Another Stellar Weekend

It was a proud weekend in the Hulewsky household. Two major milestones for our twins Nik and Leah. Nik was accepted at Columbia which made him very happy (Jamie posted already). And then there is Leah who I thought had stopped developing. Leah with the bent thumbs cut her own hair. A proud moment and quite a major milestone for her. Clumps of hair on the floor and me with no idea where they came from. I thought they might be strays from a haircut Faith gave someone since I couldn't imagine Leah was even able to use scissors. That funny girl never ceases to amaze me. ha...

St Patty's Day

Karlee standing on the light "lighting up mine dress momma!"

Allan, the model!

Joleen, so smiley! :)

Colbie Rae being her cute self!

(Needless to say, taking a picture of all 4 doesn't work so well!)

My mom (Carrie) used to make us all matching dresses until we started telling her not too! So, she was excited to be able to make the 3 girls matching St Patricks Day dresses! They turned out so cute & we are glad they have a Grandma with such a wonderful talent!!! :)

Congratulations!

Congratulations Nik!!!!




We are so excited for you!!! Whatever/wherever you choose to go, we just thought it was so exciting to get accepted to such a wonderful school as Columbia!

Congratulations to Jessika, on getting accepted to the Masters program at USC!

More Flowers!!!

Thank you Puente's. These roses are beautiful. Flowers totally brighten things up. I took a photo of Emily holding these but the lighting was terrible and you couldn't realy see her or the flowers.

Spontaneous Delight

For the past year I've been taking turns teaching "Joy School" with three other moms who live within a few blocks of us. The idea behind Joy School is not to focus on teaching kids letters, numbers or other pre-K skills but to teach them principles that will help them have joy and be happy throughout their lives. In some ways it's a parenting class because a lot of the principles are things that kids have inherently- a natural curiousity, a desire to try new things- that parents maybe don't know how to direct appropriately so their kids lose it. Other things, like the joy of the earth, the joy of order, sharing, service, etc. are things that we learn about.

I really love the curriculum and I feel like it's given me so many great tools as a parent (let's just say I still have a lot to learn) but the other day we did a class called 'Spontaneous Delight'. It still makes me giggle to think of the name. Usually I'm kind of anxious about helping the kids to learn some kind of principle, but the goal for this class was just to have fun together, and to learn that just as it's important to be still and quiet something, sometimes it's also really good to giggle and laugh together. It was the funnest time I've ever had teaching a class. We just did lots of silly things (like popping popcorn without the lid on and painting with our feet which freaked them out initially before we had lots of fun with that) and had a ball. I wish that there were more things about how to have spontaneous delight... I think that life would be a lot less stressful. It's helped me to have more fun with my kids though, which has definitely been amazing. We're still trying to figure out what to do for preschool next year- our group will all be off in other places. I'm sure whatever it is won't be quite as fun as Joy School ;)

Trees...

Berry bushes are doing well...

I don't know what tree this is but it's looking good...

Fig tree looks good...even looks like there is a little fig forming.

One of the sad deer injured trees. The only one with any growth on it.

Cherry tree looks good. Not much of a photographer so I'm not even sure if you can see the buds.

Another cherry tree photo which is not very good at all. Obviously we don't cut our grass very often. We did water the trees and I will put another shot of fertilizer on them. No deer so that's the best part of all since they are protected this time. Yahoo for that...

Beautiful Flowers

I'm not much of a photographer nor am I much of an florist but my co-workers sent these flowers for Emily. They are so beautiful I wanted to share them with all of you. I have such wonderful co-workers. I so lucky to have a job with good insurance and such good friends. I'm vacillating between gratitude and self pity right now. Not a good place to be but things will feel much better when Emily is home and we aren't making that long trek to San Francisco. I really hope her blood thinner levels are right on tomorrow so I can go pick her up...