Random Cutie Pictures

The rest of March summed up in pictures:

Opal holding Jasper (the chick).

The boys feeding Berg.

Eben's latest fashion accessory, Star Wars silly bands from Hannah.

The girls at a special princess night with Dada at the Olympia Children's Museum.

Berg and Opie holding Tiny II. Berg is such an animal lover. He's so soft and gets so excited to see the chicks. We still have Puff and Moony II from the original batch of chickens and they both regularly lay one egg a day. Six more should help with not needing to buy so many more eggs from the store. It's going to be crazy to see how many eggs our family eats when we have a house full of teenagers!

Theme Days!

I love homeschooling. I love being with our kids all day. I love watching them learn new things. I love seeing them help and teach each other. I didn't love that we had gotten stuck in a boring pattern. We kept doing the same routine everyday. Which is ok if your not me. I need fun and excitement and that's the reason we decided to homeschool in the first place (well, there were lots of reasons). Letting the kids choose what they wanted to learn about and have fun doing it were big ones. So we are changing it up a little and spending some days just learning about one thing. The first theme day we had was Eagle Day on March 15th. It was great! We read books about eagles in our actual sized eagle nest made out of blankets, (which is 8-6 feet across by the way!) watched eagle videos, and acted out hatching and flying and catching prey. We even made eagle cookies and had an eagle sighting in our backyard. Since then we've done theme days on St. Patrick, and polar bears, and last week we studied all about weather. This week we are learning all about Shakespeare and reading the kid versions of his plays by Lois Burdett. Hurray for fun! Also, Peter bought me an ipad, so the kids are really motivated to finish their work because the first one done gets to play on it until lunch.

St. Patrick's Day was fun for two reasons. Learning about St. Patrick (which we'd actually been doing since the beginning of the month, but mostly for my own curiosity) and Irish traditions. We had Dubblin Coddle for dinner - it was delicious! And Dada decided it was the day to get our new baby chicks!

This time we went to Dell's to get sexed chicks. And each kid picked out their own chick and named it. Eben got a Buff Orphington he named Tiny II, Kivi got a Rhode Island Red she named Dotty. Dada and Berg share Friar Tuck also a RIR. Jasper chose a Black Sexlink he named Jasper, but now calls J.J. Opal has a Golden Sexlink called Pokey. Mama has a Barred Rock named Rocky. We'll see how many of these live or are actually hens. So far they are much healthier than our last batch.

A guy offered to take our picture outside of Dell's and I'm so glad he did. I love this one!

The chickies live in the fireplace for now, like the last batch did, and we get to see them and hold them all the time. Now we just have to wait - hopefully not 8-9 months this time for eggs!

Back to Washington!

Our long voyage back to WA took three days! We knew we didn't want to push it and had plans to see some sights on the way. We were sent off with basket of presents day from Nonnie, Mimi and Aunt Sherri so the kids had even more toys to surround them on the drive. (Before our decent down to CA my mentor mom, Mrs. Madson, gave all the kids their own goodie bags full of car travel fun!




The first leg of the trip we made it to the Sacramento area. We crashed at a hotel which had all you can eat breakfast, all you can watch cartoons and an all you swim in pool - until the people who are trying to sleep in the rooms above the pool come in and tell you to be quiet. Do yo know how hard it is to be quiet in an indoor pool? We deemed it impossible. To be nice, even though the pool was open, we went back to watch cartoons. Needless to say we got a late start to our second leg.


That afternoon, we headed over to our friend's, the Reeds, to see their cool place. They fed us lunch, showed us their cows, chickens, lake and let us play on their trampoline and zip line! And then we were off again! We only made it to Oregon where we found another hotel with a pool.


We had to stop in Oregon so we could visit the House of Mystery the next day!





Peter and I had gone here before we got married and had fond memories of the Oregon Vortex. You can feel yourself shrinking and growing as you walk from one side to the other! It's cool! (Opal was done with the coolness at this point, but she was there.)

Peter still doesn't believe it, but look at their height difference! Even Jasper appears out of nowhere!






These ones are taken by Eben, but I think it shows even clearer how I shrunk, or Peter grew - which is it? We'll never know! Also watch for the appearing Jasper - a common Vortex phenomenon!