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!