H-man turns 9!

Holman is our shy good looking man. He is kind and very smart and really funny when there is a familiar group. He changed schools this year which I was really worried about because he is so shy and resists change. But he prayed about it and I gave him the option of where to go. He felt impressed that he should change and he has done wonderfully. We through a party for him but it was very last minute and we asked Holman if he would like to have a party or would he like us to buy Super Mario Brothers wii game. He chose the party. He invited a friend from his old school (Kau), a friend form his new school (Katelyn), his cousin (Kate) and and his neighbor (Derek) to join us to go to the movies. We saw Frozen which luckily the boys enjoyed. The movie was very cute. Later we came back for pizza. The kids all had a great time. But to his great luck one of his friends bought the Mario game for him! So he felt like he had a win win!

Son I love you so much! I love your sincerity and your helpfulness. I love that you are such a great big brother often steering your younger siblings away from danger. You are such an amazing young man and can't wait to see what man you will grow into!

Adrianna's tea party

Adrianna turned 4! We celebrated by having a tea party with some of her preschool pals. The whole table was pinked out! We had little sandwiches and little cakes and cookies. It was real fun, complete with the birthday girl having a meltdown! We love this little lady. She is our youngest and I really worried about not having a younger sibling to be her buddy. I have learned that every family needs a youngest and she is ours. She is so independent, she loves people but also loves alone play (this is probably very true since her mother has three preschool classes a week). She is sweet and loves to be a cuddle kitten. Much like a cat she gives affection only when she wants to, so when it is displayed it is from the heart and willingly. We love you very much you are our angel, our strong willed, beautiful girl!

Birthday Surprise

In late May we had a young man move into our ward. Our family notice this handsome guy instantly and asked Benjamin for details. He said his name was Dieter and was 17 and living on his own through a CPS program. Benajmin said he was a really nice and respectful young man so I said invite him over for dinner. We all liked him so much we kept inviting him over and we fell in love with him. Tragedy hit and his twin brother, who was also living independently through the same CPS program but in Prescott, died suddenly. We got to have Dieter stay at our house for a couple of days as he grieved and we traveled up for the funeral. After that we thought, hey we should have this guy move in, he is already a part of our family! So when he turned 18 in November we opened up our crazy Howe home for one more. He is great, hardworking, quite, thoughtful and respectful. He is a senior a will be graduating in May. So his life is wide open. We can't our family lucky to have him in our home and we documented this by having a family photo.

For his birthday we had a surprise party. We invited all the youth form our congregation for the party. We played minute to win it games. We had a great time, unfortunately Dieter was sick and had to leave the party early. Even thought he party ended early hopefully he understood how much is arrival has meant for us and the congregation, he has taught us a lot and hopefully he will for months to come.

unintentional social experiment

I teach 38 preschool students in 3 separate classes. I have four classroom rules: 1) Be kind 2) Be safe 3) Be a listener 4) Be the best you can be! This year I changed my reward system for good behavior. Instead of rewarding individuals for good classroom behavior I decided to reward the class for individual behavior. I did this by having a series of colorful balls in a large jar, when a student did something noteworthy I would remove a colorful ball from a large jar and put it in the smaller individual classroom jars. When these small jars were full of individual student acts the entire class would get a treasure chest item. I thought this new way would motivate the class and eliminate the animosity when one child gets rewarded and others do not. I thought the parents would be happier, in years passed I would often get questions about the treasure chest chart and how their kids were doing. When my son Holman was in preschool I remember wondering how many treasure chest items he individually received in relation to the other students. I thought this was the answer! Boy was I wrong!  I learned 3 valuable lessons.

1) When a collective group gets rewarded for an individual effort the motivation from the individual diminishes. Why try when an individual effort is just a collective drop in a very large bucket. Because I was rewarding on a group effort the reward needed to take longer to achieve than if it was a small goal.

2) Students that struggled with following direction were not motivated to change because "johnny" earned a ball, they did not think thanks Johnny for helping the team. His actions were not appreciated or even really noticed.

3) The last lesson I learned was when switching back to individual reward for individual efforts (a student does something noteworthy they get a star next to their name when they get 5 stars they get to choose from the treasure chest), the change in behavior is FAST!  The class as a whole is acting much better! Even kids who have struggled have been doing so much better.

Bottom line direct consequences for individual choices benefits the individual which directly effect the group!

15 years baby!!!

Benjamin and I celebrated our 15th anniversary on September 19th! We celebrated by going to Vancouver Canada! It was the farthest we could could go for the cheapest price :) We went to the Vancouver temple, hiked the Grouse mountain, biked around the beach and ate at yummy restaurants, road a few boat rides went to a street festival, road the train and had a fantastic time together. It was the perfect amount of time for a get away and thanks to my awesome in-laws. thanks Grandma Babs, we were able to do it!

15 things I love about Benjamin!

15. Right from the start he was always so open about his feelings, never felt the need to play it cool. I think it is because he is who he is, he doesn't pretend to be anything but himself, he is genuine.
14. He is faithful. Everyone has weaknesses, through Benjamin's he has never questioned if there is a Heavenly Father or if there really is a Savior. He wholeheartedly believes in our Redeemer.
13. He is extremely good looking and doesn't realize it. He could have married a Barbie but instead chose the girl next door!
12. He works so stinking hard!
11. He is so complimentary of me, never criticizes my housework, culinary efforts, mothering techniques you name it, he is positive.
10. He can fix almost anything! I can count on one hand how many times we have needed to call a repair man.
9.He enjoys working out and being active just as much as me. We love family hikes and moving.
8. He gets excited about holidays, trips, events, he loves to plan them.
7. He is funny. When we first met I didn't know if he would be goofy enough for me, but he is!
6. He enjoys helping others.
5. He is an excellent counselor and gives me great perspective.
4. We both share a love of ice cream. That has on many occasions brought us out of hard times.
3. He loves family, the one he came from, the one he married into, and the one we created.
2. He loves our children! He always trys to be a present parent.
1. He loves me unconditionally. He writes messages to me around the house. Whether he writes,  I love LJ  with paint on a mirror or leaves a note on the white board. I love every message and every hug. I love this strong, faithful man! 15 years baby!

A Halloween miracle!

We have had a White Yukon for several years, The car originally was very nice but over the years has had many electrical problems. So many prayers have been said over this car, we have inwardly hoped that it would get stolen and have even fantasized over locations in Tucson were this would likely happen.  On Saturday October 26th we had stayed home most of the day. At 2 o'clock I had left to go to Savers to get some last minute costume items. When I got into the Yukon it had this weird electrical smell. I called Benjamin out to have him smell ,we both couldn't figure out the location of the smell and decided it was ok to drive. The smell proved to be too much. Later that night we took the car to a friends house for a Halloween party, when we got home we cracked the windows over night hoping the smell would go away and leaving the windows high enough so that cats could not climb in and pee inside.

At around 11:00 pm at night I wake up to what I thought was a buzzer sound form one of my child's pee alarms that we had just purchased. I went to that child's room and the alarm wasn't coming from the child. I followed the noise to the front of the house, I opened the front door to find our Yukon's ceiling  engulfed in flames! The buzzing sound was the horn, as soon as I opened the front door the horn died. I ran to wake Benjamin. I said to him "Benjamin wake up the car is on fire, call 911!"  He called them and then we ran outside to see what we could do, our neighbor woke up to the sound of the horn saw the flames and ran to get a fire extinguisher. Benjamin and I both grabbed hoses and sprayed water inside the quarter-rolled -down windows. We luckily had the fire out before the fire department even got there. They finished the job and the verdict was the car was totaled! The fireman confirmed our suspicions of it being an electrical  problem the engine wasn't touched but the inside was a complete wreck!

The amazing thing was that none of our children woke up! That it happened when we were home and not on a date! And for the first time in my life I was grateful that I did not have a garage or carport! The fireman said it could have been so much worse or even fatal had their been a house attached!

To add to our drama Benjamin and I (thanks Bishop) had to speak the next day. I was able to use this crazy and miraculous story in my talk, I spoke of being grateful in spite of hard circumstance. I referenced the book the " The Hiding Place" seriously one of the best books of all time. Two sisters who once lived in a concentration camp because of their efforts to try to hid Jewish Dutchmen, they were inspired to pray for all things, even the fleas in their camp. One of the sisters questioned why must we pray for all things and even the fleas?! Later they found out why they should be grateful for all things, it was those fleas that kept the brutal guards away from their barracks and enabled them to spread the Christian message of love and hope from our Savior Jesus Christ. Well this Yukon has been a flea to us! The lord knew exactly how we could get rid of this nusance without any severe collateral damage.

Later we prayed that we could get a reasonable amount of money for this, with the hopes we could purchase another car. I admit I did not believe the insurance company would give us a reasonable price. Benjamin however faithfully prayed for a specific price. Later the insurance company got back to us with the exact price Benjamin had prayed for, a price that Kelly Blue Book didn't even predict for our car!! We bought a new car, a van, less miles per gallon, newer, smaller but it still fits our needs and better yet, still no car payment! I still have no carport but mind it a whole lot less now :)
 

Halloween

I Love Halloween!  Being a preschool teacher I know how much little children love to dress-up and use their imaginations in make believe worlds. My kids are no exception, Bella was a gypsy ( a popular choice for a middle-school-er) For the last couple of years Olivia has had a costume revolving around a card board box. She has been a dice, a rubix cube and a red box machine. Benjamin has been the maker of these costumes and plead with living to choose another route, I think he was done with spray painting. So together they came up with her costume which consisted of her with a normal card board box around her and a thought bubble attached to a head band, what was she?.... "Thinking outside the box". Super cute an no spay paint! Holman who became addicted to the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice ( thanks to a long stay at Nana's and Papas house) dressed up as Mr. Darcy, you know what every 8 year old wants to be.  Parkin was going to be a Missionary Vampire  but decided last minute to be a power ranger. Interestingly enough only Bella wore her costume to school. Adrianna dressed up as a butterfly princess.

At preschool we had three Halloween performances one for each class, I love the Halloween performances, we have a costume parade and performance all wearing costumes. This year I dressed as Merida from Brave the kids loved it, (Benjamin was my Scottish warrior wearing our families Wallace tartan and a fake muscle shirt, he was HOT)! Sadly he was gone on his annual Mens trip, the Cats were playing in California  that weekend and so he was on the road for Halloween night, we did get to use our costumes at two friends Halloweens parties though.

Bella staged a rebellion at school a couple of days before Halloween. A couple of classes talked of test and homework the day after Halloween and Bella wanted none of that. She made posters that stated "Give Halloween back to the kids no homework and tests the day after Halloween." She posted these posters up in the cafeteria and had kids sign their costume names she got over 200 signatures, luckily we were not called to the principals office! The day after Halloween there ended up being no homework or tests, coincidence....