts from God

Reposted blog entry from October 5, 2007

On Friday I was telling a friend that the one thing I had wanted to do here in California that we hadn't done was go to the San Diego Zoo.

My husband was scheduled to work overnight shifts this past weekend but at the last minute was given the weekend off. So we hopped in the car and took off for San Diego.

On the way there I was telling my husband about another friend's story. She wanted something that was out of her price range but was there at just the right time when it was clearance and then 50% off. She said she felt like it was a little gift from God.

When we got to the zoo on Monday, we were surprised at the amount of people that were there. Turns out, it happened to be Founder's Day and admission for the zoo was free for the day! We saw the pandas and had a lot of fun. When we were done we took a break at the hotel and then headed over to Sea World. It was the season that they honor those serving in the military making our admission free! We got there just in time for a pet show (trained animals doing tricks) that the kids loved and then got to see the last Shamu show of the day. My husband won a giant dragon at the ring toss too.

It was such a wonderful trip. I told my husband that I felt blessed by it. Like we too had gotten little gifts from God.

A Father's Day Post

When I met my husband in college, he was already teaching music in a little private school.  He continued to teach in various public and private schools until he joined the Air Force 7 years later.  He taught different grades at the different schools, and all grades at some of the schools.  He was good at working with kids of all ages and the kids loved him.  He was nominated for Who's Who Among American Teachers by a few different students during those years, and 11 years later many students still track him down to tell him how much they learned from him and how much he impacted their lives.

Obviously he was experienced working with kids.  He was not, however, experienced working with babies.  In the hospital after our first child was born, he was quite nervous about how to handle the seemingly fragile little bundle.  After I finished feeding the baby for the first time, I sat him up on my lap, put my hand firmly under his chin and leaned him forward to pat his back for a burp.  If you've had any experience with new babies, you know that their muscle tone is not well developed yet and his cheeks sagged over my hands.  If you haven't had any experience with babies, you might think what my husband gushed, "Oh my goodness!!  What are you doing??  You're choking him!!"  I laughed.  I did have experience with babies and tried to assure him that this was just one of many ways to burp a baby.  He was not buying it.  He only knew of one way, and if there were more ways, certainly they didn't involve my hand around the baby's neck.  A nurse came in to check our vitals.  My husband quickly pointed out to her what I was doing, sure that she would rush over and show me the proper way.  He was quite surprised when she assured him that it was a perfectly fine way to do the job.

I smile when I think about those first few days.  His protective nature as a father was evident right from the very start.  On the way home from the hospital, he kept making me check 'just to make sure' that the baby was breathing because he wasn't crying.  (He was sleeping!)  It was just a glimpse of what a great father he would be.

Blueberry picking

Reposted blog entry from August 20, 2007

We went blueberry picking on Friday. It was sooo much fun! They gave us little buckets for the berries and straw hats for our heads.
Asha loved getting to pick berries and put them in a bucket. Of course she also loved putting handfuls of dirt and twigs in the bucket too. Daniel picked about one berry from each bush while going from row to row calling us Farmer Mommy and Farmer Daddy. My husband enjoyed sampling all the different flavors -some tart, some sweet- and I loved the hunt for the biggest and bluest.  It was a very memorable family day and we got some nice photos to remember it by. I can't wait to go again!

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ROK/US Airmen and Air Force Civilian Family Invitation Event May 11, 2012

Recently our family was invited to participate in the ROK/US Airmen and Air Force Civilian Family Invitation Event.  It was a fantastic day and we were very honored to be a part of it.  Here are just a few of the pictures from that day.

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