Is it really October already?

This is what happens when Daniel decides to play instead of take a nap. I was cooking dinner and told him to go play in his room. After a little while he was too quiet, so I checked on him and found him sound asleep. He's cute, but he's a tough cookie.

Here's a picture of daddy checking out Daniel's hair, all I heard was something about being out of regulation and hair growing over his ears. Then the scissors came out and Daniel started laughing. Apparently, getting a haircut is funny stuff.

While waiting for the tub to fill up, we had enough time for everyone's favorite game of 'where's your belly?'. It always ends in Daniel laughing and saying 'right there'. Then we pick parts of his body that he can find, such as his ear, his toes. Then we really start laughing when we pick parts of his body he doesn't know yet. It took him forever to find his elbow.
It must have been a Wednesday night. Wednesday night is AWANA night. It gets a little crazy dropping Daniel off in the nursery, Megan off in the Cubbie room and Joshua goes with me into the sanctuary where the Sparks meet. Last week we had a fire drill. We needed to get it out of the way before the weather got too cold. There is snow on the mountains right now. I've had many people tell me that snow on the higher elevations means snow on the lower elevations in the next few weeks. Yikes....there was already some really white looking rain coming down the other day on the way out of ballet with Megan.
Here is one of our science experiments. We are learning about things that are alive and plants and animals. We did the whole trick where you put celery in colored water and then it changes the colors on the celery leaves. Joshua was pretty excited. We also made a collage collecting all the seeds from all the different foods we ate that had seeds in them. That was going really well until we ate a peach. The pit is still on the counter top, I couldn't get it to stay on the collage. Duct tape? Joshua has now decided that he would like to be like Johnny Appleseed, so we've been collecting all of our apple seeds and putting them in a baggie, so Joshua can plant them across the country. We decided he should wait until he's big enough to drive by himself, by then we'll have a lot of seeds.

Other big fun stuff going on...I signed up for a spinning class that I'll be taking two days a week. It is getting too dark too soon for me to get out and run as frequently as I'd like. So to shake up my fitness routine, I'll be doing some indoor biking. I did a practice session for just about 30 minutes and it seems like something I'm really going to enjoy.

Mark your calendars, the Nutcracker is the weekend of December 7th. Megan will be making her debut as a bunny. Megan has really gotten attached to one of the teacher's helpers, Britta. It's so cute how excited she is to see Britta when she gets there.

We went to an open house to celebrate the new office for our homeschool contact person. The kids were totally fascinated by the fact that her office wall has some treatment under the paint that makes the wall magnetic. The kids were playing with all the magnets on the wall and just having a blast. I'll have to remember that for the next house, it would be a great way to display the kids' artwork.

Daniel had his last weekend in the nursery during the church service. Next weekend he 'graduates' to the 2 and 3 year old room. Megan is very excited that Daniel will be in her room. I'm very sad that he's going to be 2 in just a matter of days. I'm still looking for ways to keep him small, and I'm open for suggestions.

Another exciting Thursday

Wednesday was Johnny Appleseed's birthday. This is great timing considering we got tons of apples with our organic produce co-op this week. In my search for more ideas about what to do with the apples, I came across a craft turning empty toilet paper holders into Johnny Appleseeds. Joshua was so excited, he insisted we get a picture. We also enjoyed apple crisp when we were done with our craft, and read the Johnny Appleseeed biography and marched our Johnny Appleseeds across our big map visiting the states Johnny visited and continueing to work on our concept of North, South, East, West.

Kids Fit N Fun is back up in full swing. We are enjoying the chance to run around and be loud and jump and stomp and do the things we ordinarilly wouldn't be able to do indoors. There is another mom considering taking the class over. I'm gradually decreasing my 'out of the home' commitments in order to focus on these last few intense classes for school. Here are some pictures of the obstacle course that the kids come into when the class starts.

After Fit N Fun, we ran into Daddy and ended up eating at the galley with him. Daddy had swim training today and was waiting for his turn to swim in the bay (in a survival suit, of course). While we were waiting, the kids and I went down to the Nemetz Gazebo to check out the Kodiak Community MOMS Club open house. While there, Megan wanted to get her face painted like a butterfly.

We love learning!

We have survived our first few weeks of homeschooling. It really is turning out to be quite fun and much more flexible than racing to school in the morning. To catch everyone else up to speed, we made the final decision to homeschool the kids just 2 weeks before the school year was about to start. At first I was unsure about the decision, since I have a great talent of making things much harder than they really need to be. However, it has been fun and allows us to have a little more flexibility than the average school day. Joshua is on lesson 15 of the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book, and already he is reading quite a few words phonetically along with the 'sight words' that he already knows. Yesterday he sounded out and read a three word sentence and he was so proud of himself. He was excited because Keith was home and Joshua was able to read to him. Today we learned about the short I sound. We use a great website www.starfall.com to help reinforce the sound the letters make. Joshua likes to use the computer. I think it is a combination of sitting on my lap getting undivided attention and being able to touch the computer since it is usually off-limits to the kids. We are also doing a lesson about plants right now. He's such a smart little cookie (typical mommy-brag, I'm sure!). We were reading about how paper is made from trees, which he then turned into a recycling lesson so that we could have more trees for owls to live in. He's on a big owl kick since he likes Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and the land of make believe has an owl. We've been learning about Aesop's Fables and trying to determine the lesson behind each of the stories. Earlier today we read The Ant and the Grasshopper. Then fast forward a few hours later when I was asking the kids to get their stuff together for baths. Megan was still playing in her room and Joshua declared that she was a 'grasshopper' because she wasn't getting her work done and she was just playing. I had to chuckle. We have a few science experiments coming up this week, I'll be sure to get some pictures.

Daniel is coloring and putting jewels (stickers) on the King's sceptor. We read the story about Queen Esther, then decorated crowns and sceptors to re-tell the story, then we watched the story on one of our My Bible Friends movies. The good part about homeschooling is that Daniel and Megan can join in on the developmentally appropriate activities.

This is another activity that we were doing. I wrote their names in big letters on constuction paper and they were glueing little foam hands inside the letters. Except for Daniel, he was coloring because he gets too messy with the glue stick.

Yippee for homeschooling - we get to learn in our PJs!

If you think using a glue stick is messy, you should see spaghetti night! For the longest time Daniel would not eat any kind of pasta. I recently made the switch to wheat pasta and he loves it and it looks good on him.

Oh dear! Daniel is in 'time-out' for running in the house, again. Not only does he run, but he makes the 'eeeek, vrrroooommm' sound with his Lightning McQueen slippers while he is running the circle from the livingroom thru the dining room thru the kitchen and back down the hall. Hopefully our next house doesn't have a 'race track' floorplan. His back-pack is filled with important things like a spiderman toy, two bouncy balls and a bunch of unmatched socks that he confiscated from on top of the dryer.

Joshua had a bad cough, so he stayed home the night of the concert. We went to a Music With Mar concert recently. This is Mar, the lady that owns the company. We have a couple of the CD's and the kids enjoy listening to them. She is holding Mr. Froggy. The kids really like the Mr. Froggy song. But even more so they enjoy the tapping sticks songs. We try to go to a Music with Mar class at least every other week.

The State Fair & Rodeo

Here are some pictures from the State Fair and Rodeo. We didn't stay for too long, since it was starting to get cold and rainy.

We took a hay ride all around the grounds. Joshua really enjoyed himself being able to see all the animals.

Here's Keith and Daniel on the hayride.

We packed some snacks to have but ended up buying a couple of corndogs because the smelled so good! Notice how nicely Daniel's head is healing.

Joshua was a real cowboy. He loved his horse ride! Megan didn't even make it on the horse. She was very scared and decided she didn't want to ride the horse after all.

We are just finishing reading Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. Joshua was very excited to be able to pet a pig at the petting zoo, because the story is about Charlotte the spider and Wilbur the pig.

Daniel was very uneasy at the petting zoo. He was nervous because there was a cow standing right in front of him. Can you imagine if he knew what was right behind him?

Here's the crew heading back to the van after an exciting afternoon.

Another trip to the park - August 29th

The weather is turning cooler. We are trying to get in all of our outside playing time before the parks are all covered in snow. Here are the kids playing at Baranof Park.

Megan will sit the whole time on the swings. Even though we have swings in our back yard, she still asks to ride the 'park swings'.

Joshua likes to climb on things. As long as there is something dangerous looking to balance himself on, he's happy.

The artists at work!

On a hot summer day, we painted outside. Here are the kids working on their latest masterpiece. When they were done, they all jumped into their little pool.

more ballet pictures!

These pictures are from August 8th, one of the last days of the summer ballet class. Megan really enjoyed her time this summer and we are glad we enrolled her for the fall ballet session.

Each of the girls took turns tapping out a beat for the other girls to march too.

For this next one, Miss Molly has the girls marching like soldiers and they are supposed to be serious like soldiers. No giggling allowed!! A tough task for a room full of 3 year old girls.