Lego Engineering

A few months ago a friend told us about a local spot created by engineers that was filled with Legos.

I've been dying to take Andrew and I managed to pull up their website the other week and check out their after school classes.

Lego Jedi Engineering was the first one I saw. I read the class description to Kevin and he said something to the effect of I don't care how much that costs we are totally signing Andrew up.

If you didn't know already from seeing my photos on Instagram... Andrew is obsessed with Legos... and most specifically with Star Wars Legos.

Last week he had his first class. They each made their own forest of Endor with Legos (the forest where the Ewoks live). He was so excited to show us his creation when he picked us up. This is him explaining it to Kevin.

Meanwhile, the class is only 5 minutes away from the mall... so as you can imagine, this is a win/win for me too. Catie, Ryan, and I get to spend and hour and a half once a week roaming the mall eating Mrs. Fields cookies.

Today we found a sweet deal on jewelry, so both Catie and I came home with a new purchase. :)

Ryan came home with a chocolate covered face (good thing I brought him an extra shirt).

We also made sure to visit Olaf at JCP. The kids think it is like Disneyland.

Love it! Best day of the week.

Obsessions

Andrew's obsessions really make learning a lot of fun. All I have to do is use whatever his obsessed with and plug in a few basic skills (sight word reading, decoding, writing, math, etc.) and he loves whatever we come up with together to do or play.

I love his (mostly) positive personality and enthusiasm for learning!

Instead of cleaning up my kitchen during quiet time today, I had to share these cute pictures.

I am consciously trying to actually DO some of the activities with the kids that I pin on pinterest. :)

Today we made paperclip journals from Imagination Soup.

Catie stamped while Andrew drew all of the Star Wars characters in his little journal.

Andrew was soooo proud of his pictures and writing. He tried sounding things out himself and then he also found some of the words he didn't totally know in his Star Wars books.

I was really good about doing little mini reading lessons with Andrew back in January, but I've totally slacked on doing that since then. We do fun reading games, but I don't sit down and actually have him read that often... he mostly just reads with me or Kevin and listens. I was amazed this week at what words he actually can read. We got him this set of Star Wars Phonics readers a few weeks ago and he loves them and reads a bunch of the words. Pretty soon he probably won't need any help. So glad to see that his work at school has been helping despite my lack of focusing on it!

He can actually write on a line too (and much smaller), but for this it doesn't really matter.I just loved seeing what he created.

He's the youngest in his class right now and I know he's going to be on the younger end in kindergarten next year (he'll be 5 1/2... so that is crazy to me... Elise and I were still 4 in kindergarten), so I've been worried about that and glad to see he'll have a good foundation to start!

Catie is obsessed with Yoda. So Andrew even drew her a Yoda in her journal and she was so appreciative. It was adorable to see them working together. Poor girl will hopefully have some other interests someday... but for now her obsessions are similar to Andrew's- bugs, trains, cars, rockets, and Star Wars. :)

Helping Hands FHE, Star Wars, and the Weekend

Andrew and Kevin went and helped out at our stake Helping Hands service project on Saturday morning while Catie & I caught up on chores and crafts and Ryan took a record-long nap. 

Andrew got a donut, played with bugs, picked up pinecones, and helped beautify a local high school... so he thought doing service was pretty rad. 

He asked if we could do another service project right away, so we decided to make that the focus of our FHE this week.

Helping Hands FHE 

(I'm trying to document the FHEs that are actually successful... there are so many that aren't)

Last week a friend told me about how their family does FHE and I loved their idea! She said each child gets a month to be a in charge. One week they do a formal lesson, one week they go out to dinner, one week they do an activity, and one week they do a family service project. The child of the month gets to plan each week and then a new kid is in charge the next month. We decided that this month we were going to start embedding some more service into our family activities and FHE.

Scripture: We started off our lesson reading Mosiah 2:17 and talking about service very briefly and how serving others is a way that we can show love to God.  

For our activity each person got a turn to get their hand traced onto our Buskirk Helping Hands poster and then they got to pick the service project they wanted to spearhead. We brainstormed a few ideas and it was fun to see what everyone came up with as "their" project.

I figure now we have five months of service projects planned if we choose to do one per month. Andrew wants to start tomorrow though... so we might need some more activities.

FHE only works at our house if it is quick and we are moving a lot. We played Freeze Dance after we'd done our service project planning. When the music stopped each time I asked each person a question about service- "How can you serve Catie?" (give her hugs) "How did Nephi serve?" (got us the brass plates) "What is one way that Jesus served others?" (healed them, blessed them) etc. 

The night ended in chaos and kids chucking tinker toys at one another while they tried playing duck duck goose and we skyped with my parents. Shockingly I hadn't planned a good treat... so we'll need to do a better job with that next week! 

Star Wars

Andrew is obsessed. I totally went into the Lego store on our date night on Saturday so that Andrew could get the newest Lego club magazine. The thing is now quite worn... he pores over the pages trying to decide what he wants to earn money for next... and keeps asking to do more chores. :)

I bought him some Star Wars books last week, including the chapter books and some simple phonics book versions. Kevin and Andrew have been reading the chapter book each night and little dude loves it. To help squelch his constant requests for new Legos, we started an Amazon Wish List for him today. Surprisingly, he is just as excited about searching for toys on the Lego website and then adding Lego toys to his Wish list as he was when he actually got to buy something at the Lego store.

Messes

Our house is a disaster lately. This is one corner of our living space. We basically live all day in the family room... it also serves as a changing room for me and bedroom for Ryan... and playroom. We aren't home much, so the space also doesn't get cleaned up nearly enough! When we are home and the workers are there Catie gets nervous if I leave her in part of the house by herself... so instead of trucking everyone to my room, I change in the family room. Going to the bathroom also poses a problem because if I leave everyone in the family room, there is no guarantee that I won't have a visitor... who then leaves the door open for the workers to see in... and if I take everyone in with me... then I still have the same problem... because kids will just randomly leave the bathroom. Keeps me on my toes.

Cabinets arrived today for our linen closet and our bedroom closets... so now the front room is a disaster too. Trying to keep Catie from climbing all over and inside these cabinets was quite a feat.

And here's the mess that came in from just being in the car today. You never know when the weather will change... so we had to prepare for all situations with loads of snacks, treats, and wardrobe changes.

Weekend

This weekend my fabulous friend Molly came into town. We made the trek across the Bay to go visit with her and some other friends. Kevin managed to snap a few photos of the crazies.
 

We also went to a preschool auction this weekend and won two of the items we bid on- hurray! One was two passes to Gilroy Gardens... so I'm already counting down the days till we get to use that one.

The guys ended the weekend with a Father/Son trip to Mt. Diablo to see a meteor shower... while I stayed home and ate ice cream. The meteor shower was a bust because the Moon was too bright... but the guys still had fun stargazing and hanging out together.  

 All in all... good weekend and the week is looking great too.