Meet The Troops

Monday, February 28, 2011

February is Over?!

I can't believe February is over already! The month was a busy one and flew by fast! Since I never got around to posting much, I thought I'd just share a few fun pics from some of our activities we did....


We started learning about ounces and cups and pints and quarts and gallons in math, so one day we had to do some hands on measuring for ourselves and see just how many of one was in the other, etc. It was fun!


Of course Faith saw us 'playing' in the water and she wanted to do it too. So when we were done, we decided to collect some items from around the house and teach Faithy about sinking and floating. She was really happy to get to play in the water!  :)


The girls made some guesses before hand if the object was going to float or sink, for some of them they were surprised about the results. :)


This was one of my favorites...I always love doing art projects. :) We did a picture study of Monet's Water Lilies painting and read a little bit about Monet. Then we made our own Water Lilies picture by tearing, layering and gluing tissue paper. I think they turned out beautiful! I enjoyed watching them do it so much I almost made one of my own.  :) But I didn't. Maybe someday when I'm really old and don't have any kids in the house to do all these projects with, I'll do them again myself just for fun! :) Ha! Ha!


We also did lots of transportation fun this month, including of course all the transportation printables I made for www.theprintableshare.com


We learned all about the different types of transportation and played with all of the tons and tons of cars and trains and planes and motorcycle toys that we have. But Joshua's most favorite of all was the Transportation Bingo game I made. This boy LOVES bingo! One of the many, many times we played it, he happened to be wearing his Superman costume and decided that every time he got a bingo he had to say "Superman Bingo!" and do his Superman flying pose....


When Faithy got in the game, he had to teacher her how to do it too. :)


They had a great time and played just the two of them, taking turns calling out the next picture, about 10 more games!!! 


Sunday, February 27, 2011

February Science Fun!

Here's a little glimpse of some of the science fun we've been having the last few weeks....

We did a great tornado study with the Cook family and made this fun diorama. Joy and Joshua built it together, I love the blue tornado! :)


We also started studying the human body. One of the experiments we did was tongue mapping and we did a lot of taste testing. The kiddos were pretty excited about it before we got started....we had lemon juice, salty water, sugar water and coffee that we were using for our experiment.

They enjoyed taking turns with this one...

All was great for awhile...

And then Joy tasted the coffee! LOL! After seeing her face, Joshua wouldn't even try it! :) 

When we were done, Joy got creative and mixed her lemon juice and sugar water to make a sweet drink and washed away the coffee aftertaste. :)


We also did a little taste testing of other things without our sense of smell. The kids were pretty amazed by how much your nose affects your taste. I've caught the kids a couple of times since then, plugging their noses when they're eating just to see if what they are eating will taste different!  :)

After that we moved on to the eyes and did lots of fun eye tricks and experiments. We learned all about how the eyes work and what all the parts are called. One of our activities was to look at pictures of people's eyes up close and observe the differences and then draw some eyes of our own. I thought, if we were going to be looking at eyes up close, we might as well look at some from our own family. We were all surprised by how very different they all were when we looked at them really big on the computer! The kids loved getting to examine their own eyes....




I'm sure you can guess who's is who's....isn't it amazing how beautiful and totally different they all are?! We also took pictures of Mommy and Daddy's eyes but I'm not going to put those up there! One of the kid's comments when they saw our eyes up close was, "That looks like a dinosaur eye! Look at all the lines and wrinkles Mom!".... Nothing like the honest truth from your kiddos! Ha! Ha! Needless to say, I deleted those pics after our study was done!  :)

And then the kids drew some eyes.... Pretty cute! I thought it was funny that they all chose blues for their eye color.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Sledding in South Korea

Today we went sledding at Spavis Asan....it was a blast!

Joy and her friend Riley...

Daddy took several trips down with Joy and Joshua. They loved it! And even ended up going by themselves a few times. 



Even Faith Elaina went once by herself! And once was enough....she decided she just wanted to watch after that! :)

Here are some of the other cuties on the hill....aren't they adorable! :)

There was a preschool there on a field trip. They had all of their identical backpacks lined up on the window ledge. All of the preschools in the area use the same kind of backpacks. Whenever we see groups of them out on field trips they always have these. There are several little ones that live in our apartments and we see them with their bright yellow backpacks outside everyday before and after school. 

Me and some of my sweet friends...Jocelyn and Carrie! :)
(You can't tell in the picture, but Samuel is on my back!)

Me and my handsome man!



Friday, February 18, 2011

Fabulous Gift!

Some of our dear friends, The Cook's, gave Peter a wonderful birthday gift that we had the opportunity to redeem this weekend! It was a date night - but not just any date night. They came to OUR house, brought a full meal, hot, ready to eat... including dessert and drinks. They picked up all of the children, entertained them and fed them and played with them for 4 1/2 hours!! Then they returned them all home safely, tired out and ready to sleep. Our house was blissfully silent and we enjoyed our lovely meal with no interruptions or having to share anything on our plates....It was AMAZING!!

Our dinner was delicious! Chicken Parmesan (with G.F. noodles!), a yummy salad, tons of fruit, bread and chocolate cake for dessert...
I love the little signs that her daughter made to stick in the gluten free parts of the bread and dessert for me! :) So cute and thoughtful!

We loved every minute of our date and had so much fun together! I think it was the best gift ever...and it wasn't even MY birthday! :) 

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Faith Elaina is THREE!!!

Faith Elaina turned three this weekend! We had a little party with some friends and had a great time celebrating together! I can't believe she's 3 already! It's seems like just yesterday she looked like this...

2 Weeks Old...


6 Months old...


And now the party...

She got lots of sweet presents from friends and was very excited about her Dora pillow from Oma...

And her "brown baby" that she's been asking for since Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa Churchill!


Both Dora and her new baby got to ride in her new sling...


She had a fun day! And thankfully didn't even notice that her big birthday present wasn't here yet. It stinks that things take SO LONG to get all the way over here. I know she'll be thrilled when it arrives and it'll just make her birthday celebration last a little longer. :) But until then, she's a pretty happy girl with what she's already got!

Faithy is SUCH an expressive girl, you always know how she feels about something by the look on her face. Here are just a few of the many faces she made on her birthday...

I love her SO much! She makes me smile and laugh everyday and is such a sweet blessing in our family. I remember so clearly the day 'Super Girl' (because of the way she tried to enter this world!) was born, it changed our lives forever! :)