Easter

This doesn't have anything to do with Easter, but....

we finally put our fridge in! 

(After we cut the end of the counter off to make room...*ahem*)

We moved the old fridge out with the tractor. David is potty training which is why he's...uh...not wearing pants!

Chris' parents and aunt and uncle came out and spent Saturday with us. The weather was beautiful!! I made a yummy lemon cake with strawberry filling and buttercream frosting, although I forgot to take a picture before we ate it. 

Oops!

Chris' aunt and uncle brought us a ton of lovely flowers and plants to fill all the pots on our patio (+ the two hanging baskets)!

 I love flowers. :) This week, I've discovered Daffodils popping up all over the place!

The weather was so warm, we brought the chicks outside and let them hang out in the old chicken tractor, which they love!

 This is our remaining rooster (Ben) and our Bantam hen (Elvis).

We've been going through a Lent book, reading scripture and counting down the days to Easter. It is so fun to be able to start our Easter story with the Christmas story and add on to our Christmas advent wreath, which doubles as an Easter Lenten wreath.

Unfortunately, Allison came down with a fever Friday evening and ended up spending Saturday quarantined in her room, poor girl. She was able to come out on Sunday, but we had to stay home from church and the other grandparents' house, which was pretty disappointing. We held our own service at home, so to speak and, to cheer up the girls, I let them dress up in their Easter clothes so I could try to snag some pictures.

Most of the pictures turned out like this.

Finally - a good one! Happy Easter!

Busy March

We're still plugging away at our school work, looking forward to summer vacation - just 10 and a half weeks left! Not that I'm complaining, mind you, it's just that we've had some beautiful sunny weather lately and that makes it so much harder to do lessons!

David likes to play with play-doh, color, sticker things, run around outside, blow bubbles and cause general chaos during school hours.

We had friends come stay the weekend and it was so much fun! The kids all slept well enough that at least we weren't dying of sleep deprivation. We got a couple games of pinochle in and even played Bananagrams - whoot!

The weather was nice enough for the kids to be outdoors most of the weekend, which they loved. We walked and dug in the dirt and went for tractor rides.

David was super tired after they left!

We finished the Winter term of our homeschool co-op during the last week of March. It was a lot of fun, as usual, but I'm not sure I'll teach three classes again - that was a little much! Allison made a diorama for her Book Report class.

She read Mystery of the Vanishing Horses. The scene is of a canyon with horses in it and a mine in the back corner. She had a lot of fun painting and creating her scene.



We also finished up our AWANA program the same week. Both girls received book awards. Earlier in the month, they raced their cars in the Grand Prix....

Abby won 3rd place for the design of her car in the Sparks category!

Allison won 2nd place for the design of her car in the T&T category!

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! :)