Sneak Peak

Here's a sneak peak at our family pictures we took for the Christmas card this year. Only one of them made it. Most of you should be seeing your cards in the next week. It was freezing cold outside when we took these so we weren't able to get a lot. These two are my favorites. Enjoy!

Katie's 1st Ballet Recital

Here are some pictures I took from Katie's first dance recital. They danced to "Silent Night" for Christmas and were dressed as angels. She had a wonderful time and told me that she wants to dance forever. I'm so glad that she's find something she loves so much. I enjoy watching her learn and dance out of every class with twirls and skips and smiles. Enjoy!

Lilly's Birthday

I finally finished editing these at last! Here is Lilly at 12 months. We had so much fun on her birthday. We took her out to pizza and she got a new dress and a new doll. Lilly continues to learn new tricks. Her newest ones are climbing and she is getting really good at climbing onto the coach, chairs, and other furniture and figuring out how to get things. Her only words so far are "mama" and "yeah" but she has been getting more talkative lately so we'll see what tricks she comes up with next.

Lilly at 11 months

I realize this is a little late since she just had her first birthday, but here is Lilly at 11 months old. Isn't she cute? Her new tricks for this month was that she learned to walk a week after turning 10 months old. She is also starting to talk a little more now and her personality comes out more and more everyday.

New Nephew

I had so much fun seeing my new little nephew and taking these pictures. He is so sweet and little. There is nothing like a newborn to show you how big your baby has gotten. Lilly, for her part, liked seeing him too and tried to teach him all her tricks- walking, baby noises, climbing, crawling, and the like. Keep trying girl, I'm sure he'll catch on eventually.

Canoe Field Trip

The one thing I knew from the beginning of our homeschool journey is that if we did homeschool I wanted to have plenty of field trip experiences for our children. I love the idea of hands on experiences that help make what we are learning real and apply to the now. One of our field trips we've taken this year was canoeing down the river. We were learning about the Pilgrims coming to settle the New World and ideally we would have gone out on a sailing ship on the ocean or at least toured an old one. That not being really possible in the land locked state we live in we did the next best thing we could and "sailed" around a river and used our imaginations. Perhaps not authentic in any way, but everyone had fun and we got out and talked about what it would have been like to be on the ocean on a bigger ship. On another note, I think this would make a great creative date idea (hear that Jon!).

Grammar Workshop: Nouns that name people

Every week we do what we call a "grammar workshop" where we work together and learn different grammar rules using books and other ideas to work with the information and make sure we have it down. For example, while doing nouns one day we might identify nouns in a passage from a book and another day we might write a sentence with a noun we found in our passage and again another day we might draw a picture of the noun. Just different things. I use First Language Lessons for the grammar rules and a good order to present them in but I present the material and work with it in my own way and to fit our themes. Today we continued our discussion on nouns that name people and as an assignment we listed as many different common nouns for people that we could come up with. At first it was rather slow getting the kids to be excited about it and I had to help them by asking things like "Who helps you at the library?" Then they got to thinking and remembering that Halloween is coming up so our final list included nouns like:

vampires, witches, zombies, monsters, goblins, dryads, fairies, naiads, princesses, princes, queens, kings, and commoners

I wish I could have learned nouns like that when I went to school. Halloween nouns- I love it!

What to take...

Katie had a project to name some important things to take with her as an immigrant to America in Colonial times. The first thing on her list was books- doesn't sound bad. Then I had to explain to her that a cell phone wouldn't be one of them. She was a little upset that they couldn't call their families from the boat and tell them they were doing okay and to send more corn bread and juice. Somedays it is hard to save the laughter for later, but I think she learned a lot. Her final list looked like this:

1. Books (she has to learn on the boat)

2. Food (she might get hungry)

3. Water (she might get thirsty)

4. Paper and Pen (to write home to her friend M down the street)

5. clothes (an afterthought with some prompting)

First Day of School

We had a big party to celebrate our opening day of school. We introduced our learning adventure for this year- Colonial America. We gave each of the kids a costume and had Captain Moroni come as a guest to tell us about his fight for freedom. I am excited about our learning year. It's been a big thing to put together. I got the idea for the curriculum from courageousbeings.com and am basing this year on their Noble Birthright adventure. However, I've had to write the language arts portion to better suit me, sew costumes, decorate the school room, plan field trips, gather supplies, etc for the year. It almost feels like putting on a play. It's worth it now. A lot of that work will last for the year and I can sit back and enjoy the ride.

The kids loved their first week of school. How it works is they have a certain amount of math and language assignments to do each week and then they can choose their science, history, art, special theme math, music, etc assignments from a list of projects (or come up with their own on mom's approval) that work with our key information for the week. They love having the choice and say they are learning a lot already. It's been great so far. Jon is really getting into the theme as well (I'm so glad I married a man who doesn't mind dressing up like a Nephite for our kids) and is even helping me begin an outline for next year when I plan on writing my own adventure. Fun stuff and also very busy stuff.

Lilly at 9 months

It was really hard to get her to sit still for her 9 month portraits. She's got crawling down this last month and she loves to explore the world around her. Her first experiment when encountering a new object is to put it in her mouth and taste it which was the other difficulty in getting her pictures this month. She's also got her first two teeth in at last and was trying to bite my nose today with them :) She loves to do tricks and we've nicknamed her "monkey" because of it. She'll make sure she is being watched and then will dance or some other thing for people. She also loves waving at people she meets.

Happy Birthday Katie!

Our sweet Katie turned 5 this week! Here is a peak of her pictures :) She says her favorite toy is a barbie house with a barbie. Her favorite movie is Cinderella. Her favorite story is Cinderella. Her favorite thing to do is to make pizza and cookies.

Lilly at 8 months

Our little sweetheart turned 8 months old this last week. She still doesn't crawl but is getting close. She is good at scooting to where she wants to go and she has now pulled herself to a standing position twice on the furniture. She is starting to talk more and it is fun to hear her voice. She continues to love being around people and is very social BUT only if mom or dad are holding her. She is a very calm and good baby and very loved.

Mama's Girl and Silly Boy

I got myself a mama's girl and I love it! Lilly has entered that clingy stage where she likes her parents more then anyone else and her mommy in particular.

First Lemon

Don't the pictures say it all? The funny thing is this is her 3rd or so taste since I didn't have the camera out for her first. She kept going back for more, so maybe it wasn't so bad really.

Lilly at 7 months

Here are some 7 month pictures of Lilly. This month she's learned to stick out her tongue and spit. My favorite new skill that she's learned is to give kisses. She takes your face in both hands and brings your face down to her mouth and then she starts "kissing" or eating you for a second or two, and then let's go with a big grin on her face. Really wet and adorable. She's starting to scoot around a little to move. Other then that she continues to be a really happy, easy-going baby and we sure do love her.

Silly

It always seems like my kids are the most happy when they are being silly :)

Jedi Sam

Samuel got to go to a birthday party for a boy in his class at school this last month. This little boy LOVES Star Wars so the mom created the theme around Jedi training. So cute! Here is Sam dressed up and ready to learn the ways of the Jedi and showing off his light saber moves.

Soccer

I put the boys in the Rec Soccer for this next year. They have a camp they do in the summer for it and then they will start to play games in the Fall. So far they are loving it. Each player got a free soccer ball for signing up and they love playing in the backyard with each other. They've made some new friends already and I think it will be a good experience for them.

Dragons

I was reading to Katie from the book Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George (I got to meet the author yesterday btw- so much fun!- and get my book autographed!). If you love fairy tales these books are for you and my girl LOVES fairy tales. In fact, all my kids do. As the name suggests there are dragons in the book.

So at dinner today Katie says in this growly voice "I am powerful! I am a dragon with huge jagged teeth. Grrrrrrr!"
Samuel tells her "I'm not afraid of you!"
Katie: "You're not afraid of me? I am drinking lions blood (juice) and eating bears (bread and pasta and veggies) so I can be the biggest dragon of them all! Grrrrrrr!"

They then went on to all be dragons roaming the land and eating bears and drinking lions blood so they could grow to be the biggest beasts. Even Lilly was a dragon though her growl was more a fierce sticking out her tongue at you and spitting (a new habit). As they ate more and more bites of their grizzly dragon meals they started to slowly stand up on the chairs like they were growing until they were finished eating and started jumping around on the floor in this jumping jack kind of motion to signify more growth. Then they flew around the house to rescue maidens and do other noble dragon deeds.

Lilly at 6 Months

Lilly turned 6 months this last month. She keeps on getting bigger and more beautiful. I finally got a picture of her sucking her thumb. She is not huge into binkies, though she does use them when she is tired to get to sleep, so she's developed this habit of sucking on her thumb. She is the only one of my kids to do so. She's generally a very happy and patient baby and a joy to us all. She loves playing with toys and being with people. She's sitting up very well and can roll over.