Friday, April 30, 2010

It is time to celebrate!!!! Today, 10 months later, we happily finished our first year of homeschooling! Definitely time to celebrate! A year ago, we made the decision to TRY homeschooling. We all agreed that if it worked, we would continue and if it didn't work, it would be a lesson learned. I am happy to say that it has WORKED. We all loved it and plan to continue next year with bells on.
Backing up a bit, on Monday MK decided to try out flying by jumping out of her crib. When asked why she did this, she simply stated, "Well, I no want to sleep. I wanted to play." Needless to say, the big girl bed will be making its debut soon.

On Wednesday, a new member of our family arrived. His name is Flash and Pryce could not be happier. For Christmas, Pryce received a Grow A Frog kit. We ordered the tadpole about a week ago and on Wednesday he made his grand appearance. After getting Flash settled into his new little home, Pryce could be found reading to him or watching him swim or writing in his journal about the little guy. He is very proud of him!

On Thursday, we watched a most exciting game of baseball featuring Colin. I honestly wish that I had it on video. Colin made one play that I will forever have engraved in my memory. He was on third base. The coach told him to steal home. He ran. Then the coach yelled for him to come back to third. Colin turned around and ran back to third. Then the other team over threw the ball so the coach told him to go home again. He was back and forth, back and forth, the crowd was cheering him on the entire time but the best part was Colin's expression. He was smiling the biggest smile ever during the entire back and forth process and even shot a glance up at us to make sure we were watching. He ended up making a very close slide into home plate and scoring for his team!

Sunday, April 25, 2010

The Pond


Ryan and I met almost fifteen years ago. During one of our first dates together, Ryan took me to his family's property in SC to go fishing. I can never remember the exact acreage of the property but it is secluded, quiet and extremely peaceful. Part of the property contains a large pond. So Ryan takes me over to visit, he gives me a fishing pole, and I, acting all like I knew what I was doing, gave the fishing pole one nice whip in the air to cast out and.....well, the fishing pole went flying into the water. Nice. Ryan forgot to mention that the fishing pole was broken.
Yesterday we took the children to visit the pond and to go fishing. The boys have not been fishing in quite awhile and they were more than excited about this adventure.
One child, though he was all about fishing, he wanted nothing to do with actually killing the fish....he told us that we would be breaking a commandment if we were to kill the fish. He was so cute. Everytime a fish was caught, he would say, "Ok, now let him go. Let him swim away."
P seemed to get a lot of this slimy stuff on his hook. Then, he would want someone else to pull it all off....ewww.
MK chose to learn about fishing from G-Mom. They did quite well together.
In addition to fishing, the children were also entertained with rides in the trailer behind the lawn mower, paddle boat excursions, tromps through the woods, and down hill wagon riding. The wagon riding was the most impressive event and the one that I did not take any pictures of. The children would all pile into this wagon - there was a driver, four passengers and a pusher. The game was much like watching the bobsledding event during the Olympics. The pusher would get everyone going and then jump in the wagon once it was going at a decent downhill speed. Of course, nothing is complete without a crash involved. C was driving and one of the wagon wheels went astray leading he and his crew into the shore of trees that awaited them. Thankfully, they all had helmets on and walked away laughing!
We had a wonderful day at the pond with our family, great memories.