Saturday, September 26, 2009

Homecoming 2009

Chelsea goes to Blue Springs North High School. Tonight was their homecoming dance.


Playing around before the official picture taking...



A little bit of height difference here. This is Chelsea without her shoes on.



Beautiful couple all dressed up for a change. Neither one of these two are much for putting on Aires. They manage quite well in their sports shorts and T-shirts.



The other girl and her date are friends of Chelsea's. They play softball together. Due to a rain out they were able to make it at the last minute.



Check out the heels she is wearing just to get a little bit taller. I hope she doesn't break an ankle in these!

All Dressed up with Someplace to go....

I decided to kidnap my son before we headed to Chelsea's house for pictures. Its a rare occasion when the boy decides to get cleaned up. I like him when  he cleans up. I figured I had better take advantage of the situation so we headed over to the lake and got some pretty decent pics!

















Football with Cair Paravel

The lions versus the lions.... Ended up being a very rainy game that was called at half time. Was a great trip out of state... followed up as usual at McDonalds.





Chelsea is always a good sport when it comes to taking MORE pictures!



Yummy! Dinner for two...




Some of the group that didn't get lost on the toll roads. We agreed on the first McDonalds we came to and somehow lost more than 3/4 of the team.

International House Of Prayer Picnic

Abby on her way down!
Our Church had their 10th Anniversary picnic this last Sunday. We had a ton of fun!



This game was a ton of fun for the girls.



Lots and lots of people.






Look carefully... DO you see the line of people ALL the way down the right side and along the back of the park? I am not sure how many people actually came. I assume somewhere between 5,000-7,000. We STILL were not in line but the kids were. It took them over 2 hours to get to the pavillion.



The food Pavillion



We are such line hoppers. Here we are sitting with some friends eating already.

They had football, basket ball for both men and women, Family kick ball, board games like spoons and chess, Korean games, Men and womens sand volleyball, soccer and baseball. They also  had a drum circle and a whole area of blow ups for the kids... oh~ And face painting too!


Now to the post I had planned to share

Our sixth week of school was super busy. We are learning alot and doing more than any other year I believe. With that being the case I often take alot of pictures in the classroom. Some how I managed to take more pictures of activities than anything else. My digi camera is always along for the ride. I rarely go anywhere with out it being in my purse or pocket. I don't know what I will do once I upgrade to a big camera. Probably still carry the small one around.

This week on the homeschooling board we have chosen Apples as the theme. We actually will do this topic until the end of next week. It has been great fun and I have learned alot of new things. The women over there are such a wonderful resource!

So I am going to shut up and post pictures now. Hope you all enjoy!


Nick came up with the slogan "How do you like them apples". When we discussed it being grammatically wrong they didn't care. They said it wll all about the attitude and slang of it. I really was pushing for "As American as Apple Pie". Hali drew and cut out, then arranged the board so that we can add our work to it as we deem fit.






As one of her fun things to do once we finish the workboxes for the day, Hali created her very first candle.



I will have to follow up with the completed project. Abby is studying plants and reproduction in her Abeka Science. Using the dyed rice from a previous project, colored sand and pipe cleaners she created all the parts of the flower including roots. She then labled them for identification.



Her drawn out and partly completed project.



Hali's dramatic photography taken on our way to St. Mary's for the boy's football game. We had three games almost back to back.



Junior High lined up to watch Varsity play. Aaron is number 8 and Nick is number 10.



The McDonalds tradition continues. Only problem was a half  hour before we arrived the manager sent most of her crew home. It took us more than an hour for all of the parents and players to get our food. Shown here are the last ones to get service. By this point I was ready to get back on the road.




Nick's Girlfriend Chelsea has been joining us for alot of football games. I wonder how long it will take for her to start hating McDonalds?



We did manage to do some new things this week. One of those was adding the counting blocks for Abby. She is counting by 4's here as a pre-multiplication assignment. She would "trade" each block when it was approperate. When we got into the 200's she was ready to quit and just do the math problems.



We have had a couple weeks of rain. Here we are playing De Kalb High school. We played in the rain and thankfully we had no injuries. I don't get very many pictures because I am usually video recording the games.



The last couple games Nick has had a chance to play if he wanted to. His ankle is still swelling and is painful at times. We will have a two week break coming up and hopefully he will be able to play strong the last half of the season.


A busy week

As I sit here about to write how this week has been, my son just announces that he can't find his clothes for Homecoming. He forgot to order the wrist corsage. We have to be there in less than three hours. He has been playing football with the boys up at the church lot for about 4 hours... He is down to the wire and mom has to step in. My blood pressure sky-rockets. The other teen is asking if he and his friend can run to Cici's pizza for lunch... Oh wait, his friend forgot his shoes at the park.

As you can see life will always be full of surprises and things not going the way we plan. We scramble and do the best that we can do. Hy-Vee floral comes to our rescue, only offereing pink and black when Nick's date is wearing black and white. Kohl's is on the way to Hy-Vee. So instead of updating like I had planned, Mamma Jenn is off to save the day!

Friday, September 18, 2009

Gingerbread Lapbook and unit study

Abby has been finishing up alot of projects this week. One of the lapbooks that I know we wont be adding anything else to is the Gingerbread man. So I wanted to take some time out and post the pictures from it. If I knew how to link things I would. One of these days someone will show me how and I will get all these things situated. Until then, if you want to do a gingerbread lapbook I suggest that you either email me or you do an online search.

Mind you that Abby wanted you to see these pictures. I think she likes lapbooking as much as I like HER lapbooking. As with several of the other unti studies, you will see this one attached to the front of the folder. Please remember I use the super huge commercial drawing file folders... SO I can fit more on without having to do the extensions.

BTW, did I mention I love the gingerbread man?


Front with Unit study attached so it doesn't get lost by the end of the year.



I am really wishing I would have printed these off on colored paper. I thought Abby would enjoy coloring them but she likes them in black and white.



Abby working on her soft "G" and hard "G" sounds.





Outside of the gingerbread house


Inside with word search





Under each of these sections Abby wrote what she thought.





She didn't spend too much time on this project. There was alot of cutting out. So coloring was NOT going to happen.


This was Abby's favorite. The book goes through and on each page you eat one pc of the gingerbread man. An arm, leg, head and so forth.


And thats it for the gingerbread man!

Pick of the Week

Refuel

There are times when I find something that is really awesome and just WORKS! Well, Dh was shopping this last week at Mardells and came home with this new Bible. Its unlike any other bible I have seen. I opened it up and all I could say was "This rocks!"

There are a few things I really liked about it. First we bought it for the boys. Its totally geared for teens. The format is striking, the pictures totally contemporary... Instant sucess with the boys. The one we got is the old testiment battles...

I am going to share these pictures with you all so you can see what I mean. They cover all kinds of issues teens are faced with. Guarding your heart (you HAVE got to read what it says!), issues with Porn, making eye contact if you like a young lady, music reviews, movie reviews, how to get plugged into short tems mission opportunities, and a section called bible basics... in this case its the words "agreement"... I give this book 5 stars out of 5. Its EXCELLENT!