Weekend with Hinata (updated on Monday)

Zachary took this awesome picture of the Salt Lake Temple (above)

"The Christus statue"

We heard a great story from our guide about it. She said the sculpture was making it and had the arms raised up at night, but each morning when he came back to work, the arms would be down. He finally decided that was the way it should be, with Christs hands beckoning all to "come unto him".

On Temple Square in the Assembly Hall.

The Dinosaur Museum:

Standing under the "Supersauras"

Eliza and Grace loved playing with the wind tunnel experiments.

Saturday night eating with the cousins.

We had a very busy weekend! On Saturday, we went to Salt Lake City to temple square, the dinosaur museum and had the cousins over for dinner and games that night.

Sunday, we went to church, and took a walk up at Bridal Veil Falls in the Provo Canyon. We played UNO and watched some tv. We try to keep it simple on Sunday, so we wanted to do things that were more relaxing. It was a nice day after being so busy yesterday.

Friday night at the corn maze!

Hinata, Zach and Kirk getting ready to enter the scary monster!! (The scariest part was Zachary jumping out at me around the corner).

The boys and I had a great time at the corn maze. Besides the corn maze, we rode a haunted hayride wagon, played on some huge slides and ate popcorn. It is a fun place to take the kids and was perfect for Friday since that was Hinata's day at the farm. We didn't take pictures on Thursday but we went to the library after we picked him up in the afternoon and visited Grandma's house during our piano lessons.

We found our way out of the maze!!

They loved the fast slides!

Hinata is here!

Eating our yummy hamburgers!
Kirk and Hinata playing air hockey

The boys had fun playing chess, air hockey, foosball and the Wii before bed last night.

They had fun playing and learned that Hinata understands English pretty well.

We should have a fun week ahead!

October brings Halloween and...

our newest student from Japan! We are all excited to meet Hinata this Wednesday. He will be our third student to stay in our home during his jr. high school's trip to America. It is always a fun event for our family and we look foward to learning more about him this week. Good thing he likes cats! (Now we will see what he thinks about three little sisters!!)

Zach with Copper, Takuya and Kirk

Takuya and Kirk at the corn maze last year.
Takuya and Voodoo at home

Last year, our student Takuya, had a great time and we really enjoyed getting to know him. He especially loved our cat, Voodoo and playing with Kirk and Zach. We were sad to see him go and wished he could stay longer than just one week!

Our first student, Shoji was also happy to come and stay with us and hoped he could come again someday.

It is a good chance for our family to learn about another culture as well as the students learning about America. Hopefully, they will stay our friends for years to come.

General Conference: "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus"

This weekend was General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I love hearing the prophet and apostles speak. I especially enjoyed President Eyring's talk on kindess and putting other's needs before our own. "That is what love is. And the sorrow comes primarily from selfishness, which is the absence of love". He talked about little children singing "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus" : I'm trying to be like Jesus, I'm following in his ways, I'm trying to love as he did in all that I do and say. It was a beautiful message and great words to live by! Go to lds.org and you can click on archives and listen to other talks on families, service, etc.
President Eyring:

Autumn is here!

Olivia drew some pretty pictures of flowers and butterflies outside. (She helped pick out the colors for our new fall background for the blog too!)

Grace is ready for school! She looks so cute with her hair like this. (That's our new door by the way, mom.)


Eliza having a breathing treatment. (She thinks it's fun.)

We have had our share of sickness this last week. Eliza and Grace had colds. Eliza would cough non-stop, so I decided to take her to the doctor. She seems to cough all winter long, with brief gaps in between. The doctor said it could be cold induced asthma so we are trying the breathing treatment. Fortunately, I had a nebulizer from when Zach had the same problem when he was younger. It seems to be helping.

Olivia and I both had a bad sore throat last week and then fevers for a few days. With all the worry over swine flu in the schools, I had to keep her home the whole week. Now she has the cold that the other girls had! Let's hope we are all better soon.

Visits from the Tooth Fairy...at 4!!

I love this dress Grandma Carol bought for her and I even found bows to match!

I keep forgetting to make note of Eliza's lost teeth. She's very proud of her "lost teeth" and still remembers how she lost them. One was while eating an ice cream cone back in August (her vanilla cone had a strange red spot all of a sudden). The other one she lost at home a few weeks later while swimming. She says she has another loose tooth as well.

I wasn't expecting her to loose any teeth for a while, so I was kind of surprised. My baby is turning into a big girl already!

Teeth, toes and eyeglass woes...

Sunday after church... OK, after a week of broken glasses, and various accidents, I just want everyone to be careful for a few days! First, Kirk had an infected, in-grown toenail, which needed to be taken care of on Tuesday. Right before I went to pick him up for his appointment, he called to say he was hit by a soccer ball and his glass were in pieces. Well, I'd just been to our optometrist an hour before for my check-up and had an appointment for Zachary that afternoon, for his broken glasses, by the way. So, both Kirk and Zachary had glasses that were broken, but fortunately Kirk had a back-up pair to wear.

We got everyone back in their glasses and Kirk's toe is feeling much better. Then, Friday evening, I just packed Zach of to an overnight campout with the scouts and the rest of us were out playing in the front yard when I noticed something strange. Grace was missing the bottom third of one of her front teeth! I couldn't believe it! She was obviously not wanting to talk about how she broke her tooth at school and I tried to be patient, but what a strange thing to happen.

She told me, after much prodding, that she was sitting on the ground during recess with her friends when she hit her head against the ground and broke her tooth. Coming from most children, that would be very unlikely, but Grace has the ability to have strange things like this actually be true stories! Seriously, she can trip, bump or run into the most obvious things (like barstools, chairs, people, cats, etc.) Just getting from one side of the room to the other can be an adventure for her.

At times, it is hard to understand why she has trouble with these things, but I know it is probably because of her huge change in eyesight and that she's always had issues since she couldn't see well for the first 10 years of her life. It's just difficult to take her to new places or with people who aren't around her much. She will be so hesitant and awkward trying to find her way around that I think they assume she has a disability of some kind. (This was especially hard when her language skills were just coming along and people would treat her like she was about 5 years old.)

She is really smart and capable, but most people don't get that when they see her movements. I think when we push her to do things on her own it can look kind of tough to others, but really, she CAN do things for herself. She is a very bright and determined little girl. So many things are still new to her and each new situation brings new challenges. As parents though, we have to help her learn to do things for herself and everytime she does, she gains confidence and strength. After seeing the amazing speed that she learns things, I know it is possible for her to catch up physically to her peers. Not in physical size, but in her strength and abilities. She only has one more year after this one until jr. high, so I know she needs to learn to do things for herself. I just hope she can become more aware of her surroundings as time goes on. I guess I can also be glad she didn't break her glasses too!

Our Labor Day weekend fun...

Brian helping Olivia learn how to stop her horse

Monday,at the park with my neice Amber's adorable baby Veronica

We started off with horseback riding lessons for Olivia, Kirk and Zachary. (Grace wouldn't get on a horse but maybe next time). Mike works with Brian and I taught his girls swimming lessons this summer. Brian and his wife Carolee have quite a few horses so we did a trade. Olivia didn't want to get off her horse! Eliza got a chance to have a ride and was so cute but of course it is easier if your feet actually reach the stirrups! Kirk and Zach will be experts in no time. Zach had his horse trotting around the arena right away. Grace played on the playground with the little girls. It was fun for everyone!

Next was the sleep-over with cousins, Seth and Jesse came here and Eliza and Kirk went to their house. Eliza invited herself and how could Aunt Cheryl say no, especially since Eliza loves to brush her hair and put lotion on her feet. This actually sounds better than it feels but hey, it's still some pampering!

Then on Monday, we all met up with the extended Earl clan for a picnic in the park. A great Labor Day weekend all around.

Yes, Chinese people CAN learn to swim!!

Grace had never been in water except to bathe before, so being immersed in water was a completely new concept. At the first of the summer, she would grab ahold of me and dig her fingernails into my arms because it was so frightening to feel the buoyancy of being in water. Well, after watching her for weeks hanging out on the "baby bench", we decided to push her a bit. Mike especially helped her to get out of her comfort zone and amazingly, she wanted to keep having "swimming lessons" every time we got in the pool.

We'd heard the difficulty that some Asian people have learning to swim, which isn't surprising considering a lack of facilities or opportunities to learn as we do in the States. I don't know if this is the same in other areas of China, but she definitely had no experience at 10 years of age.

She went from clinging to us for dear life, to hopping carefully from the side of the pool to our arms and learning to pick up her feet and kick. After she got good at those skills, Mike had her go a little further each time. She would barely clear the wall and stayed as close to it as she could but then she gained some confidence and started enjoying herself.

This last month, she actually jumped off the diving board, with me right there helping her in, and I gave her a push to swim down to the deep end. She actually wanted to go again! It didn't take one or two tries until she wanted to do it all by herself. Although she would swim like she was scared out of her wits, she made it! We made sure she would jump in and swim down to the shallow end each time we swam and soon she was very comfortable and enjoying herself. The last test was going of the slide. Just last week, I told her she should try it and she did and loved it! That is her new favorite thing to do in the pool.

It's amazing to see the progress she makes and how fast she can learn something. Now that is a real miracle! Here's a clip of Grace on the slide, notice Eliza, my little fish, following her. (I just love the way Eliza walks like a bodybuilder!)

Isaac returns home from the Middle East!

The girls LOVE the beautiful gifts their cousin Isaac brought them!
Isaac went to BYU 2 years ago for the Arabic StarTalk program. Last summer he went to Cairo, Egypt to continue his studies and this summer he went to Jordan and also Israel while he was there. He's amazing at Arabic and is the "poster child" of the Arabic program (he's the student they highlight in the brochures for the program). We were all glad to have him back, especially his mom Cheryl!

School starts...already!

Grace has on her new favorite outfit...Ariel of course.

I can't believe summer is over! At least that is what the kids think when school starts. Kirk and Eliza started last Monday. He's at a new charter High School and Eliza is at the same pre-school she went to last year that she absolutely loves. Zach went on Wednesday for 7th grade day, jr. high! Olivia and Grace started on Thursday and are so happy to be back at school. Here we go again!

Kirk returns from Startalk Chinese camp!

Kirk with his teacher
Kirk with his good friends from camp

I couldn't get the whole group. This is mostly the level 3 students singing the farewell song.

Kirk had an amazing time at the language camp! He worked very hard but made good friends and had fun. This camp covers so much (they get a years high school credit for Chinese class) that they are studying for hours every day, except on the weekends. It's intense but these are the kids who want to learn Chinese and really want to be there.

Besides learning to speak Chinese, they work on arts and crafts, make a music video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_rw3p5Et98), and learn songs, poetry, etc. It's a very well-rounded course.

Kirk loved the instructors. Many are young, some are even college students themselves, so they have lots of energy and excitement. Most are native speakers as well. I just can't say enough good things about this program!

We are glad Kirk did so well and are glad to have him home.

Children's Gardens at Thanksgiving Point

Eliza is scowling because Zachary made her sit there...it's so frustrating to be four!

Walking with dad to see the "big" gardens. A storm had just passed through, leaving the walks wet and a bit windy still. A perfect time for a stroll through the gardens!

Climbing rocks and finding treasures

Splashing around Noah's Ark

We decided it was time to do something fun, so off we headed to Thanksgiving Point in Lehi. It's just about 20 minutes away and we have a pass to the gardens and the dinosaur museum and farm country. This place is huge and has so many fun things for the family. If you come to Utah County, it's one of the best places to take the children for an afternoon of fun.

Chinese Night Market at Kirk's StarTalk Camp

Last night we were able to attend the night market at BYU. It was our chance to see how Kirk is doing and to have some fun! He has learned so much and has some nice friends. He's having a great time.

The girls were so happy to see Kirk. Eliza didn't want to let go of him for most of the party! She loves her biggest brother.

I thought Eliza might fall asleep while she sat still to have her face painted.

Olivia came up with the idea of a Panda and bambool. Turned out pretty cute!

Eliza with her butterflies. (Doesn't Grace have georgous hair? I think it grows a half inch every week!)

The boys are trying to blow ping-pong balls from cups of water to the next cup (a game from Taiwan). The last 2 are filled with flour, so it gets really messy! Zach ended up beating not only Kirk, but the person in charge of the game too!

More Yellowstone photos...

"Dragon's Mouth Spring"

This was one of my favorites.

I hadn't seen these, and I love this picture of Kirk with cousin Andrew and Zach especially.