Be Still My Heart

This morning, I dressed the girls in their silks and took them out in the back yard for a photo shoot.

I only took about 2 dozen shots.  It was super quick.  It was still rather brisk outside.  I felt bad wearing long sleeves and a jacket while they were just in their silk dresses (although I had them wear camisoles and bike shorts underneath).  

But they were troopers.  Totally good sports about the whole thing.

Little implings.  They're so adorable.  I feel like I shouldn't gush about how stinkin' cute they are, but sometimes I can't help myself.  How did I get so lucky?

This one is going to be Hannah's school valentine this year.

Katie is not much for smiling on demand yet.

But I promise, she does smile.  And these pictures?  Make me smile.  

Katie says, "Gooshie!" for "hug."  I'm pretty sure I caught Hannah saying gooshie back to her.  If that doesn't melt your heart, I don't know what will.

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Hands on homeschooling with a cement mixer

 

Saturday morning, we woke up to this in the front yard:

Never a dull moment around here, I tell you.  

Remember when we had the fire engine in our driveway overnight?  

This was almost as exciting.  

I drive a big van.  So Paul wanted to widen the driveway, in order to give us a little more room around the vehicles.  

It was pretty cold out first thing in the morning, so the kids started out watching from the windows in their jammies.  That's Jack.

That's Hannah.

But pretty soon, they started popping out to check out the action.  

And it was very interesting to watch.

The pouring,

the smoothing.

All that watching paid off when there was a wee bit of concrete left over.

"Why yes, you can play in the concrete, just put gloves on first."

Unfortunately, Paul had to work on Saturday.  I sent him a picture to let him know the work was starting, and teased him that I was going to sprinkle GLITTER into the wet cement.

He was Not Amused.  The kids, however, thought it was a great idea, so they glittered their patch.  

I remember when I was a kid and my dad let me put my handprint in wet sidewalk by our house.  I would have loved to do the same with my kids, but Paul foresaw disaster, given the number of little paws that would have been.  Sigh.

At least they got this little piece to play in.  

It kept them amused for a while, smoothing it out and starting over.  Writing their name, making leaf fossils, hand prints, glitter...

Um, yeah, that's upside down.  Mad photo editing skillz there.  Oops.  

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Homeschool Weekly Wrap Up #18

Sam recently asked me to teach him how to do laundry.  Warms this mama's heart to hear him crashing around in there and find him doing a load on his own.

If you're a regular reader, you may remember me telling you about a science experiment that flopped, which is one of the reasons we're using Magic School Bus science kids from Educents in addition to our regular science.  

This was the flop we had this week.  The matches were supposed to launch.

They totally didn't.  

We tried several times.  No go.

The cat got chased into the bowels of the house, though these openings.  NOT by one of the children.  Sigh.  He came out again, though.  No visible progress on the bathroom this week, but exciting work got done on the front yard.  (More on that later.)

This week, we learned about Gideon and Samson.  I'm using Write from Ancient History to have Brianna and Eli practice writing a summary of a story, and the book had stories about both Gideon and Samson.  I love it when "extras" line up so well with our main curriculum.  

Another adoptive family blog I follow mentioned Xtra Math, and referred to it as a "math vitamin" which I just had to check out.  It's a free program for basic operations review/practice.  I had Brianna, Eli, and Jack start working on it (it's just a few minutes a day).  I think I'm going to have Hannah try it, too.  

For our next Chinese New Year craft (I'm starting to sound like the guy pulling rabbits out of a hat, aren't I?), we made....

a mess out of the adhesive thingie from Mom's scrapbooking supplies...

but we also made...

using scrapbook paper and Chinese zodiac stickers...

chopstick holders!  Another one of those "not my idea" things I have on my Chinese New Year board on Pinterest.  Fun, easy craft.  

So much so, that Brianna made some more of them while I was reading to the kids during school.  

This coming week, we learn about Ruth, and then Samuel, and the next week, we get into the start of some Greek stuff.  I'm looking forward to something a little different.  

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