Get in My Jelly Belly!

Last year I took the kids to the Jelly Belly factory and they loved it. They loved it so much I decided to do it again this year. It's kind of a drive to get up there (1.5 hours from our house), but it's a free tour and they give you free samples at the end of the tour.

We got there right around lunch time, so I treated the kids to a bean-shaped pizza before we got in line for the tour.

Hannah looks ravenous.

They don't allow you to take pictures inside the factory. I think they're afraid of spies or something. I'm sure you've all read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and know what went down in Willy Wonka's place. I suppose that's why Jelly Belly would be wary of cameras in the factory. But we still got this neat photo (though I was unwilling to give them my fourth-born for the physical souvenirs, I still get the digital copy):

I got my cheap bag of Belly Flops and we are sending Hannah home with a surprise pack of beans for her parents. We're also sending a couple small surprise packs of beans to Elder Wecker and his companion (Jake, you have to share) in the Philippines. I can't tell you all what kind, in case my in-laws happen to actually read this post.

On our way home, we stopped by the Oakland Temple to walk around on the grounds and go up on the terrace. It was a perfectly lovely day to do such a thing.

View from atop the terrace. Downtown Oakland in the forefront and San Francisco across the bay. Gorgeous day.

I also took the opportunity to take pictures of my kids being adorable (because that's what they do best).

Moses is so handsome, I'm gonna die!

Can you believe how chubby this kid has gotten in the last 7 weeks? I can't.

Couldn't decide which I liked more. This...

... or this.

Goofy goober.

I accidentally took a tour through Oakland, trying to find Moses a Sprite (he was so thirsty!). Oakland, for as big of a city as it is, has the fewest grocery stores per capita than any other city its size. Sprite, apparently, is very hard to find. I found plenty of places that would sell us an alternate choice of beverage, but that would have not been appropriate for a four year old. Eventually I succeeded in my quest, but Hannah and I saw some very interesting things and some of them we wish we hadn't seen. Oakland is a place like no other (though I have seen worse). I think I'll just stick to the temple grounds when I visit there from here on out.

San Fro-disco

Joseph's little sister, Hannah, has been with us a few weeks, helping us out with the kids, among other things. She spent the first half of her life growing up in St. George, and the other half growing up on Maui. There are a lot of things she's never experienced in her short life, so while we've got her, we're going to take her on some fun excursions.

It would be silly of us to live so close to such a neat place as San Francisco and not take her into the city, so we took her there. Some of the people in Joseph's office have also been bugging him to bring in the baby to show him off, so it was killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

There are so many cool things to see and do in SF, that one day is not going to cover them all. We also have four other kids, so I just chose the highlights.

First, we went up to the top of Joseph's building. I would have liked to have gone to Coit Tower, but that would not have been feasible with the stroller and all those stairs.

They've all got Dum-Dums in their mouths and are making funny faces.

What a bunch of goofballs!

Next, we walked over to Chinatown, which is just a couple blocks away.

Asher poses in front of the gate.

Hey look, I do exist! It's nice having someone else to help me take pictures.

I love the atmosphere here. And the architecture.

Window shopping for crowns and tiaras.

The six of us with the stroller took up a lot of room on the crowded sidewalk, so after we got our fill in Chinatown, we backtracked a little way to get to Yerba Buena Gardens. The kids had a ton of fun walking through the financial district. The city can also be a playground.

I like the juxtaposition of the older and newer buildings.

Asher posed for me and gave me this look when I told him to smile.

Playing on some steps.

The kids probably would have been happy just playing here and skipping Yerba Buena.

Cute girl.

I'm not sure what this pose is that Moses gave me. Silly boy.

Walking through the city with the kids, I felt like I was trying to herd cats, especially when it came to Asher. He refused to sit in the stroller and walked everywhere. He would chase dirty pigeons, into the street. He had to touch every parked car. He wouldn't watch where he was going and passersby would suddenly have to swerve out of their way to avoid running into him. He would stop in the middle of the sidewalk, or the street as we were crossing, and sit or lay down when he got tired. I'd try to pick him up, but he'd do that thing, you know, the one where a toddler suddenly becomes a sack of bricks. It was exhausting. But we eventually made it to Yerba Buena.

I love this picture of these two kids.

This is a neat sculpture. Hannah and the kids would sit on the bench and the pressure of their weight would make the statue on the globe sit. When they'd stand, the statue would stand.

Close up of the statue.

These big slides are really fun to slide down.

I like this action shot of Moses running around.

Hannah had to accompany Asher down one of the big slides.

Making music.

You'd think he'd be tired after walking all through the city, but he wasn't.

An Asher sized slide.

"Mommy, take a picture of me up here!"

Hannah and I were thoroughly exhausted from all the walking and herding of small children, so we were excited that all we had left to do was get back in the car and drive. Drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. At rush hour. It was rather relaxing.

Akiko and her favorite auntie Hannah.

Apparently, my kids think the GGB is the place to make silly faces...

... and I didn't get the memo.

SF was swathed in sunlight on an otherwise overcast day.

Close up from across the bay.

I love the fog rolling across the top of the bridge. Such a neat effect.

There were tons of things I would have liked to have taken Hannah to see that we didn't have time for or just weren't possible with all the kids and the stroller: Fisherman's Wharf, Coit Tower, Alcatraz, riding the cable cars, etc. And then on our way out of the city, I forgot that I wanted to take Hannah to see some painted ladies. D'oh!

It was still a fun day and Hannah got to see a lot of neat things in the city.

Hannah is a Palindrome

Poor Moses. He kind of gets left out of things. Simon's been getting a lot of press because he's the newborn. Asher has been written about a bit because he's been so cute with Simon. Akiko just finished first grade. Where has Moses been during all this?

Moses is the kind of kid that goes off on his own all the time. While I'm busy chasing Asher around or taking care of the baby, Moses is off in his own little world: playing video games, playing with Legos, drawing or writing or reading in his room, etc. He's kind of like the invisible boy. He only comes out when he needs me.

I absolutely love this kid to pieces, though. He's super sweet, kind, meek, loving, sensitive, quiet, silly, imaginative, and incredibly intelligent.

Before Simon was born, the first thing Moses would do when he woke up was come into my room and tell me, "Mommy! It's time for your morning snuggle time!" and crawl into bed with me, where we would snuggle for a few minutes and talk before we'd get up to get him breakfast.

Since the baby and I have been home, we've had very few morning snuggles. I asked him why once and he told me he's afraid to snuggle with me because he's afraid he'll accidentally bump my tender belly. I'm also frequently already snuggling with Simon when he comes in to the bedroom in the morning (actually, I'm usually feeding the baby, but that counts as snuggling, too).

Since I've been feeling better lately, Moses and I find other times to have our snuggle time. It melts my heart that he was so concerned about my comfort that he "paused" our snuggle time until I was feeling better.

Like I mentioned before, Moses is incredibly smart. He has been able to do simple arithmetic problems with positive and negative integers for quite a while now. He's sounding out words and writing phonetically. He's going to be so far ahead of the other kids when he finally gets into kindergarten, not this fall, but next. Bleh.

Last night, during dinner, we ended up teaching the kids about palindromes. So right after Joseph and I were done explaining what they were and coming up with an example or two, Moses jumped into the conversation and stated, "Poop is a palindrome."

Joseph and I stopped and laughed. We were both so amazed and amused that Moses would just come up with something like this on his own. Normally, we don't encourage "poop talk" at the dinner table, but this time we made an exception.

We really just cannot get over how fast Moses picks up on concepts. He came up with three or four other examples of palindromes. Akiko got frustrated that she was having trouble coming up with any at first, but felt better after she finally did.

Moses sure is amazing, though, and full of surprises.

Oh! Did you think this post was going to be about Hannah? Sorry to disappoint.

Shaving Cream Day

Akiko's last day of first grade has finally arrived!

Akiko and Mrs. C.
Akiko made the candy lei that her teacher is wearing around her neck.

When I was in elementary, the last day of school was called "Shaving Cream Day." The kids from the junior high got out about an hour earlier than the elementary and would come down the hill and spray cream and silly string on as many little kids as they could. I never got creamed, and neither did my siblings, that I can recall, but I remember seeing some kids covered head to toe in it. I wonder if they've banned the practice. I'm sure they have.

Anyway, Akiko has grown so much this last year. When she was in kindergarten, I would do her hair every morning. She would have a different hairdo every single day. The girls in her class noticed.

I used to do her hair all the time at the beginning of this year, too. Then I got pregnant and getting out of bed in the morning became a chore for me. I would at least brush her hair for her from the side of the bed. Eventually, Akiko slowly took that over for me, too.

Every once in a while, I would find her in the bathroom with an arsenal of hair clips and headbands as she practiced different hairstyles on herself. Now she and her hair are all on her own. Of course, brushing her own hair became a million times easier when we chopped off a good seven inches or so last spring.

I promise, this post is not all about hair. That just happened to be a long tangent. Sorry.

Akiko's reading and writing skills have taken off. Mrs. C. really loved Akiko's writing and would often use her journal entries as examples for the rest of the class to follow. We loved reading things that Akiko wrote that she brought home from school. While we throw most of the stuff away that she brings home from school, some of them we had to keep because they were just so funny or really well written.

For example, one of her workbook problems said, "Write a number sentence using the number 5."

So, Akiko wrote, "5 had a baby. She was happy. The end." Funny, right?

I think the number sentence was supposed to read something like "5+4=9." I like Akiko's sentence better.

Akiko has also stated many times that her favorite subject is math. It's been neat to see her skills take off in that curriculum as well.

I've loved watching how much she's grown and progressed in all areas. She's always been pretty independent, but it's really manifested this year. I bought her a pair of laced shoes a couple months ago, showed her how to tie them once, and she got it right off the bat.

We're really proud of Akiko and all that she's learned this last year.

Now...

Let summer begin!!!

Withdrawals

Joseph went back to work in the office yesterday. I'm having withdrawals. I miss having him here. It's not just for the help he provides. I just physically miss having him here. So does his best buddy Asher. I really love my husband.

Quick story: On the morning of our anniversary last Thursday, Akiko asked Joseph to wake her up early so she could make us breakfast in bed. So, Joseph woke her up, but she was so tired because it was so much earlier than she was used to. She had to ask Joseph to make her breakfast first, in order to wake her up more, so she could send him back to bed and make frozen waffles for us. Isn't she the sweetest silliest thing?

I'm really glad Joseph was able to take paternity leave. I'm really glad we live in a state that mandates it and that Joseph works for an awesome company that allowed him to take the full time off. They even sent us a bunch of barbecue meat as a congratulatory baby present. It was tasty and we found out the kids really like sausage and ribs.

I'm still not on my own with the four kids, though, thank heavens. We flew Joseph's little sister in from Maui for a few weeks. We'd keep her here the whole summer if we could, but she's got prior obligations that she needs to be back on the island for.

This week is Akiko's last week of school. She gets out on Thursday. Late, I know. I think we're out later than everyone else in the country. So, we've just kind of been sitting around waiting for her school to end so we can kick off our summer.

I've got lots of things planned, and I hope we'll be able to accomplish most of them. We've got our summer camp co-op scheduled. I plan on taking the kids to a pool and on a hike at least once a week. I've also got one major outing (Jelly Belly factory, zoo, a day in San Fran, etc.) planned for every week.

I'm not sure how I'm going to pull it all off with the baby in tow, but the thought of sitting around in our sauna of a house all summer really bums me out. Actually, it practically makes me start sweating just thinking about it. Yuck!

I mostly just want to create fun memories for the kids, too. That's what summer is about, right?

I honestly don't know how often I'll be posting during the summer or if it's going to end up being one of those giganto recap posts when school starts up again in August. We'll see.

Anyway, I don't have much to say, so I'll just leave you all with a few pictures I've taken of mostly the baby in the last little while. You can see for yourself how much he's grown (and gotten cuter).

Asher and I were alone at home with the baby, so we played with him on the floor. Well, Asher played with him while I took pictures.

I just think Asher looks cute in this picture and thought I'd share it.

Doesn't this melt your heart?

If that isn't a mischievous glint in his eye, I don't know what is.

Trying to turn. I told him it's too soon. Simon concurred.

Sticking out his tongue at us. Silly boy!

See how much he's grown (i.e. gotten chubblier) in one short month?

Play time with daddy.