Mommy's Weekend

So I had a BLAST this weekend at the Military Wives' Retreat.  It's through the Military Family Foundation which just started up last year.  This was the first military spouse's retreat and they also have a Father/Son retreat that my hubby and boys are sure to be going to in October.  If you live in the Florida panhandle or south Alabama, these are great events to get involved in.  They are planning on starting new locations in the future as well. 

So this was the view from our cabins.

One of the first activities we did was the archery and rifle range.  I wasn't that great with the bow and arrows but I did really good with the rifle.

We also did some horseback riding...

While I did enjoy it, and I would definately go again, I was a bit nervous up there.  My horse was very tall, and he kept shaking his head, trying to keep the flies away.  And I don't think he liked me much...whenever he had the chance, he'd walk so I'd have to duck under branches.  He would actually turn a little so that this would happen.  And I didn't like tugging on the ropes to tell him where to go, but I had to start doing that when I saw he was making a point to run me into the branches.  I kept picturing him hiking up on his hind legs and then taking off running with me on him.  But I'm glad I went, and like I said, I would definately do this again.

We also spent quite a bit of time on the lake...paddle boating and kayaking.

And carpet ball is only one of the most fun games ever.  We had a tournament but I didn't win, although I'm not too bad at it.  I am trying to convince my hubby to build a carpet ball stand thingy for our back patio.  He thinks it's too long, so I'll have to research it more... 

And we ended both days around the campfire, chatting and relaxing.

So I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked to.  We did so much more than you see here, but it's hard to do all this stuff with a camera in tow.  I only used my camera on my phone.

There was only 13 of us ladies on the trip this year.  I didn't know any of them, although two are in my MOPS group, we just were in different groups there.  So I made a lot of new friends and we had so much fun.  The camp staff made delicious food and it was so nice to be served and cleaned up after!  I'm so thankful for this new foundation and how much they want to support military families.

Our Week: 12

Our life.

One week at a time.

2012.

Week 12.

This week. . .

(3.19.12 - 3.25.12)

First swim of the year...

The temps got up into the high 70s, and to the boys, that's warm enough for swimming.  The water is still quite chilly, so we girls are happy to just stick our feet in.  Anna actually missed out when the boys first jumped in, but she joined in when she awoke from her nap.  (Which is why Leah was in her undies...her swim suit was in the room Anna was sleeping in.)

Ready to join in...

This is the life...

This spring weather just makes me want to skip around and sing at the top of my lungs.  I love it.

And if it's warm enough for the pool, it's definately warm enough to walk to our friendly neighborhood beach.

Actually, it cooled just a bit this day and was windy, so it wasn't the best beach day.  But I didn't know that until after we were ready to go, so there was no way I could cancel our beach trip.  And it's never too cold (in Florida) to play in the sand.

And they wouldn't be my boys if they didn't make volcanoes out of buckets, sand, and water.

I'm looking forward to many more treks across our neighborhood to this place.

This week in school, week 27:

• Lots of learning about ancient and medeival Africa...Ghana, Mali, the Songhay Empire, Zimbabwe...
• Studying Mars in Astronomy.  The hands-on activities for this week were to make a volcano (which we didn't do due to not being able to find our volcano model since our move...did I throw it out?) and designing a Mars habitat, which the boys did with Legos and I didn't take a picture of.  This just wasn't my week with taking pictures of school.
• Studying pictures of different paintings from the Renaissance.
• Gabriel read about the story of Joseph in his Bible reader and is doing well learning about more phonics rules.   
• We went back to make sure we completed all the previously scheduled science activities in Gabe's first grade book.  One we did this week was learning about trees.  We did some bark rubbings of the different trees by our house and identified the trees.

We also had some friends over this week.  It's kind of neat because we were all stationed together in Texas, and now we are stationed with one of the families here while another was visiting from the north where they moved to.  It's fun to meet up with old friends and it's quite common in the military to get to do that in later assignments.

All of our boys...

And all of our girls...

Now I'm very excited to be able to go on a military wives retreat up in Alabama for TWO nights!  It's like a camp for kids, with all sorts of outdoor activities, but only wives are allowed.  I'm SO excited!  And I'm so thankful that my awesome hubby is completely capable of handling his kiddos while I go.

Have a great week!

Our Week: 11

Our life.

One week at a time.

2012.

Week 11.

This week. . .

(3.11.12 - 3.18.12)

At naptime, I'd much rather put these girls to bed than clean out a crib full of books, toys and shoes. Silly girls.

And, introducing....bangs.

So, they are not even and they are too short.  But she's adorable enough to pull it off.  And now I don't have to put her hair in a pony tail every morning and after every nap.

And dinner being made by someone else...so nice!  Thank you Christopher.

This week in school, week 26:

• Medieval Spain: Ferdinand and Isable unite Spain into one country and drive the Jews out of the country
• Medieval Portugal: Exploration of Africa (the Dark Continent) becomes important and Henry the Navigator leads many expeditions by ship
• We learned about the moon in astronomy this week.  There were lots of fun hands-on activities to do.  They involved chocolate...'nuff said.
• Gabe learned about snowflakes in science for his first grade work.  That, of course, led to a houseful of paper snowflakes. 
• Gabe read more about the story of Jacob in his Bible reader.

Chocolate and vanilla wafers...ready to make us some moon phases!

This is an experiment back from the week we studied the sun.  However, we just found our magnifying glass, so we're a little late doing it....using the sun to melt chocolate.

Another perk of home education...Lego Hero Factory guys to keep you company while doing math.

Gabe's school...

We also:

• Met our MOPS friends at a fun park for a picnic.  (No pictures!)
• (I) Went on a Mom's Night Out dinner with a friend. (Always nice!)
• Enjoyed Gabriel's last basketball game of the season.  It will be nice to not have 8:00AM games to go to on our Saturday mornings now.
• Made fun St. Patricks Day crafts.

Followed by cupcakes with his team

My kids really enjoyed the true story of St. Patrick, but we also like to enjoy the silly four-leaf-clover and rainbow side of the holiday as well.

Have a great week!