My Heart and Mind 10 Years Later

I find myself deeply saddened, as if it the attacks just happened. While I was sad ten years ago, it's hitting me differently now.  I hear about all the children and spouses who lost someone in those vicious attacks while going about a normal day just like any other, and I think about us going through the motions of our routines only to have our lives absolutely halted.  I can't bear to imagine.

Ten years ago I was a sophomore in college and in biology class (a class which I later dropped) when the attacks actually occurred.  I did not hear about the attacks until I was driving home after class.  I was flipping through the radio stations trying to find some music, but it was all news. I figured it must be something pretty important so I listened, and that's how I found out.  I didn't know Ryan then (we met a year later), but he was in basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, MO.  Of all places! His mom was losing her mind since she didn't know he was going to be immediately shipped somewhere.  I remember a rumor going around that they were going to start up the draft again and remember feeling relieved my brothers were only 13 at the time. Kinda silly, I guess. Ironically one of my brothers is now a soldier, training at Fort Sam Houston. 

We are a nation that needs Jesus, and all we can do is pray and share. I will never forget.

Week in Review #42: Ff is for Farm and Family Reading

The activity you see above was by far my favorite and the idea just came to me while flipping through my Pinterest boards.  The girls "built" a farm with various printables.  All I did was glue on the "sky" and "grass" on big pieces of cardboard, and then I let the girls creativity take over. :) Autumn was more interested in seeing how much glue she could layer on. Four (!) glue sticks later we were done. Glad I stocked up during all the back to school stuff. :)

The completed works:

All is well on Hannah's side of the pasture...

..unfortunately Hurricane Autumn went through and
mixed everything up a little. :)

More fun from the week:

Building airplanes (this was her doing!
Impressive!)

Making numbers with the new Play Doh set
her daddy got her

Fall Bingo

Flower puzzle

Hannah pointing to something intriguing
in her math

My cool mom moment of the week--licking beaters while
I made snickerdoodles!

Isn't this the cutest coloring page? Capital
and lowercase letters are each a different
color so you can see what the picture is
(in case it wasn't obvious :p)

Hannah is doing great with the Daily Language Review.  Of course the concepts aren't really review for her so we're having to spend a day or so more on each assignment, which is fine. She's understanding what makes a sentence and what doesn't. Everything else is going along just fine as well. She's still very much into astronomy. On Wednesday we talked about how cold Mercury gets when it's not facing the sun.  I asked her to draw in her notebook what Mercury looks like when it's cold. She drew Mercury in an ice cube! I just laughed out loud! How clever is she!

I did not stress myself this week at all. We got back from Clarksville on Tuesday, so we only had a 3-day week.  We still got the basics done--math, language, Bible, and astronomy. Autumn has recently taken to this animal puzzle game on my phone and can put together all of them in mere minutes. I was sneaky and put it at the next level of difficulty and she still did well. :)

 During meals we have picked up again on reading Little House in the Big Woods.  The kids didn't seem very interested after a couple chapter, but then Hannah asked me to read some one day during lunch and we've done it every day. Although Hannah has the tendency to interrupt constantly, just with whatever random thought that pops into her head (Gee, Ryan, I wonder where she gets that from!).  Today I finally had to tell her that if she interrupts then I was going to stop reading and we  would just pick it up again the next time.  She seems unhappy to stop so abruptly, so maybe it'll work.

The weekend is already looking full--soccer game, birthday party, and church! Fun stuff!

Printables

Build-A-Farm: Barnyard Friends by Whimsy Primsy, At the Farm Printables
Flower Puzzle: 2 Teaching Mommies
ABC coloring pages: Hidden Picture Color by Letters
Bingo cards: DLTK's Custom Bingo Cards

This post is linked up to the Weekly Wrap-Up.

A Tropical Dora Birthday

Despite their appearance, I assure you they
were quite thrilled with the  festivities

Meagan and I were talking about both wanting to give a Dora themed party for our girls (who are 15 days apart) and my mom had leftover tropical/Hawaiian decorations from an office party. We decided to combine the two, and an adorable shin dig was born! 

My mom had this great idea for "birthday trees".  Autumn and Emma each had one with their presents under it.

And the cake! YES! So proud of it! I made it and did the frosting while Meagan bought the Dora and Boots and put all that together. Way better than anything Wal-Mart or Publix could have done!

I dyed half the frosting blue for the water, obviously, and spread on the rest of the frosting and covered it with graham cracker crumbs for sand.  At first I was going to use brown sugar for sand.  Meagan bought the Dora and Boots figures and the trees were from my mom's leftover decorations.

I am very excited by how everything turned out, and that it was still hot enough to swim! Just a couple days later it was 65 degrees outside! Crazy! Although I am very pleased with the change in weather. Long overdue if you ask me.  

Wordless Wednesday: Paging, Dr. Emma!

My niece, Emma, has really taken to playing doctor and giving us all "exams" and even the occasional diagnosis (I once had dead crabs in my stomach...ouch).  What better gift for her birthday than a doctor's kit! I found this Melissa & Doug set on Amazon complete with lab coat! I think her favorite thing is giving everyone shots, probably to get revenge on all the immunizations she's receiving over the past few years. ;)

DIY Air Freshener--Awesome for Fall!

My mom used to do this when I was a kid and it always made me hope she was baking something yummy! :) The smell is perfect to welcome the glorious season that is FALL!!! Take the peels from 2-3 oranges, put in a large sauce pan of water, and sprinkle in a generous amount of cinnamon (or nutmeg, pumpkin pie spice, whatever fall scent you like :-D).  Heat to a rapid boil and turndown to medium.  Let simmer until water is almost completely evaporated. This will last about 45 minutes to one hour.  Once the water is gone the smell will last about a good while!

Week in Review #41: Ff is for Flower and Frazzled

I typically read our current astronomy lesson to both girls
while they have lunch

My computer had been having issues with not recognizing the cord when plugged in and the battery does not hold a charge worth anything. So I've been a week without a computer. Gotta love these first world problems. :-p It has not been so horrible since I can keep up with everythying via iPhone. 

Ryan took my little computer with him to the academy and he brought it with him this weekend. I'll have a computer again! Hallelujah!

Hannah and I started using Evan-Moor Daily Language Review this week. Each day is a very simple language lesson (the structure of a sentence, spelling, etc) and you can easily expand on each lesson. Of course we hit a few bumps since it's something new but I'm sure after a while it'll be fine.

Autumn loved all the gluing activities (see below) and kept asking for more, so I was pretty sorry I didn't have more prepared. Watch, I'll prepare a ton of gluing activities and she won't have any interest. :-p I'll still do it though...just because I love her. Heh.

We managed some good activities this week in the midst of being busy with church, soccer, and getting ready for our trip to Clarksville.  We got here yesterday and I am ready to enjoy some birthday fun later this afternoon!

The flower activites are from 2 Teaching Mommies and the fall coloring book is from Kid Sparkz.

Piecing a flower together with various shapes

A great intro to all that is fall! :)

Don't all flowers need cars and pizza?

Next week will once again be brought to you by the letter 'F' and we will do more with fall and farm!

And don't forget to "like" us on Facebook! Look to the right and you'll see our profile! :)


This post is linked to the Weekly Wrap-Up

Week in Review #40: Ee is for Earth and Eccentric Education

The week started out with an unplanned trip to the zoo! Hannah's lesson in her Bible curriculum was animals of day 5, and Autumn had a file folder game where she had to separate animals into three categories: ocean, farm, and zoo. Feeling like a super cool mom, I said, "You know where we can go and see these animals..."  Both girls immediately cried out, "The zoo!!" So we got dressed, packed the cooler and away we went. The zoo was eerily quiet since school is back in session.  It was actually kind of nice.

Hannah narrates to me in her own words
what she is learning from the latest lesson
and copies it in her astronomy notebook.

I've been reading the astronomy lessons to both the girls while they're eating or working on a craft.  We skipped to lesson 5 for this week, the lesson on Earth to obviously coincide with Autumn doing "E for Earth" stuff.  It's all very interesting.  Either I was never taught this in school or I just did not pay attention to ANYTHING! :)

Hannah got a 94 on this test ;-D

The rest of the week was very productive.  New activities started this week for Wednesday night church.  I was quite pleased with that.  The girls were beyond giddy to go to their own groups.  I think we all were anxious to get away from each other for a couple hours. :)

Other activities from the week:

Earth bingo (Hannah called it Earth-O)

 I printed these bingo cards from DLTK.  You can customize them with different themes and sizes. I think we'll be using these alot! :)

The morning board in action!

Earth craft..super easy! Blue paper circles,
scraps of green paper, pulled apart cotton
for clouds.

No, TV is not part of the curriculum, but they
were sitting so nicely together I had to get
a picture. :)

Autumn working on dry erase pages

animal sorting

Sensory bin...this was a big hit! I should have brought it out
forever ago! I'll be making plenty more of these!

First soccer practice! Hannah loves it!
More on that later I'm sure.

Next week is F which will be a combination of flower, fall, and farm!

This post is linked up to the Weekly Wrap-Up