May wrap-up

We had a busy month!  Didn't mean for it to get so busy, but it did.  Between chicken coop building, camping, Aaron's birthday, 4-H stuff, and lots of yard and gardening work it was a squeeze school in when we can kind of month.  So, we did a lot of puzzles, and random things.  Here's a sampling.  I was lazy and didn't take a lot of pictures of all the things we did!

The boys did this ocean puzzle.  I helped them too.  I love getting down and doing puzzles with them.  They laid down to show how big the puzzle was.
 

We did a lot of puzzles.  Here's one of the many geopuzzles the kids did.  This one was Africa and the Middle East.  These puzzles are wonderful!

April was pointing to Egypt.  She thought that was fun since we are learning about Egypt {still} in Story of the world.



Wrap-ups.  These are very handy.  I think this is going to help Aaron a lot.  He can do the +1 and +2 pretty good.  He loves this.  We have a multiplication one too for April.

 

playing games has been a fun thing this month.  Here April joined Aaron in his Graphing, and they made a game out of it.

 

 I usually don't let the kids do the Wii during the day or for school time, but since we were doing a little baseball mini unit I let them try out the baseball on Wii sports.  Aric is demonstrating his Wii hitting skills.

 

April marched with her 4-H horse club in the local pet parade.  That was pretty fun to watch, we even saw chickens in the parade.

A baseball spelling page that Aaron worked on.




This was a fun tot school activity I pulled together while camping over Memorial day weekend to occupy little Alex.  Marbles and these ice cube trays.  He liked putting them into the holes.  He loved the marbles, but I had to watch him closely with them so he didn't get to play with them as long as he'd liked.

We are still working through our Articles of faith.  They like these puzzles to help them to learn the words. It is going to be busy here for a little bit longer, but we do plan to school through the summer, at least part time as much as we can!

Desiree

They roost!

Remember how I was saying the chicks weren't touching the roosting bar in the coop?  Well, they finally figured it out!  I came out a few nights ago to close the door, and found them all like this.  So glad they finally figured it out!
 
 Oh, and they are all no longer chirping.  They mostly have the full chicken clucking sound. 

Desiree

First camping trip of the season!

Our first camping trip of the season already come and gone...sigh!  It was fun, and fast, and tiring.  Camping with 4 children is very tiring, but so worth it.  I always love spending time with my family in the great outdoors.  It really is refreshing, and takes us out of our normal.  It helps us to see things in a new perspective, and we get to explore this beautiful world that God has created.  I am so thankful we get to do this so much. Having a travel trailer really makes it possible.  I don't know if I'd be so willing to do it with tents, especially in the rain.

We left on Thursday afternoon and it was threatening rain, and even thundering a little bit.  A lot like last year!  It did rain about half the time during our camping trip.  But we had a few great afternoons of sunshine and warmth.  Even when it was cloudy and not rainy, that was nice.  But, there were evenings around the fire where it started pouring and we had to cut our fire time and run for cover!

The kids did a lot of hiking and geocaching around with Grandma and Uncle Marc (they were there too in their own trailer).  They played a lot of games like Disney Headbanz (our new game for this year), Disney apples to apples, and pit.  We realized that we have a overwhelming supply of disney games in our trailer, and probably need to change them out for some non-disney ones.  I add a new game to the trailer each season, and the headbanz game was new this year.  It's a game where you wear a headband with a card facing out so you can't see who it is and you ask questions to try to figure out who you are.  That was a fun one, and pulled out many times this camping trip.

I think that about covers the highlights of the trip.  I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking...

Little Alexander.  This guy was a challenge to keep corralled in the campsite.  He just wanted to wander away, and go some where all the time!  He would just start walking down the gravel drive away from our trailer every chance he could.  Someone had to have their eye on him all the time.  So, when sister was on little brother duty, this is what they did.  She let him jump all over her.  He loved that.

 

This is his favorite way to be held, upside down.  April was begging me to help her, but of course I had to snap a shot of it first, right?

 

Aaron learned how to build his first fire.  Daddy showed him how to build the kindling, to get it started.  He loved this.  He's ready for boy scouts!



We have a new traveling buddy to join us on our camping trips now.  This is our traveling gnome.  The kids love having a gnome that goes camping with us.  We will probably take pictures of him going with us all summer.

 

A picture of the Headbanz game.  It was a great game to have sitting around the fire.  Kinda looks goofy seeing everybody with cards on their heads, made me want to laugh when I looked out the window from the trailer.



My little Aric wanted to spend a lot of his time inside the trailer.  I think he just liked being in there with me and Alex, so I got out some construction paper and we made a little craft during some quiet time.  I have some paper and supplies for quick little crafts that I just keep in the trailer.  Then we can decorate the "fridge".



Bringing Alex's space saver chair for him was a life saver.  This was the best way we could keep him contained while making s'more's.  Here he is eating his "s'more".



I think the only part he ate was the chocolate.

Apparently all April had was chocolate too??  Ha, just kidding.  I know she had at least 2 full s'mores.  Somehow she must have sneaked more chocolate.




Aric loves to roast the marshmallows, but he doesn't eat them.  Funny kid.  He only likes the chocolate, and maybe a little graham cracker.  I have to keep the chocolate bars well guarded from him.

 

We did something new this year.  We had a fun camping gift to give them on our first camping trip for the summer.  They all got pocket knife's, but the little boys didn't get real ones for obvious reasons.  They got little wooden play ones.  They LOVED these.  April got a real one, she is old enough, so she got a little pink CRKT shrimp.  You can click on the link to see a picture.  I forgot to get a picture of hers.  Here's the boys' little wooden one.  It was actually a kit, and they put them together with Daddy.  We got these at Bi-mart if anyone is interested.  Don't know if they have them anymore, but they were sure a great find.

Aric carried his around everywhere.  He loved to pretend like he was cutting back the bushes while we were hiking because there was a LOT of overgrowth on the hikes. 

These were great kits, and so easy to put together.  They close just like the real thing too.

I wasn't going to include this picture at first because it isn't a very good one, but I want a picture of the whole site to remember.  This is Metzler park, the same place that we went to last year.  It's a nice place, and it was very green and beautiful.

Happy 6th Birthday Aaron!

Today is Aaron's birthday!  He's finally 6 year's old!  He has been waiting for this day for a long time.  He had an awesome year, here are some of his best moments this past year...

He got his first animal!  He loves his  chicken "Black beak."  He's super at holding her, and loves having his first animal.


He has freckles now!  Love that cute face.


He still runs away only sometimes when you want to take his picture...

He loves to get my windows dirty...

He loved the air and space museum up in WA so much he could hardly contain himself (which is usually the case)...


He loved discovering the world everywhere he went...
 

He wore many hats playing "caps for sale" during school...
 

He made the coolest ups man I've ever seen...
 

 He made us all laugh...

He sold lemonade at his first lemonade stand...

He tried hard in school, and learned all kinds of new things...
 

He grew in many ways!  Looking back on his year has helped me to see how much he really has grown in so many ways.  I'm looking forward to seeing all that he can accomplish this year!
 

Chickens (not ours) in a parade

We are so doing this next year!  These chickens were in the pet parade, so cute!

Building the coop part 2 (and other fun pictures)

The chickens have been living in their house for over a week now, and they love it!  We love it!  It's so cool seeing this neat barn coop in the back yard.  All the hard work really paid off.  I also love that my house doesn't smell like a farm so much anymore.

On to the pictures and coop building...
First up, painting!  We all got to pitch in a little bit with the painting.  Even the kids got to help with this part, but Michele did do a majority of the painting red and trim work.  It was fun for the kids and I to help when we could though.

April made a "beware of chickens" sign.  We saw this idea somewhere on the internet, and she thought that was pretty funny.  Not sure where we should hang it yet. Michele painted that white chicken on the front himself!  I think that may be my favorite part of the whole coop. Next up, the roof.  After the painting and the wire attached it was time for the roof, and we were all happy to see that there was an end in sight.
A shot of the door where the chickens can come down from the loft area to the run during the day.


Aaron sure loves his black beak.  She's getting big. So big that he has to hold her like this.  He's getting pretty good at catching her and holding her.  Maybe we'll look into showing at the fair. This is a shot of the roosting bar.  It's actually a branch from the butterfly bush we took down recently.  As of today they still haven't gotten on it (at least that we have seen).  We're not sure why.  Too high?  Too weird?  They just haven't noticed it?  Not old enough to be interested in roosting?   It's bolted down so it's not wobbly at all.  Don't know.  We'll see how that goes. All the boys loved watching Daddy with his tools, and were always willing to "help".  I think Daddy is so happy here because he's putting the last thing on, the latch, before it was done. It's all ready for some chickens to move in! Are you ready black beak?  It's movin' day!
I think those chickens are ready!
I think they like it...
Oh yes, all kinds of stuff to peck at in this grass!  This is the life!

In other news we've officially used up our first chick feed bag.  Hopefully soon we'll be able to make a re-usable bag out of it real soon.  I have the directions to make one, and they are so handy.  I'm excited.  Hopefully I'll get to post pictures of that soon.

Desiree