First Field Trip

This past Friday we took our first field trip! It was completely last minute. I went to a Homeschool mom's gathering at the church where I have Bible Study and the boys have their homeschool class. I found out about this event from another mom the night before and we decided to go ahead and do it. We went to Aw Shucks farm and I think this was this years replacement for going to the pumpkin patch. All the pumpkin patches here are WAY WAY more expensive than where we used to live - and not nearly as great I might add. Anyway, this farm had a homeschool day where Kylie and I were free and the boys were a discounted price. They learned alot about corn, listened to a talk, fed animals, got a hayride, played on all kinds of slides and hay bales, ate lunch, and saw an old train car and old store from long ago. Kylie joined right in with all the school ids. They had a blast and a bonus was they had friends to go along with! We had a great time - here are some pictures....

New Class

A local church offers MANY women's Bible studies on various days of the week. On Thursdays they have not only childcare, but a homeschool class that count as school for the homeschooler (though I don't have to worry about that in Kindergarten). It started up this last week. Kylie did not go to childcare since it was her birthday and she was out to breakfast with Jared. I took the boys to class and I could tell they were a tad nervous, though excited, but when they saw all the stuff in the room their eyes completely lit up. I was able to have a nice break and begin the "Beloved Disciple" study by Beth Moore which was great. I'm hoping to make some friends in that class. It is a huge class. We will see :). The boys LOVED their class. It is limited to 15 kids so I was concerned they might be the only boys or the youngest there by far. I wanted to do this class for a number of reasons but I really wanted them to be able to make some friends their age and do some more interacting in a class setting. I was very happy to see there are a total of 6 kindergarteners and 4 1st graders both boys and girls. I think it will be perfect for them! They made balloon animals themselves, studied flotation, began work on a memory verse, learned about faithfulness, and did a few other fun activities. I'm super excited about this for them - it's perfect for all of us! (Well... as long as Kylie loves it next week). It will last the entire year and we are looking forward to it!

Kylie turns 3!

I already posted some pictures of Kylie's birthday party but the celebration wasn't over! Her real birthday was Thursday. This Thursday was the first day we had my Bible Study and homeschool class. Jared took Kylie out for their traditional coffee/waffle date in the morning while the boys and I went to class. Then we all went to Red Robin or lunch and Jared went in to work for a while. That evening we opened gifts and had eggs, sausage, and toast (at Kylie's very specific request) for dinner. Enjoy the pictures! I posted a link to this video yesterday - but here it is embedded..... I took it with my phone (better quality than the camera) and was holding it up. She thought I was taking her picture so that is what is going on at the beginning :)

Kylie's Real 3rd birthday

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcQIYiwmahI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Kylie's party part 1

On Saturday we were able to celebrate Kylie's 3rd birthday with
friends and family. We all had a great time! Sadly, pictures don't
come out well in this house I think because of the lighting and
colors. I'm blogging from my phone and can only post 5 pics at a time
and the video has to be a link. Hopefully this will all post properly
and you will see the pictures int the next few posts. I did it
backwards I. Hopes it would show properly. We will see what happens :)

Kylie's party part 2

Kylie's Party Part 3

Kylie's party Part 4

Kylie's Birthday Party Video

I am unable to embed the video at this time. If you click the link you
can watch it. Unfortunately, If I had taken the video with my phone I
think it would have come out better. However, I love how she is
singing along :)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBr8MvwUOrg&sns=em

First Day of School

Our first day of school was today! Other than Kylie being slightly more distracting than I anticipated (she was just really excited), today probably went better than I expected. The boys did great the whole day (about 4 hours with a short break in the middle). Once Jaden said "I'm tired of sitting here" so I will need to make sure I let him roam. Today we talked about school and expectations, looked at all the school stuff, marked our calendars, talked about George Washington, reviewed a few sight words, did Language Arts, Spanish, Science, Math, Reading, Writing and Comprehension. Phew! Math, and kind of reading, were the only subjects that took more than a few minutes. I had Kylie eating her breakfast and watching Sesame Street while we did math and I think that worked really well. Kylie did about 8 (VERY SIMPLE) pages in her workbook, played a little in her room, and did some coloring. They said they liked it which is a good thing since we will be doing it from now on ;). The location of these pictures did not make for a great one - but here are their pictures. Kylie is technically not even old enough for what I refer to as "real preschool" so I call what she's doing pre-preschool :)

Labor Day Weekend!

I am short on time so this post will be a little scatterbrained - but we had a great Labor Day Weekend! On Sat we were able to visit a very dear friend of mine from High School and her family (who have also quickly become family friends) up in Mooresville. Sadly, they are over an hour away. Not sadly for that day - but sad for all the other days :). We had a nice visit, some lunch, and the kids had a great time playing. They have a boy just over a year older than our boys and a daughter just under a year older than Kylie. They get along great! You can't often say you remain such great friends with someone this long past high school! We have some friends just south of that who we know from Bellingham (how crazy is that?) Brandi has a hair salon at her house and Jared and Jaden got their hair cut. The dads then took the kids swimming, we had dinner, and celebrated their son's (also named Jaden :) ) 5th birthday! Fun times! Sadly, I have no pictures of this day. Sunday we caught up on some chores and relaxed. Monday we went to the columbia zoo with our friends from Bellingham and had a blast! It rained a little but it wasn't a big deal. I DO have some pictures of that....