we love summer

For the past five years we have started each summer with a trip to Arizona State University to watch Bill's team play in a summer tournament.  It just so happens that there is a Cracker Barrel nearby, as well as a beautiful hotel with free breakfast and dinner.  It makes for a fun mini-vacation!  We also got the benefits of a wonderfully clean pool for three days!

 Right after we got home from Arizona, we started swim lessons.  We have had to change pool locations several times over the past 7 years, and thanks to Aunt Judy, we had a wonderful place to go!  Caleb did not like swimming lessons at all on the first day.  His crying was so loud, I was worried that the neighbors might think we were hurting him.  Miss Patty, our experienced swimming teacher, reassured me that he was capable and strong enough to learn, and to work through his fear.  After six lessons, Caleb swam on his own!  It was so amazing to see him let go of his fears and start to really enjoy being in the water.  What he also discovered was that my Aunt Judy provides an unlimited amount of strawberries as well as free Ipad usage! Caleb usually takes a long time to warm up to people he doesn't know very well, but it didn't take long at all with Aunt Judy. They became fast friends!

 Dylan decided he wanted to do two basketball leagues this summer. So we have spent a lot of time cheering him on.  Gracie decided she wanted to try out basketball for the first time also, and has been loving it!  I am so impressed how she gets out on the court, plays defense, and fights for rebounds with kids that are all older and bigger than her! I also love when family and friends come to watch Dylan, Delaney, Gracie and Luke.  It is such a fun way to spend time together.  Molly, John and Owen surprised us at one of the Upland YMCA games that Dylan and Delaney play on together.  This was Owen's first basketball game. He seemed to enjoy it! :)

 Another thing we have been enjoying this summer is trying out new vegetables in our backyard garden.  We had a huge harvest of carrots and beets!  I bought and used a pressure canner for the first time filling up over a dozen jars.  I guess the true test will be how they taste when we open them up.  Right now we are enjoying fresh tomatoes, and waiting for the zucchini and cucumbers to grow. 

 We got together with our homeschool group in July to start planning out our projects for the next school year.  Here Wyatt is showing the kids his hunting video game.  We enjoyed having Caleb Deniston around for a couple of weeks while he stayed with his Aunt Laurie.  Dylan and Gracie also liked their first sleepover at a friends house when they stayed with Caleb and Abby at the Woodside's for two nights while Bill and I went to Santa Barbara for our anniversary.

 Gracie wanted to try out the hunting game also. My mom couldn't stand watching her shooting at the poor animals!

 We have enjoyed our Disneyland passes so much this year.  We are all thankful to my mom for the best xmas present ever!  This was a day in early July that we went to go see what the new Cars Land looked like.  We were so impressed with everything but the lines were over two hours for all three new rides, so we decided to wait until another day to ride those.  We went over to Disneyland instead and enjoyed smaller crowds and lines!

 There is a wilderness park in the middle of California Adventure that the kids always want to do, and Bill is always saying it's a waste of time!  The kids won him over and we all climbed through the different trails and bridges.  He helped Caleb through all the climbing, which he loved!

 The first time we tried to take Caleb on "Soaring over California" he refused to let the workers measure him to see if he was tall enough.  He cried and cried every time they made us put him up against the measurement post.  This picture shows Caleb after he went through the line for the first time without being scared, and let them measure him three times.  It was a big deal for both of us!

When we went over to Disneyland we discovered that Caleb was also tall enough for "Star Tours" and I was thrilled.  For the past 12 years, I have always volunteered to stay behind with whatever child was too small to ride the faster rides, and it hit me... I don't have to do that much anymore. It was fun to ride it all together for the first time.

best of show

I'm still finishing up the month of May, with our day at the home school fair.  Right as we walked into the gym, we discovered that Gracie had won "best of show" for the table runner that Aunt Gail taught her how to make.  Her first purple ribbon!

 Luke loves putting things together and this year picked out a pirate mansion to work on.  Sticking to the same theme, he also entered a drawing of the pirate mansion that he put together.  Luke knew exactly what he wanted to enter, and was very happy with his two projects. 

 Dylan and Gracie have been very interested in learning how to use my camera.  After it rained one day, Dylan knew exactly the kind of picture he wanted to take.  He was able to capture the rain drops on a rose in our front yard.

 On another day, he followed this bird all around our neighborhood trying to get a good shot.

 Gracie was able to capture a close up shot of one of many butterflies that we chased during our December trip to Cayucos.

 Dylan entered his research report on the dropping of the atomic bomb and received a first place ribbon.

 He also entered his science project which tested the accuracy of the 'five second rule' when it comes to dropping food on the floor.  In our house, it is safer to drop food on our kitchen floor than it is in our living room.  An interesting side note: there was some kind of bacteria on the ham lunch meat that didn't get dropped on the floor at all!

Gracie did her table setting based on the Little House on the Prairie books that we have been reading.  For the two weeks before this, Gracie loved having so much time to play with Evee, as Sarah stayed with us while Matt got things settled for them in Tennessee.

 Abby won "best of show" for her creative table setting with a jungle theme.  We were so impressed with how much she made on her own, especially the utensils made out of sticks.  So cute!

 Grammy always comes and supports the kids!  This year she left little notes beside all of their projects. 

 Dylan got a first place ribbon for his art entry based on the speech he gave to our home school group, teaching them how to draw a horse.

This was some of the group that came to support the kids! Lori, Chris, and Emi came later in the day.  This picture makes me feel so blessed!

merry month of May

 I'm still trying to catch up from the month of May... This picture was taken by Gracie of me, Mom and my Grandma (Granny) on the day before Mother's Day.  We brought Grammy and Granny flowers that day and then took Grammy to lunch. It was a beautiful, sunny day and Grandma was in a great mood.  She talked about all of the fun trips that she took me and Lori on when we were kids.  She even talked about jumping in the swimming pool after Lori fell in when she was little, even though she didn't know how to swim herself!  We also remembered riding in the back of Grandpa's truck in the camper shell, back before we had to wear seat belts. We rolled around everywhere as we were coming down the mountain roads after fishing! It was a great day.

 For my 40th birthday, Bill took the day off work and we went to Disneyland.  The three older kids talked me into leaving Caleb at his grandma's so that I could go on all of the rides with them.  I didn't want to do it at first, but Caleb was thrilled to get to stay at Grandma's house by himself.  We also got to explore a little more of California Adventure that I had never seen before.  We found a room made to look like the library from Beauty and the Beast (my favorite movie of them all).  We took a quiz to found out which Disney character we were most like.  I was hoping for Belle of course and ended up getting Jane. I wasn't sure how I felt about that one!

 By the middle of May, none of us really wanted to do school anymore!  We were all working hard to finish all our assignments before Everlee and Sarah came to stay with us.  By the third week of May we were all done and it was time to have some fun outside.  What started out as an activity of filling of cups and bowls with water for Caleb, became hoses and umbrellas, then became a water slide.  It was the perfect way to start our summer!

 Delaney takes art lessons at a school right by our house.  We always enjoy going to her open houses and seeing her work displayed.  We all were so impressed with her growing abilities as an artist.  I thought this was her best work yet!

I remembered as a kid in elementary school that we made cards with holes in them so that we could see the solar eclipse.  Dylan made one this time and we waited and waited until the right time, and saw it happen through the shadow on our wall.  At one point the entire back side of the house was covered in crescent shaped shadows!  It was an awesome experience to remind us of the perfect power and plan that God has for us!

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!