Celebrate Good Times

Spring is a busy time for us.  All of our birthdays fall within two months of each other.  Add in Easter, Mother's Day, etc., and it makes for a season full of celebrations.  The kids birthdays will get separate posts, but here are some pictures of Easter and Mommy's birthday.

On Easter, the kids got a small treat, enjoyed a special breakfast, and got dressed up for church.

On Mommy's birthday, we spent some time exploring Champoeg State Park.

Let the celebrations begin!

Under Construction

Project: Brennan's 6th Birthday

Project Date: Saturday, April 30th

Shift: 2:00 P.M. - 4:00 P.M.

Project Location: Brennan's House

RSVP to the Construction Manager...

That is what Brennan's construction birthday party invitation read.

He invited friends from Teacher Loekie's and from homeschool co-op, and everyone seemed to have a great time.  The house was decorated like a construction zone...

The kids dressed like construction workers and played construction games...

Everyone enjoyed eating snacks out of a tool box and a tractor cake...

And before they left, the guests got to watch Brennan open their gifts, and they got to fill their toolbelts with goodies too...

Happy Birthday Brennan!

Haiku!

This is a first! My first blog post! The one who is writing this is...(drum roll please)...Kyler! Today I am going to talk about my new poetry book.It is called The Word Artist. So far I have talked about adjectives, alliteration, onomatopoeia, acrostics, Psalms, Haiku, Cinquain, Quinzaine, and shaped verses. Now I will show you one of my Haiku verses:

The Seasons

Spring and Summer hot,

Fall and Winter are colder,

All of them are fun!

I've had lots and lots of fun with my new poetry book! (and lots, and lots, and lots,...)

Sleepless...

Sleepless...This is generally our condition when we are forced to share a hotel room with our children.  And our trip to Seattle was no exception.  Like typical kids, they were so excited about the change in scenery that they were practically bouncing off the walls.  Add to that our proximity to the airport, and you can imagine how tired we were every morning.

But despite all that, we had a great trip.  Though nothing about the trip tied directly in with anything we're studying in school, we certainly learned a lot, and more importantly, we had a blast.

Here are pictures of some of the places we went...Space Needle, Zoo, Music Museum, Pike's Place, Museum of Flight...

We took a tour of the sound in a boat...

And we celebrated Melaney's birthday...

All in all, it was a great trip!

Keep Digging!

This week we visited the other side of the world...China!  We talked about the various dynasties and about how China's natural borders on all sides kept them fairly isolated, and thus culturally unique.

One of the many special things about China is silk.  We scoured the house looking for something 100% silk, and the only items we found were Daddy's ties.

This has nothing to do with China, but isn't this rainbow picture awesome?!

Israel

One of my favorite things about the history curriculum we're using is that it includes a lot of information about Israel's history.  Of course, we know a lot of the stories from church, but it's fun to get a little more detail, and to do more hands-on learning.

For example, the kids created bricks and built structures out of play dough as part of the lesson about the Israelites in slavery in Egypt.

They built the Ark of the Covenant out of Legos.

Everyone's favorite was a traditional Jewish feast.

We had flat bread, grapes, cheese, dates, and more.  These are some of our favorite foods, as it turns out.  And what kid doesn't like eating on the floor!

Food, Glorious Food!

In general, we try not to indulge ourselves too much, food-wise.  However, last week was just one of those food-focused weeks for us.

As part of our study of Jacob and Esau, we made "fruit stew", which was warm apricot-orange pudding with bananas (Grandma's recipe).  It was good enough that we could almost imagine selling our birthrights for it.  Almost.

Of course, Joseph's story inspired us to decorate coat-of-many-color cookies.  With sprinkles.

Also, you can't go on a fantastic Great Harvest field trip with your co-op and not buy a few of their giant cookies.  By the way, I highly recommend this Great Harvest in McMinnville, both as a store and as a field trip destination.  The owner did a great job teaching the kids about nutrition and showing them the equipment they use to make their products.  The kids each got their own lump of dough to form into rolls, which the owner baked for us to take home.  Some of the kids combined their dough to make a cute dough boy.

And finally, though it wasn't technically part of school, it's worth mentioning that we went to Olive Garden for Daddy's birthday and ate homemade pear pie and ice cream.

I guess we should be extra healthy this week! =)