Strawberry Picking

Trying to fill our days as much as possible so that evenings will seem a little shorter with my husband on the other side of the big pond, we drove an hour northwest the other day up to a little town named Baker, Florida, and spent the morning picking ripe, red strawberries from the fields at Akers of Strawberries.

The kids each carried their own little white basket, and picked the perfect strawberries from the plants and dropped them inside. 

The fields were nearly empty, which I was very thankful for, because it gave me the chance to let them all have their space.  I made sure to enjoy just watching them, etching these memories into my mind, taking in their different personalities and they decided which strawberries were perfect for their basket.

Gabriel thought that the strawberries with the long stems were the ones that looked the best.  When he was able to pick one with a very long stem intact, he made a point to show everyone his find.  

Christopher knew the redness was what counted and made sure to get the deep red ones that looked so juicy it was hard not to pop them in your mouth right there.

Matthew, being the loving brother he is, wanted to help the girls pick out the right ones.  He would point out the good ones to Leah, and while sometimes she's more independent and likes to do things without help, she sweetly picked the ones that Matthew pointed out.

Anna was so fun to watch because she was so random in picking the strawberries.  She'd walk a bit, stop, pick a strawberry, walk some more, stop, pick another one.  I was just surprised she didn't come out with a face covered in sweet strawberry juice from not being able to patiently wait to eat them.  I didn't ever see her pop any in her mouth though.

Leah came out of the strawberry fields with the least strawberries of all of my children.  I think she might have been trying to find just the right one and so was very picky about which ones she chose.

And I'll also mention that she managed to dress herself with both her shirt on backwards and her shoes on the wrong feet.  The shoes on backwards is pretty much a sure thing every time, but I didn't even notice her backwards shirt until much later in the day.  It's even funnier to me because she has such perfectionist tendencies.

After we picked a half carton full, we stopped in the snack cafe for some strawberry shortcake and strawberry frozen yogurt.  It was enjoyed by all.

Now, home to enjoy all of our juicy strawberries!

Last Week of School!

Week 34 of 34...check.

We ended our school year with minimal school each day...Bible, history, science, and art.  As interested in the exploration of America as the boys are, they were even more excited to welcome in summer break.  As much as they enjoy astronomy, they were happy to end their astronomy unit with a paper space station and close the book for a final time (for now).  We'll do a few things over the summer, but we'll do it casually and enjoy the casualness of the next few months.  

Christopher with our card stock space station.

Matthew playing "Fox and Geese", a game from the era we studied.

Their daddy is deployed for the month, so we celebrated with some friends on the last day of school.  The kids did their school work early in the morning rather than during their normal school time in the afternoon so they could really enjoy being done during our morning celebration of swimming at the beach and a sundae bar at home with friends.  

The boys asked to celebrate at Beach Berry, a local frozen yogurt joint with three different topping bars filled with every topping imaginable.  Did I mention this was a self serve place?  It's fun and we do go there sometimes, but not by myself.  Not with my little two year old swiping toppings off the counters while I try to help five kids get their bowls filled.

So we made our own.

They all loved it and we decided to save the toppings so we can do it again sometime.  It was so fun to have our friends over to celebrate with.  They also finished up their school year as early as we did and will enjoy the lazy days of summer starting in May. 

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But really, what mom with a two year old, a three year old, and three young boys can actually have a summer full of lazy days?  

I've been filling my post-kids-bedtime evening hours with getting ready for a certain young lady's 4th birthday party.  Every year I say it and I will again this year...how is she already turning four???

"Discovering a New Planet"

I forgot to add the link for the play that the kids put on for Chris, Anna, and me.  They love watching it over and over.  I was the narrator as well as the camera woman, so my voice is really loud compared to theirs and you'll have to adjust your volume throughout.

Enjoy!

Our Week: 16 (and 17 &18)

Our life.

One week at a time. (Okay, so three weeks this time.)

2012.

Week 15, 16 & 17.

This week. . .
(4.8.12 -5.5.12)

So things got a little busy here.  We had Chris' dad and step-mom visit and then shortly after, my dad and my grandma came to visit, my dad from south Florida, and my grandma from Michigan.  It was fun to have four generations in our home.

Chris went on a short TDY right before my family came and so they all three ended up flying in on the same day, and all traveling through Atlanta to boot.

And while Chris was in Virginia for this TDY, he was told that he'd be leaving for the middle east in eight days.  For a month.  He left the day after my grandma flew home to Michigan and the same day my dad drove back south.  Oh, I'm not ready for these longer ones* again.

*And yes, I realize that to other military folks, one month is not that long.  To me and my kids though, it is long enough that we will miss my husband/their daddy A LOT.

My friend Cheryl at https://www.facebook.com/CrazyMessyBeautifulPhoto took this photo last month.  It's my favorite.


These weeks in school...

It got done here, there, and where ever and whenever we could fit it in. We really want to finish up, so we kept up with it in between doing fun things with family.  My grandma enjoyed listening to our history and Bible books along with the boys so that worked well.

So, for the older boys, this was weeks 31, 32 & 33 of our school year.  In these weeks, we...

• Read about several important men and women of the Reformation era...Martin Luther, William Tyndale, Anne Askew, John Calvin, John Knox...and about the new translations of the Bible that were being written so that people could read it in their own language.
•  Read about William Shakespeare...and are still enjoying it!  We are reading a recommended book called "The Children's Shakespeare" which has eleven plays in it written in storybook fashion, each about ten pages long.  My boys bring it to me each evening to read the next one. Can you imagine children enjoying Shakespeare?  It is mostly in language we can understand (hahaha) but has some words that I have to guess the meaning and try to explain it to the kids.  We also made a cardstock model of the Globe Theater.  We cut off an extra flap or something and it didn't work out 100% correctly, but we got the picture.
• Read more about Native North Americans.  We snacked on beef jerky, sunflowers, and berries, and also used berries as ink to draw with, as the Native Americans did.  We also made arrows out of straws.
• Finished up our Latin vocab words for the year!  The boys are thrilled.  It's not their favorite.
• Learned all about Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Keiper Belt, stars, and galaxies.  Wheh!  The kids put on a play about the discovery of Uranus.  We made our own clouds (like on Neptune) while some friends were over and attempted to make a baking soda rocket.  Note: Marshmallows will not substitute for cork when using vinegar and baking soda rocket. (What?  We had to stop up the bottle opening with something!)
• Debated about whether Pluto should get to be a planet or not.  Christopher and Matthew both said yes, and wrote and assignment about why.  
• Made ice cream (when learning about how freezing cold Pluto is) using plastic bags, heavy cream, vanilla, powdered sugar, ice, and rock salt.  It was pretty yummy, but melted really fast.
• Made an astrometer for astronomy to measure the brightness of stars.  It's been cloudy every night so we haven't used it.  We also poked holes in a cardboard box in the pattern of the big dipper and shined a flashlight into the box so it lit up the dark wall.  
• Made big planet orbit posters.  With glitter glue, which makes it even more fun.  

Wow, that sounds like a ton of astronomy projects this month!  We used a few that are in our Astronomy workbook that are not in the teacher's manual because the boys just want more, more, more hands-on work with astronomy.

Some pictures of our weeks...

Making Saturns (project from the prior week)

Doing art comfortably...

Writing backwards...the way DaVinci wrote in code.

Christopher's

Matthew's

Making clouds...

(warm water in microwave, drop lit match into water, quickly cover with bag of ice)

Attempting to launch the baking soda and vinegar rocket...

(I'm guessing Leah has to go potty?)

It's a dud.

Making ice cream...

Planets orbits posters...

Christopher's not finished with his yet; he has to make it just perfect...

An astrometer is used to determine how bright a star is.  Each rectangular hole has an extra layer of plastic wrap to make it harder to see dimmer stars (or something like that).

Using straws as arrows...the Native Americans used feathers for increased accuracy, so we cut the end of the straw to act like a feather.

Berries and beef jerky...snacks and writing ink.  

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Gabe's been working pretty hard as well.  We are pretty far behind still and he still has several weeks worth of work left.  Now I wish I hadn't been so easy to skip days if we just didn't get to it.  Good thing he's actually one year ahead, right?  

Math using animal crackers?  Gabe's favorite kind of math!

This tambourine is a project from way back when Moses led the Israelites across the Red Sea and they celebrated with music and dancing.  

I just found the bells recently.

Whoa.  I think I'm caught up now with our school for the past three weeks.  ONE more week!  

(Not counting Gabe's work, which only takes a half hour at the most each day.)