a peak into our week

This week has been pretty hairy. I did well at staying organized for most of last week, and then I lost it and have not yet recovered. That is why there have been no posts this week. Anyway, we have gotten a few things done and started a few others, here is what we have been working on this week...

Last week we were studying light and authority and part of that was lighthouses. We started making lighthouse this week, it still needs to be paper mached and painted, but it works! The kids are very proud of our first electrical project and Regan has big plans for the decorating of it.


We started studying horses this week and are learning about their points and markings. We read a book about the Pony Express today and yesterday we tried out hand at drawing horses. These two are my drawings.

This is Regan's. She does not like it, but I think it is pretty good for an almost 7 year old! I helped her draw the first few shapes, but she did most of it herself.

She gave up after the picture above and resorted to tracing horses and drawing scenes for them.

Must get back to my to-do list, more to come soon!

did I do something wrong, or is this normal?

My neighbor gave me 18 pounds of tomatoes Thursday night. He has a huge garden, probably 30 tomato plants, the same amount of cucumbers, some watermelons and peppers too and from what I can tell, they hardly use any of it! He gives some away, but lots of veggies just rot on the vines. I have considered climbing the fence and picking some, I am sure he would not mind, but his dog is not too friendly!

Anyway, I recently finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle and was inspired by all her gardening stories and recipes and thought I would give her tomato sauce recipe a try. She calls for 30 pounds of tomatoes, so I just cut the recipe in half. If you have ever wondered what 18 pounds of tomatoes looks like, this is it.There were not any instructions for how to make the tomato puree needed for the sauce, so I did some Internet research and went to work. This is where I am thinking I must have done something wrong. Those 18 pounds of tomatoes, that filled my biggest pot, only made 2 jars of sauce. Is that right? If it is, then that is a lot of work for very little return! I hope it is good!

do you believe in providence?

I definitely don't believe that anything happens by chance, like the people we meet in a day or your car breaking down at a certain time. I have always believed that God has a purpose in everything that happens, but I don't know that I ever considered it affecting my footwear purchases... until today.

We are starting a unit on horses next week and as a part of the unit, I am taking Regan and Micah horse back riding. Just one lesson, but the place that I am taking them requires them to have boot with a hard sole and a heal. I have been asking around if any of our friends children had out grown a pair of cowboy boots and watching in the stores to see if I could find some inexpensive boots, but so far, nothing.

My mom sent the kids a package this week with birthday presents in it and there was some money for the kids "shoe fund" inside. We were in Walmart today, and I thought we would just look to see if they had something. My expectations were low since I have not had any luck elsewhere, but right there at the beginning of the isle were black and brown cowboy boots! Max and Micah loved them, but I could not find any in Regan's size. As I was scanning the tops of the shelves, all by it self about, down the isle was one lone pair of boots in Regan's size. As I pulled it down off the shelf, it got even better...

They were PINK!

And to top it all off, the pink boots were on sale. The total purchase came it at $5 more than Grammy had sent. It doesn't get much better than that!

afternoon pet

Meet Tommy, our afternoon pet.

The kids found him in the back yard today. We have seen turtles up the street in the creek that passes under the road, but never in our yard! The kids were thrilled and we had to keep him at least until Phil got home.

This is him where the kids found him in the back yard. You might notice that he looks a bit cleaner in the first picture, that is because Regan gave him a bath!

He was a shy little fella and unfortunately didn't come out of his shell too much.

After dinner Phil and the kids walked him back up to the creek so he could be with all his turtle buddies.

day two

Day two was much smoother than day one. Of course, it started with scissors, old magazines and glue sticks... it does not get much better than that!

This is the art book we are using right now. The kids love it and it has pretty fun, easy projects to go along with what we read.

Today we read about faces in art, or portraits.The project was to make a fruit/vegetable/plant face collage (like the one above on the right).

Here is Max with his collage. He was very proud of his fruit lady, although there were a few things that don't quite qualify as fruits and vegetables!

Micah with his goofy smile, I can't get him to make a normal face for the camera.

Regan came the closest to following all the rules, although her lips are granola bars :)

happy birthday

I stood in the toy store debating whether to get Max the Playmobil Take Along Tower, or go across the street to Target to get the Playmobil Police Carrying Case that he had seen earlier in the summer and liked. After a few minutes of walking around the store, I decided to put the Knight Tower back and go to Target.

This morning, Max came running down the hall and said, "I want something that wears blue for my birthday!" He proceeded to take out his My Big Rescue Book, board book (a great buy from the dollar tree) and point to a policeman on a motorcycle and said, "I want this for my birthday!" I confirmed that he actually wanted a toy Motorcycle Policeman and not a real policeman to come live with us (it was a picture of a real police officer) and breathed a sign of relief...I had made the right choice! I love it when making my children's wishes come true is so easy :)

Happy Birthday Max!

4 today!

first day

Well, today was the official start to our fall semester. It is funny, the kids have been begging me for weeks to start school, but today was a struggle for everyone. I have been so excited about all the fun things we are going to do this year that I forgot about the transition time that always occurs at the beginning of anything new. At one point when I was trying to read something to the kids, (who could not sit still, be quiet or listen to save their lives) Regan said something to the effect of "I didn't think it would be this boring!"
In all fairness, it was not an ordinary day, it is Labor Day after all, and Phil is home from work which changes the dynamics of how we function, plus I did not want to spend all day doing school, I mean it is a holiday. In the end, we got through it. Not without me asking Phil if it was too late to put them on the school bus tomorrow :)
Tomorrow is a new day and our first day of art! That should make up for every "boring" thing we did today! I am off to read the Hiding Place to the kids before we go to some friends house for Dinner!