The Annual Father and Sons Outing

1 Father + 2 Sons = 3 Happy Boys

 

The First Day of School

Well, this is the first time I have had to split a post.  On the family blog I have this delightful picture of Miss Madison all decked out for her first day of PUBLIC school.  (Yes, you read that right, Madison is going to be our public school Guinea pig and see if we want to consider a life like the rest of the world.)  And on the home school blog is the picture of the rest of the kids on their first day of school in our Hoskins Family Home School.  It has been a bittersweet day, and one I'm sure I'll have to blog about later, but for now, here's the happy girl as she prepared to embark out into the world.

 

(Luckily no one tried to take a picture of me this morning--as I couldn't get the crying under control for several hours.  I did eventually suck it up enough to get on with the other kids' first day though--but as I said, I'll give the full saga at a later date!)

Bismarck's Shakespeare In the Park

Well, as is typical when we move to a new place, we like to scope out what fun things there are for our family to do.  Bismarck has several outdoor swimming pools, a water park, a super slide fun park, a zoo, a science museum, a history museum, and several other "typical" family entertainment enterprises.  It's the less typical stuff; however, that usually more suits our fancy.  Consequently, after doing some research, we found out about Bismarck's Children's Theater, (we attended their performance of Charlotte's Web--probably won't go again unless one of our kids is performing!) Bismarck's Sleepy Hollow Outdoor Theater, (we attended The Sound of Music and will definitely go again) and Bismarck's annual Shakespeare in the Park Production.  We didn't bring the camera along for the first two, but since the girls wanted to enter the children's fairy contest at the Shekespearean festival, we thought it might come in handy. 

 

Upon arrival, we wandered through the various vendors, listened to the period music,

 

had some medieval dancing lessons, and then made our way over to be knighted by the King.

 

Afterwards the kids practiced their fencing,

 

 

 their jousting,

 

and Emma got her face painted.  Then the girls finally got their chance to participate in the Midsummer Night's Dream Contest of the Fairies.  As they paraded across the stage in front of the fairy judges

each girl was greeted by one of the fairies,

 

 

presented with a little gift,

 

and then gathered on the other side of the stage.  Then the fairy judges assembled and chose a winner for the grand fairy contest.  As it would turn out, Emma was chosen for her age bracket.  She was as pleased as could be, albeit a little stage shy when she had to go claim her prize.

Afterwards they photographed the winners for the daily newspaper,

and took some personal shots with the non-winners and their families.

 

Then they did a lovely presentation of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I'm not a huge Shakespeare fan, but it was actually pretty fun.  It reminded me of the good old days of watching Shakespeare in the Park back in Oklahoma.  It was definitely a more small town presentation, but we'll take the culture in any way we can get it.  Besides, anything beats sitting in the apartment and doing more unpacking.  And, as a good friend told me after we arrived, if you just lower your expectations, you're going to love Bismarck!  Well, I'm not too big on lowering expectations, but even so, Bismarck's turning out to be an okay place after all.

Our First Month in the Apartment

Well, our first month in the apartment has been mostly unpacking, unpacking, and unpacking some more.  It's dreadful.  My last post was a single picture of the apartment showing the absolute disaster it was when I arrived.  Now that we are a little more unpacked, I think I can post a new shot to sum up our life.

 

  

 

Yes, I think this picture says it all.  Things in the apartment are pretty dull and we're all ready to get into school, church callings, fall activities, and some social circles.

 

On the bright side, the kids have been pretty excited to see their long lost toys.

 

 

And, our boredom has led to all sorts of sporadic craziness. One night, a few weeks in, I simply couldn't unpack anymore.  Instead, the kids and I decided to bake a bunch of cookies and take them to the families Nick and I were assigned to home and visit teach.  We chose an old favorite--St. Louis gooey butter cookies, and when we got to the part where you roll the balls in powdered sugar, things got a little out of control.

 

It was kind of a mess, but in truth, I laughed and played as much as the kids.  I guess some kind of excitement, even the silly, messy kind is better than nothing.