Piano Recital

This past weekend my girls had their piano recital.  Their teacher did something a little different this year. He had almost all of the kids play a duet along with their own solo piece. It was a fun twist to the performance. Sometimes the kids played with their mom and others played with their teacher, Mr. Anderson.  My girls had the opportunity to play with each other. They played duets and a trio!  We had been on vacation the week before with no chance to practice. So going into this day, they were a little nervous.  I was so proud of them. They did a great job! :)

E. warming up

 A. Warming up

My four girls! 

I still don't have a video camera. It's something I dream of owning, one day! LOL I use my Powershot camera's video function for all my video taping needs, and it shows. ;) For some reason this particular day the camera was being finicky and on several of the songs didn't start recording until the song was well underway. No clue why, but there you have it. So without any further ado, here are my three older girls playing their pieces (or parts of them playing their pieces. snicker, snicker)

R.'s solo



E and R's Duet



EAR's Trio



A.'s solo



E. and A.'s duet



E.'s solo

Girls getting their certificates

Golden Glow

E. was up earlier than usual one morning last week. She had the house all to herself while the rest of us slept. What did she do with her time? I don't know what all she did but I do know she grabbed the camera and caught some pictures of the sun streaming through our windows! :)

Hope you enjoy the view of our home, around 5:30 in the morning, through the eyes of my 13 yo.

Breakfast table

Photographer's feet

Sun is already high in the sky. 

Summer is here. *sigh*

Sprinkler's in the morning light

Water drops glistening in the sun

Sprinkler's spray
(E.'s favorite photo) 

peonies in the sunlight

(my favorite picture out of the bunch)

Summer Time

Summer time means hot, hot, hot temperatures and swim team!

A.  went under right as I snapped the picture. She's the bottom middle blur. ;)

S is working the kickboard in the top middle

S. and A. are swimming on a rec swim team this summer.  Last year, A. and R. were on a different team and had so much fun exercising and staying cool, we decided to keep on going this summer as well.  We switched teams for a couple of reasons, cost and location. :)  All of these meets will be held at pools close to our home, as opposed to last year where we traveled a good distance for meets, usually at rush hour, and the cost is a fraction of what we paid last year. 

We missed their first week being on vacation, but they have made up for the lost week and are doing fine. Their first meet is Saturday!  Can't wait to watch them swim.

Swimming is such a great sport. It's a fantastic physical workout as well as a mental one. Yes, you compete against other swimmers in meets. But what you really are competing against is yourself, or more precisely, time. Your place in meets can vary, depending on the heat you are in, but what doesn't vary is your ability to beat your time each and every race. 

I love that this is a sport my 11 year old can compete in and not only do well but can feel good about how she is improving through the season. She's not my most athletic daughter. She's very quiet and too reserved for most sports. It's not that she couldn't play the sport well. It was more her timid nature kept her from being given the chance to show that she could play the sport! She's played soccer in various rec leagues for 5 or so years. The longer we continued, the more she was ignored because she is not aggressive and the more she felt like she couldn't perform. As a result, she didn't play as well at the end of the season of soccer last year as she did in the beginning.  As the girls were moving up in age brackets, we decided it was time to retire her soccer cleats.  Which is where swimming comes in.  Swimming gives her the ability to just be and swim.  As a result, she is beaming as she swims lap after lap after lap.

Be looking for updates throughout the summer of my swimmers!

TOS Blue Ribbon Awards

The year is up for the TOS Crew of  2010-11. Every year the crew members vote for their favorite curriculum in various categories.  The votes have been tallied and the winners have been announced!  I reviewed a lot of these products, but not all of them. If I reviewed them, I've provided a link to my review. All have a link to the Crew's blog where you will find all of the reviews given this year for that product.

Congratulations to all the winners!

The following vendors are the recipients of the award this year:

Favorite Language Arts Product => Institute For Excellence in Writing (IEW)

Favorite Social Studies Product => Bright Ideas Press-Wondermaps

Favorite Science Product => Eagle’s Wings-Considering God’s Creation


My Review

Favorite Math Product => I See Cards-Pyramath
My Review

Favorite Online Math Product => Ten Marks
My Review

Favorite Writing Product => Writing Tales

Favorite Reading Instruction Product => Talking Fingers
My Review here and here

Favorite Foreign Language Product => Classical Academic Press
My Review

Favorite Fine Arts Product (art, music, etc.) => Artistic Pursuits
My Review

Favorite Preschool Product => Go Go Kabongo
My Review

Favorite Elementary Product => Speekee
My Review

Favorite Upper Grade Product => Vocab Ahead

Favorite Special Needs Product => See-N-Read

Favorite Christian Education Product => Apologia
My Review

Best Resource I Didn’t Know I Needed => Lanschool Technologies

Best Customer Service => Peterson Directed Handwriting
My Review

Best Online Resource => Big IQ Kids

Best e-product => Zeezok Publishing-ZGuide to the Movies

Best Technology Resource => Collectorz

Best Homeschool Resource => Yesterday’s Classics

Best Book, Novel or Magazine => Zoe & Sozo Publishing-Foundlings

Best Children’s Book => Kregel Publications-Circle C Beginnings
My Review

Best Hands-On Resource => Corps of Re-Discovery
My Review

Most Adaptable Resource => The Write Foundation

Most Unique Resource => GoTrybe
My Review

Most Family-Oriented Product => Growing Healthy Homes-Nutrition 101
My Review

Kid’s Choice => Schleich Action Figures

All Around Crew Favorite => Institute For Excellence in Writing
My Review

Nature Study

One of my friends organized a field trip recently to the Hassayampa Preserve. We had never been there before and were looking forward to visiting this beautiful area of Arizona.

The building has a neat little museum, where the kids are encouraged to touch and explore.

All my kids managed to get in this shot!

S, R and J are in the front

E and K are in the middle

and A has her back to the camera looking towards the shelves.

All the kids were exploring before heading out on our hike.

We broke into two groups, my family and our good friends made up one group, everyone else made up the second group! My kids were excited to be with their friends for the morning as we headed out of the museum with our guide.

Our guide talking to the kids about what we were going to do

This area is just beautiful. You would never know you were in a desert! It's a riparian preserve w/ springs feeding the lake and river. Our hike took us towards the lake where we walked around looking at the nature and doing a sensory exercise.

I told Mark when we got home that I felt like I was in Ohio with all the vegetation and water around us. Ohio without the mosquitoes! It was a beautiful day all the way around. The weather was perfect, the bugs weren't pestering us and the time spent with friends was priceless.

E. took over the camera pretty early on and took over 200 pictures while we were there! I won't share all of them with you, just some of our favorites.  There are a lot in here, hope you enjoy them!

She had the camera setting on Aquarium, because she likes the way it looks. It gives everything a yellowish glow. 

Our guide told us that in the 1960's people would come and water ski on this lake! There was also a trailer park located on it's banks at one time.  Sometime in the 70's the land was donated to the Nature Conservancy and they let it go back to it's natural state. It's hard to imagine water skiing in this place now!

stopping for their sensory exercise - this one was on sight

E, A, and R drawing what they see

J. adding to his nature book what he sees

Mistletoe!

water level. Last year, the banks were flooding. This year, the water level is down.

Kids and guide looking out on Palm Lake

Not a bad picture for a point and shoot camera!

My little bug. She was loving this hike, walking up at the front with the guide. 

I had to run and get her a few times so she didn't walk right on into the water.

Ants working together to move this large object

Lots of palm trees around "Palm Lake" :)

More, very old, palm trees

picnic area

Yep, still the desert just outside of this oasis. 

Such a juxtaposition, lush, green vegetation and dry, rocky cactus on the hill just on the other side of the river. 

After walking around the lake, we walked down to the river to look for tadpoles and other naturey things.

a small branch of the river. 

you might be able to make out the tadpoles (click to make picture bigger)

 

Nature on nature! All the red spots are some type of bug

Is this stick bug looking thing the mother, or is it getting ready to have a feast!

being "sworn in" as junior deputies. 

 Nice shot of everyone squinting into the sun, don't you think!  

After our hike, quite a few of us drove in to Wickenburg for lunch at a neighborhood park. The kids ate and played and got to know each other better while the moms talked. It was a perfect ending to a beautiful morning.

We're going to try to go monthly to see the changes that take place throughout the year. The kids are really looking forward to going back again.

The Rest of the Garden Tour

It's taken me awhile to finish off the incredible garden tour I wrote about a few weeks ago. As promised, here is the rest of our tour!

After leaving Boho Farm and Home, we moved on to the other gardens. Our next few gardens were wonderful examples of how you can utilize your yard, no matter what the size, for growing food for you, your family and friends. I didn't take many photos of the next garden on our list but their yard was filled with growing things, almost all of them edible!  They had all varieties of fruit trees, corn, strawberries, herbs and of course, tomatoes.  I'm sure they had more growing, I just can't remember what all they had.  They also had a backyard pond with koi. Very pretty and peaceful. They also had chickens and ducks. I took a picture of the ducks for my kids. :)

In Ohio, ducks and geese were not something  you necessarily welcomed into your yard. They were more of a pest that you tried to keep out due to their mess and in the case of geese, their tempers! Obviously ducks lay eggs and large ones at that!

Moving on from this small urban farm we went to another yard that wasn't very large but packed so much into their growing space, they have created a CSA for the neighborhood!  Farmyard devoted their entire front yard, and a good portion of their back yard as well, to growing vegetables and fruit. Instead of a manicured lawn, they have well maintained beds brimming with beautiful looking vegies!

Front yard

Summer squash and sunflower hedge

What's behind the towering sunflowers...

Back yard

shading the tomatoes

 

blackberry bushes

Chicken coop and run

 Moving on from this fun farm we visited a small farm that just started in January! His farm was tiny but it was mighty. :)  

Egg collecting box

corn, tomatoes, herbs, peppers, melons. He had a lot growing in this tiny spot

  You can see his compost bins in the upper right

After leaving this farm we had one more to visit. The last farm is on the largest piece of land, around an acre and is the home of Jill of Sweet Life Garden.  This farm was amazing. The property has been in Jill's family for many years and has been tended to with loving care. They have mature fruit trees, peaches, apricots, apples and various citrus, which she sells as whole fruit or in delicious jams and marmalades.  Her flower beds are overflowing with gorgeous flowers and her vegetable gardens were full of beautiful vegetables.  She has a huge chicken coop, with lots and lots of chickens. I can't remember how many she said she has, but it was a lot!  Her yard is where the picnic was held. This is where we all gathered at the end of the tour for a delicious lunch made from the gardens of Rebecca of Farmyard.  People spread out over her entire yard enjoying the scenery and delicious lunch.

I'll leave you with pictures of Jill's beautiful yard and our incredible picnic lunch! Thank you to all the talented gardeners for opening up your yards and sharing your knowledge with us.  We loved the tour and your hospitality and hope to come back through in the fall!  

Make sure you check out the gardeners websites linked in the post for more info on their gardens and growing beautiful, edible treats in the desert!  They have some beautiful pictures on their blogs. :)

Chicken Coop

Little spaces of beauty throughout the yard

 

Gorgeous flowers

Strawberries! Blackberries are behind, along the fence

Sweet Life Garden's orchard

Even her blueberries are thriving!

Espaliered Apple Tree, along the pool fence. :)

another view of the veggies and flowers

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Yum! Doesn't that look good? It was!