Snow Much Fun!

This was our first real snow this year!  For about three days, we had snow flurries for much of the day but nothing that would really stick.  The kids were going crazy!  They wanted real snow!

Well, they got it!  Our first winter storm left us with about 4-5 inches of snow, lots of ice, and even a snow day on Monday!

Rylee and McKay wasted no time making snow angels, rolling around, and, of course, eating the snow!

Even crazier is the fact that the temperatures have been very cold - well below zero when the wind chill is factored in.  These kids definitely take after their daddy - there is no way you'd get me out to play in the snow with temperatures that cold!  My favorite line is, "I'm NOT ready to come in yet!  I'm not even cold!" McKay says through rosy red cheeks, shivers, and quivering lips!

Haydn ventured out in the snow with his Razor scooter!  He loved sliding around everywhere and can't wait for some big snow piles to go scooting down!

Though I wouldn't play outside yet, I did get the hot cocoa all ready for my little ice cubes!  I'll venture out when the temperatures are above zero! :)

Hello Mr. Yellow Belt!

Last night, Haydn became an official yellow belt in karate!  Testing was about two weeks ago so this has been an eagerly awaited night for Haydn!  When they announced, "White belts, turn around and remove your belts" I thought Haydn was going to burst from all the anticipation!  He was all smiles as he was "belted" and that ribbon of yellow was wrapped around his waist!

As Haydn finally settled down for the night (after an ice cream brownie sundae celebration with some close friends), he thanked God that now he could line up with the yellow belts during class!  So cute!

Good bye white belt!

Hello yellow belt!

Haydn with Miss Tonya and Mr. Gary

Haydn and Mr. Vito

Haydn's best warrior face as he poses with Master Collins

Smiles and Laughter

Quick!  Grab the camera!  They all love each other right now!  :)

With three kids close in age, every moment of our day isn't filled with smiles, laughter, and goofiness.  A visit to our home would definitely reveal some bickering, fighting, and, yes, some screaming!  So, when there are moments like the ones shown in these pictures, I try to capture them as fast as I can!

What do you do when you're cold?  Hop in Dad's shirt with him, of course!

This picture doesn't do justice to what's happening.  This is Rylee wearing Momma's boots, eating a cookie, and saying, "Hmmm . . . these are great cookies!  Thanks for helping me guys!"  She just loves to play "mommy" these days!

Our Little Scholars

I get asked a lot what our school day looks like.  We always start our day with prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a look at the calendar, followed by our Bible lesson and some songs.  Then the kids head into their own activities.  Some days you'd see all the kids working together in one area and sometimes they are each in a different part of the house, working on their own "stuff." 

During our Egyptian studies, I took Haydn to an archaeological museum on the U of M campus.  While there, he purchased a mummy excavation kit.  Boy, did he love that!  After two days of excavating, Haydn discovered a sarcophagus with a mummy hidden inside.  What a great learning activity to wrap up our Egyptian unit!

Miss Rylee's school year is centered around learning her letter sounds and how to (informally) write the letters.  We incorporate reading, science, math, and social studies into her letter sounds.  We do a lot of hands-on activities, but Rylee's favorite thing is definitely writing and doing activities in her "preschool book."  In this picture, she was learning to write the letter I.  She was most excited to figure out that she could now write the words "Hi Rylee!"

McKay follows along with Rylee in our preschool world.  He is learning to recognize all his letters and picking up a lot of the sounds as he goes.  In this picture, he is using some wood pieces to build the letter I.

I look at these pictures and can't help but to be amazed!  It seems like yesterday we were amazed when they learned to roll over.  Now we have a house full of scholars who amaze us each day with how much they are learning!

On this day, six years ago . . .

On this day, six years ago, Chris and I were holding our very first child.  I remember those first moments of wondering how in the world we were really going to take care of this little blessing.  Today, that little blessing turned six years old. 

I don't know why I couldn't get this kid to take a serious picture just once today! :)  He said, "This is my six year old picture, mom!"  So, here you have it: Haydn at 6 years old!

To celebrate his birthday, Haydn got to choose today's menu.  He picked waffles for breakfast, taco salad for lunch, homemade pizza for dinner, and icecream brownie sundaes instead of a birthday cake.  Of course, we still had to have candles and sing "Happy Birthday!"

Six candles on melting ice cream . . . make a wish fast! :)

No birthday would be right without a couple gifts!  Between some close friends and family, Haydn came away with a Hot Wheels color changing track, a Corvette Transformer, a Toy Story wrist watch, K'Nex, Scooby Doo game, and some card games!  It was pretty cute hearing him list each one of those items in his thank you's to God tonight!

It was so hard for Rylee not to "help" Haydn open his gifts!

With three kids and lots of nieces and nephews, we decided once the kids turned five that we wouldn't do big parties anymore.  So, Haydn got to choose two friends to do something cool with him for his birthday.  This Saturday, he is taking two friends to the Monster Truck Jam!  Haydn is super excited! 

I can't help be reminded of a popular country song whose lyrics say, "You're gonna miss this.  You're gonna want this back.  You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast."  So, as we bow our heads in thankfulness tonight, I pray for these days not to go by so fast!

Velma and Daphne

Halloween weekend, Chris and a couple buddies went to Cedar Point for Hallo Weekends.  That left my best bud, Julie, without a date for her work Halloween party.  So, she and I scoured our brains for hours trying to come up with a perfect costume theme for us so I could essentially be her date.  Here's what we came up with:

So, hopefully you've figured out we were Velma and Daphne from Scooby Doo!  It was so much fun to dress up and play the part!  I actually felt like a movie star that day as Julie was in charge of putting together my hair and makeup!

One of the funniest things about this whole costume adventure was when we walked into Walmart on our way home from the party.  You could hear people saying things like "Scooby Dooby Doo" and "Where's Shaggy?"  The checkout lady was very surprised that Daphne had gone anywhere without Freddie!  It was all quite funny!

And, yes, that is my hair!  I have had so many people ask me if that is really my hair!  It's amazing how light my hair is with no products in it to help keep all the curls from frizzing!  Though I really like the idea of being able to have straight hair if I wanted it, it took poor Julie two hours to straighten my hair that day (not to mention the extra time to style it)!  There's no way I have an extra two hours to get that look on a given day!

Two Knights and a Princess

 Two knights and a princess . . . sounds a bit like a fairy tale, huh?  Actually, it was the kids' Halloween costumes this year.  Grandma was extremely creative - what started out as a Cinderella dress for Rylee turned into an amazing dress along with two incredible knight outfits for the boys.  

This first picture is actually my favorite.  The boys were in full knight mode as they acted as if they were protecting the princess.  Rylee doesn't look at all like she is enjoying the knightly protection, huh? :)





May we introduce Sir Haydn!  This is his sword-handling stance with his most serious warrior face!

There is a cute story behind this costume.  When Haydn asked if he could be a knight, we thought it would be perfect for McKay to wear the dragon costume we already had in the basement.  When I asked McKay if he'd like to be a dragon, he cried and said, "But Mom, the knight kills the dragon!"  So, hence, McKay became Sir McKay.  What a cute little knight he was!

You must notice Rylee's glovelets and the sparkly shoes - no princess dress is complete without such accessories!

Princess Rylee Turns Four!

It is so hard to believe that our little princess has turned four years old!  That means that it was just over three years ago already that we began the battle with Celiac disease that shriveled our little girl away to nearly nothing!  No one would ever know now! 

Well, Rylee turned four in royal style!  Grama made Rylee her very own Cinderella dress, Grandma Babcia created a princess castle (gluten free) cake, and Haydn helped decorate the house with pink and purple streamers and balloons!

Try to imagine all these little screaming and giggling princesses all dolled up in their royal gowns, dress-up glass slippers, jewelry, and tiaras!  Chris and I couldn't help but to laugh when we saw this picture - it looks like a future homecoming picture!

The highlight of the day was the visit from the Queen.  Aunt Phylicia dressed up as the Queen who had come to crown the princess.  The only problem was that the Queen had lost her magic wand.  So, the girls (and boys) helped the Queen find her wand so that Rylee could be crowned princess for the day. 

Building the Nile River

Ok, so have I ever mentioned how much I love being a homeschooling family?  This week we were learning about the Egyptians who lived along the Nile River.  To really illustrate the point of how the flooding of the river helped the farmers along the land, we built our own model of the Nile River.  Now, I'm no dummy!  I took care of presenting the information during the school day and waited for Dad before we began playing with the dirt and such!

So, first we had to build the banks of the river as well as the delta that empties into the Mediterranean Sea.  Once that was set, we used foil to create the Nile River running through Egypt.

 Now we were ready to plant our crops.  In our case, we just planted some grass seed that could be watered by the flooding river.

Next came the fun part - flooding the river!  The kids were so amazed to see all the water get sucked up into the banks of the river. 

Now if only we could control how fast our crop grew!  The kids check their Nile River everyday for signs of growth!  They can't wait until it is time to flood the river again!

A Visit From Davis

It was so nice to have Davis back home, if even for just a short time.  He flew in last Friday and headed back out Tuesday afternoon. 

Haydn was so excited about his official Army dog tags that Uncle Davis brought for him and loved wrestling around!  Of course, you'd hear me pipe in often with things like, "Easy Davis!  He's little you know!" or "Yikes! Be careful with him!"  You can't blame me for worrying!  After months of combat training, I think Davis forgot that he was wrestling with his nephew and not the enemy!  Haha!

I will admit, I had to wipe the tears from my eyes as I watched him drive away and begin his 23 hour trip back to Colorado.  I'm sure he was sick of hearing me tell him to drive safe, stay out of trouble, and to let me know he arrived safely.  I just can't help it!  I'm sure I won't be any better the day my children leave home! :)

Archaeological Dig

For social studies this year, I am using a book called The Story of the World.  Our first couple lessons were designed to help the kids understand what history is and how we learn about history.  So, to help the kids understand how we learn about history, we had our own archaeological dig in the garden. 

I buried several "artifacts" that were clues to the kinds of people that lived in our home long ago and what kinds of things they did.  Haydn was really getting into the dig with comments like, "I found a Lego!  There must've been kids who lived here long ago!" and "I found a potato!  This means they must've eaten too!"  But, my favorite comment by far from the kids was when they found a toad in their dig site.  Rylee exclaimed, "Holy Toledo, Mom!  They had toads just like us too!" 

Alas, a fun lesson had by all!

Rylee using her archaeologist tools to clean off
her discovered artifact!



"Is this some kind of old tool
or what, mom?"





You know McKay is thinking hard if
the tongue comes out!



Kia! Karate Warrior!

Today was Haydn's first day taking karate.  He is taking lessons twice a week at PKSA in Trenton training in the Korean Martial art of Tang Soo Do.

He was fascinated by the "mirror wall" and did a great job learning basic skills.  The best part of his day was getting his name on Miss Tonya's Challenge Board.  He could choose from a variety of exercises to perform in one minute.  Haydn chose to do push-ups of all things.  In one minute, he did 30 push-ups (ok, so they looked more like wet fish flops by the time he reached 15 or so but his teacher still counted them :)).  Since he did the most in his group, he won the push-up challenge!  Check out our push-up champion!

Haydn has tried a couple of team sports in the past but hasn't really been excited about them.  Today, we saw excitement and pride in his face! 

A Fun Day in Put-in-Bay

We started our trip out to Put-in-Bay by boat, but the waves were just a bit too ferocious.  So we turned around and made the trip by car and rode the Jet Express over to the island.

Though we drove golf carts all day, toured Perry's cave, visited the old candy store, rode the carousel, played at an arcade, and ran like crazy around the park play set, the kids still had the most fun mining for gems.  Haydn thought he would surely find enough gold for us all to be rich!

First Day of School!

Our best smiles!

Well, summer is quickly coming to an end!  Our three little monkeys began their first day of school today!  Haydn is proud to be a first grader, Rylee is so excited to be a preschooler, and McKay . . . well, we say he is in toddler school! 

We started the morning with breakfast cake (a healthy cake of course) and special back-to-school presents.  This week we'll be working mostly on learning routines and rules to help make our school time fun and productive!