Doing school the home school way, rockets, and crazy hair

Just this past Wednesday night was Crazy Hair Night at A*wana.  All the kids were able to participate, which I was happy about!  Dad brought home some colored hair spray for the kids to use, and all the girls used lots of barretts and hair ties in their hair.  It was a lot of fun for all of them!  The unfortunate side of all this is late bedtime.  Why?  Well, because I couldn't let them go to bed with all that in their hair!  So, showers were taken right before they all went to bed.  It was literally 10 o'clock before they were in bed.  It's a good thing we're home schoolers! 

D came up with a good idea to go along with our study of Astronomy.  He decided to get some rockets and shoot them off!  So just last week, he went out and bought a bunch of stuff.  Today even T and he went out to do a test run while the girls and I were at a birthday party.  I hope next weekend is just as nice and we can all watch!

Just this past week, I happened to look at N while she was doing some school work.  She was lying on her stomach on the landing of the stairs.  I took the opportunity to shoot  a few pictures of her doing that.  I thought how wonderful it is for the kids to be able to do their work in whatever position they wanted as long as finished their work!  I'm so glad we're home schooling!

A*wana Grand Prix

This was our first year ever having a child desire to participate in the A*wana Grand Prix.  I think T would have liked doing it last year, but I don't recall seeing a paper come home about it!  LOL!  So, this year, T said he wanted to do it.  We went ahead and bought the kit for the car, and T enlisted Dad's help!  It was very fun for them both to work together on a project like this.  Since Dad had been a boy scout, and had made a car like this before, he had all the knowledge about it! 

The actual race day was on a Saturday.  We all got ready to go, but T forgot to wear his official TNT shirt.  Ooooops!  It turned out okay, though.  There were several rounds for all the cars to race, and T's car even got second place a few times!   Unfortunately, his car didn't make it into the finals, but I think he really enjoyed being a participant.  I think he did a great job!

It was fun to see all the designs of the cars!  Here are some pictures of the event!

T's Iowa car

At the check in station

Finding T's name in the line up

weighing his car to make sure it's 5oz or under

T's car in the line up!

Some of the other cars

Very creative kids!

Calling T to the stage

waiting to give autographs

waiting for his car to race

T's car getting ready to race!

Second place racer!!!!

He's #1 in our book!

Study of Mercury

One of the lessons from our science book, Exploring Creation: Astronomy, was about the planet Mercury.  After we had read all about Mercury, and even looked up information about the space probes that were sent to Mercury, we did some projects.  The first one was a simulation of how craters are made.  We took rocks and dropped them into some flour.  The kids all loved doing that!  The second project was making a salt dough planet themselves.  The little girls even wanted to try that!  We made the dough, and poked holes in it to simulate the craters, and let them dry.  The kids all thought that was so cool!

Here are some pictures of our Mercury project day!

Where has the time gone?

Wow.  It's April.  Already.  Where did the time go?  I haven't posted a lot lately because our wonderful, cute, energetic puppy chewed the power cord for my laptop.  Because of this, my computer time has been seriously limited.  

So, what's been going on?  We went on vacation and had a wonderful time!  It was seriously cold down there.  Yes, warmer than here, but one day we actually had to buy gloves for the kids.  Who would have thought!  So, the lesson we learned from our vaction was not to go to Florida till February!  LOL! 

D has been traveling a lot since January.  I think he's finally at a place where he can slow down.  The past 5 weeks we've had some weird sickness going through the house.  It was so weird.  T started it with running a fever one Saturday.  Then the following Saturday B starts vomitting.  The next Saturday N starts vomitting.  We skipped a week, and the very next Saturday I get the whole vomitting.  Ugh.  Wasn't pretty.  Nothing like Christmas, but still.  I think we're done with it all...hopefully.

The kids have joined a gym time with a homeschool group at our church.  Every Thursday we meet at the gym for two hours.  The first hour is instruction/playing an actual game, and the next hour is free play time.  During that second hour, the mom's walk and so some light exercising.  It's been great for the kids to have actual concentrated time for exercise as well as some extra socialization.  One of the mom's has a girl a bit younger than R & B, and the girls enjoy playing and riding scooters during gym time.  Then of course, it's always nice for Mommy to get to know other home schooling moms! 

N & T will soon finish their math books.  I'll have to order the next round of math books this week.  Although N is not as close as T, but T will start memorizing his multiplication first before he starts the next book.  N hasn't been doing so great with the book we're using for reading and grammar.  Because of that, we've kind of stopped all work on that, and she's concentrating on the reading part.  It had gotten to the point of frustrating both of us! 

The girls are doing well with preschool.  They clamor to do more work than I have for them to do!  It's really funny at times.  So, sometimes I have to really try hard to find things for them to do! 

Really that's all that's been going on here.  I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of at the moment! 
Here are some pictures from our vacation....

Happy New Year?!?!?

Happy 2011!!!!



Ah yes.  Christmas is past, and New Years is past, and it's colder than a....you fill in whatever your heart desires!  I actually Googl*d that to see what I could find, and the suggestions weren't nice.  LOL! 

So, New Year's Resolutions are running rampid everywhere.  Well, I'm not "technically" making any.  I do have some goals for the year though.  Most of them aren't starting till after January 16.  Why?  Well, the fam and I are going to Florida for 10 whole days!  Now if the weather would cooperate, it'll be a wonderful vacation.  However, to be honest, 60 degrees will feel a lot warmer than the 22 degrees it is outside right now.  Brr....I'm cold.  It even feels cold in the house, too!  Where's my blanket??????

Goals, yes, that was what I was going to write about.  My goals.   Family goals.  K, here goes...
Family goals
1. Spend less money...or stay on budget or cut budget down...which ever way you want to say it, we need to save some moolah.
2. Family Game night.  Yes, we are starting a night of family games on Thursday nights.

That's it for the fam at this point.  We might do a Bible study, too, but we'll see how that shakes.

My goals
1.  Read Bible every day.  No excuses.  I've really let this slide, and it's beginning to show.  So, that's #1 for me.
2.  Memorize 24 verses in 12 months.  I've joined Beth Moore and her siestas in their goal of learning a verse 2 times a month...the new verses are posted online on the 1st and the 15th of every month.  So, this first verse for me has already been posted...I'm doing my best!!!!  LPM Siesta Scripture Memory  there's a link if you want to join in for it!!!
3. Calorie counting, exercise doing, water drinking fool.  Yep, I'm doing it.  This week just upping the water and exercising...after the vacation...watch out!!!!
4.  More structure.  This is a weak area for me and the kids.  I want to be more structured for them and myself b/c I know it will help us all in the long run.

So, those are my goals.  Hopefully I'll remind myself to let y'all know how I'm doing.

What are your goals/resolutions for the year?

Family Update

I have been really really bad about taking pictures of school these few weeks.  We've worked on letters F and E in preschool and just recently some Christmas themed stuff.  Hopefully after the holidays I'll get cracking with the camera!  I did catch R writing on her MagnaDoodle some names, so I'll share them.  I'm so proud of her for practicing!  Neither one of the older two ever took initiative to do this type of thing!

We've had some sickness here lately.  In fact, today I kept Nay home from church and took her to the doctor.  She's got a sinus infection, and she just took her first round of antibiotics.  She's also to be taking some Dimetap for her congestion.

T, R, and I were at the doctors last week.  We all had the infection in our lungs with lots of coughing and sounding terrible.  Thankfully we've made it through it all!  Still coughing some, but better than what we were. 

My sister and her family are driving up from Oklahoma to stay with us through Thursday.  I'm excited to see them, and of course, the kids are excited to see their cousins!  I think their cousins are excited to see snow more than anything!  LOL! 

Our Christmas Musical last Saturday was cancelled due to blizzard conditions.  We ended up singing only on Sunday night instead.  It was amazing the way it all came together that night.  I wish I had some pictures of the night, but no one seems to have any!  I do have one of N and T right before leaving.  Since they sang with us, I had to get a picture of them! 

I'm not sure if I'll post anything between now and Christmas Day, but if not, Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!!

R & B before leaving for the Christmas Musical!

T and N right before leaving as well. 

Writing some names...

More name writing...

One of her favorite names to write! 

The girls and Santa this year!

Funny...

Here's a video of Dean and T.  It's funny because Dean all of a sudden dared T to go with him to the mailbox barefoot to see who could get there the fastest.  It's funny because there was snow on the ground!  We had gotten only about an inch, but still that inch is cold!  Anyway, I just wanted to share this with you!  Enjoy and laugh a lot...I did!  ;)