Celebration

7 years ago today Doss started working for SLB. He wanted to take the family out to celebrate. Joseph suggested we go back to the Chinese hot pot restaurant. That is where we went. The food was so yummy. We had a great time.

#261/365

Workshop

I have been wanting to attend the Active Parenting Workshop that the school counselor holds each school year. I signed up for the 3-part course. Today was the first day. It was very interesting to be in a workshop with parents from all different cultural and religious backgrounds. I have lots of reading to do before part 2 next week.

#260/365

Painting

Katelyn brought home a painting she had made at school a few weeks ago. She said it was for me and asked me to hang it up. The caption says "me and Mom." I am the one with the lovely hair and no body...lol. I love it when the kids draw me pictures or make me cards. They are sweet kids. I am very blessed to be their mom.

#259/365

Reversi

Doss and Joseph played some board games this afternoon. I took a nap and woke up to find them playing Reversi and snacking on peanuts.

In other news, Joseph injured his left foot again playing soccer. Doss took him to the clinic this morning. No broken bones but he is supposed to take it easy and not run for a week. His foot is wrapped in an ace bandage. Joseph is upset about not being able to participate in PE and missing soccer practice this week. Hopefully he will be able to play in the game this weekend.

#258/365

Busy Day

Today was quite the day. We dropped Katelyn off at a friend's house this morning before we headed to Joseph's soccer game. The friend was dropping Katelyn off at a birthday party that coincided with the time for Joseph's soccer game. After the soccer match, we took Joseph and Audrey to lunch at Pizza Hut. Then we played at the arcade for a while before heading home to get ready for cub scouts. Scouts was at the American Club and so was the ward party. Katelyn ended up at the American Club after the birthday party. While Doss and Joseph were at scouts, the girls and I hung out at a friend's house that was near the American Club. Audrey just loved their dog Izzy. She is normally a high strung golden retriever but she was super calm and sweet with Audrey. It was cute to watch them together.

#257/365

Game Night

The kids were pretty crabby this evening. They all took turns crying and having fits about which activity we were going to do tonight.  Doss finally ended up playing board games with them.  Tomorrow will be a super busy day so I made a dessert and some salad for the ward social while everyone else was playing games.

#256/365

Planes

We took the kids to see Planes this afternoon. It was a cute movie. After that we had dinner at Canton Bay and then we grabbed a few groceries. Hero Supermarket had little kid-sized grocery carts. The kids each wanted to push one. It was cute!

#255/365

Soccer Practice

Joseph has soccer again on Wednesdays this year. Joseph's coach is ex-military so he had one of the boys give him 20 push-ups for not listening to him. Joseph is just looking on while coach and the little boy are doing push-ups. Luckily, Joseph listens and follows the coach's instructions pretty well so hopefully he will avoid having to do penalty push-ups. I know I couldn't do one to save my life.

#254/365

Air Purifier

I think it has really been helpful to have an air purifier at the apartment. The air in Jakarta is not very clean. Sadly, it appears that the air purifier may be broken. That thing cost around $400 so I am not eager to replace it. Doss is trying to see if he can fix it. I am not hopeful.

#253/365

Gymnastics

Audrey has gymnastics every Monday afternoon. Joseph was going to do gymnastics too but we pulled him after he broke his toe. Audrey gave her leotards from last year to a friend. They were too small. She loves the new one that she got for this year. It has lots of colors and came with little shorts.

#252/365

Cute Car

#251/365

I just love Hello Kitty. We saw this car with Hello Kitty decals on the side and hood of the car...so cute!

Settling In

Katelyn is really doing well in preschool.  We had an open house on Friday morning.  She was happy to show me around and seemed quite settled into her new surroundings.  I met some of her friends and got to see some of her art.  I also got to read and play with her for a little while.  I am so glad that she is enjoying school.  The kids are all wearing yellow just for fun.  Periodically the teacher sends home a theme.  I wasn’t sure Katelyn would comply since she often says that she will only wear pink.  Friday morning she said the teacher said they should wear yellow and she seemed more than okay with that.

#249/365

Playing with pink Play Doh.

 

 

#250/365

Joseph had a soccer game this morning.  Team Netherlands really did not play their best today.  Joseph did pretty well overall.  He sat out 1 quarter and played defender for 2 quarters.  He scored the only goal for his team when he played striker during the 3rd quarter.  Coach said he knew Joseph preferred to play striker but that he really needed to learn to play all the positions well. The final score was 4-1 against Team Brazil.  I didn’t get a good picture of Joseph. In fact, I took very few pictures of the game.  Most of the time Joseph’s team just was not very lively.  There just weren’t too many interesting shots.  Hopefully the kids will be more lively next week.  #7 on the other team was quite a good player.

Tires

I saw several people pulling carts filled with old tires down Jalan Sudirman which is a major road. I have no idea where they were headed. It is a good thing traffic wasn't too heavy. Normally the card would be back to back and I would not have gotten a picture from several lanes over.

#248/365

Pizza Hut

I picked up Joseph from school to have his toe looked at again. We got a different doctor that basically said it was just a toe so I shouldn't be worried. He said to just keep it taped to the other toe for awhile longer and that was pretty much it. Joseph's toe is still discolored and a bit puffy but it doesn't seem to bother him. We had some time to kill between the doctor's visit and soccer so Joseph asked if we could go to pizza hut for a snack. It was fun to hang out with the little guy this afternoon.

#247/365

Someone was hungry. He ate a mini pizza and teriyaki chicken. I just had some Milo.

Cheating

Okay, so I should technically be taking a picture a day, but it’s my blog so I am going to do whatever I want.  I meant to take a picture of the dumplings that my friend Dawn and I made today, but I forgot.  She came over today so I could show her how to make them. We had a good time.  I had a pretty busy day today but this evening I played around with Lightroom a little more after the kids went to bed.  I am really liking this program a lot.

#246/365

I shot this picture of Audrey while we were in Bali.  I changed it to black and white and I cropped the picture to put the focus more on her face.

Lightroom

I really need a better way to organize my photos.  I also wanted to learn more about editing and retouching photos so I have been reading about Adobe Lightroom 5. So far I really like the software so I may just buy it after the trial period is over.

 

#245/365

All I did with Katelyn’s picture was bring out the highlights in her eyes and adjust the contrast and exposure.  She’s so pretty!

Behind Yet Again

Sometimes I just forget that I haven't posted to this blog. I am just a couple of days behind so time to catch up.

Friday I spent most of the day cleaning and sorting old school papers, workbooks, and art projects. I came across several pipecleaner people the kids had made. I took a quick picture and then those cute little people went into the trash.

Saturday we went to a scouts information day at JIS and we also took Joseph to his soccer game. We weren't going to let Joseph play and the coach didn't have him on the starting roster. Anyways, Joseph ended up playing 3 out of the 4 quarters. His team tied the other team.

I need to vent about the other team to get it off my chest. I'm quite disappointed that this league is supposed to be non-competitive and the player assignments to teams are supposed to be random yet it was very obvious that it was not. The other team is being coached by the coaches that were in charge of the school's competitive Coco Cola League team last term. The entire team is made up of kids from Joseph's school instead of kids from different schools. Also, more than half the team is made up of kids that were on the competitive team last year plus a few kids that were ineligible to be on the team last year because they were too old. Those kids of course are really good players.  Some of them played on the school's competive soccer team for the older age group last term. The age requirement changed this year so some of the older kids now qualify to play with the younger ones . It appears that these coaches have already hand-picked the kids that will likely be on the competitive team next term. I think they are trying to squeeze in an extra few months of practice before the competitive league starts. It's pretty sad that some parents are so overly competitive.  I wasn't overly impressed with the competitive league last term.  Joseph just loves soccer so much.  He is pretty good too.  I just hope that he has a chance to play in the competitive league next term.  

Today we went to church in the morning. This evening we had the missionaries over for a yummy Tex-Mex fajita dinner. Later this evening I put my hand in my back pocket and found a 100,000 rupiah bill. That's like ten US dollars. That was a pleasant surprise.

#242/365

Cute pipe cleaner people the kids made.

 

 

 

#243/365



Joseph is on Team Netherlands.  They are orange and black.

 

 

#244/365

Yay!  I found ten bucks in my back pocket.  That is always nice.