Garden Visitor

This little guy visits our yard every few days. He is a white "Gray" squirrel. He is not a true albino as his eyes are brown and not pink, but he sure is pretty.

This time of year he is quite camouflaged against the snow, but he sure stands out in the summer against the green.

Math Fun

Hannah and Dan love playing with the Math U See blocks.

Art Project

Rachel and Gabe have been working on a Literature Pocket book this year. They are enjoying learning about the illustrators of some great children's books.

One of the recent projects was a technique called scratchboard. The kids colored bright stripes with crayon onto cardstock, painted over it with black paint and then scratched off designs.

The result was fun to make and quite interesting.

Coloring the stripes with crayon

They both loved the painting part

Scratching off their designs
Finished pictures

Cylcamen

I committed to posting at least something once a month for the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day at May Dreams Gardens. I'm terribly late, but wanted to post something in February.

The only thing blooming inside or out right now is this Cyclamen. It is quite pretty, but I sure will be glad when something is blooming outside. We still have ice and snow outside, but hopefully by mid-March, we will have at least a little crocus on display.

Leaving Footprints

Brian has been finishing up a new room for Daniel. The last few coats of paint have been applied.

After Bri had finished, I noticed paint on the floor in the kitchen, just a smudge of white and figured Brian must have gotten some on his shoe and tracked in downstairs.

Upon further investigation, we came across some very incriminating evidence that a little person had tested the dryness of the paint. Just about Dan size!

A little bit more painting was needed, but I love this little footprint on the plywood floor in his room. It will be covered with carpet soon, but someday, someone will remove the carpet and see this little footprint and perhaps smile.

Littles "Plane Day" - 2/16

This marks the second anniversary of Rachel, Hannah and Daniel's arrival. What a day that was. Brian, Bessie and the Littles arrived off the airplane exhausted and bleary-eyed from their 24 hour travel from Manila.

The next days, weeks and months were filled with many difficulties and joys, but we have held steady to the path God has set for us. He is always faithful and so generous with his blessings. Through the difficult times we could see His grace so clearly poured out to us.

We are a family now, with all our flaws and imperfections, but loving each other and still learning new things about each other each day.

Our 1st family picture on February 16, 2006

Our most recent family picture taken at Christmas time 2007

Valentine's Day

I'm trying to incorporate more activites for special days and holidays. The Littles do not understand holidays except for Christmas, so this helps them to learn the holidays, plus it is fun.

Valentine's Day is a good holiday to do some arts and crafts things. We cut up old cereal boxes and each of the kids decorated them with construction paper and markers. These became our "mailboxes".

Our line of finished mail boxes

After that the kids picked out Valentine's. I had picked these up a few weeks back. They had fun deciding on who should get which card. We had Spiderman, PetShop, dog and cats, jungle animals and sea creatures. There seemed to be an appropriate card for each person.

Next we made sugar cookies. How can you go wrong with making cookies. Everyone took a turn cutting out the hearts and putting on the sugar.

All set for oven

Don't they look yummy?

While the cookies baked, we read "The Story of Valentine's Day by Clyde Robert Bulla.

This was a great little book that covered just about every aspect of Valentine's Day. The pictures were very colorful and I enjoyed all the different ideas of who St. Valentine was.

I did not plan a special Valentine's Dinner, so Brian brought home KFC for us. What a treat.

We each opened up our Valentines and had the cookies for dessert.

This Valentine's Day was a fun and special day for us. We all had a good time and the extra activities were enjoyed by all.

Crystal Landscape

Valentine's morning started out gray and cloudy, but the clouds pushed away and the sun came out, leaving a spectacular landscape of snow and ice. It was gorgeous. My photos don't do it justice, but it was like a landscape of diamonds.

I'm still working on this paper technique for close ups. I think these came out a bit better than last week.

Wintry Wednesday

Yesterday was our co-op day. To celebrate Valentine's Day we had a pot-luck lunch. Our co-op is held at our church and there are things like an air-hockey table, foozball, hoola-hoops, jump ropes, balls and all sort of other things. The kids played games and basically had a great time just hanging out together and we mom's had a wonderful time of fellowship.

We have had a lot of very yucky weather recently...snow, sleet, freecing rain, ice, rain, wind and frigid temps. Today was a rerun of last weeks storm, except we got more snow out of it before it turned to freezing rain and after as the rain turned back to snow.

This weather is making us all feel a bit of cabin fever. I am not one to keep the kids inside because of weather, but it is no fun being out in frigid, windy weather or when it is freezing rain, so the kids have not been out much the last week.

Today we were cooped up inside again. We cancelled Bessie's piano lesson due to the weather.

We had a pretty good school day. Rachel started on her new phonics book. Hannah is doing very well with her work. Bessie moves steadily along with all her subjects and Gabe worked quite a bit on his Tiger lapbook today. Dan plays along while we all work.

Rachel and Bess busily working

Legos are a huge hit in our house, everyone loves to play with them, from the youngest to the oldest. Gabe and Dan play almost daily. Dan was such a good boy today and I know it was because he was so engaged in what he was building. He is an excellent builder and you can just see the concentration on his face as he picks out pieces and puts them together.

Gabe has been working on a Tiger lapbook from Homeschool Share. This is a great site for unit studies and lapbooks. Today he put together this 3-D tiger puzzle that he got from the zoo.

Colorful Crystals

We made crystals at our co-op last week. The kids are really enjoying watching the changing scene everyday. This was a very fun albeit messy project.

Rachel's Ninth Birthday

Friday was Rachel's birthday. She had been counting the days and was so excited.

Mom and Dad came over to help us celebrate. Rachel got some very nice clothes from them, some jewelry, hair bands and an art poster to color. We gave her some PetShop sets, more hair stuff, a game and a dinner set (Disney Princess).

Now, please don't look too closely at her brownie sundae (her dessert choice) as I am sure you will notice that big "8" that I put on. Rachel is nine this year. I had a very bad brain moment and put an "8" candle on intead of using nine candles. It wasn't until later that Gabe said, "Too bad you didn't have a #9." Well duh...! The worst part was that Brian was serving and he realized it was the wrong number, but thought I was just letting it go because we didn't have a #9. Oh, well, Rachel didn't notice at all and just loved the whole affair.

Gabe and Rachel try out the new game