Awards and class parties

The end of the year parties at school was held on Thursday and the award ceremonies took place before the parties that morning. Michael was back in town so we split up and since he missed out on Maddie's graduation ceremony the night before he went to her award ceremony and I went to Lily's.

Not surprisingly Lily got the spelling award. She always get's the challenge list for her spelling homework (they have a pretest on Monday's and if you get all the words right you get a challenge list for bonus points) and she placed 2nd in the distric's UIL spelling contest earlier this year. She says that her classmates usually asks her for the correct spelling when they need to instead of getting the dictionary ;). I'm so proud of her! Her party followed the awards and due to a few very wet days beforehand they were not able to be outside that morning and they had to set up all the games inside. The kids had fun though. They got facepaint and popsicles and they also got to decorate their own cupcakes.

Playing a cookie game.

Stacking bolts game.

Lucas helping Lily play a game.

Face paint station.

Cupcakes.

Maddie got a pretty special award, "Star Performer", for being a model student in her class and always doing the right thing. I couldn't be more proud of her. Michael filmed when she got it so here it is.

The 5th grade party followed after the awards and what a party it was! Definitely the coolest party we've had at school.

They had a game truck come. I have never seen such a thing but the kids thought it was so cool. Leather couches and many tv's, game consoles and games.

Dunking their teachers.

Inside the game truck.

Laser tag.

Maddie and her friend Jolee.

They also had an angry bird slingshot game. They got pizza and our favorite frozen yogurt place (Cherry Berry) came with frozen yogurt and toppings so the kids got to make their own ice cream creations. They partied all day and had so much fun.

Maddie's graduation ceremony

This last week of school has been full of activities, especially for Maddie as she is graduating from elementary school. Wednesday evening she had her formal graduation ceremony where she received her diploma. All the 5th graders performed a song, some students read speaches on the topic "Looking back, looking forward", the principal held a speech and there was a slideshow of the kids with baby pictures as well as more current photos. After the ceremony we had cake and lemonade and it was a very special evening.

Of course I took lot's of pictures as well as some video's with my iPhone. This first video is of the 5th graders entering the cafeteria to the song "Over the rainbow", I love that song!

 

The whole 5th grade performing R. Kelly's "The world's greatest".  Great song to perform at graduation, it was a very special moment for these kids.

 

Maddie before the ceremony.

The program.

Maddie and her friend Amber.

Maddie

Cheering after everyone received their diplomas.

Maddie recieving her diploma.

Maddie's class cake.

Maddie and her science teacher.

Maddie and her math teacher.

Maddie and her homeroom/english teacher.

Maddie and her best friend Kaycee.

Maddie and her friends Kaycee and Jolee.

Maddie and me outside of school after the ceremony. I can't believe she's almost as tall as me, she's still 3 inches shorter but with the heels she's wearing in this picture she looks as tall as me.

Catching up with a few pictures

Since I haven't been very active on the blog lately I thought I'd catch up with a few random pictures.

Maddie got a new haircut, with side bangs, in time for graduation.

Summer is here and the boys love to play in their little pool. Our community pool is also open and we've gone several times already.

The boys end up coming into our bed most nights. To make sure no one falls out of bed at night I put up a barricade on Michaels side when he's at work. In the morning I stack pillows and blankets on my side. This is what it looks like. I love having them sleep with us but they do take a lot of space and move around a lot!

Playing at the park.

The boys playing with their friend Anton at the McDonalds play area.

Our new car. Another Honda Odyssey, a 2008 model with about the same milage as our old van.

This is what our old van looked like after the accident. I went to the junkyard to pick up all our belongings and took a couple of pictures. The insurance adjuster stopped adding up the damage when the cost was up to $14000, decided it was totaled.

The boys got new car seats since theirs were in the car at the time of the accident. We ended up upgrading to seats that turn into a booster (the Britax frontier) and will grow with them until they are old enough to not be in a seat at all. They love them.

We have 4 more days of school and lot's af things happening this week. Send off ceremony for Maddie, award ceremonies, class parties and last day of school. Looking forward to summer break!

Playing behind our yard.

Since last fall the kids have enjoyed playing in the open area between our backyard and the golf course. Especially the girls play there a lot with their friends from up the street. They've been making forts around the trees with sticks and have just had a lot of fun.
A few months ago Michael put up a rope in one of the trees for the girls to swing on. A couple of weeks later someone had added a seat made out of wood. It turns out our very nice neighbor decided to make it for the kids that play back there (they only have a one year old themselves). Shortly after the swing was up Lily came in contact with poison ivy and broke out in a pretty bad rash. We had no idea it was back there but it is. I was about to take Lily to urgent care one evening (because I didn't know what the rash was) when I was home alone with the kids. I decided to leave Maddie home with the boys as I didn't want to expose them to all the germs in urgent care. I went to let our neighbors know (the same ones that helped with the swing) and asked if Maddie could come to them in case of an emergency. Well, the wife is a Doctor and she was nice to offer to come have a look at Lily so I didn't have to take her anywhere. She suspected it was poison ivy right away. They've lived here a lot longer than we have and have seen it back there before. Our neighbors are the best!
After that the kids continued to play back there but were looking out for the poison ivy. Then a couple of weeks ago we got another rash. Michael got it first around his feet and ankles, he thought it was fire ant bites. Then Lily breaks out in a rash all over and it looks like chickenpox but she's not feeling ill. Maddie had a few spots as well. We had no idea what it was that first time and it eventually went away. Then Michael and the boys played in the back one morning last week and later that day and the next day they were covered in spots. After a little research we suspected Chiggers and a few days later we had our pest control guy come out and he confirmed our suspicion. Chiggers is a type of mite that actually attaches and feeds off your skin. They are so tiny that you almost need a magnifying glass to see them. In fact, we haven't actually seen them yet but know there's tons of them behind our yard. The rash is pretty uncomfortable, Michael's had the worst reactions so far with severe itching, blistering and oozing. The kids haven't been terribly bothered but it's no fun anyway. So for now there's no more playing or swinging in the back.

If you click on the picture you can see the swing a little to the right and there's poison ivy climbing the tree trunk to the left of it.

4 year check up and update

 The boys had their 4 year check up this Thursday. Here's their stats.

Lucas: 41.5 inches (63 percentile) and 39lbs (67 percentile), 105.4cm and 17.7kg

Jacob: 40 inches (30 percentile) and 36.6lbs (45 percentile), 101.6 cm and 16.6kg

I think the height measurement was a little off so it's not quite that big of a difference between them but Lucas certainly is a little bit taller.
The check up went well and they did not get any shots at this time. Our Dr. was quite impressed by the fact that they haven't had a sick visit in well over a year and was asking us what we do that makes their immune systems so strong. I really think it's mainly that we've been lucky this year and we generally do not run to the Dr. for every fever or cough. We also use a lot of natural and homeopathic products when we are sick. Let's hope their immune system keeps strong and that we stay as healthy next year even though the boys will start preschool.

We got the boys registered for preschool this fall. They will be in school Monday, Wednesday and Fridays for 2hours and 40 minutes in the afternoons. We had a great experience with this school with Lily so we are very excited. It will be great for the boys in preparation for Kindergarten.

I can't believe how big they have gotten, 4 years old already and starting school.
They speak about 90% Swedish right now but I'm sure they understand more english than they speak since they do watch american tv-shows and movies. Cars 2 is a favorite right now and they love to play with their Lightning McQueen, Tow Mater and Francesco cars. They have a couple of Cars 2 t-shirts, a pair of shoes and a pillow. They also play a lot with their legos and other vehicles. Building car washes and garages out of legos etc. After watching the movie "The toothfairy" they also play hockey around the house, using their golf clubs and street hockey pucks they picked up at the sporting goods store a while back.

They love listening to songs on the iphone, right now one of their favorites is "I'm glad you came" by "the wanted". Here's two video of them singing the song. Lucas in green t-shirt and Jacob in gray.

Welcome 2012

We spent New years eve at home and after dinner the girls went to their friends Jolee and Vienna's house. We had made a chocolate pie for them to bring over and share. They stayed there until 11pm when I picked them up so they could ring in the new year with Michael and me at home. It was a nice and quiet night.

On New years day we went to Erwin park and Lily brough her friend Barb. We grilled hot dogs for lunch and then we went geocaching. Geocaching is a real-world outdoor treasure hunting game. Players try to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices (in our case our iPhones) and then share their experiences online.It's a fun thing to do for the whole family.

Found a geocach.

Barb took this picture of us.

I really like the feeling of beginning a new year, it's a fresh start of things. I haven't made any new years resolutions per se but I did receive a book for Christmas called "The healthy home" and I'm excited about implementing some of the things they suggest in the book to make our environment at home a healthier one. Another thing we will be working on is getting financially independent and secure. We started this last year and I'm pretty proud to say that we have made significant progress in paying off debt as well as saving up some emergency cash. We still have a long way to go but we really worked hard at this last year and will continue what we've started.

We have lot's of big things to look forward to this year, the two biggest being Maddie starting middle school and the boys starting preschool in the fall. Big milestones!

Here's to hoping that 2012 will be a great year for all of us!

Oklahoma City visit

Between Christmas and New Years we made a road trip to Oklahoma City. For 3 days and 2 nights we stayed at the Skirvin Hilton in downtown Oklahoma City. This is the city's oldest hotel and listed on the National register of historic places. Also rumored to be haunted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skirvin_Hilton_Hotel
We didn't tell the girls that the hotel is rumored to be haunted until the day of our departure. They thought it was pretty cool.
We didn't experience any supernatural things per se but there were a couple of things that made Michael and I wonder. The first evening when we came back to our room after dinner the room smelled like someone had just been burning candles. We got changed into bathing suits to go down to the pool but when we left the rooms the doors would not lock. You know how hotel room doors usually lock themselves when you close them. Maddie and Lily had their own room and me, Michael and the boys had a suite. The girls room connected to our living room. Both doors would not lock and we had to get security come reset the locks. The security guard said that sometimes the locks loose their memory. A little odd that both rooms would have the same issue. That night we didn't sleep very well, the room was too hot and the boys were crowded in their bed so they kept moving around. Then in the middle of the night Lucas sits up and says "Är det ghost?" (is that a ghost) followed by answering his own question "Nej, det bara flickan i hissen" (No, it's just a girl in the elevator). Creeped me out a little for sure because there's no way he had heard Michael and I talking. And the story about the haunting involves a female that is said to have had an affair with W.B Skirvin (the man who built and established the hotel) and that committed suicide by jumping to her death in the thirties.
Maddie and Lily have on occasion played ghost with the boys and they have a swedish kids movie about a friendly ghost (Laban) so he does know what it is but it's still odd that this would happen just that night while at this hotel.

The hotel.

The living room.

The boys in the hot tub.

At Abuelos restaurant in Bricktown.

The Dallas Mavericks were staying at the hotel at the same time. The last day we were walking around the hotel and we ran into some of the players in the lobby. Since I had my camera in hand I snapped a picture as they got into the elevator. The tallest guy is Dirk Nowitzki but the others I'm not sure of.

The 10th floor where most haunting have been claimed to occur. We were staying on the 9th.

Jakie on the phone.

The second day we went to the Science museum Oklahoma. It was so much fun and we ended up staying the whole day, about 6 hours. We saw a live science show that was really fun, we went to the planetarium and the museum was full of different hands on experiments.

Jakie.

In the planetarium. When the lights were dimmed and they started playing music the boys started crying. The music sounded sad to them and they have a thing about sad music ;). We tried to distract them but as the room got all dark they got scared on top of being sad so Michael had to take them outside. Maddie and Lily really enjoyed the show though.

Maddie and Lily creating flying objects to fly in the wind tunnel.

Segway ride.

Lucas enjoyed the segway. He was so proud for going by himself. Jakie wouldn't go without Michael by his side.

This was one of the boys favorite areas.

Bricktown at night. Bricktown is an arts and entertainment district in downtown Oklahoma city.

Bricktown.

The last day we visited the Oklahoma City National memorial. The memorial honors the victims and survivors of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

After visiting the memorial we took a boat tour through Bricktown.

On the boat tour.

On the boat tour.

Pictures from the 1995 bombing at the memorial site.