Winter Glimpses, Part 1

Marian performed with Bryan College Youth Choir.

We greatly enjoyed visiting with dear friends: Lionel, Sue, Isabel, and Christopher

We welcomed a new addition to the family----  

 a Foosball table!!  (What else?)

 And Dwayne celebrated 

42 years of awesomeness! 

:)  

A specially designed, one-of-a-kind, cooperative effort from the kids!

Homeschool Year Recap-- Part 3, Co-op Group Stuff

As much fun as we had on our field trips in the fall, we still missed having time with our friends doing co-op activities.  So after Christmas break, we rejoined our group classes.  The focus this past spring was mostly art.  The kids did a number of projects, including line & design, stamping, collage, and acrylic paints.  We also had a fun trip to an art museum and a great field day to wrap up the year.  So glad to have such good friends!

Food art!  Using grapes to worms coming out of our apple!

Pudding paint!

Painting with acrylic

 Two beautiful finished products!

Museum Trip:

Reagan was a little keyed up after being so good and so quiet during our museum tour!

I just loved this work!  The jars are filled with little things the artist found around an old homeplace.  The woman is simply from his imagination-- how he thinks someone who lived there might have looked.  I seem to remember that the boards are from the structure of the home.  How creative!

 Field Day events:

 Herculean Shot Put!

  The kids assured me throwing this globe was harder than you might think!

 Obstacle course:  boys vs girls!

(Audrey at 14 versus Reagan at 4 just doesn't seem like a fair fight, does it?)

 Sock War!

This was hilarious to watch, but no joke about it for the contestants!

...and that wraps up my homeschool recap!  

We've had fun, worked hard, and learned a lot-- at least Mama has!

Happy New Year!!

Happy 2014!!

We love to welcome in the new year with a big party at our house and invite as many friends as can come-- lots of food, fellowship, games, and fun!!

This year made our 7th annual New Year's Eve party--- at least that's our best guess.  We've never bothered to keep count, but we know we've been doing this since Ellie was a baby, probably longer.  So just to be safe, we decided to use Ellie's age to help us keep track from now on.

This year was the best party of all, of course.  The kids made a huge poster so we could have a picture wall.  Didn't they do a great job?  I actually remembered to take everyone's picture at some point during the night, as well as some candid shots.  I wish I'd remembered the camera after the games started around the table, but I was too focused on winning to think about pictures!

We were delighted to meet a new family that recently moved to this area, as well as spending time with dear, "old" friends.  Everyone had a great time, ate plenty, and ushered in the new year with lots of laughter! 

Here's a bit of the fun, but I'll only share a few since I'm not sure that everyone would want to be posted.

May God bless all of us richly in 2014 as we choose His ways 

and serve Him with gladness.

Running

This past summer, my friend Elizabeth asked me train for a 5K with her.  I jumped at the chance, though I wasn't sure that actually running 3.1 miles was possible for me.  Well, you never know until you try!  I really believe I wouldn't have made it without such a good training partner, but I have now completed 3--count 'em, 1-2-3 5K events!  The first one was in Maine and I covered that in a previous post.  The other two I completed on consecutive weekends just a couple weeks ago.

One was a color run to benefit a nearby women's crisis center.  It was fun to have so many friends to run with, and the color mess was fun, too!  (Friend Elizabeth is on my right.)

The second one was a fundraiser for the local high school's athletic department.  No color here, but I placed in my age range... and won a t-shirt from Piggly-Wiggly!  What more could you ask?

My finishing times for the races were 28:58 and 29:02, respectively. 

Now, the kids want to train and run a 5k with me next year!  I cannot tell you how much that excites me!

Co-op Classes

We have had such a good semester in our homeschool co-op group!  I have mostly been in class with the younger kids-- Ellie and Reagan's class.  Friend Amy hosted us for the first part of the semester, and now we are back at Friend Starr's house.

Ellie and Sunshine, making joyful noises!

Showing off an art project, state of Tennessee string art

Both classes have covered so much material: basic government, fun facts about Tennessee, several historical figures, a small unit study with the novel, Stone Fox, and a Bible study on the book of Jonah for the older class while the youngers have studied the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5.

Flipping a coin as part of our meekness lesson...
What does that have to do with meekness, you ask?
You'd just have to be there!

 We have brought a fruit every week to go along with the fruit of the Spirit study.  We tried to pick fruits that were symbolic of the trait we studied that day, but that didn't always work out.  We used strawberries for love because they're nearly heart-shaped; bananas for joy because they're shaped like a smile; a piece of watermelon for peace- a play on words there; lemons for patience because you have to eat a lemon s-l-o-w-l-y; peaches for gentleness because you must be careful not to bruise a peach; kiwis for faith because they have such little seeds and we reworded Jesus' words to be "faith the size of a kiwi seed"; pears for goodness and oranges for meekness, but I forget why.  I'll have to get back to you on that!

More joyful noise!

The younger class is winding up these last couple of weeks of the semester with a short study about the sun.  Here is a neat craft we did to start off with: we cut out large circles of white cardstock and put yellow, red, and orange paint on them.  Then we covered them with plastic wrap and the kids squished the paint around to cover the circle.  The result is kind of a tie-dye look.  Very cool.

Precious friends

We hope this Friday will be sunny and we can try some neat experiments like melting chocolate chips with the sun and a magnifying glass, making rainbows with a prism, or even making a solar oven!  We just never know where we might end up!

A Proud Day

What a day we've had!  

After everyone rushing around this morning to get our necessary Saturday chores done, the girls and I sped off to Cleveland, TN (and hour  away) to a 4-H speech competition for Marian.

This was Marian's first competition involving more than just a few local kids, so I was a little nervous for her.  Not that I needed to be.  Marian is unbelievably cool and collected in front of a crowd.   Unfortunately, her allergies decided to really kick in full force overnight, so the poor girl could hardly breathe, had difficulty projecting her voice, and was battling an earache.  Nonetheless!  Marian did a really good job with her speech.  She did not place in the top three, but we sure are proud of her!!

Meanwhile, Dad & boys did not let any grass grow under their feet!  Andrew had a soccer game this afternoon.  He is playing better an better this season.  If his coaches keep bragging on him like they have been, we'll have to build a bigger door or else Dwayne won't be able to get his head in the house!!  Today, Andrew's team enjoyed their biggest win of the season thus far.  They beat the team from Kimball, 7-0!  Go, blue!  (Who would have ever pinned me as a "soccer mom"?!?)

As if the day wasn't full enough, our church's annual ladies banquet was this evening.  We buzzed back from the speech competition just in time... actually, we were a bit late.  Some of the men of the church cooked and served a wonderful meal for us and a dear lady from Kentucky came to be our speaker for the evening.

But most incredibly of all is this picture.  Do you see that my ELEVEN-year-old is as tall as I am?  When did this happen?  

Giving Thanks

 We had such a wonderful Thanksgiving this year!  As always, we had plenty to eat: turkey, ham, dressing, dumplings, rolls, casseroles, and pies, pies, pies.  Yum!

Feast!

But our blessings were multiplied this year as our dear friends joined us for the celebration (and brought about half of that food I just listed-- yea!).  We so enjoyed spending the day with Friends Brenda, Melissa, Josh, and Thomas.  

This was a wonderful Thanksgiving indeed.  

At the top of my list of blessings this year is great friends!