24 adults, 32 children (that’s 56 total (!) if you’re counting…) and lots and lots and lots of work fun!

At Matthew’s request, we put together a Lego-themed party, complete with several homemade Lego-themed favors (in home-sewn favor bags), homemade Lego cakes, Lego party games, and even a homemade Lego-brick pinata!  We pulled together a lot of great ideas from the Internet and went crazy for the past couple weeks putting this together.  We’ll try to put up a post soon with some details on some of the fun stuff we made for the party.

To top it off, we reserved a local park and were blessed with fantastic weather, all adding up to a wonderful party for everyone!

Two days later, Lois and I are still trying to recover from the preparations and execution of this gig; but it was so worth it, knowing that Matthew (and our guests) had a blast!

Happy Birthday, Matthew!  You have been and continue to be an amazing blessing in our lives and we love you lots!!!

Here are some photos from the festivities…

Yummy cupcakes with Lego-heads attached:

25 pounds of pulled pork plus fixings:

Game 1 — “Guess the number of Lego bricks in the jar”:

Most of the children at the party lined up in preparation for group games:

Tossing legos into bowls (aka Lego carnival game):

The “hit” of the party, the homemade Lego brick pinata (get it? “hit?” ha ha ha):

Kids and adults alike took turns trying to bust it open:

Including the birthday boy…

And a few parents!

And even yours truly, taking the final swings before it finally broke open…

The yummy birthday cake made up like a Lego brick (note: it’s a bit tricky to light candles in breezy weather):

And finally, a gratuitous photo of our adorable 3.5-month-old Nathaniel with a couple of his doting grandparents:

He and his older brother purchased (with previous gift money) a fancy “Ninjago” (Ninja + Lego) ship called “Destiny’s Bounty” and we agreed to put it on a cake for Andrew’s birthday.  It turned out great!

Here’s a photo of the cake with two candles (whose numeric values add up to eight. Yes, we are a nerdy crew here):

To mark the occasion, in addition to receiving a few store-bought gifts, Andrew collaborated with my wife to make a homemade Ninjago shirt.  His brother did the same, and both proudly donned the shirts once they were ready today:

As much as ever, we are grateful for this sometimes-quiet, often thoughtful, and frequently in-his-own-happy-place contemplative son of ours.  May the Lord continue to bless him and use him as a blessing in the lives of others in the coming year.

3-month-old Nathaniel in Flannel:

And sporting his dad’s alma mater:

They love my Angry Birds jammie pants

They love to play (when we let them) on our phones.

They loved it when Lois made them Angry Bird plush toys.

So it was no surprise that my oldest (nearly 10yo son) cracked up when I told him about a comic strip I’d seen on a blog about “what really happened at Stonehenge”:

Now, remember, I only ever described the comic strip as a mingling of an image of Stonehenge “before” and an Angry Bird flying mid-air toward it.

I did not show him the picture.

Again: I did not show him the above picture, nor go into great length describing it.

He’s learned about Stonehenge from history lessons Lois taught.

So imagine my shock, surprise and delight when my two older boys showed me this drawing they came up with entirely on their own:

What was really shocking was that they drew the above using nothing more than Microsoft Paint.

As in the most basic computer-based drawing program in the world in MS Windows (for our Angry Bird loving Hawaii-based blog readers who are also Mac afficionados).

Wow.  Wow.

So cool. Had.to.share.

This is what is called “delight-directed learning.”

This experiment involves dissolving the egg shells with vinegar, hence the name “naked egg.” You are then left with the egg white and yolk encased in a semi-permeable membrane.  We then put one naked egg in water and another one in corn syrup to learn about osmosis, which is the process of water moving from more concentrated to less concentrated solution.  In the water solution, the egg expanded as the water moved inside the egg whereas in the corn syrup solution, the egg shrunk as the water inside the egg moved out.  After this, we reversed the process by putting the imploded egg in the water solution to expand it and the fat egg in the corn syrup solution to shrink it.  The results were fabulous and fun to play with.

Without further ado, here are  pictures documenting our experiment.

Here is the egg sitting in the vinegar solution, and as you can see, the shells are already dissolving and releasing bubbles.

After two days of soaking, the shells are completely dissolved.  To the left is the naked egg and to the right is the normal egg.  As you can see, the naked egg had already expanded and is larger compared to the regular egg.

The kids then took turns handling the naked egg and bouncing it gently.

After some fun, we put one naked egg in water solution (we added red food coloring to the water) and another in corn syrup.  After soaking for about two days, here are our shrunken and fat eggs.  Very cool, right?

We reversed the process by putting the red, fat egg in the corn syrup solution and the wrinkled egg in the water solution and let them soak for about two days.  Truth be told, we forgot about these eggs as they sat in the refrigerator so they sat in the solution for many days.

Our red, fat egg shrank.

Our shrunken egg is now revived and plump.  Because it was in the red water solution, it too became red (though a lighter shade than the first).

Once again we played with the eggs.  I dropped the fat egg in the bowl and it instantly popped as there was a lot of water content inside the egg.  The red blob to the right of the egg yolk is the membrane.

The kids took turn feeling the membrane and squishing the egg yolk out.

Now, on to the shrunken egg.  Here is Bethany feeling it and checking it out.

We bounced the egg from various heights to try to pop it.

Look at this boy’s hand!  That’s the perfect free-throw hand motion for basketball.  He was trying to score and he did.  The egg finally popped after many abuses from these kids.

Due to the low water content inside the egg, it was much harder to pop it.  And of course we have to mess with the insides just to see.

They sure love the gooey mess.  I was actually quite relaxed about this mess, only because it was well contained.  You see, this is the solution to everyone’s happiness.  Mess = happy children.  Well contained mess = happy mom.  When you have this combination, you have one happy family.

The aftermath of our much abused eggs.

For the conclusion of our experiment, I here present NATHANIEL!

His older brother thought it was cool to put an camouflage bandanna on him.

You may wonder what Nathaniel has to do with our experiment.  Well, nothing really.  It really doesn’t have to make sense.

My blog, my call.

That said, I posted his pictures for the following reasons:

1. My island-dwelling friend Andrea thinks he is cute so this is primarily for her viewing pleasure.
2. These pictures share the same memory space in my camera as the experiment.  I’m all about equality here.
3. Blogging is harder to come by these days due to sleep deprivation so squeezing everything I want to say all in one post is ideal.
4. Hmmmm. . . . I ran out of brain cells to actually say something.

Oh wait, few of my brain cells have returned.  We now have a nickname for this child!  We didn’t have troubles in the past coming up with nicknames for our children, except for Nathaniel.  For some reason we just didn’t have a good one for him, and once again I attribute it to brain cell depletion.  Before I reveal his real nickname, I must tell you about my failed nickname.  I affectionately call him “Man-Child.”  Notice that i used the present tense for “call” instead of past tense?  It’s because I still think in present tense and not willing to let go of this nickname.  I tried to convince the family that this name is biblical.  After all, biblical matriarchs and patriarchs call their sons man-child.  It’s gotta be in the Bible somewhere.  The family ignored me at first, not saying anything positive nor negative.  They eventually moved into the stage of frowning upon hearing this name.  They have now moved to the final stage of declaring this nick name as weird.  I think they’re really saying that I’m weird and to which I say. . . too bad I can’t argue against that.  Man-child isn’t sticking so we have to move on though I’m still holding out hope.

So my husband has the winning nick name of CHEEKS.  Nathaniel is all cheeks and we absolutely love those droopy, squeezable, and plumply cheeks.  Everyone in the family approves.  Even I have to succumb to such a cute nickname.  So, there you have it, a window into my scattered brain.

He doesn’t seem to mind being in a laundry basket.

And it spins!  And it’s fun to spin, spin, spin!

This lazy susan was super easy to put together though I had to enlist my husband to do it because I can’t use a power drill.  All you need is a lazy susan from Ikea and seven buckets, also from Ikea.  The total cost was about $14.  Thanks to Pinterest for this inspiration and if you want to make one of your own, here is a photo tutorial.  I didn’t bother to paint the buckets nor the lazy susan because I actually like the way they look.

So why do I like this organizer?  Because it keeps all the supplies centralized in one location, in the middle of our school table.  Whenever someone needs a pencil, pen, crayon, or a ruler, it’s right there!  Each child used to have a pencil box of his/her own where they store their own supplies.  I thought this was a great idea because each child felt special in having a box of his/her own.  Not only that, each person got to pick his/her color.  Well, inevitably whenever a child needs a pencil or a crayon, it’s missing from the box!!!!  So, I have to go and hunt for one.  To fix this problem, I have the child refill his box with more pencils or other supplies.  Guess what happens next?  Somehow they disappear again.  We must have a school supplies thief in the house.  In the end, having individual pencil boxes don’t work for us.  This new organizer solves our problem so no more hunting for more supplies.  We are loving it.

In a household full of little ones who need daily corrections for one thing or another, we need grace, and lots of it.  It is easy to lose sight of what grace means in the midst of training.  Recently I implemented “grace hunt” in our home.  Rather than haphazardly going about it, I made it a daily instance during our dinner time.

I explained to the kids that “grace hunt” is like a treasure hunt.  Instead of hunting for treasures, we’re hunting for grace.  We want to see how God works in each person.  We started with me identifying evidences of grace in each child’s life during that particular day.  I can definitely tell that they really like it.  Who wouldn’t want to be praised?  I’m also careful in not merely boosting one’s ego through such practice.  I make sure that whatever good I see in a child is directed back to God.  For example, “I’m so happy to see you obeying quickly and finishing your chore.  I see God helping you to be more diligent and obedient.  Thank you.”  As I identifies evidence of grace in the children, I also encourage them to look for them in their siblings during the day.

I am very glad that we’re doing “grace hunt” on a daily basis because it helps me reflect on each child.  I often get derailed emotionally when I’m constantly dealing with problems so helping me focus on God’s grace in each child’s life is a good practice for me.  It definitely fights against disappointment, depression, or other negative sentiments.

This morning, my eldest took his little sister under his wing to begin her formal education.  He got her started with all the necessary materials (“just like” her older siblings): a pencil box, a binder, a pair of scissors, two pencils, and a few crayons.  Today, he taught her the letter B and began to show her what words start with this particular letter by cutting corresponding pictures from a grocery ad.  This explained why when I went to check the ad for a grocery shopping trip, there were many missing images and lots of holes in the ads.  This was not apparent to me initially, but after seeing my daughter’s lesson, the holey ads mystery was solved.  I chuckled when my son clipped a picture of beer, among other B letter words.

It was so sweet watching him teach his sister.  He was so patient with her and she reciprocated by being receptive to his teaching.

Thanks to coworkers with a good sense of humor and camaraderie, I was greeted by this.

The view from above:

Rather than attempt to evacuate the cubicle, I figured I’d just climb in & get to work!