Happy Early Thanksgiving

I haven't posted in a few days and now there's a lot I'd like to post about and I'm sure I'll forget most of it. :)

We're leaving tomorrow to go to Ohio for Thanksgiving. I think I have about half of the things done that I wanted to get done. We're nearly all packed....which means, I have managed to get all the boys packed up but can't decide what I want to take to wear. :)

Last week we finished up our How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World lapbook. :) Thanks to a wonderful woman named Robin, we were able to start Cranberry Thanksgiving. First of all, that is one of my favorite FIAR books so far. I haven't read too many of them yet, we're still working our way through Volume 1, but I love it. We didn't do too much with it because I didn't want to stress out with getting a lot done due to the short week this week. I did find this great link on Scholastic.com that talks about the first Thanksgiving. It had a lot of great info and really helped my little guy who didn't know how Thanksgiving started. I'll try to find the link and post it here. :)

Adisson is doing very well skip counting by fives. :) He's very excited to learn to skip count by two's. I'm excited to work on that with him next month.

Adisson's also been enjoying his Master's Club A LOT! Last week he came home with three new badges! Tonight he had a little gift bag from his teacher's because his birthday is on Saturday. I really appreciate how great they are to him, and well, all the kids that go. :) What a blessing!

I guess I don't talk much about Zander, since most of my rambling is about school. Zander is getting more and more verbal. He has the BEST manners in the house. :) There's something especially rewarding as a parent when you have conversations with your toddler that go like this ..... I sneeze and say "Excuse me." Zander says "Bless you." I say "Thank you, honey!" and he responds with "Allcome!" Or if we're walking down the hall and pass each other, he says "Excuse me." :) He's very concerned with other people, too. If someone hurts themself, like is getting clothes from the washer and putting them in the dryer (we have a stackable unit) and hits her head on the dryer door and he says "Are you ok?" And if he does something silly and hurts himself we ask him if he's ok and he always says "Ohh, I'm fine, I'm fine." He's just a delight to be around. He's always making us laugh and we just enjoy being around him. He has a crazy temper and screams quickly, but that's just how it is to be two sometimes. Heck, I feel that way some days myself. :) I'm just so blessed and so grateful.

Last week we went to the zoo for our homeschooling class. I love the class. It's really great. Last week they touched a skunk (descented) and a boa constrictor and looked at a scorpion's exoskeleton under a black light. :) Then we hung out in the zoo for about an hour. It was unseasonably cold and I forgot my coat at home, but it didn't make much of a difference since most of the animals said they'd rather be inside, too and we didn't get to see them.

Ok, I'm just rambling now and I really need to get to bed as I have several hours worth of stuff to get done tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ohh, he looks kind of upset.... :)

So we're finishing up our How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World lapbook. We've got most of it done, we just want to do a painting project tomorrow. :)

Adisson had Master's Club tonight. It's pretty similar to AWANA's as far as I know. Same premise nonetheless. He goes on Wednesday nights for about an hour and a half. Last time he was there, he got his vest. He's been wanting it so badly so I was so excited to pick him up last time and see that he had it! :) He also got a patch that I waited until the last minute to get sewn on this evening, despite having two weeks to get it done. When he came home tonight, he had three more patches to put on! I was so happy for him! And to make life easier...I sewed them on to his vest this evening. :) Master's club comes early next week because of the holiday and I don't want to be rushed. :)

I'm so very excited to start Cranberry Thanksgiving tomorrow. Along with the incredible amount of Thanksgiving crafts I want to get done before next Wednesday. :) I'm trying to limit the amount of projects, but there are so many things I want to do! I think Sunday might be our craft day. :) And also the day we start packing for our quick trip to Ohio.

Adam's supposed to get his tattoo finished up tomorrow afternoon. And the boys and I are going to the zoo on Friday. I was hoping Adam would get to go with us, but it looks like he will have to work. :( He hasn't worked more than a few hours in the three weeks he's been home and on the one day I make plans with him to go somewhere with us, he's going to have to work a full day. Kinda disappointing. I was hoping to go to the art museum after the zoo, but if Adam doesn't go, we'll just come home.

There is no charge for awesomeness

There's a few things I want to blog about before I forget to do so! We've got some fun school stuff to talk about, too, but I'll write about that later today! :)

First of all, my baby turned 2 yesterday! :) 2 years old already! He's silly, funny, precious, wonderful and amazing, and just the most wonderful addition to our family. God has truly blessed me with my boys and I'm grateful for them everyday. :)

Next up, Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. :) When Adam and I were together in high school and afterwards, we always spent our Christmas' with our own families....but Thanksgiving, we always spent together. :) Of course since we've been married we haven't spent all of our Thanksgivings together, just 2 of the 5. By the grace of God he is home in time this year, which is truly amazing and wonderful! :)

Five in a Row, the best curriculum ever*, has a great Thanksgiving book to utilize for the holiday and I've been so excited to row it. But I can't find it. Now, I have managed to find a few on eBay, but my husband adamantly refuses to spend $30 on a worn out book. I've been searching for a copy of it for nearly three weeks so at this point, I'd pay A LOT for any copy....but to no avail. I've ordered it used on a few sites only to have my order cancelled because they really don't have the book they said they had. I posted briefly about my woes on the Five in a Row message board....about how I cannot get my hands on a copy (oh and my library does not carry it...I've checked....A LOT). And a wonderful woman said she had an extra copy she'd mail me...for free. And she lives just in the next state so it shouldn't take too long to get to me. Ok, no shame in admitting it...I nearly cried. It was just like God himself had said, I told you I'd get you a copy. :)

*Oh, so I'm biased because it's what we use and love. :) Besides being the best way for Adisson to learn, the manuals also come with the best author/publisher team ever....that in itself is worth....well, it's priceless really. :)

Things are going well here. We've been doing a little life learning lately since Daddy is still home so much. :) But since he's at work right now, I really need to get the kitchen cleaned up and laundry done. I'll be back later with school updates. :)

I'm a Pirate....ArghhhH!

Yesterday was a weird day. I'll save our crazy trip to Clarksville for my other blog, but I will share our homeschooling goodies here!

We continued working on our How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World lapbook. We didn't add much to our lapbook yesterday but we reviewed all of the country information we had made on Monday. We started a salt and evaporation expirement. We'll be adding those pages in the lapbook later this week.

Adisson started working on counting by fives yesterday. I think I'm going to purchse the counting by five's song by Skip Count Kid on Amazon.com. You can buy the whole album as MP3's and save over $4.00 over having the cd sent to you. I might do that instead of purchasing just one song. That way when it's time to learn how to count by other numbers I already have the songs.

We continued on with our handwriting exercise this week of writing one nice thing about each family member. Yesterday it was about Zander.

We were going to make bread yesterday but we ended up shopping last night and didn't get to, so we'll be making the bread today.

I also ordered piano lesson materials for Adisson. It's from Pianimals. They offer some samples on their website and I printed off those pages to see if Adisson liked them and he did, so I went ahead and got the A Book and the Holiday book. I know he'll LOVE learning some Christmas songs. He plays with my Grandma when we visit, as she's the only one with a piano, and he loves being able to show her something he's learned. So I'm excited that I think I've found something that he enjoys a little better than the stuff we've tried in the past.

We're also (or just me probably) working on stuff for the boys birthday party that is on the 29th. Instead of buying a pinata, I think Adisson and I are going to make one, but we'll see. That might be a little harder than I'm anticipating and I might just buy one instead. It's a circus themed birthday party. But I'm also planning a baby shower for my brother and his girlfriend for the same day, so I'm pretty busy with that. And some volunteering I've got going on this month for the Fisher House.

Anyway, that's what we're doing for school right now. I'm still searching endlessly online for a copy of Cranberry Thanksgiving so we can row it next week. But I'm pretty cheap and just can't justify spending $30 on a book. I know, it isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but I usually buy our books for under a dollar...it's just hard to think that I'll be spending that much money on a book that is in "fair" condition.

I hope your homeschooling adventures are taking you somewhere fun.

I love days like today!!

So, this is what we did today!!! :)

First of all, we are rowing the book How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman. We started it today. It's such a great book! In case you aren't familiar, it's about gathering up the freshest ingredients from around the world to make an Apple Pie! We purchased the Fold N Learn from Five in a Row and it has the BEST pictures! It is soooo worth it! I'm hoping to add some great pictures of our completed Lapbook at the end of the week. We still have to do two things to finish up last week's lapbook from The Glorious Flight and I'll hopefully add pictures of that one as well.

We of course did our Math. Tomorrow we start learning how to count by fives. He knows how to count by tens really well, so I'm hoping we can learn the fives quickly. I think we'll be using SkipCountKid to help because Adisson can learn just about anything if you sing it in a song. :)
Our handwriting this week will culminate into a book. He is writing a sentence about a family member everyday. Today his sentence was My Daddy makes me laugh. Tomorrow he'll be writing a sentence about his brother. One sentence is just about all I can get from him without too much grumbling. :)

Our Bible time lately has been reading through a children's Bible. The stories are easy for Adisson to read and easy to understand and we love it. So we read three stories (2 pages each) each day. It's really great.

We've stopped doing a weekly spelling list. It's been very boring and it's too easy. I've tried making more difficult lists, but it's still tedious and boring. He'll learn how to spell in due time. I'm not at all stressed about it now. :)

We're allllways reading. He reads all day. Everything he gets his hands on. :) I try to schedule specific books to be read on each day, but he reads so much anyway that it doesn't concern me if he doesn't read that particular book.

Today we also tried an "Egg"xpirement. In the book we're working on this week, we're supposed to go to France to get fresh eggs for our pie. But instead of carrying around an egg through our journey, we're supposed to just bring the chicken, so the egg stays safe. So we put our egg in a baggie and Adisson was supposed to carry it around with him to see how long it would take to break. But we kept laying it down and not carrying it around. So we're going to try again tomorrow.

In England, we are supposed to bring home a "well mannered" cow. If we bring home the cow, we can be sure we have the freshest milk. Once we get home with the cow, we are supposed to milk the cow and churn the milk into butter for our pie. So today we made our own butter. I picked up some heavy cream at WalMart. We put some in cream into clean, empty baby food jars and shook like crazy. And then we had homemade butter! We're saving it until tomorrow. We're hoping to make our own bread. It doesn't have much to do with making apple pie, but we're learning the process of liquid and dry measurements and how to make things go from ingredients into something yummy. :)

Today the boys had dentists appointments. It was Zander's very first appointment. I was nervous for him. But he did sooooo good. His brother did wonderfully as well. We were super excited to hear that neither of our boys had any cavities!! I did hear that my baby needs to start working on giving up his pacifier.... :( but anyway! We stopped and picked up a gingerbread house to work on tonight after dinner! None of us had ever decorated a gingerbread house before and we were so excited to work on one tonight. We all had such a great time!!

So that was our day! I know, it's a lot and it was fun! Adam was home from work today...he doesn't work tomorrow either for the holiday. It's nice to have around so much, the boys will miss him when he's working more during the day. But it's so nice to have him around a lot right now. It will likely be that way until next year...which is a blessing! :)

Ok, I let the kiddos stay up late and it's time for bed! Enjoy your evening!!

Oops...I forgot to blog!

Ok, it's been entirely too long since I blogged. And I miss it. It just got so busy here. We went to Ohio for three weeks and then we came home and I was very sick and then we had to get ready for my husband to come home....it was intense.

But he's home, finally! It's been so nice to have him here! This weekend is a long weekend for him due to Veteran's Day so he's been off since Friday morning and won't be back in to work until Wednesday! :) Yay!

For a few weeks, schooling was a little scattered. We read allll the time and worked on math and played learning games, but the intentional schooling was not as frequent. But we've gotten back on track now.

Last week we rowed The Glorious Flight. It was a great story and Adisson loved it. He enjoyed the activities we worked on. He especially loves art so he was excited to draw some pictures. We made a lapbook, as well, and it was great. Daddy was excited to see what Adisson worked on!
I'll post pictures of our lapbook this week. I know, I've got to get some pictures of my kiddos up here!

This week, we are rowing How to Make Apple Pie and See the World. I really wanted to row Cranberry Thanksgiving next week, but I cannot find it anywhere. I've borrowed How to Make Apple Pie, but I really want to buy it as my goal is to have all of Volume 1 and Volume 2 books purchased before the end of this year...this school year, not 2008. :)

This week in Math Adisson will be learning to count by fives and working on his addition and subtraction facts. He's doing pretty well in math despite the constant whining about it. :) He despises writing so that's a chore. We've found a great kid's Bible that we are reading out of so that's been so much more pleasant. And he's nearly finished up his reading program...which was a second grade reading program. So I'm now on the hunt for more books on his reading level. I don't want to buy the next part of the program just yet because I don't know if he's really ready for it, but I might be getting it in the Spring, if he continues doing so well.

Ok, well, there is our update. Things are going really well here and we're getting excited for the boys' birthdays coming up. Zander turns 2 on the 17th and Adisson turns 6 on the 29th. We're having a big family party on Adisson's birthday as it's the Saturday after Thanksgiving and we've always had their parties on that weekend. We'll be purchasing birthday goodies this week!
WOO HOO!

I'll be back soon....I promise!! :)