Back to School

I know it's been a long while since I have blogged. Like 2 years. So I am trying again. My kids are getting older(I know how dare they) these are back to school pictures of the oldest 3 kids. School started for them last Monday Aug 22, 2016

Angie is a Sophomore now. She is going to Century High School

Christopher is in 8th grade. He is in Franklin Middle School. 

Kirsten is in 3rd grade. She is in Tendoy Elementary. 

This momma is thinking slow down stop growing. Oh well,. At the same time I am glad to see them learning new things and doing so well. Go kids Knock em dead( not literally of course) 

Visiting with Santa

                                 Here is Angela with Santa

                                   Christopher looking good.

                              And Kirsten with her cheesy grin. What a ham.

Angela is going to public school

This has been a rough and challenging year for Angela. With the birth of Elizabeth to one of Angela's close friends and neighbors moving to Aunt Shanna coming home from her mission. On the first day of November Angela tells me she wants to go back to public school. Mostly because she wants friends and I have on occasion forgoten to mark her lessons. It took awhile for there to be room for her as just until recently the 5th grade classes at Tendoy Elementary were all full. Finally I got a call from the secretary telling me that there is a open spot. Angela was so excited to go pick out a new back pack in preparation for school. I am also looking forward to spending more time with just Kirsten and Elizabeth.

So with this change coming, I ask myself do I regret home schooling my kids? At first I thought yes, but after thinking it through no I don't regret it at all. There are things and lessons that neither I or my kids wouldn't have learned. Since this blog entry is about Angela, I will say I would not have learned how gifted and talented in the area of learning she is. She excels at History, Reading, Science, and Math. She more then often finishes her school work in less then 3 hours. I must also remind myself that she may not have become so accomplished in these subjects had she not been at home doing her lessons with the Idaho Virtual Academy. SO that in and of itself made it all worth it for her during the last 2 1/2 years. There is also a time and place I believe for public school. Kids do need that interaction with other kids their age. Especially when they get into the 6th grade and beyond. I was going to put her back in public school in the 6th grade anyway. So when she came to me expressing interest in returning early I thought it's only a year earlier then planned. Not a big deal. I shall have to say I will miss Angela being here with me at home. Good Luck Angela. I love you more then you will ever know. Go make some friends.

A New Look

Angie and I decided to donate our hair to locks of Love. Trina Rowe was good enough to cut our hair to do so. I had to talk myself into it because I was so used to it being long.

Here I am in my before picture.

Here is Angela's before picture.

Here we are in our after Picture. Ken thinks the shorter hair makes me look slimmer. I just know for Angie this will make it much easier for her to fix in the morning. Sometimes it's nice to change things up a bit don't ya think?

AMAZING Time at the Swore Farm Corn Maze

As part of a Idaho Virtual Academy activity Angela got to go to the Swore Farm and go through the corn Maze. Here they are at the entrance of the Maze.

Kirsten was so excited to go again. She helped us navigate our way through.
"Here all the pumpkins" Kirsten told us. She was thrilled to show us how big they all are.
My two cute girls in the John Deere Tractor. Grandpa Hubbard would be proud.
And how cute is a cow named Kirsten and a farmer named Angela? Love my girls.

Kids Collage 2009

This is a collage that I, Ken, created using Picasa 3. It was fun to do and neat to capture all of the different poses for each of the kids. We had a hard time trying to decide which picture to put on the wall, but we did make the selection. The rest are for fun and of course will end up in the kids scrap book at some time.

Angela's Baptism

Below, we have a few pictures to tell about Angie's baptism that took place yesterday. They had it on a stake level, meaning that they usually take the first Sunday of each month to have all of the kids baptized throughout the stake for the previous month. So, every child that turned eight during the month of July were baptized yesterday. They had a total of nine kids and we had a lot of family show up.

We had a lunch afterward for a few hours as we got a good visit with family and friends in our new home. It is nice to definitely have a home to host such an event and we look forward to doing it again for future events.

So, enjoy the pitures...

Some weekend pictures...

OK, this picture had to be taken because Christopher really is asleep in this position on the couch. It really does not look comfortable, but amazingly he did sleep. Isn't it amazing how you could sleep anywhere as a kid, but as you get older that flexibility disappears!



Yes, the Easter Bunny did come, but this year the kids got a single basket containing a soccer ball since they like to kick their other balls around the house. Then we got some candy for the family to share. We never have really been big on Easter baskets, gifts, clothes, or anything of that nature.

As far as the rest of the Easter holiday went, we had Ken's parents along with his sister over for a ham dinner and a fun game of Yahtzee afterwards. It was a great day and would love to do it again later.



This picture was taken because Kirsten loves eating an apple. This is a picture of a ten-month-old biting into an apple that often takes place as Shani eats her daily apples. She does take actual bites, even though they are tiny, and chew them with the eight front teeth that she has in her mouth. Yes eight and she still nurses!



Shani wanted to get this picture in because of the hair style. Does it remind you of a particular cartoon character? It did for Shani and for now, it is the only style that she can do because, yes, most of the hair length exists on the top of her head. What do you think?

The Kids Speech Festival...

This is coming late tonight, but we wanted to get this in before we took of for our Washington State excursion this week. Last Friday, the kids had a Speech Festival for their school. On that day, all of the kids in all grades and classes had to stand in front of assigned groups with judges to present either a poem or writing either composed or written by someone else.

Well, Angie and Christopher both chose poems written by someone else and while standing in the front of a group of about twenty kids and the adults of some of those kids, they recited the poems. Below, you will see each kid delivering them.

As it turned out Angie was assigned on a competitive level and she ended up getting 3rd place out of her entire grade class. Christopher was not in any competition, but did a far superior job than what would have thought that he would have done.

Good job kids! Your parents are very, very proud of you. Keep up the good work!

(Here is Angie performing her poem - Planting)



(Here is Christopher performing his poem - The Robin)

It has been a very long time since our last entry. In fact, looking back we last created one last year right before the New Year. Since that entry, we have had a lot of time visiting with family. We even had Scott, my brother, and his family with David, my other brother, here for a week. We had a great time seeing them and the rest of the family that was around during that time.

The holidays are over and looking outside the window, just the cold long signs of winter cover the landscape. It is sad to have the holiday season over with because all of the colored lights and festivities did brighten up the streets for a little while. Now the outside is dark with only the street lamps and an occasional porch light to break up the dark of night. Oh well, just a few more months to go and things should start to brighten up once again.

Other things going on includes new callings for Shani and I. Starting next Sunday, we will be team teaching the 8 to 9 year-olds in primary.

The kids are back in school and as ever, my work load has gotten more busy with the implementation of a new software system for my place of employment at Farm Bureau. I have had three weeks of straight training (32 hours a week) with one more week to go.

Well, for now we will stop...enjoy some of the pictures below as they are a scattering of events during the last few weeks.


Christopher, our son, wanted to see what Kirsten, our youngest, would look like with his glasses on her.



The kids like to often get into our bed.



OK...so we got a good picture of our dog too!

This has been a fun Christmas weekend. We attended our first Christmas party of the season. It was a Robbins Christmas Party at the Williams Thatcher ward church building. We played games and ate good food. Later we also sang Christmas sang in the Relief Society room. The kids had a lot of fun playing with their Cousins. It was nice to catch up with my family. While we were their we also decided to get a family picture taken of the 5 of us as a family, especially since their hasn't been a resent one taken in quite a while.

We are also posting some recent pictures of the kids.