The Long Winter

We finished the book, The Long Winter, at the end of April and I am just getting around to sharing the pictures from our day of activities.  Since we had been discussing Mary's blindness, Wyatt dissected a cow's eye for us. It is amazing how God's plan for animals works!

The long winter feels like the longest book of the entire series because the Ingalls family suffers through one horrible blizzard after another.  There is a brief part at the beginning of the book where they discover a little bird in the hay and then set it free.  Due to my new found love of pinterest, I was anxious to try one of the ideas I had pinned.  We took empty toilet paper rolls, covered them in peanut butter, rolled them in bird seed, and ended up with  a bird feeder to put on the branch of a tree.  Since we don't have any big trees, we attached string to ours and hung them in various spots in the back yard.  Sadly, two days after we hung our bird feeders, we had a rain storm and ours turned to mush.  I was excited to hear Abby's story of seeing a bluejay having a snack on the bird feeder that she made at her house. So, all was not lost on this project!

 Laurie's idea was for each kid to make their own newspaper.  In the story, Mary encourages the family to wait until Christmas day to read the newspapers that they have received, in order to save if as a special thing for that day.  Laura doesn't want to wait, but is so thrilled when they finally do get to read them, that she admits that Mary was right.

Grammy in her normal spot with Caleb and Weston playing games.

 Abby and Winona working on their bird feeders

 Dylan taking the whole newspaper project very seriously

 Wade and Marilyn working on his newspaper

Kim Medina taught us all how to make our own sourdough starter.  I found this very interesting.  The funniest part was that she said several times not to put the lid on the jar because it wouldn't take long for the process to start, and she was right.  None of us realized that someone had put the lid on the jar, and you can see the result...

It's always nice to sit and enjoy the wonderful food that everyone brings to our times together.  Here we are all devouring the apple crisp that Laurie brought for us!