Thankful Tuesday

 1. The kids enjoyed gym class on Friday. Oliver participated well through most of the class. He was ready for it to be done fifteen minutes before the class actually ended. He also did better in his soccer game on Saturday. He didn't need any encouragement at first, but then he did come off the field (in the middle of the game) saying things like "my eye hurts," "I need a tissue," and "I need to go potty"). The soccer season ends on June 10. The end is in sight! Oliver also went to his Sunday School class on Sunday without anyone needing to pry him off my body. Progress!!! Now to see how he'll do tomorrow night at the Alliance church.

2. The boys and I enjoyed a dinner at Cracker Barrel (using a gift card) last Tuesday. Yum!

3.  We found a date that will work for the three friends Nadia wanted to invite to her birthday party. Her birthday is on a Saturday, but Friday, Saturday, and Sunday didn't work for her friends. Hopefully the weather will be nice on June 22 for a pool party for her 9th birthday party!

4. Maurice was well enough to travel to Italy yesterday! He was sick last week and not sure if he'd be able to travel this week. He is flying to Rome and then spending time with his professors in Pompeii and Herculaneum before flying to Turkey. In Turkey he and my dad will spend some time in Ephesus (he's doing his thesis on a residence in Ephesus) and then be with the Towfighis for several days.

5. The professor who supervised my student teaching 25 years ago has been working in the country with a very famous large wall for more than 10 years. I went over and taught there for three weeks in 2006. I love reading his email updates. Some people in that country are working toward a goal to send 20,000 missionaries to other countries by the year 2030. They are mostly going to countries between theirs and the Middle East where people of their nationality are far more welcome than Americans. They came up with the number 20,000 because they estimate that that is how many missionaries have come to their country since

1807. Amazing!!!

6. We attended a picnic at Dave's house on Sunday afternoon. Dave is the office manager, receptionist, and salesman at the family business. The kids had a blast, and there was a lot of yummy food. It made for a long day as the kids and I left for church at 8:05AM, and we didn't get home until 7:30PM. We were about to leave the party at 5:00PM (it's 90 minutes from our house) when an ice cream truck drove by their house and one of the guests at the party offered to buy a treat for anyone who wanted one (he spent over $100!). The line moved very slowly, and I didn't want the kids eating ice cream cones in the van so we didn't leave until 6:00. The ice cream was tasty! I was wishing I had brought my camera to get some pics of them eating their ice cream cones. We'll have to buy them cones at least one more time this summer when I do have my camera handy.

7. I'm very thankful to the men and women who have paid the ultimate price for our country. Freedom isn't cheap!

8. Paul came home at noon from work yesterday (Memorial Day). That was a pleasant surprise!! This also meant he had time to install a second towel bar in the kids' bathroom. This means there is room for my towel and Paul's towel in there until he repairs our bathroom floor, and once we can use the master bathroom shower again, the second towel bar will be useful when we have overnight guests. We also worked on a small spackling project together, which means the honey do list only has nine things on it now. We are down to single digits! Paul coming home early also meant we could have dinner together around our kitchen table. That is a rare treat.

9. Yesterday I put in an order with our credit card points for an iTunes gift card for Nadia (one of her birthday presents) and also six different $25 gift cards to restaurants (Subway, Wendy's, Dunkin Donuts, etc.) which will help us stay within budget in our entertainment category, as we're getting way too close to the limit for the year in that one already.

10. Paul cleaned the grill on Saturday and used it for the first time since the fire several months ago. I  overcame my fear and used the grill yesterday. I was rather nervous, but everything went fine.

11. On Thursday I bought a 1.5 quart container of Edy's Rollo ice cream for $1 at Surplus Outlet. Wow! Not great for my waistline, but very tasty!

Fall Flag Football

The kids have played flag football in their gym class on Fridays, and so I asked them what they thought about playing Upward flag football this fall. Nadia was a very enthusiastic YES. Oliver said he'd rather play that than soccer, and Ian said he'd prefer to do it if his siblings were. At least one of our children have played soccer every spring and fall for 4.5 years, but we are going to be taking a break this fall. Some of the kids might play soccer next spring, but last night I registered all three of them for Upward flag football. Their evaluations will be in June. The practices start the second week of August, and the eight games are held every Saturday in September and October. There are two churches within 30 minutes of our house that offer Upward flag football. I picked a Baptist church that I estimate is 20-25 minutes from our house. We will have to drive farther than we do for Upward basketball or AYSO soccer, but there is only one practice a week and all the games are at the same location, which means it's less hectic than soccer or softball. The teams are separated by gender and grade.

The three grade groups are K-2, 3-5, and 6-8. I'm hoping that Ian and Oliver will be on the same team. I like having the kids try a wide variety of things so I'm happy they'll get to try at least one season of flag football. It could be our first and last, or it might become something we do for several years. Time will tell. It cost $210 to register the three kids AND buy three uniforms so it's certainly not as expensive as softball has been this spring.

Last night I also added two things to our summer schedule - attending one Crosscutters game (minor league baseball) and a Little League World series game. The good news about both of those is they won't cost us any money (except for parking for the Little League game). It's embarrassing to admit we live about 15-20 minutes from where they hold the Little League World Series every year, and we've never been to a game thus far. Last year was the first time any of our kids had been to a baseball game. We went to a Crosscutters game on a night we could get free tickets, and it was an enjoyable experience. I figure

this year it will be more meaningful to Nadia now that she's played softball. Last  year we went on a Sunday because the games are at 5:00 on Sundays, but this summer the Sunday games conflicted with VBS so we're planning to go to a 7:00 game on a Tuesday night. I figure we don't have to stay for the whole game since the tickets are free.

We have been in summer mode for one month thus far, but since our local public school will finish their school year on Thursday, today I instituted a new plan for the next three months. I told Nadia and Ian that they can earn up to three iPad turns a day, and each turn will be 20 minutes long. It is their choice how many (0-3) turns they have a day. For each turn they must complete one of four tasks, and they can only choose each once a day. Their choices are reading (at least two chapters), practicing the piano, 10 minutes of math flashcards, or writing in their journal. I know Nadia will read far more than two chapters most days, but the additional reading will not earn her an iPad turn. The only subject we haven't finished is Bible. We are currently on chapter 21 of Jeremiah, and we still have all

of Lamentations and Ezekiel to read. Then we'll be done with the Old Testament. We're going to start the New Testament in the fall.

One of my FB friends posted a link to this article today. Some things on the list don't interest me (such as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland which we walked right past when we went to the Great Lakes Science Center last month), but most of the things on the list are indeed places I would love to take the kids some day. Some are places I haven't been to yet such as Hawaii or Alaska. A few places on the list I have been but Paul and the kids haven't been there yet. There are eight on this list that we've already done with the kids: Kennedy Space Center, Boston (although we need to return there to do more of the historical sites), Grand Cayman Island (I was pregnant with Oliver but the other two swam with the stingrays), Disney World, Cedar Point, Plymouth Plantation, Chicago, and Sesame Place. I toyed with taking the kids up the Statue of Liberty this summer, but I've decided to wait until Oliver is 48 inches tall. We only live 4 hours from Niagara Falls so I think that could be something we do in the next year.

Sentenceless Saturday

Nadia in the "salt and pepper shaker," which she rode three times in a row without getting off of it.

Foto Friday

We could have returned to day two of Art Day today, but instead we had a low key day that included a trip to the recycling center, gym class, a trip to the grocery store, mowing the lawn, etc. I used the weed whacker again, which means I used it two weeks in a row. Ian's soccer game that was supposed to take place tomorrow morning was moved to next Wednesday night, and we don't do soccer games on Wednesday night due to church so he'll be missing that game. This means we only have one soccer game tomorrow - another low key day. I took SO many pictures at Knoebels on Wednesday (more than 200!). I've deleted about 50 of them and edited about 50 of them. I still have 100 to look through and either edit or delete. One lesson I learned while looking through them is that I should have boosted my shutter speed a lot more in many instances.

There was a fence in between my lens and the bumper cars, but I was able to make the fence disappear from the view! Yay!

Going up the first hill on the Impulse. Nadia is in the second from the left on the back row.

Thankful Thursday

1. Last Friday morning we stopped at a yard sale a church was having in their gymnasium on our way to gym class.. Everything was by donation toward their missions fund, and I found a few pairs of sandals for Nadia. Yay! The gym was packed with stuff. I didn't even attempt to look through the clothing.

2. Nadia's softball game was cancelled last night, which means she didn't miss it even though we had said the musical at church took priority.

3. We had an amazing day at Knoebels yesterday! The weather was perfect, and it wasn't crowded.

4. This afternoon I was able to pick up my new engagement ring as well as my other rings that I got resized. My left hand ring finger is still a size 5, but my right hand ring finger knuckle has gotten bigger. It's so nice to be able to take those rings on and off without ice cubes and physical pain! I remember when I was engaged in 2000 that I would often find myself looking down at my left

hand. It was weird to be doing that again today. It's special to me knowing the diamond was my great grandmother's.

5. Today we had a wonderful time at Art Day. Last year a lot of the art stations were outdoors. Everything had to be indoors this year because it was raining all day. Jess opened up her home to almost 100 people today. We were there almost four hours (some were there for shorter or longer amounts of time). I would estimate she had at least 30 different art stations set up in various places on three floors of her new house. She'll be hosting another Art Day tomorrow. We also enjoyed the potluck lunch.

6. Today two frames I recently ordered arrive on our doorstep. I put a piece of artwork into each one, and Paul hung them on the wall this evening in the family room. I am enjoying displaying some more of their artwork this way!

7. Ian's soccer practice was cancelled today due to the rain. Tomorrow the ONLY thing on our schedule is gym class. After two hectic days, I am ready for a day mostly spent at home sweet home!

8. At first we used bedding for the guinea pig cage. That was great at minimizing the smell, and we could wait a week to clean it out, but the bedding got EVERYWHERE. I felt like I needed to vacuum multiple times a day. The felt fabric I bought needed to be changed more often, but it solved the "bedding getting everywhere" problem. The problem we encountered was it wouldn't stay covering the entire space. Sometimes the guinea pigs would move it, an other times it was my kids who accidently moved it while getting a guinea pig out. This meant poop was piling up on the bottom of the cage instead of only on the fabric. I had to clean the cage more frequently, and it was more disgusting to clean it out. The final straw was then the guinea pigs were getting dirty from this and then also spreading that to the kids' clothes. We gave the guinea pigs a bath a couple of times in the sink, and they were not crazy about it. I had the idea of putting down Velcro to attach the fabric more firmly to the bottom of the cage, and thus far it seems to be working. I attached the Velcro yesterday morning. Hope this idea is a "winner" as my mom would say.