Sunday morning walk.

Isn't Mareea so cute riding on her bike with no training wheels?  She was determined to learn how and insisted Daddy take off the training wheels.  Her balance bike had gotten her ready and within about five minutes she was riding around like a pro. 

Curtains.

Why yes, it did take me 15 months to get up curtains in our bedroom.  I love them...and they cost $5 for both which I also love.  Our bed is not centered, but apparently I needed more room on my side when I was pregnant to fit between it and the chest of drawers that is out of the picture.  :)  We'll have to move it back now.  I think I'm going to put up some pictures above the curtains.  Or get a wall decal if I can ever decide what it should say. 

First soccer game

I had really missed watching these 2 play soccer.  We all had a great time this Saturday playing and cheering.  They won and Ashton scored twice!  Looking forward to a great season!

Evangeline's first "incident"

"Oh no, Evangeline!!  Wait!  Where's the camera!"

Happy Birthday Sweet Evangeline!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She is one.  What a year!  Happy, happy birthday to my beautiful, sweet, laid back, smiling princess, Evangeline.  We all love you so much.  It has been such a blessing to have you in our lives this past year. 

Some things in our homeschool recently

This year I chose not to buy a curriculum, but just buy some materials that we were interested in and learn with them.  Being interested in nature, we bought this game. 

 

Pretty quickly I realized that we could not play the game (at all) because we did not know any of the birds!  So we decided to just use the cards to learn the birds one at a time.  A few times a week we take turns choosing a card and reading the bird facts on the back.  Afterwards we watch a couple youtube videos about that bird and then sit down with our colored pencils and draw it.  Recently I've been reading aloud to them about birds in general while they draw.  Even Mareea at age 4 can now name the 15 birds we have learned by just looking at them.  They get really excited about our birds and I feel like they are much more interested in the birds around us outside.  I wish there was a Hawaii version of this game!  Maybe we'll make one.  

Our current read aloud is Raiders from the Sea.  I am loving it as much as the kids are! It's part of a trilogy and I'm glad we bought all 3 books so we won't have to wait for number 2 to arrive from Amazon.

Our hymn study is currently, A Mighty Fortress is our God.  I had the children make a comic with the lines of the song to help them really understand it.  Ashton's cracked me up.  He's a budding comic book artist!  

We have been trying to be a little more social in our homeschooling recently.  My introverted self took a big leap and started a lego club in our home.  It has been so much fun for Ashton and Landon and we have made some really great friends.  We alternate the lego club and meeting at the splash park each Tuesday.  Tomorrow we are meeting our lego club friends to go look at some historical airplanes and draw them.  I hope I can keep Gideon under control while they do their sketching.  

Today we...

 Today we had "PE" with some homeschool friends.  We alternate lego club and PE each Tuesday.  We start out at the skate park until we're tired and hot.

 The girls decided that skate ramps are not exciting enough apparently. 

 After getting warm at the skate park we head to the splash pad.  Evangeline walked around the outside, but never quite went in. 

Our friend Eric loves board games so we always play after we've gotten the wiggles out.