Sci-Port

This Friday we decided to take a little field trip to Sci-Port Discovery Center with some friends. It is a hands on discovery museum. It seems we were not the only people in a field trip mood. There had to be 8-12 school buses in the parking lot! The place was PACKED! Luckily there was a small area that is formatted for younger kids to explore and so we headed there. Most of the school kids were older. We were delighted to be left almost to ourselves and ecstatic to learn that this small area still had hands on learning for older kids too.

Benjamin, Jacob, Emma and their friends donned hard hats and started "building" a house. Benjamin's favorite was driving the truck.

Emma also enjoyed sailing this small boat. I am not sure how we could have had more fun even with the entire museum to ourselves. They were all sad to leave and I was sad I didn't get many pictures, but I promised them we would return. Probably AFTER field trip season is over, for the local schools at least.

Cosmic Bowling

One of the tremendous blessings we have here in Louisiana is a great home school group, to enjoy extra curricular activities with, right here on base. We have been bowling every other Wednesday since we arrived here with all the other kids that home school. It has been a lot of fun. Jacob and Emma are learning more than just how to throw the ball, but sharing, taking turns and enjoying a little exercise. Not to mention all the friends they have had a chance to make.

This week was the last bowling week for a while. They will be switching to a different activity, and in honor of the final bowling day they had "Cosmic Bowling." They turned all the lights off and sent the disco ball rolling. Jacob walked in and declared how awesome the lights and music were. Several times Jacob was found dancing in between songs.

Emma just loves being a part of "school." I am continually amazed at how grown up she acts when she is included with the "big kids." I keep forgetting myself that she is not my little baby girl anymore.

Monkey See, Monkey Do!

Philip Dancing

As I was organizing the toys in Emma and Philip's room, Philip started to help me. Since the three older kids were conveniently far far away from the cleaning I decided to try to record Philip picking up his toys and placing them back in the huge bucket I was removing them from. Then Philip added a special treat for all of you. He started to dance! I have never seen him do this before! What can I say? Kids are so unpredictable, but worth it all!

Jacob's Art

Jacob wanted to post a photo this week. He sat down with the kids and created these potato heads and asked to post a photo of them on the blog. So this post is for all of you from him!

Happy Easter!

Our Easter weekend started with our monthly trip to the temple. We headed up to the temple Friday night and Robin hit a session that evening. The next morning while Nato was at the temple, Robin and the kids had some Easter fun. They had an egg hunt and found some chocolate bunnies in their baskets and enjoyed the sugar rush.

After Nato was done at the temple we loaded the van to head home, but the kids wanted to see what the temple in Dallas looked like so we drove over and walked around.

It gave us a great spiritual meal after our sugar that morning.

Sunday was wonderful! We were a little tired from the trip, but it was definately worth it.

We were a little behind in the morning with the church prep so this photo wasn't taken until after church and by then getting everyone to sit still was pretty impossible, but at least we tried.

Happy Easter from our house to yours!

Tornado

We survived three years in Florida without a single Hurricane. Imagine our surprise when after only living in our house about a month we have experienced our first Tornado! It was quite a night and I don't think we will soon forget it.

Don't worry we are all safe and we experienced little damage to our belongings, but the story is still worth telling.

About 8 pm last night I went out to do some child free grocery shopping with my friend Mellyn. As Nato studied at home he heard the sirens on base going. He decided to quickly gather the outside toys and place them in the small play house we had in the back yard to keep them dry. Almost as soon as he returned to his computer and school work he saw and heard the little play house being lifted and carried off to who knows where. It happened so fast he almost missed the sight. About 15 minutes later the power went out and so after checking with me on the cell phone that we were soon on our way home he decided to go to bed.

Meanwhile Mellyn and I had planned on stopping at two different stores to purchase the things we needed for Easter Dinner. As we checked out of the first store the young checker was voicing her concern about getting home before the "storm" came. This is the first we had heard of the "storm" and we weren't what kind she was referring to. She was nervous about driving in her first rain storm and we decided that was probably the extent it. So we headed to our next stop which was actually in the opposite direction of our homes.

After being in the next store approximately 5 to 10 minutes, Mellyn received a call from her husband. Her nursing baby, who had been sleeping through the night lately, was awake and crying. She assured him that we would come as quickly as we could. So quickly we headed to the checkout. In the meantime I received the call from Nato that the power was out and I let him know we were headed back. Little did we know we would not make it so quickly.

As we headed to the base we were redirected twice because roads were closed off by several policemen. Finally we asked one of them how we could get to the gate of the Air Force Base so we could get home. At this point we were informed that two of the bases gates were closed for sure and the third one MIGHT be open.

Where is the third one? I still know little of the town and Mellyn has only lived here 8 months herself so her knowledge was limited, PLUS all the street lights and traffic lights were OUT. The kind policeman gave us quick directions and we set out to find our way. At MIDNIGHT we finally found the third gate (after several phone calls to Mellyn's husband). At this point we were relieved, but not for long. They would not let us on the base! They instructed us to try again in two hours.

Well, where do two women go at midnight for two hours? I'll tell you. We went to IHOP. We sat and drank hot cocoa and prayed we would get on base before anymore nursing babies work(Mellyn's had gone back to bed she had just been startled by the storm).

Finally at 2:30 am we pulled up and were let on the base. As we drove home we were just amazed by all the trees that were down and the roads that were blocked by the debris.

This morning we ventured out to find our play house and we learned a little more. Basically the storm hit and went right down our street. If we would have come home after the first store we would have been IN the storm. I am grateful the Lord sent us the other way.

Here is a picture of the tree behind Mellyn's house that was uprooted, they lived just five doors down from us, her house is the one on the left behind the tree.

When we found the playhouse it was actually five houses down on the street across from us, but the base was still together. The roof was found in a completely different direction.

We have survived the first tornado, I think we will try to be aware of the next one a little earlier.

It's Official!

Each time we have found ourselves expecting a new baby, it nevers seem quite real until we have the first appointment and receive an official due date.

With the move a hold was put on official news for quite a while, but we finally have an official date and we now feel as though we are truly expecting another baby.

This little one is scheduled to be born on August 31st!

Ultrsound photos do not post well, but I figured I would at least try. It looks to me as though this one is already a belly sleeper!

April Fools

Jacob was really looking forward to April Fool's Day this year. A few weeks ago he heard of a good prank to pull on someone and asked me if he could pull it on his dad. I gave him permission and he has waited patiently (for a six year old) for April 1st to come.

While Nato was at work that day Jacob went into the bathroom and took the bar of soap out of the tub and hid it under the sink. When Nato came home after his afternoon physical training session he of course went straight to take a shower. He was a little confused about his missing soap, but since Jacob had not removed my bar of soap he was still able to cleanse himself, but when he asked me about it I just referred him to Jacob.

You should have seen the smile on Jacob's face when Nato asked him. You would have thought he had just won the Nobel Prize or something. He was so happy to "get" dad and Nato really hammed it up once he caught on to things so Jacob felt really good about himself.

The best came later that night when Nato removed Jacob's soap. It was hilarious to see Jacob's reaction. He just laughed and laughed because dad "got" him. Everyone was good sports through it all and that made it fun!

Conference Weekend

In the past years we have always listened to all four sessions of general conference. As our children have grown we have found that listening is a broad description of what we really do. Usually we would use the Internet to listen at home except for Sunday morning where we would head to the chapel. The sessions at home have been getting less quiet all the time and so this year we thought we would try a couple different things.
We read an article in the Ensign magazine that had a few ideas to get little ones to "listen" to conference. We have tried a couple of them, but I think the best one has been Candy Bingo. It is not at all like regular bingo. I made a poster with pictures to represent some gospel words. Whenever the children hear one of the words they get to pick a skittle or other small candy from the bowl. Man did they score with Elder Scott's talk on temples, and Elder Nelson's talk on prayer. They were even excited last night that there was another day of conference still to come. (I didn't take any candy to the chapel mind you.)
Emma is also excited that she gets to stay up from her nap for the afternoon session today. We had to keep asking her NOT to remind Benjamin that he had to take a nap and could not listen to conference. She was just so excited to be big enough to enjoy it all.

Talking Benjamin

Benjamin is now talking ALL the time. He says whole sentences and big long words. I love to hear him say his own name. It took me a while to realize he was refering to himself and I just had to share his cute little voice.