My Fabulous Husband

I am SO blessed.  God gave me a FABULOUS man.  :)

So Sweet

Good Times

Last night Ben gave Sonora and Nate a guitar lesson.  It was Sonora's first.

Sonora's First Lesson

We had an unexpected visitor this afternoon.  Judah was SO pleased.  Later this afternoon Judah's Bible Verse said "A friend loves at all times."

Working hard

Almost got it!

Later on this afternoon I played Dog Lotto with Judah.  I told him to say BINGO after he covered his board.  Every time I would hand him a new card he said something new.  The first time it was "Bingo!"  Then, "BingDing!"  And Finally, he said "DingDong!" when he got the last one.  Harper and I laughed and laughed.

Yikes!

Good times.

First Day of HHE

I wish I had stopped to take more pictures.  It was a flurry of planning, packing, loading, unloading, and gearing up to get us ready and out the door for our first day of co-op.  I'm not going to lie, it was tiring, but I think it was TOTALLY worth it.  All the kids enjoyed their first day and the boys came home saying that Writing was their favorite class.  Praise God!  That is a HUGE praise!  As we get used to everything I will take more pictures to add on here along with class descriptions, but for now, I am just INCREDIBLY thankful to have this new co-op!

I did manage to snap this ONE picture toward the end of the day.  It is no coincidence that this is the Drama room.

He said that he was teaching about Jesus.  ~LOVE. 

The Many Uses of Super Sliders

Well, since it is summer and we are in full swing of being just plain lazy, I thought that I would give you a glimpse of our find today...Super Sliders. Who knew that those little coasters that move furniture could be so fun? Our kids. So here's our list of today's educational, and not so educational uses of Super Sliders.

• Floor Air Hockey
• Regular Indoor Hockey
• The Many Forms of Dance, including but not limited to Break Dancing
• Massage Tools
• For Defining Friction
• Teething Toys
• Exercise
• Sledding
• Indoor Cross Country Skiing
• Calculating Distance Traveled
• Shuffleboard
• Baby Shuffleboard
• Weight Distribution
• Stencils
• Frisbees
  
• Actual Coasters

The way I see it, you could just buy a couple of sets of these, throw away your home gyms, your air hockey tables, and your teething toys, and then just replace them with these little gems. They would be much easier to put away...toss them in a draw and be done! How fabulous.

AND, because I'm feeling incredibly ornery this evening...here's J~'s favorite use...




Or, you could just be normal and use them to move furniture...

Custom Coloring Pages

Want to see something cool? Your own personal coloring pages!

Paint.net is a downloadable program that is a lot of fun. You can edit photos or create your own. The pencil sketch application did this one...


J~'s obviously thrilled to be in the pack-n-play. However, I bet my girls will enjoy coloring him!

Have fun!

Geography Fair

Oh how I wish that I would have taken our camera to the geography fair last month! A d'oh moment for sure! Ah well, we did take pictures beforehand...

Our finished board. Each of the region pockets held a state lapbook for each state in that region.


Here is the front of Oklahoma. We happened to have extra stickers for OK. We didn't use all the stickers on every book.


The inside is a map. The kids labeled rivers, mountains, and other important geological features.



The back page contains information that we gathered for that state.


The state birds/flowers worksheets I got ~HERE~
The state maps that I used, I got ~HERE~
I made up the back page worksheet myself. I've uploaded it to Homeschool Launch. Homeschool Launch is AWESOME! There is a link in my sidebar. It takes 30 seconds to upload things you make to share with others, so PLEASE SHARE! No sense in re-inventing the worksheet:)

We taught the kids the state capitals using this book:

It uses cute pictures to help them remember the state and capital. For instance, on the cover is an Ark Can Saw a Little Rock. Little Rock, Arkansas! Great way to remember!

At the actual geography fair we had a booth in which we passed out apple pie and cracker jacks. H~ also sang with her kindergarten class in front of the group. It was sweet...again, regret for no camera...

This project was actually our entire year's worth of geography for N~, Q~, & H~, culminating in the fair itself. However, from this picture you can see who helped quite a bit!

Book Organization

To start off, yes, this kind of stuff makes me very happy. Weird, uh-huh, but a very happy lady nonetheless. Here's why.


These three shelves are our science books. They were a mess. The kids either pulled them all out to find what they wanted, or they didn't bother because they couldn't find what they were looking for. For that matter, neither could I. Then I saw ~THIS~ at 1+1+1=1 and thought 'hey, I can do that,,,what a great idea'! So here ya go...
Now, you know my husband, being the engineer that he is, decided to take this one step further. (and about five more hours worth of work longer wouldn't you know...:) He thought that if we tagged the books somehow, they would be easier for the kids, especially the girls, to put away. Soooo.... we added little sticker tags to the spines and made cute little labels for the boxes...

Now, the books should be easier to see, easier to choose, easier to find when we need them for school, and easier to reshelve. THAT is why I'm a little bit more joyful this evening! Here's someone who isn't so happy however...

Just in case you're wondering, I think he's tagged as a drawing book...