Glimmer of hope

Sometimes the littlest things get me excited. After starting our science, the elementary Apologia, swimming creatures, I saw a glimmer of hope that maybe something is sticking. We have been learning about the ocean floor and while the kids were swimming this afternoon, I heard them decide that the floor of the pool was like the floor of the ocean. Shallow end was the continental shelf, the slope to the deep end was the continental slope and the deep end was the abyssal plain. They even used all the correct words. I almost cried! I guess it gives me enough umph to continue on!!! Now if I could see a glimmer of hope with math, I really would cry!
A scary thing I have heard from them as we have been learning about the ocean is 'on SpongeBob..., on SpongeBob...'! Funny thing is, Spongebob seems to be fairly educational after all. Who knew.

Like I need something else

Well, now I have a Facebook page. Just what I need. Something else to take up time. Not addicted to it yet tho. Hopefully I won't get too into it. If you are there, add me as a friend!
We are in our 2nd week of school and things seem to be going pretty good. Math is still everyones least favorite, but we are doing it earlier in the day this year and it seems to help. We have already had our first field trip too. We went to the Ft Smith PUblic Library and got a tour. It was fun. The FS historic site is up next. Trying to get something set up for the Coleman Observatory for us. We will see.

New Bloggers

My kids have started their own blogs. I listed them with my favorites. T's Olympics and R's Sports. Be sure to check them out!

Back Home & Back to School

We spent last week vacationing in Colorado and had a blast. We maxxed out on nature study! I told the kids if they listened and learned and sketched in their nature books, we would count last week as a week of school. We rafted, we hiked(see hillbilly momma above), we got up in the middle of the night to see the meteor shower-you name it, we did it. It was great!
Now it is back to school. Today was our first day, and it went fairly well. Not too much whining.Hopefully it will last!
After we got home, our computer pooped out. We can't even get it to come on. Hopefully, we can get it fixed soon. I'm lost w/out it!!

Bargained Out!

We are Bargain Galored out! The kids and I have had a garage sale the last 2 days w/ my sis in law. She lives on 64 and we decided we couldn't pass up the chance to make some money and clean out our storage. It went great. Sold most of our stuff the first day and reloaded w/ my moms stuff the second day. The kids sold water, popcicles, muffins and juice. We had to keep them from taking their profits and using them buying the neighbors stuff! After all the inventory they ate, money spent, we only made about $10 on the food! It was good experience for them and kept them busy. Plus, I was thanked and called a good mom for letting them go shopping at the other sales-Ha! It did get pretty hot, but not near as bad as it could have been. Now we have gas money to get to Colorado!!

Nature stuff

We've been busy lately getting ready for a big garale sale and camping trip all at the same time but we have made some cool nature finds lately to share.

The pics are of a wasp nest Rich found and sprayed. He is finally getting the hang of this homeschooling/study what you find/nature thing. He brought it over and went through it with the kids. They pulled out different wasps in different stages of development. Some where fully formed and ready to come out , some where still larva and some inbetween. We also got to see the stinger up close. It was all really interesting!

Last week while watering some trees we planted on our lot, we dipped up some tadpoles out of the pond. We ended up bringing a few home in a bucket. So far, they are still alive. We give them goldfish food and have to get fresh pond water every few days. We have read that you can't just put in tap water. Since we are going to be out of town next week, I wonder if any of the grandparents will be willing to babysit tadpoles??? Anyway, it has been fun. We have read about them a little bit and drawn the life cycle in our new nature sketchbooks.

Weekend Weddings

Congratulations! This weekend our family friends, Jim & Jeannie got married. My mom had a small family reception at her house. We got to meet Jeannie's daughters and to see Faith but without her new man!

Yearly pics

The last week of July every year, we have to hurriedly get together and take pictures of the kids for the football program. Both my parents buy ads in it and they want pics of their grands included. Of course, we know they are always due Aug 1, so we get together around July 30 and snap away. We have done some really cute things over the years, but this year we just sat them outside,nothing unusual. This last one I did because we did the same pic several years ago. Fun to see how they are growing, or sad, don't know which!