A Thanksgiving Celebration

Every year (almost) we travel to my aunt's house in Kentucky for Thanksgiving. It's usually the only day we spend with my extended relatives on my dad's side so we really look forward to seeing everyone and catching up.

Here's our day in pictures:

Heading to Kentucky.
Megan wanted to hold on as we crossed the bridge ;)
On the farm:
Megan, Uncle Ed, and Papaw going for a walk to see the cows.
We got a kick out of Heidi wanting to go for a ride in the Mule.
Hanging out outside:
Nicholas fell asleep.
Then he snuggled Kristen and she fell asleep too!
Nana is in the purple and Megan is snuggling Uncle Ed's mother. I can't remember the name of the other lady but I think she's Ed's sister.
The Great-grandkids: our kids plus my nephew, J.D. and my cousin's daughter, Emily:
The six of us plus my dad and Nana:
Nana, Dad, and Aunt Emily:
We had a wonderful day visiting and eating (too much, of course ;)) and we look forward to seeing everyone again soon!

Thanksgiving isn't over for us, though! We still have two more wonderful dinners to share with family! Although it makes for a busy weekend for us, we feel so thankful and blessed to have so many people to share this holiday with that we wouldn't have it any other way! :)

Being Thankful

Like most people, I take note of my blessings on this day and spend the day feeling humbled and thankful. Today I would like to share some of the things that I'm most thankful for.

1. Jesus. Without Him, nothing else matters anyway :)
2. A loving God
3.My family
4. Our health

If you know me, then this list isn't a surprise to you :) but here's one that might:

5. A messy house! Even though I'm continually frustrated about the mess in my house, I also recognize the blessing here. It's messy because we homeschool and I am truly am thankful for that opportunity and time with our kids. It's also messy because we have a houseful of healthy children who love to create and play! I'm so thankful for that! I'm well aware that there will be a day when there will not be toys scattered throughout my house and I'm not looking forward to that so I'll try to remember to be patient and enjoy this blessing :)

I hope you all had a minute to realize the things you are thankful for as well :)

Sing It, Nick!

I just love this song! One more post from showcase :)

Making a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord

"Joy to the World"

Our co-op music class performing "Joy to the World" at showcase. This is the first year we've had an actual music teacher and we are loving it!

More Birthday Fun

Today (whew, finally caught up!), Todd's parents came to visit and gift the little birthday girl! She was so excited to get presents after her birthday! And here she is all decked out in her new Barbie dress with her matching Barbie:)
A cute new outfit made with organic cotton!
Thank you Meemaw and Papaw!
Megan giving Meemaw Judy a big thanks:
And, of course, she couldn't resist covering herself in the wrapping paper ;)
We had a wonderful afternoon visiting :) Russ and Judy, thanks for coming up! See you Saturday!

Cooking 101

Friday afternoon, Nicholas had a cooking class so we grabbed a quick bite then headed straight there after our field trip.

The theme was Thanksgiving. The kids learned about some traditional Thanksgiving foods as well as some more modern day traditions. They also learned a little geography as they talked about where some of the food traditions came from.

Good co-op buddies :)
The drink, which was sweet, was the only think he liked. I'm shocked.
Isn't he a cute, little chef?
Carla, we are loving these classes! Thank you for setting this up!

Mott's Military Museum

Back to my week! We really had a big week around here and I'm eager to share Friday!

We had a co-op field trip scheduled to go to Mott's Military Museum. One of the classes at co-op for Brandon's age was WWI so this seemed a perfect choice for the semester. Let me just say, it couldn't have been more perfect. We loved it! Mr. Mott himself gave our tour and he was a fascinating man! He started collecting pieces of history as a boy digging up arrowheads (which he has on display) and his passion continued right on into adulthood. He shared his passion with his son who grew up to be one of the men who "acts" in the Battle of Gettysburg reenactment!

Mr. Mott likes to tell about his pieces by talking about the people who used them. He really seemed to enjoy bringing history to life for our group. And we loved hearing all his stories! His museum covers our nation's history, war by war. There's an extensive Civil War display, tons of Native American things and information about some of the more famous battles with them, WWI, WWII, and he has a new wing under construction for Korea, Vietnam, and Dessert Storm.

There's also a replica of our own local war hero, Eddie Rickenbacker's, house filled with things about him. I never new he was so fascinating!

Although everything he has is labeled, having him give the tour made a huge difference. You can go in any time and read all the labels about all the things in his museum, but his stories are the best part :) He is a wealth of information!

I snapped one picture before one of the other parents informed me we were not allowed to take any pictures inside. Oops! Here it is, money from the Civil War time period:
We were, however, allowed to snap away outside and I did ;)

Planes and tanks :
Our group:
Kyle was so sweetly playing with Megan:
Thank you, Angi, for setting all this up! Too bad you guys couldn't come, you would have loved it! It was really a neat place and I hope we go back in the spring after WWII!

A Fun Preschool Schedule

I'm interrupting myself here for a few to post on a fantastic preschool planner I found! I read Homeschool Creations fairly regularly and recently ran across this cute little preschool planner! I'm so excited to use it to try and keep some of the things I want to do with Megan organized!

If you haven't checked out Homeschool Creations, you definitely should! Such wonderful ideas going on over there! She has another site for toddlers called Totally Tots that is fantastic too! They are planning some big changes over there so check it out!

Sunday Morning

Behold, children are a gift from the Lord,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one's youth.
How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them;
They will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies at the gate.
Psalm 127:3-5

After the Showcase :)

After showcase, we have a time of food and fellowship. Families sign up to bring something to share and we eat, talk, look at the displays, and watch our kids play :) As it all winds down, we start putting the room back together and cleaning up our messes. A big, gigantic THANK YOU too all who helped! Last night would've been a very long night if clean up had been left to only a few, but people jumped right in and the help is greatly appreciated!

As all of this was going on, I managed to snap a few pictures of a particular little cutie and her very cute friends being, well, cute :)

Megan put her program on the music stand and pretended to direct the choir. She does this all the time in church! Cracks me up!
Emma came over to see what she was up to and they chased each other around the music stand :)
Megan, Erin, and Greer. These three have Montessori and Preschool play together and are such good, sweet friends.
And there they go....another game of, well running :)
I have no idea what they were doing here, a game of sorts, then Greer fell. She obviously wanted to be there, she was probably tired because it was really getting late, but Megan was insistent ;)
So cute!

The Big Night

Last Thursday was our last day of co-op for this semester. Our kids absolutely LOVED their classes and they'll miss seeing their friends so much. Maybe we'll have to get in some "playdates" over our break ;)

Anyway, along with the last day is our showcase; sort of an open-house/recital. It was HUGE this year! As I was typing the program, I was amazed at how many kids had signed up to perform. Really, I was starting to stress a little ;) We set up every chair in the Fellowship Hall and it wasn't enough. I overheard someone telling someone else there was no place to sit! WHAT?!? We had to drag chairs from upstairs. Seriously!

It was all good though. Actually, it was great! I completely forgot to snap a few pictures of the fantastic displays (of course I did), but let me tell you, they were great, so I stole a few from my friend, Angi :)

I was so impressed with the art that Brandon did this semester! Miss Juli said she wanted to have an older kids class so she could teach a more in-depth class and wow did she ever! Here is some of Brandon's work from the past ten weeks:

For this study, they were to bring in an 8x10 picture. Then they were to paint the picture three different ways; realistic, abstract, and non-objective. Love it!

I stole this picture from Angi's blog ;) Brandon's isn't in this shot, but I love how you can get a good idea of what the diplays looked like and see some of the wonderful talent!
Here's a close-up of Brandon's:
For this one, he did a grid drawing of a photo of a zebra, then he took that drawing and etched it into a black board. Love it too! Brandon's is top center:
This is a display from Nicholas' Seasons class. They did all sorts of things in this class, from decorating pumpkins to bringing home snails and bulbs. There was all sorts of hands-on learning going on there!
Then there were the performances, my favorite! Nicholas did music this semester which he surprised himself by loving! They learned a sweet, little song and also learned a song on the bells! I'll be posting a video of that soon!
Megan's preschool class did a cute song to sign language. These little ones worked really hard this semester learning these signs. Megan was so eager to show me hers each week. She was so excited!

A Bit of Fun

It has been such a busy week! There's so much I want to get up here and usually when I get so far behind, I just don't post it at all, but there were some really good things that I want to share (remember!). I'll just start where I left off :)

Tuesday, we went to Coco Keys which is an indoor waterpark not too far from here. This was the last week of their special and we had to get in on it! Unfortunately, so did everyone else. The place was packed. We went with my cousin, Teresa. She got there right at 3 when the get-in-free special starts and she got the last table! We were not able to get there until 5 and by that time, we were lucky to get in at all.

I spent the first two hours running around dragging Megan with me trying to find the boys. We did get to relax a bit on the lazy river type area where you float around on innertubes, but mostly, I was in a panic trying to find one or the other and wouldn't let Megan out of my sight even for a second!

We took a pizza break around seven and lucky for us, people started heading out. By eight, the place was pretty deserted! Yippee! This time was pretty relaxing. I could entertain Megan on the innertubes while Nicholas went down the slides with Hannah and Brandon played some basketball. I got to go down the slides once with Nicholas while Teresa watched Megan, but the lines were so terribly long then...GAH! When Hannah and Nicholas went down there was hardly any line at all and they just kept going back up! They had a ball!

I didn't take many pictures. I was in the water with Megan the pretty much the whole time! But I did get a couple:

Nicholas and Eli playing some basketball. These two are pretty good buddies :)
Brandon shooting hoops in the bigger kids pool.
Here's the exit for the water slides. That's Brndon in the water. He lived on these slides that evening ;)
Megan at the end of the evening drying off.
All the kids!
Everyone had a really fun evening! Brandon suggested a weekend away there this winter. Hmmmm maybe .....