Self Portrait Mosaic

We made these as part of our summer learning. Pinterest made it seem so easy...Lesson learned; don't cut the paper too small. Small pieces of paper means more gluing and the kids were losing their steam towards the end. 

Somehow, I forgot to take a pic of our family's artwork. These are all of our friend's kids. Hmm, another lesson learned!!!

Mike and Tracey's Wedding

This is Mike. Mike has been waiting for Tracey for-ev-er. We prayed and prayed and when it didn't seem like Mike will ever have a mate, we thought perhaps God wanted him to not have a wife. But alas, God is again proving that His plans for Mike is so much better than what we can come up with! Tracey and Mike met at college and it wasn't long before Mike knew this lady would become a big part of his life. 

One a hot summer night, they married. We are so thankful we got to witness God's plan.

Mike sang a sang to his bride, which I can't remember the song because I suck at that kind of thing, but we were so surprised! Mike is such a quiet man and when we saw this, we needed to pick our jaws off the floor.

                                                      Yay, finally husband and wife!

 I think this was Soph's first wedding. How little she was compared to now. She did a fantastic job, being in hot weather, bugs in the open, no napping environment. So thankful for her flexibility.

                                             Running off to the next chapter of their lives.

Magnus was able to decorate the getaway car with us and he had such a great time! Because he could read, we had to refrain from a lot of tasteless/crude writing. It was probably a good thing he was there!!!

S'mores Solar Oven

One of my favorite things we did over the summer, was making these solar ovens. You can get the details here . Not only was it easy to make, but de-li-cious! A shout out to Round Table Pizza on Marlow for these 

pizza boxes.

Finished product!

 We let the marshmallows sit out in a moderate 75ish degree weather for about 30 mins. If it would've been hotter, they could've been done sooner. The chocolate though was instantly melting. I don't know if it was because of the residual heat it had or it got hotter as we waited. Nonetheless, yumminess ensued!

That's a happy face!

Aw, the sweetness of childhood!

Love how Cutie's eyes are closed! It must be good, right!?!

There's even a stance for eating these so you don't mess up your clothes!

Nothing beats summer with good friends, good food, and good learning!

Ah Emily the Graduate

So this post is way overdue. Like way overdue. Emily the graduate has long graduated. She's even gotten a semester of college under her belt! But, life gets busy, obligation takes over and upkeep on the blog life has to wait. Anyways, that Emily. She is one of my nieces, in my long line of nieces, but not any less of one. 

Emily was just a wee one when John and I started dating. His first little child that he got to interact with. She was around 2 when we thought we would be so cool to take her to the movies. Now, at this point we know nothing about little people. So we took her and another niece in John's hatchback with NO CAR SEAT, that was NO CAR SEAT! She made it through the whole movie of George of the Jungle. Then these awesome babysitters thought it wouldn't be a complete babysitting stint if there wasn't a meal involved. Geniuses came up with the idea to travel all the way to Rohnert Park to In and Out because come on, we wanted to show her the good life! Away we traveled from the east side of Santa Rosa to Rohnert Park with no car seat. Got our meal and then she's sobbing because she misses my mom. My other wonderful niece tried to console her, but nothing would do other than a trip back to Yieh(my mom). 

So that was mine and John's first experience at wanna be parenting. Thankfully we are so much more wiser. Praise the Lord! But thanks to Emily who didn't know otherwise that she was a guinea pig to our parenting skills! Haha

Flash forward to many years later, how much love she gives us. A brilliant, kind, loving sweetheart. Our family would not be the same without her. We are so proud of this accomplishment. Not an easy thing to do with all the emotional toll that life can bring sometime. We love you so so much. 

 Our girl playing in the field while the commencement ceremony was happening. Truthfully I would have loved to be running around instead of pretending to listen to the ceremony. When you've gone to more than a dozen in the last few years, it all sounds the same.

These two could be 2 peas in a pod. Soph looks up to her so much. It might also help that Bong Ly always shares her chapstick with her.

For some reason I love this photo. It might be that I am not in it. It might also be the state that I caught everybody in. This is how they are. So funny. Ok, I might just be the only one laughing!

Three of my many nieces. So beautiful. Youngen on the left there tried to quiz me about the birds and bees. Yeah, no thanks junior higher. One word, hormones...

                                                               The proud parent.

The Car that Went Nowhere

For part of our summer learning sess, we made rubberband cars. The kids colored and labeled their wheels and they were so excited to put it together and race. I saw a video online and thought this was going to be such a fun project. But sometimes the things you see on TV doesn't always work out in real life. No matter how much we tweaked it, it just wouldn't budge. So the kids were gracious. They ran around the house and played. Just being together was enough!!! 

                       


















They did such a good job coloring and designing. So creative these kids!

Rock Candy

During the summer, we got together with some friends and did a little learning. I saw this on Pinterest and it reminded me of my 2nd grade class. I don't think it was edible, but it was still pretty cool to watch it grow. Maybe we were just growing crystals as oppose to rock candy. Who knows, that was quite some time ago. This however is devourable! Although I have to say it uses a lot of sugar! It puts into reality of how much sugar is in our candy that we buy from the stores. Since we don't see the process, we don't think about it. It definitely made me rethink candy. 

We made a simple syrup. Rolled our chopsticks in sugar. Poured some of the syrup into our jars, mixed food coloring into it, stuck the chopstick in with a clothespin to hold it from hitting the bottom of the jar and that was it! The instructions said to let it sit in a sunny spot uninterrupted for a week, but ours were not growing big enough. We let it go to 3 weeks and it was perfect then!  

Magnus with his favorite color.

Our friend with his all mixed up.

A cutie with hers!

Cutie's sister with hers!

And of course Soph's.

Yum!

I loved this project, but my tongue did not. I made the mistake of rubbing this on my tongue and the rough edges were not kind to it. Maybe I'm not cool enough to eat this!!!

Gone Fishin'

We took the kids to Hagemann Trout Farm to do some fishing. Their website basically said that it would be a guaranteed catch. I was excited to have Magnus try his hand at fishing. He has wanted to do it for quite some time, but time was never on our hand.

I imagined that he would be coming home with enough fish that I would have to freeze some for later. High hopes! It ended up, Magnus and his dad fished for 3 hours with help from various people there, switching to different parts of the lakes, and even help from the owner. He got 1. It was about 6 inches long. He was so excited. I'm thankful he caught something! We came home and he was thrilled to cook up his catch!