Trip to the Orchard

Tidbits

1. Bella got her ears pierced - princess crown earings - Blogger doesn't like pictures today.
2. I took the kids ice skating for the first time today. Anna Kate picked it up fastest, Rose was doing the best by hour's end, Ethan tried hard. :^)
3. After raining for two weeks, the weather has turned beautiful - and fallish. Highs in the 70s this week. I spent the rainy week switching out summer and winter clothes - almost done.
4. Moon names are fascinating and my favorite, the Harvest Moon, is coming up on Sunday.
5. We're studying history via ABEKA's third grade history book, Our American Heritage this year. It travels a timeline of American history by biography. We covered Christopher Columbus, and are now studying John Smith. Next week is Pocahontas.
6. If you're studying John Smith or Jamestown this year, On the Trail of John Smith at National Geographic Kids is such a fun online resource! Animated, narrated videos and interactive games are a great way to remember history.
7. I asked Rose what she wanted for Christmas last night. She wants a pink rubber band.

First Day of Fall

Watch this

Make this or this

Try this

Color this

Draw this

Wear this

Write on this

Happy Autumn!

graphics courtesy of akidsheart.com

Waffles

Rosie the Earlybird: Mom, will you get up and make me something to eat? I'm hungry. (She says this many mornings.)

Me: Sure, Rose, just give me a minute.

Rose: I put forks on the table, so we need to eat something forky. Like waffles!

A bit later:

Rose: Do you have any powers, Daddy?

Daddy: Am I Superdad?

Rose: You have the power to make waffles!

Beach Pics

Okay folks, so I took 345 pictures, not counting the lousy ones I deleted.

Here are some favorites.

Check out those glasses -
it's the last time you'll see them -
good thing we had a very nice spare pair. :^)

Rosie's Beach Cake

Ethan was thrilled to find this rope at the pier.

The "pirate ship"

We think it was hunting the hippopotamus

Rosie saw in the waterway.

Rosie's Ocean Dance

Do you see the crab?

the candy shop

crab legs, baby!

Bella loved watching the tide -

it was so hard to get her picture!

A stop at the fishing pier before heading home

We're back

Booty?!

A couple of weeks ago, the children's Bible study included a story that ended with the Assyrians gathering booty, to which Ethan responded with a shocked look and a "What!!??"

Yesterday, I took him for his first visit to the eye doctor. He was a little on the spastic side. They seemed to enjoy it. Turns out the doctor was home schooled until college and the nurse outdid him by having seven sisters. At one point during the nurse's initial exam she said to Ethan, "I just have one more thing." Ethan wryly replied, "Where I come from there's always 'one more thing.' " It cracked her up. :^)

A Fun Day

We got to study constellations today - fun! The children seemed to all be in good moods and enjoyed their worksheets, the book we read, and the DVD we watched. The man in the DVD on space was standing with a moving outer space background behind him (you couldn't see the ground or his feet). Rose wanted to know if he was on his porch or if he really was in outer space.

Brian got off early like he's supposed to on Fridays, but doesn't as early or as often as he used to these days - so that was a big plus for the day and allowed us to carry out our Family Night plan - a paddle boat rental at the nearby state park (they close at 5PM). It seated four, so the three older kids went with Brian. He and Ethan pedalled while the girls sat on the backseats and dangled their feet in the lake. Bella and I hung out and watched.

The children very much wanted to go swimming in the lake, but we instead hit the trail to a spot on the mountain creek that has a trail to it and some benches and is a nice ankle - knee length depth area. They had fun wading and crossing a fallen log, although, they kept trying to get me to cave in to their idea of swimming back at the lake beach. Rose brought me the prettiest rocks from the creek to look at while I held Bella, I wish I had taken a picture of them. Ethan was sure every unusual rock was a meteorite.

Back at the ranch(house), we cleaned up, got Ethan's earache back under control (swimming in the lake would have been a bad idea), and had some buckwheat pancakes with last years vanilla pear sauce from the freezer. We even got to read a really cool glow in the dark book of the constellations. (And, wow! I just went to find the link for that on Amazon and ended up with a good condition hardcover used copy being shipped to me for a total of $5.03!!)

Last tidbit for the day. Brian charges Anna Kate and Ethan's mp3 players at the desktop CPU. He'd returned Anna's recharged player to her and she immediately immersed herself in her favorite Hannah Montana song - it's very catchy.



A bit later, Brian called to Ethan to let him know that his player was syncing and Anna called back through the house, "yeah, mine's already sunk. "

Well, I can't get the computor to acknowledge my SD card, so I'm giving up for now and can hopefully add pics to this post later.

News and a Great Find

Sorry for the scarcity, it seems that we are trying out any and all available illnesses of the non-life-threatening variety. Still very capable of rendering everything in the household behind schedule. So we've started a bit of school. We're going to the beach in a few weeks, so I'm doing a few multi-subject units until we get back and settle into our regular schedule. This week is comets, asteroids, and constellations in honor of the Perseides, which, incidentally, we won't be seeing this year due to cloud cover. Next week will be insects and the next water and the ocean.

So science being the name of the game, I was once again searching for some really good Creation science stuff that is available on line, kid-friendly, not fifty years old, and not cheesy. Tall task.
Yield: a couple good finds.

Watch this:



This is the stuff that makes me cry. You know, when you do those quizzes and it asks, "last time you cried?", I'm sitting there trying to remember the last time I saw something like this. Or a Hallmark commercial.

Now the best part is, you can order the DVD, or watch it right on their website here. Beautiful.

Another find was the KidsAnswers page at AnswersinGenesis. They've got some great articles and cute videos there. You can order issue reprints of the kids magazine (which is an insert in Answers magazine). I'm thinking of doing that. Wish someone would publish a full size creation science magazine for younger kids, but this is something.

So off I go to try to get some rest. I'm running a fever for the third day in a row, but only have moderate cold symptoms (so what's with the endless fever !?). Ethan has an outer ear infection, I believe, that hasn't gone full-blown yet and I'm trying to home-remedy it unless it should take a turn for the worse. And Rose has had a cold that keeps almost getting better for about three weeks now. I'm calling the doctor tomorrow unless she wakes up snot-free. Anna Kate and Bella are the only two to not have been sick in the past few weeks, and Brian is also well at the time that this post went to press.

So there you have it. It wasn't too shabby of a post after all. I should do this more often. In all my spare time. Yeah.