Aiden's Capes and Tutus Party

June 2nd was Aiden's 4th birthday party. All the kids showed up in capes and tutus. In true Martel fashion, there was a fun craft (picture frames) to work on. The kids got really creative with dot paint and craft paper.

Lennon was happy to see another baby. He kept pointing to Keira saying baby and then to Finn, Ava's little brother, saying "baby' again. He liked tickling Finn's toes.

Keira explored everything. The mini bilibos were a perfect toy.

Nolan and Lennon. Hmm.

Keira actually managed to put a dress up helmet on her head.

Katharine of course broke out in song and dance.

Later she shed a layer of clothing to be able to jump better in the bounce house. I guess tutus were not made for jumping.

The birthday boy.

Lukas

So - I am trying to figure out what to post and how to keep this blog thing as up to date as Erik does. He left for Europe today to do some research for the next game he's working on. I don't think I have an creative juices left. All that painting at church last week and inhaling paint fumes, preparing for VBS which involved inhaling sharpie fumes seems to have left my brain a big pile of mush. Yes, by now, the kids think we live at church. Over the last eight days, there was only one day we didn't go to church to do something. What is great about it is that Lukas has made some really good friends there: Danny and Jack Turner. Lukas can't wait to get there and doesn't care how long we stay, which is usually until 1 pm. He has such a blast. On top of that, we manages to toilet train him in only 4 days! Yeah for Lukas and being such a big boy now. My little guy is so proud of what he has accomplished! What seemed to help him along the most was getting some character underwear, which I thought I would NEVER get, well, it just shows that mothering requires flexibility. He's so proud to wear Star Wars boxers, that even in the smallest size 4 still fall off of him, but I better not suggest to put on some that fit better! Oh well,...Now we only have two more kids in diapers and hopefully it will be one only soon. Lennon goes to the bathroom with Lukas all the time now saying "go potty." We'll see how he does once we start when Vacation Bible School is over. Until then, the kids will get to spend a few more days with their friends and an awesome nursery staff while I get to build more trees, cacti, make rivers, grass AND enjoy some time with adults without being interrupted by a little person...I wonder when we get to go back to school? 

Wrestlemania

Lukas and Lennon seem to get along the best when they are trouncing on each other.

Flashback: June 2, 2006

Katharine's latest ballet recital is coming up next week, and here is a look back at her first. 

8:15

Katharine still goes down for bed at 8 PM every night, but recently she had started to come back downstairs claiming that she wasn't tired or sleepy. Her nightstand light is way too bright to leave on, so we bought her one of those small book lights that clamp on to a shelf or bed.

Now every night shortly after “lights out”, Katharine can be found under the dim glow of the lamp,  finishing off one more chapter of whatever book she is reading. I have my own habit of reading for at least 15 minutes whenever I get to bed, be it 10 PM or 2 AM. Like father, like daughter.

Then and Now: Crawling around in the cute pink dress

As the children multiply and grow, you begin to notice recurring outfits and themes in your pictures (especially if you take as many photos as me).

Today we dressed Keira up in one of Katharine’s old dresses, and Iria remembered that we had pictures of Katharine in it from way back in 2003 (just before we moved into our new house).

Katharine was 9 months old at the time, and had been already crawling around for a while. Keira is 7 months old, and just beginning to perch herself up on all fours (she has been dragging herself around quite handedly up until now).

Graduation Day

Katharine graduated from home school kindergarten yesterday. The cap was homemade, which seemed rather fitting.

Sadly, her lower tooth never made it to the ceremony. These things are dropping like flies!

Legacy Books

I took the kids to Legacy Books today which has got to be the BEST bookstore EVER! We stayed for almost 2 hours and they were still not ready to leave, except for Keira who was getting very tired. The children's section was empty and they could wander around by themselves. They came back with a million books. Lukas mostly looked for pirate, Star Wars and Spiderman books, Katharine found a lot of fairy books and Lennon just grabbed whatever caught his eye. Keira chewed up 2 Scooby Doo books and good person that I am, I ended up buying those instead of putting them back on the shelf: one small Star Wars book and a little fairy book. Yes, we are book addicts and hardly ever walk out of a book store without new books. The coolest thing are the giant bean bags in the middle of the floor that the kids can just roll on, sit on, do body slams on or have pillow fights with. There is also a great blue reading chair that you just want to curl up on with a good book. The first time Erik and I went there a few months ago, I was instantly reminded of the Staatsbibliothek (national library) in Berlin where I spent many hours doing research when I went to university in Berlin, Germany. The store feels light and airy and I love the simple architecture of it. Of course there is a coffee shop, too, which serves good coffee and nice cookies and things like that. Legacy Books is very different from Barnes and Noble, they have a lot of books B&N does not have. I especially LOVE the art section in the kids' book section. The kids are already planning their next trip back there and I have the next storytime in my calendar. It's June 16th at 10:00 am, for those of you who have kids and need to find things to do during summer break!

Lennon found the Scooby Doo early reader books.

I took a picture of the ceiling with my phone. It looked kind of artsy to me.

This little girl had a very good time.

Last Day of School

It is still pretty early in the morning, but we just finished our last lesson of Kindergarten. I can't believe we are done with school! Katharine has learned so much! And even Lukas picked up quite a bit of knowledge along the way.

We started early today as everybody was up early. The first lesson was our last history lesson and we finished the year learning about Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The last few weeks we have spent learning about people that fought for freedom and equal rights in our country. Lukas was especially impressed by Jackie Robinson, and yes, he remembers his name, Katharine thinks he looked cute and now Lukas wants to play baseball. Teaching this unit made me personally tear up sometimes. Katharine at times had this look on her face that seemed to say "now why would we not all have the same rights? What's the problem with different colored skin, we are still the same?" In addition to doing our lesson, I also went on youtube this morning and we listened to the entire speech Dr. King gave. The lesson left me with thinking that his dream is still not fulfilled, but that we have come a lot closer to it. If I can bring up my kids so they they don't see the differences on the outside of others, than I will have accomplished something.  Our definitely last lesson in Kindergarten was art. I got to pull out all of Katharine's art work she created in art. Katharine colored and cut out some blue ribbons and decided which of her pieces was the best with shapes, the best in color, the best portrait or self-portrait, the best landscape and the best sculpture. We went through a long list of questions to reevaluate all that she learned and I have to say she did splendid! She could talk about all the different pieces of art she created, textures, patterns, lines, sculptures, told me the difference between paintings and sculptures, portraits and self-portraits, talked about still life paintings and much more.

It has been an amazing journey to see Katharine grow. I have not always been the best teacher and parent, but I tried hard and the biggest compliment that my girl can give me is to tell me that I am the best mommy and teacher and that she is looking forward to 1st grade in our little school, which, finally I found a name for: "The Harry Walter Memorial Academy for the Liberal and Performing Arts." I think my Dad would like that. And I am sure he would be super proud of Katharine for being such a little artist, drawing having been one of his passions.

We have been around the world and in outer space during this school year.  We read a LOT of books, painted, drew, cut, pasted, crunched numbers, talked about shapes, the time, tested for magnetism, made icebergs, wigwams, tipis, loin cloths, trees, recreated the surface of the moon and let meteors fall on it, grew plants that we also let die, made sculptures, sang songs, wrote poetry and short stories, put up with nagging little brothers and a hungry little baby and a great many other distractions that were sometimes hard to deal with, but we had an awesome journey! 

Not to leave out Lukas and Lennon: They loved painting and making sculptures. Lukas loved the interactive screens in science, the stories in history and any kind of worksheet that involved animals or presidents. He is especially fond of George Washington, that "guy on the coin". One afternoon he told me who William Penn was. Now that is cool for my "little guy." Lennon was happy when he had someone to play with, but did like painting and songs.

What did I learn? Tons. For one, that yes, I can teach my  6 year old, even math and science, and still take care of the other three. I dug up a lot of knowledge that I forgot I had. I learned I DON'T always have to go by the book, even in school. I learned that it is okay, even for me, to stay in jammies all morning. I learned I do have patience, but that I can't always look into Katharine's mind and expect her to perform a certain way. Sometimes it is worth stepping away from the desk, doing something different and then to come back to the lesson and sure enough, things will go so much BETTER! I don't know for how long we will homeschool and which one of the other kids will like it as much as Katharine, but we did order our 1st grade supplies that we still needed in addition to the ones we got to buy from Kara.  Thank you Kara, for sending us down this road! There is a lot of cool stuff going to happen in first grade, but for now, we are going to take a bit of a break. Tomorrow evening we will officially celebrate the end of Kindergarten with a cap, maybe a gown, definitely cake and a certificate.

The conclusion: Homeschooling was the right choice for us this year and I am thankful to be able to give my girls and boys some wings to fly...

Play ball!

We can spend an entire evening just playing around with all of the balls that we have laying around in the garage. In fact... we did just that on Sunday.

The frisbee is also popular, although it always turns into a game of "survival of the fittest".

Katharine beats Lukas...

Lukas beats Lennon...

And Lennon finally snatches it after the big kids have had their fill.

The Boys of Summer

The thermometer almost hit 90 today, but it felt even warmer than that. Summer is back!

The Chocolate Cake Experiment

Here is a video of the little ordeal that I put my poor daughter through this afternoon (although she did get a big piece of cake out of it, so it wasn’t too bad for her).

Loosely based off of the “marshmallow experiment” (a Stanford University study from the 1960’s which tested deferred gratification in young children), Katharine was told that she could have an even bigger piece of cake if she was able to wait for ten minutes without eating the smaller piece in front of her. I left the room and left the camera rolling.

I capped it at ten minutes, but it looks like Katharine could have held out even longer after she made it past the tough eight minute mark ("DADDY!!!!"). Now we have to wait ten years and see how she does on those SAT scores...

Fruits of the Spirit

Over the last few weeks, the kids have learned about the Apostle Paul and the Fruits of the Spirit in Sunday School.  Today the finished the lesson learning about Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. The last seemed to have captured Katharine's interest: Lukas pulled Lennon's throat "just because" this afternoon and Katharine tried to be the big sister and pulled Lukas' hair in retaliation. Upon inquiring why Lukas was crying, she explained the situation to me. Sitting between Katharine and Lukas, I asked if that was the right choice and what she could have done differently. I got the answer that she "could have practiced self-control" and not hurt Lukas. Thank you, dear Sunday School teachers! Later on, Erik tried the "Marshmallow Test" on Katharine, which he had read about in "The New Yorker". He did his own version and turned it into the cake test. He put a small slice of chocolate cake in front of Katharine and told her that if she could wait 10 minutes without touching the cake. If she did, she would get a slice twice the size on her plate. The rest of us were not allowed to distract her. Well, there were about three minutes of distraction and seven minutes of absolute self-control. So yes, Katharine got her big slice of cake. For the rest of the afternoon Katharine has been telling her brothers to practice self-control. So, "self-control" seems to be the word of the day. Erik took a video of Katharine and I hope he will post some of it. I hope we will continue practicing self-control, patience, kindness, generosity, love, faithfulness, peace and joy...

What Lennon and Keira are doing

Keira is 8 months old today. Lennon was 20 months on the 19th. My babies are growing way too fast! Lennon is looking more like a little boy now and not so much like a baby anymore. He is the biggest daredevil of all the kids. Katharine and Lukas were a lot more cautious at the same age. Lennon has a very good arm, which our friend Julie knows very well as she has been his target many times while waiting for the big kids to get out of their dance classes. He is still addicted to his soy milk. It takes him about 2 seconds to drink 9 ounces. He also loves spicy chips ( Garden of Eden's Hot Blues, loaded with chili powder). Lennon loves to sing and dance, do body slams, climb onto just about anything, he loves to race Lukas, loves books, but not so much reading by himself. He wants to be read to ALL the time. He will come into our bed with a bunch of books and his lovey, get under the covers and simply demand "book". He still likes to play with Duplos, the little kid version of Legos. He can have a nice temper tantrum. And turns out, he is so far a very sweet, protective and caring big brother to Keira. He makes sure the little girl has her pacifier or milk, whether she wants either or not. He checks on her when she cries and always makes sure she has enough toys to play with. Keira has been on the move for the last month now. He least favorite thing is her breathing treatment, who can blame her, but when she is very tired, she will fall asleep over it. Her lovey is a little bunny, however, in her bed she also has a sheep, four bears, an octupus, a donkey and a bunch of pacifiers. She loves to eat paper, a little more fiber can't hurt, right? Oh, and grass, too. Keira can laugh out really loud. She is the darling of the nursery workers at church, yeah, I am bragging. She is the first one of our children to be in the infant carrier for more than 7 months, so far, Katharine has held that record, the boys were out by 4 months. I guess what this means is that she is our "smallest" child and we all know we don't have small children. Hahaha! Keira is willing to taste any kind of food. She loves waffles of any kind because she can self feed that way. Today she tasted her first muffin at lunch at Einstein Bros. And she liked it. She seems to take after Katharine, because she has been eating stage 3 foods for the last month, basically skipping stage 2 foods, unlike the boys who were very by the book. So far, Keira has only the two bottom teeth. What else has she done? Oh yeah, she likes to pull out the construction paper on one of the shelf of our desk. Meals are always fun as she is super messy and our little cat, Pepper, is always there waiting to lick her little fingers which she is more than willing to let him lick. I don't have a good picture of it, so you just have to believe me. That cat loves baby food, prefers the meats and veggies over the fruit. The little girl loves her bath, but you better not try to get that washcloth out of her hands. We always have to have two on hand. One for her and one for me.  Keira has a cute little laugh and a very strong voice. She has a pretty sunny disposition and everybody simply adores her. No pictures today.

Wednesday night on the curb

The weather has been great as of late, so the kids usually spend their evenings outside before heading to bed.

Katharine was sporting some pants rather than the usual dress. She was  quite happy with her new look, so we took a stylin' photo.

We finally got around to inflating Lukas's bouncing ball. He had been waiting for this moment for most of the day.

Then of course Lennon had to have one as well.

and Keira... well, she just sat in the shade and ate grass.

All I want for Memorial Day are my two front teeth...

Waiting until Christmas would be a little long, so we are going to have to change the song up a little bit.

Riley and Michaela

The kids hooked up with their neighbors, Riley and Michaela, last night. The dynamics are always interesting- Michaela is at an age where she follows big girl Katharine around everywhere, and Lukas does the same with Riley. Lennon follows Lukas, and Keira... well, she just likes to sit in the shade and eat grass.

 

And yes, we need to get helmets for the boys. They were riding their ‘inside’ bikes, but you can never be too careful on ‘outside’ pavement.