A Super Party

This is my year for birthday parties! I have not had a big party for any of the kids in a few years, so I decided I had no excuse this year! Eli wanted a Super Mario Brothers Party for his 5th birthday and he had a blast! On a side note, we learned that Super Mario Brothers was invented in Japan, so it fit right in with our ECC curriculum these past few weeks :) Anyways, we had some games for the kids to play, a great cookie cake, and a great time with friends and family. Eli was quite the gentleman when he opened his presents: he took time to read every card and walked over and gave everyone a hug after opening their present. Happy Birthday, Eli! Hope you had a smashing time!

China Town

We finished up another country in our Exploring Countries and Cultures curriculum this week. The kids really enjoyed our stories and projects while we studied China. The Chinese lanterns were so easy to make! And we enjoyed a meal at a new chinese restaurant right around the corner. It was a buffet, which I do not usually like, but I survived it without getting food poisoning :) The kids were SO excited to go and had fun trying out the chopsticks and all had pretty good attitudes trying some of the foods!











On the non-school front, I have been very overwhelmed with so many things going on lately. Soccer frenzy has started, which is fine and fun, but my mind has been so pre-occupied with the planning of a certain 5 year old's birthday party coming up this weekend (which is all I really want to do). And then there is our Disney trip I'd really like to sit down and plan all the details for (it is coming up in less than a month and our housing fell through)! And then there are always so many other things we could do. I had to say no to my husbands request to go to a carnival night at the dental conference he's attending this week. A carnival?! Really, I have no time for that! ARGH!!!! The poor man just wants a fun date with his wife...so we are running errands tonight together instead. Yeah. **sigh** I just can't make everyone happy, but I strive to. I am still trying to learn how to say no and live by my priorities (I think this is a life-long one for me)!

Identify this Plant!

Can anyone tell me what this plant is? I have spotted 3 of them growing around our mulched garden areas...I'm assuming they were in the mulch we purchased last year. ???

Quiet Moments

I love these shots because it represents some of the quiet moments we have around here...occasionally, they do happen! Here is book basket time:




I love finding Abby enjoying herself outside, in God's creation. I will find her in her own little worlds so often out in our backyard. In the sandbox, on the swings, on the trampoline, in their clubhouse, and here, she made her own little desk area to sit and draw a picture. These little times are so precious to me. I love my B.G.


And here is Eli. Twice this week, he has given up waiting on me to make his lunch, so he's marched into the kitchen, announced that he's hungry and wants to make his own sandwich. He pulls out the lunch meat, cheese, and bread. This day, I just handed him a cutting mat and let him go to town! He was finished before the rest of us even sat down. I'm glad they don't have to rely on me for too much around here :)

Back-Tracking

I wanted to catch up on my school weeks here! Before Easter and after Micah's birthday, we had a great time studying India. I am determined to crank out Asia and Australia before we head to DISNEY (!!!!!!YEAH!!!!!) in May. Anyway, we spent a week and a half on India, and will do the same with China. Then I think we can fit Japan, Russia, and Australia into a week each. I love that MFW is actually flexible enough to allow this kind of scheduling to happen. I will say that we are doing A LOT of work each day, and this is teaching me to be way more diligent during the beginning of the year and not to take a month on a segment that was scheduled for 2 weeks! We finally finished our David Livingstone book, and I will be skipping the last two biographies...instead I picked a read aloud for China from the book list and am saving Mr. Popper's Penguins to end our school year with.

Nothing new for the basics...we are just cranking through math and language arts. Eli is enjoying the new Dick and Jane or Benny's Adventures book I place in his bucket each day. And he is just working on printing his letters with our memory verses. Abby will finish her Alpha math book with flying colors. I'm debating whether to do another year in Math U See for her or to switch her to Singapore next year like I did with Zeke. She doesn't seem to have the issues with Math U See like Zeke did...hmmm.... Speaking of Zeke...he's doing great, but we have had to have a lot of discussions about attitudes and Philippians 2:14-16a (we made it our memory verse for last week!). I will always butt heads with him since he and I are SO MUCH alike: rule followers, stubborn, perfectionists!!!! It is good to have the pep talks from my husband that remind me to focus on the important things... character issues are more important than completing a math page or a craft project! Issues are very inconvenient when they occurs during math time and take 45 minutes of discussion and training to solve, but I know it is the right work. :)

Here are our face paintings during our India study. The kids had fun performing a little skit for me after their paintings were done.



Here we are making volcanoes. The funny thing was getting a phone call during this project, answering it, exiting the room, leaving the children with vinegar and baking soda and having a LARGE mess to clean up! But it was OK. They had fun.

We ended our unit on mountains doing this activity suggested in the textbook. I'm pretty sure Zeke was the only one that understood why we were doing this activity.

And over the span of 2 weeks, we fit in a "green craft" activity from the Family Fun magazine. It fit in well with our science lessons on Reducing, Reusing, & Recycling. These fish are made from 2 L pop bottles. Fun!

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter, and we hope all of you did too! We did our usual Easter baskets and egg hunt Sunday morning before church and then stopped and saw great grandma and grandpa, uncle Ted and Aunt Paulie before heading to Jackson for a lovely meal and afternoon with Marilyn, who graciously invited my dad and grandma and grandpa for Easter dinner! Here are some of the cute shots...I have been taking horrible pictures lately :( I'm not good at lighting and using the big flash. I need to work on that, but it's really not high on my priority list lately! I didn't even color Easter eggs with the kids this year! Thankfully Mimi thought of it and the kids had fun dying eggs with her (their favorite babysitter) while Steve and I went out on a date.







We also made some easter baskets with our small group from church for the family we adopted at Christmas time. I'm glad we did this activity as a family event.


Jesus IS alive!

First born vs. Fourth born

7:30 am...a bedroom door opens and out strolls Micah. One thing is on his mind...the fruit snacks he received at the birthday party yesterday and did not eat on the car ride home.

"Mom?"( from the top of the stairs)

"Yes?"(from the living room rocker trying to have a quiet time)

"Can I eat my fruit snacks?"

"Sure, why not!"

And there you have it! The difference between a first born and fourth born. I think this is hilarious!