D'alde Quilling: Magneti - Floare Curcubeu

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 Magnet Floare Curcubeu
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D'alde Quilling: Magneti - Floare Mare

Daca te mai gandeai ce cadouri sa faci, frumoase, unice si ieftine, CirculMagic iti propune magneti colorati realizati din hartie in stil quilling.

Floare Magnet Quilling
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MauldenNews June 2011

Ahhhh....I loooove June......I hope everyone is enjoying this summer as much as we have been. A summary of the past few weeks--

- family bike rides
- spin art
- swimming
- turning over rocks to look for creatures (I swear there is something under every rock! amazing how LIFE is all around us if we just stop and look.)
- experiencing the big blue warm Atlantic ocean with Bryan's family in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina - awesome! So great to visit with everyone.
- Other beach stuff: collecting shells, building sand castles, jumping waves, holding a baby turtle, watching a mama bird feed her babies in the nest, and learning to hunt for sharks' teeth

We had our first Awards Day to celebrate the end of the school year (credit goes to my mom for this idea-it was something we did every year growing up). Alex earned awards for:

- honesty and telling the truth
- learning to buckle and unbuckle her own seatbelt all by herself
- riding a 2-wheel bike
- learning to tie her own shoes
- crossing all the monkey bars without dropping to the ground
- scoring 100% on her reading and spelling tests
- being the most "eco-friendly" in the family - she is always planting seeds and caring for the earth
- learning to swim completely independently!

In addition, Sam earned awards for:

- jumping off the diving board for the first time!
- riding a 2-wheel bike
- performing his preschool program with gusto and knowing all the songs by heart
- earning several gold medals for his consistent efforts in the Rusty & Rosy learning program he does at home
- fetching the newspaper for me in the morning -  rain, shine, or snow!
- most creative Lego architect (faithful replicas of Star Wars space stations and spacecraft)
- best water drinker
- best hugger!

Of course, summer wouldn't be summer without time to laze around and read. I highly recommend Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand - amazingly well-researched and beautifully written true story of Louis Zamperini's life. Some others I've appreciated recently:

Meg Meeker's books on parenting - simple (easy reading) yet wise.
Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters,
Boys will be Boys and
The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers. (among others: prioritize friendships, make time for solitude, simplify, and say no to competition/peer pressure from other moms. )



Writing Down Your Soul by Janet Conner
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers
Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Kids from Nature Deficiency Disorder by Louv

And with that - I hope you all are getting plenty of sunshine and lazy days.

Sarah

things I wish I'd learned in Kindergarten

Alex's kindergarten class recited this prayer from memory at their kindergarten graduation.

I didn't realize they had been saying it at the beginning of each school day all year. Even so, it was impressive to hear them say this in unison, with their heads bowed and eyes closed:

"In the name of God the Father,
in the name of God the Son,
in the name of God the Spirit,
Praises to the Holy One.

I thank you, heavenly Father, through your dear son Jesus Christ, that you have graciously kept me this night from all harm and danger. And I pray that you would keep me this day also from sin and every evil, that all my doings in life may please you. For into your hand I commend myself, my body and soul and all things. Let your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me. Amen."

Isn't that beautiful?

What if we all started our days with such a prayer...

MauldenNews May 2011

Hello all -

Here are some of our highlights of our month of May -

It was the wettest May on record for Salt Lake, and the wettest spring on record for at least 150 years. We awoke to a light dusting of SNOW on Memorial Day - and poor shocked tulips in the yard. The local ski resorts are hoping to stay open through July 4, which has happened only twice before. If you want to come ski with us on July 4, let me know.

May 25 we celebrated Alex's Arrival Day - 6 years with us! She was dying to try laser tag, so we took her and of course, she loved it. Sam was more enthralled with the "Blast Zone," a 3-story multiplex structure with nerf balls and nerf guns, a nerf cannon, and a huge, steep slide. May 31 marked Alex's  kindergarten graduation. She courageously overcame her stage fright and performed the whole program with her class, something she hadn't been able to do at the Christmas program. We're pretty proud of her. She has grown so much this year, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually (if not so much physically). :-) After the graduation program, at home, she was crying and told me she missed her Korean mom. I'm not sure if it was seeing all the other mothers in the audience, or her recent Arrival Day milestone, but it was a little sad, or maybe bittersweet.

 Sam has been entertaining us with songs he learned for his preschool end-of-year program: "Baby Bumblebee" and "I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor" and "I'm a VIP." He is actually a pretty good little performer  - lots of enthusiasm and smiles and no sign of stage fright. Alex's class sang for church - she didn't want to sing, but I told her I'd give her a piece of gum afterward if she did. She said, "Even if I just stand there and move my lips?" Little turkey! She did stand up and appear to sing with her class, and I don't know if she was just lip-synching, but she did get the gum. She made up a wonderful song and performed it at home for me - it was called "It's almost time for me to be a princess." :-)

My 2nd official half Marathon (the Ogden Half) luckily landed on a rare sunny day, and I had a great race. I even beat my old record by about 15 minutes! I don't usually care about going fast, but in the future I will remember to sign up for a downhill race course if I want to go for a new time. The course was very scenic, with a reservoir, high canyon walls, a rushing stream and a beautiful waterfall. My friend Tammy went with me, but she couldn't race because she had an injury. She was an awesome support crew, though, getting up at 4:30 a.m. to drive me to the bus pickup and cheering me at the finish. I'm already plotting and planning ways to get together with friends and family for more runs - it's a great excuse to go somewhere new and connect with people. I'm enjoying having a Galloway group to train with here.

And finally, a very interesting fact: according to the "very accurate" doctor's scale, Alex and Sam both weigh EXACTLY the same: 37.6 pounds. Alex still has 2 inches on Sam in height, but they're pretty evenly matched for wrestling.

Take care, hope you are all well and enjoying your summer - we will eventually have summer here too.

Sarah

Two more firsts

Two new firsts this week.

First family bike ride together! Prep time: 3.5 hours. Actual riding time: 30 minutes.

Still, it was good. Ever since the kids got their bikes for Easter, they've been wanting to ride and our neighborhood just doesn't have a lot of good riding territory. They go up and down their little stretch of sidewalk a lot - the stretch that isn't frighteningly steep. We actually left their tires semi-deflated to keep them from going too fast at first. But they are getting proficient...enough to be leaving skid marks everywhere. Sunday we had nice warm weather - so it was time to break out and go RIDE! Yee-haw!

The prep time was so long mainly because we had to find various assorted bike rack parts in our jumbled garage, assemble and then install the bike rack on top of the car. We also had to buy a new bike pump and pump up all the tires. Finally, we were ready with 2 bikes on top and 2 in the trunk, with a bungee cord holding the trunk lid. Very classy. We don't need no stinkin' minivan.

Got to the trail and the wind started to blow...40-mph gusts. Alex was scared that the wind would blow her away, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, but with encouragement she managed to keep her wits about her. Sam wasn't scared at all - though he should have been - he kept looking BACK at us instead of in FRONT where he was going...ran off the trail twice and looked most surprised to be in the grass all of a sudden! Still makes me laugh to remember it. Glad he is still years away from driving the car.

Anyway, the second "first" of the week was Sam's first plunge off the diving board at swim lessons. I am so proud of my two fearless fishies. Maybe it's because I'm such a poor swimmer, but I'm so thrilled that they are loving the water.

MauldenNews April 2011

Hi all,

April was a busy month for us - I worked my 2-week full-time on-call hospital rotation, and we celebrated Easter and Sam's birthday. Happily we had Bryan's mom (Nana) here too, which was awesome as usual.

Happenings this month - in no particular order:

Alex, protesting an enforced bedtime despite her creative juices flowing at full speed: "But Mom, can't you see I'm making a PROTOTYPE?" Sure enough, she knows what a prototype is: "Something that is the only one in the world."

For Sam's 5th birthday we had a successful wild rumpus party, complete with pinata (our first!). Twelve kids and 11 adults made it lively enough.

First the burro's head came off, but the candy was still all down in the other end...

Weather in April was typical for Utah. We went hiking in 70+ degree weather one day and had 10 inches of snow the next. We actually went sledding last weekend - on April 30 - at a local park. Hopefully that's the last time until winter.

Alex made her own gifts for her teachers for Teacher Appreciation Day - each got a plastic baggie with a Clementine, toffee bits from a restaurant ice-cream topping bar, and a sesame cracker.

Alex also locked me and Sam out of the house one day. Grrrrrrrrr. Luckily for me, our renter was home and opened the basement door for me. I now have a spare key hidden in a special location.

I had the kids loaded in the car to go to school one day and found the car's battery was dead. While I was busy getting it jump-started, using the renter's car (second time she saved me that day!) the kids were playing in the yard. Only after I got the car going again did I realize that they had been eating dandelions. Alex heard they were OK to eat and convinced Sam to eat some. Yummy yummy.

Alex put a purple band-aid on her forehead one day and wore it to school and church. When people asked what happened, she said, "I'm not really hurt. I just like to wear this for extra attention."

For Easter we tried a new recipe: "Empty Tomb" rolls. You wrap marshmallows in dough and bake, leaving rolls with an empty space in the center. They were awesome, and easy. I can see these becoming a family tradition. We also dyed eggs and had Easter egg hunts at home and at church. Bryan and I were up until midnight or so assembling new bicycles for the kids. They were thrilled with their first 2-wheelers (though they are totally dependent on the training wheels). The only shadow of the day was when Alex figured out that the Easter bunny was actually...mom and dad. She was actually pretty mad, but recovered. She still seems to believe in the tooth fairy, but I'm not sure how long that will last.

Easter morning... Hunting for eggs

And that is about it for now. See you next month. As always, keep in touch.