Great Day!

I love the simple days, where things just flow one into the other, don't you?  We had one of those days today.   We're taking a brief summer break, probably starting back in July.  With nothing, or very little, on our plate right now, I'm enjoying some lazy, laid back time with my kids.

Today we started what I hope will be our daily routine.  We headed out the door for a walk around the neighborhood followed by swimming in our pool.  After swimming, we had a simple lunch and the kids went off to do their own thing for awhile. 

Leanne, on the FIAR boards, posted a Nature challenge to get outside and study your trees.  I thought this would be a perfect day for such a study.  I had the kids gather up their pencils (colored and regular) and some paper.  I grabbed my camera, the cd player and a classical music CD (and the baby of course ;- ) ) and followed them outside.  Their assignment was to pick one of the trees in our yard and document the changes it goes through throughout the summer.  They could document the tree throughout the months through drawings, poems, songs, pictures, whatever inspired them the most.  I encouraged them to look at all aspects of the tree.  Check out the bark, the leaves, the canopy, the color, the animals, etc.  Then I set them loose. 

One of our trees happens to be a lemon tree, which has provided us with so much wonderful lemonade this past spring.  I'm going to miss all those fresh lemons here pretty soon.  I grabbed five of our very ripe lemons and made some fresh squeezed lemonade.  Yum!  I filled up 6 glasses with ice, poured in the golden elixir and brought it out, along with some gingersnap cookies, to my budding naturalists.

What a beautiful picture to see all my little treasures out there enjoying God's glorious creation, in all its varied facets.

I'll share their drawings and poems as they come in throughout the summer, so stay tuned.

Fresh Squeezed Lemonade
16 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice (about 5 lemons)
48 oz filtered water
~ 1.5 cups sugar

Stir and serve over glasses filled with ice.  Enjoy!

What did you do today to celebrate and rejoice in God's creation?

She Did It!

I know as homeschoolers we don't really "do grades" but, since this particular year marks a milestone for my eldest, I thought it was fitting to celebrate it a little bit.

My daughter has officially "graduated" from elementary school into middle school.  Today she finished up her 5th grade year!

Working out the last problem as a 5th grader

She now will spend her time finishing up her free reading books, continuing with math and all the free writing she wants (she loves to write).  I'm also going to hand over our Beyond Five in a Row Manuals and let her work at her own pace throughout the lessons getting some extra practice in essay writing as opposed to what she does now, creative writing.

It was a busy year with many interruptions, including a death (grandfather) and a birth (sister).  Through it all E. worked hard and persevered, even when the books weren't what she really wanted to be reading. LOL

I'm so proud of you E.  You amaze me daily with all the gifts God has given you.  Love you bunches!  Looking forward to starting your 6th grade year together!  I'm so thankful that I am blessed to be your teacher. 

Here are some pictures of my young scholar messing around w/ all the books she read this year.

The happy scholar

E, where are you?  Time for school

The Philosophical Scholar

The tired scholar

Poor Blog

You know you have a sad little blog when your only traffic is coming in off of google image searches of your son's Valley Fever rash. LOL He's all better now, if any of you strolling on in here to see the image care. :D I don't even come to visit my little blog too often anymore. Poor, poor blog. LOL I'm actually dabbling w/ a new blog over at blogger. They tell me it's easier. I know one thing that will make it much easier, I'll be able to blog w/ Safari. For some reason this blog host doesn't like safari. Which means, I have to log into firefox, which doesn't happen all that often. As you can tell from this post, w/ no formatting to it, I'm in Safari. Too lazy to switch servers. :p

New Beginnings

My first post over here on Blogger and I have nothing to say. :)  I'm trying out blogger to see how I like it compared to Homeschool Blogger.  I hear it's easier to navigate, which I'm all for.  This post will just be a bunch of testing features to see how I go about adding things.  Thanks for indulging me.

I'll introduce the cast of characters you'll be meeting along the way.  On my homeschool blogger blog, at one point I referenced my kids by their birth order and days of the week.  So, child number one was Monday's child, #2, Tuesday's child, etc.  I think I'll try to stick with that for this blog from the beginning instead of mixing things up as I go along.  

Starting from the bottom up, our new gal.  Who will be 2 months in 2 days.  She's our Saturday's Child. :)

Next is Friday's Child.  He turned 3 last month and is bursting with life.  Non-stop action until his head hits the pillow at night.

Thursday's Child is my first boy.  What a joy he has been in our lives.  Sweet and sensitive.  He loves playing his guitar and on his homemade drum set.  

Wednesday's Child is my third daughter.  She is bubbly and outgoin

g yet appears shy when she first meets you.  She loves to play soccer and helping with her baby sister.

Tuesday's Child is my sensitive second born.  She loves, loves, loves nature.  Her artistic ability at recreating the world around her amazes me.  The minuteness detail is never missed by her sharp eyes.

Monday's Child, my first born, the one who made me a Mom.  What can I say about my special gal.  She's spirited and gifted in so many areas.  We see life very differently, which at times can be exasperating but I'm learning to recognize the blessing it is as I view the world through a different pair of eyes.

Poem

I found the poem my 11 year old wrote for her new baby sister.  The kids call her by her middle name, which is why there is an "A" as opposed to "K", like I will be writing. :) 

A
You are a wonderful baby, A.
God gave you to us as a blessing.
Your eyes are as blue as the Heaven
you came from.  You have stardust
in your eyes.  Your hair is the color of
the paved streets in Heaven, and your face is
like a sunbeam directly from God.
You are warm because you were sitting
in God's lap before He sent you
down to us.  You smell like the flowers of
Heaven.  When you are a little older, you will
smile and laugh, sounding like angel babies do.
When you get your first tooth, it will be like the
little pearls from God's palace wall.
One day, you'll grow up and have babies of your
own.  And you'll say, "This baby is a little bit of
Heaven.  I wonder if I was like that too!"
You were.  All babies are.  Even the ones who fly.

Over due introduction

Our sweet gal made her big arrival on January 21, 2009.  She was born at 8:39 am and weighed 7 lbs 5 oz and was 20.5 inches long.  She's healthy, beautiful and absolutely perfect. 

As we close on our second week with our new blessing, we're all slowly adjusting.  I think that J, who will be three in a few weeks, is realizing what this all means.  He struggles with being excited and then not so excited.  He's missing having his Mama all to himself.  Fortunately, Daddy is still home, which is taking the edge off of having a new sister a bit. 

Little K is doing marvelously well.  She's sleeping pretty good for a newborn.  She's beginning to be awake a little more often, but is still letting me get a few hours of sleep in at night.  That always helps.  She calms down pretty quickly when her needs are met and seems, at this point at least, a pretty mellow gal.  Thank you Lord!  We definitely need a mellow child in this house. LOL  We'll see what happens as she continues to become more alert, but for now, we're basking in the "easy" mode.

Here are some pictures from her first day on her own.

Minutes old

First Bath

J holding his little sister for the first time

S holding little sis

R holding K

A looking very excited, don't you think.

E's turn!

They brought me and the baby homemade gifts. :)  E wrote a beautiful poem for her little sister.  If I can find it, they've misplaced it :(, I'll share it.

Saying goodbye.  This always makes me cry, when they all have to leave. :(

We left the hospital the next morning.  Not soon enough for my liking. LOL  I'll post those pics later. :)

Green Smoothies

What do you think this tastes like?


YUM!!!

Green smoothie we had today:
Bunch of spinach from our local CSA
~1 cup plain non-fat yogurt
3 ripe banana's
small package of frozen mangos
~1 cup frozen peaches, sliced

This was one of the best smoothies we've had so far.  The spinach made it really green, but the taste was barely perceptible.  Instead, it tasted like a fresh summer ice cream treat.