Annual Grand Prix

Every year, the AWANA program we attend hosts a Grand Prix where the kids race wood derby cars that they have designed and/or decorated. Allison has really enjoyed this event, over the past several years, and has even won a couple of trophies! This is Abby's first year to enter a car in the races and she is super excited! Both girls spent a lot of time trying to decide just what they wanted and designing their cars.

Abby's first entry (she was adamant about wanting an eraser)!

Allison's car has a couple of different Bible verses on it about God's creatures.

A New Adventure

As I mentioned in a previous post, we inherited two roosters and a small bantam hen when we moved into our new home. A neighbor is going to take at least one of the roosters off of our hands (hopefully two!). Chris has designed a great hen house and we hope to start building it in the next week. In the mean time, we needed to get something to fill the hen house with - chicks!

This morning, we headed into town and picked up twelve cute little balls of fluff.

We brought them home and placed them under the heat lamp. 

Before we left, I remember thinking that tub was pretty big, but I can see now that we are definitely going to need something much bigger to contain these little critters soon. :)

We got three each of the following breeds: Welsummer, Rhode Island Red, Black Australorp and Buff Orpington. They are all toted to be friendly hens and good layers. We are so excited to watch them grow up and collect their eggs!

"Gingerbread" Houses...or something

In December, I promised the girls they could make gingerbread houses. Then they asked to make graham cracker houses instead...whoohoo! However....we got busy...packing, paperwork, Christmas, advent, church.

January rolled around and I assured the girls that they could make the houses as soon as we were moved in. February blew in and I bought a big box of graham crackers and made sure we had all the things we needed to make yummy houses. Then we ate all the graham crackers.

March 4th, a friend came over, I bought a new box of graham crackers, and the girls finally got to make their houses!

Materials

Glueing it all together.

Let the decorating begin!

 Final products :)

The every day...

Here are some things we've been up to:

Found this old favorite at our local (much beloved) second hand book store...

then found this. Ack!! What is our world coming to?! ;-)

The girls love having friends over. Here they are playing "hair salon."

It warmed up for a few days and we were able to get some yard work done.

David helped!

We ended up with a very large box secret club house!

We've gotten some snow a couple of times recently, but nothing that stuck around for long.

David is loving bath time!

 Daddy and mommy love how tired David is after playing hard outside.

Co-op Fun

Our kids usually participate in our local homeschool co-op at least one term a year, if not two. This winter, the kids are taking Pioneer Life, Arts & Crafts, Outdoor Survival, Intro to Book Reports and Early Reading. They all love seeing their friends and learning new things together!

I teach the Intro to Book Reports class, along with an Advanced Book Reports class and organizing a craft hour for the preschoolers.

This week the girls made log cabins in their Pioneer Life class!

The preschoolers love craft time...and so do I! :)