Back to school again and "Family Fun Night"

Hi All,

What a week! We had so much fun getting back into school after our little hiatus in Michigan. We've been co-opping for history and science with our neighbors so we have spent a lot of time at their house this week. Next week I will be teaching so we'll have the kids at our house.

We also had our first themed family fun night last night. The theme was " Fun at the Fair." We all had a blast. We decorated the house and ate "fair food" for dinner. We did some face painting, played games, and listened to bluegrass music. It was so fun that I'm going to try to do a different theme every week.

I have lots of pictures to share so enjoy!!

Here are the kids in their "hideaway." We are learning about the first people and talked about Nomads and how they traveled around and lived in tents or caves. I let them paint some hieroglyphics in their cave. They loved it.

Doing a science experiment.

Practicing their observation skills. That's an egg. They loved touching it.



We took a field trip to Petco.

After we looked at all of the animals and talked a little about them, they each had to pick one to draw in their science journals. Marina picked the ferrit.

I thought her drawing was hilarious. I thought it was also pretty cool how she drew it coming out of it's play toy.

Julio picked the boa constrictor.



All of the kids outside of Petco.

We learned about the tower of Babel. Here is Julio building the tower out of his blocks.

Notice all of his Lego guys.

And, of course, Indiana Jones is at the top.

The best part was knocking it down!

Practicing cuniform writing.

Here's a close up of Marina's.

They made sugared dates just like the Assyrians used to eat.

More science! Learning about color mixing and what happens when you mix oil and water. Then they got to drop alca seltzer tablets in their test tubes and watch them fizz over.

We made slime!! The kids loved it! Julio said "this is my dream"

So yukky but so fun!

Family Fun Night at the Fair!!

We ate corn dogs, corn on the cob, french fries, watermelon and of course some lemonade to wash all of that healthy goodness down!

These are cupakes. Pretty cute, huh?

Face painting.

Daddy just had to paint Mommy's face....

What do you think? Am I ready for a night at the casino?! I don't know what he was thinking!

Then I got a hold of him and turned him into "Super Dad" We make a handsome couple, don't we?

Cupcake eating contest.

Daddy won!!

We also had a race while hopping in pillowcases(little Julio won) and we had a coin toss(more like a mess of coins all over the kitchen floor) and we did some crazy dancing to bluegrass music.






And nothing like topping the night off with some suckers!

It was a great success. We can't wait until next week. We'll be spending the week on Egypt and I'm thinking our theme for family fun night might just have an egyptian theme. Stay tuned...




Whew! I didn't realize how much we did this week until I looked at all of the pictures. By the way, we did fit in reading, grammer, math, and bible during all of that fun.

Thanks for stopping by!

Love ya,

Marilena

My Poor Marina!

Hello All,

Well we had an interesting night! Julio was working late and I was just getting the kids ready for bed when all of a sudden I heard a thud and Marina crying. I knew that she had hit her head on the countertop in the kitchen ( like she has done about 10 times this year) but I didn't panic until I saw blood running down her hand!! She must have hit the corner just right because above her right eyebrow she had a one inch gaping wound! I didn't know what to do because it was 8pm and I was all alone with the kids so I called Julio crying. Poor guy, he probably felt so helpless because I just told him that Marina had a huge cut on her forehead and to meet me at the ER. I called a few of my neighbors to see if someone could help me with the kids but no one was home so I just put the kids in the car and went to the hospital. I had calmed down by then and Marina was holding the wound closed with a washcloth. I called Julio on the way to let him know that we were OK and that I had all of the kids with me. We spent a couple of hours in the children's ER and Marina got about 6 stitches. Except for the fact that we were still on Michigan time and Michaela fell off a chair and was bleeding because she bit her lip, the kids did great.

To top off the night Julio told me that while he was rushing out of work he bent down to get his cell phone (while he was driving) and when he looked up he saw a telephone pole right in front of him! He swerved and blew out a tire. He was right by his office so he went back and took one of his coworkers trucks. He didn't know how bad the damage was until this morning. He blew both of his tires and totally trashed his rims!! His friend had to have someone else drive him home. Thank goodness he didn't crash into that pole or I would've seen and ambulance pull up instead of his truck!

Well, all is well now. Marina is fine. She will probably have a scar on her pretty face. I'm so thankful that she didn't hit her eye. Here are some pictures of our day.

My little princesses playing dress up. Michaela got this outfit for her 2nd bday and Marina was so happy when she got a matching one for her bday.

The little mommies tending to their baby.

Then they decided to tie their baby up and pretend they were witches instead of princesses.

My poor baby!! It looks great in this picture compared to what it looked like when it first happened. When little Julio saw it he said "I can see all the way to her heart!"

They were really nice to her at the hospital. She got this cute polar bear and a book for being such a good patient.

Love ya,

Mar

Our Trip to Michigan

Hello Everyone!
We are back from our trip to Michigan. The kids and I had a great time but Julio wasn't able to come out for the last week as we had planned so it was a very long 3 weeks. I really missed him and it is so good to be back! The kids were so cute at the airport. When they saw their dad they all ran around the baggage claim area and jumped in his arms yelling "Daddy, Daddy!"

We had a lot of fun on our trip even though we didn't get to do half of the things that we planned on doing. The weather was perfect for most of the time except for the last weekend. I never got a chance to go to the cidermill because it was pouring rain on the day we were going to go =(


This is probably the longest post ever because I had so many pictures to share and I couldn't narrow it down to just a few, so here you go...

Julio between his Grandpa's on our first night at my parent's house.

Marina, Michaela and Daniells playing ring around the rosy.

Marina and her cousin Daniella

Michaela lying in the bright, soft, green grass. We don't get to do much of that here in Phoenix.



The girls with Nonna Mia.

Julio and his cousin Sammy. They are like two little old men. We were at a church fair when they first saw eachother and they walked around holding hands. It was so cute!

Michaela and her cousin Emilio at the sprinklers.

Me and Michaela

Emilio loved the sprinklers. Michaela not so much.

My mom and me canning tomatoes. These tomatoes are all from her garden

Julio and Marina in front of my mom's house. If you look closely you will see that Julio was riding a pink and purple princess bike... poor kid didn't even care.

The kids helped my mom make a gazillion mini meatballs for a benefit dinner she was cooking for.





This is our cat Kimba. He lives with Nonna because we were afraid to bring him to Phoenix with us. He is an outdoor cat and we here that cat's don't last long around here with all of the coyotes. The kid's had fun bonding with him.

My sister, sister in law and me decided to go out one night at the last minute after we put the kids to bed. We just hung out at PF Changs for a couple of hours talking and laughing.

And then at the end of the night, to our surprise we saw our cousin, Nikki, ( in the middle) with her husband and his cousins on the other side of the restaurant. We were there together the whole time and we didn't even know. We had a good laugh and then we all hung out for another couple of hours.

Emilio and Michaela hanging out in front of the hot pepper plants. They picked quite a few of them too. It's a good thing none of them broke and got into their eyes!





Nadia and Michaela.

Marina and her cousin Olivia.



Lina, Me and Angela

We had a beautiful lunch at Lina's mom's house one day. Here I am with my mom, my mother in law, Grandma, Maria and Lina's grandma.




Lina's sister brought her puppy. His name is Erros. Julio just loved him.




Michaels took a little longer to warm up to him but she finally held him for a bit.

Julio caught a frog. If you look close it is on his leg.

While we were at my in law's house Marina spent most of her time on this swing. She loved when Papa would push her really high.




Just a cute picture.

We celebrated Marina's 5th Bday while we were there.



I can't believe my little girl is 5...

This was hilarious. Julio is wearing Papa's glasses.




Michaela trying on a bonnet that Nonna had hanging on her bedpost.





Saying goodbye to Great Grandma and Grandpa was hard.

On the plane ride home. That's gum on Michaela's upper lip...




Julio played with his new DS the whole plane ride.

We came home on Marina's real bday. Daddy brought home a cake after work and we sang to her at 8:00 last night. We were exhausted, with the time change it was 11: 00 for us but we wanted to wait for Daddy to come home from work. He had to go in after he picked us up from the airport.



Whew! I'm pooped! It took me awhile to write this post. I think I'm ready for a nap. There are a lot cuter pictures in my sister and my father in laws camera's. I'll have to post some more when they send me them. If you made it this far I'm sure you are sick of looking at our pictures and I'm sure you don't want to see anymore!!

Thanks for stopping by and for all of you back in Michigan, I miss you already!!!

Love you,

Marilena

P.S. How do you like my blog's new look. I thought I would change it up a bit.