Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there!!!

I had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday. It really started on Saturday evening. Bond and I got to spend some time together catching up on 24. He stayed up late with me, which doesn't happen since he delivers newspapers in the morning. On Sunday, while he was still delivering the newspapers, Wally and Pokemon King were up early to make me a wonderful breakfast.

I didn't get to eat it in bed because I had to get up to feed Babymoon, but that's okay. I got to watch Special Agent OSO with Rocket while eating. After eating, they gave me their gift. 

If you look at the first letter of each candy, they spell out MOTHER. How cute!!!

We went to church, but left early to head to Old Man's Cave for a picnic and a hike. We did this last year for Mother's Day, the previous year for Father's Day and before that it was Memorial Day. I think it's becoming a spring tradition!!! It was a very nice day!

I'm so blessed to have my wonderful family. I love my boys!!!

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pinewood Derby

As we were traveling to church for the Pinewood Derby, Pokemon King had Baby moon laughing up a storm. We were so luck to have a camera on hand!

Pinewood Derby

Last night was the Pinewood Derby. The theme was Jurassic Park. This was Pokemon King's last Pinewood Derby, as he will be moving on to 11 year old scouts. He placed 2nd overall! Great job Pokemon King!

Weekly Report

I think we've had a very productive week. We were able to get most, if not all, of our assignments done. I think the nice weather earlier in the week was a great motive for getting schoolwork done. 

Pokemon King's Accomplishments:

HISTORY

• King Charles and his 'Cavaliers' or 'Royalists' fighting against the 'Parliamentarians' or 'Roundheads'
  
• Pocahontas
  
• The life of William Shakespeare

SCIENCE

• Cyrus McCormick & the invention of the Reaper
  
• Pressure in soda cans

GEOGRAPHY

• Marco Polo-These are 2 activities from the book:

Weaving

Chinese Mask

LITERATURE

• Parables From Nature-The General Thaw
  
• Children of the New Forest by F. Marryat (this is set during the time of King Charles)
  
• Pilgrim's Progress (we've recently decided to drop this-we will start it up again next year with an easier version-we both need to brush up a little more on vocabulary before we tackle this version again!)
  

LANGUAGE ARTS

• finished punctuation: quotations, apostrophes, commas
  
• wrote a book report (without a lot of fuss, too!)
  
• starting prepositions
  
• poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (some are really good, but others are really hard to follow)
  

MATH

• fractions, circumference, volume, proportions (I know it seems all over the place, but right now they are basically brief introductions)
  

Dinodude's Accomplishments

HISTORY

• King Charles and his 'Cavaliers' or 'Royalists' fighting against the 'Parliamentarians' or 'Roundheads'
  
• Sir Philip Sydney & The Ungrateful Soldier from 50 Famous Stories Retold
  

SCIENCE

• Burgess's Bird Book, which uses real birds to make up stories-after (sometimes during) we look up the birds to see what they look like & also find out a little more about them
  

GEOGRAPHY

• Paddle to the Sea-the story of a handmade wooden boat, traveling along the waters
  

LITERATURE

• Aesop's Fables-The Lion, the Bear & the Fox and The Hares & the Frogs
  
• King of the Golden River-just finished up 
  
• Aladdin & the Wonderful Lamp-the version we read has very little in common with the Disney movie!
  

LANGUAGE ARTS

• prepositions
  
• writing a letter
  
• addressing an envelope
  

MATH

• multiplying by 10, 100 & 1000; making change from $1.00; area of a rectangle; negative numbers on a number line; finding missing dimensions of a rectangle
  

Rocket's Accomplishments

Explode the Code-he varies between 1 and 7 pages each day. Right now we are on the second book, studying 'n' and he's doing such a great job! He concentrates so hard when he makes his letters.

FOR ALL: 

MUSIC

• Composer Gustav Mahler-Symphony 9
  
• Piano lessons have drastically improved-I'm giving their lessons on Friday and they are practicing every day!

ART

• Vincent Van Gogh-The Night Cafe

Pokemon King's painting of The Night Cafe

Dinodude's painting of The Night Cafe

Rocket's painting of The Night Cafe

My Baby Went to Prom!

I'm sooo not old enough for this!

 

Spring Break

We took last week off for Spring Break. I think we were all ready for a break. The first part of the week we really didn't do anything. The boys did their usual: playing games with each other, watching movies, playing video games, fighting, arguing, etc. I decided I'd better take them somewhere so we didn't sound too lazy. 

On Thursday, I took them to COSI. All by myself! Since Bond actually goes to work, he wasn't able to come with us. Pretty sad in a way because we really enjoy going places as a family. Unfortunately, Wally still had school. His spring break was the week before. So, at COSI we went to the Gadgets area first. The boys love to put the little balls in the shooter to shoot them out. Plus they have these 3 pulley chairs where you sit in the chair and pull yourself up. Depending on how many pulleys there are it's either pretty hard or pretty easy. Then we went to the submarine area. Dinodude and Rocket love going in the submarine. Surprisingly, we didn't go to the water area. That's my favorite place. I could sit there for hours just listening to the water. After that we went to the traveling frog exhibit. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of frogs! Their favorite was the most poisonous. They're the most colorful. We saw Steelers frog and a Michigan frog! The kidspace area was last. Pokemon King and Dinodude are too old to actually go in the kidspace, but they have a little area where they can go to play video games. Obviously, Pokemon King didn't like that! (wink, wink!) After that, they were all ready to go. 

Friday we went to the zoo. It was such a nice day, so of course, everyone else had to go too! We saw the crocodiles, alligators, snakes, lizards, manatee, bats, and a few others. We really wanted to see the new baby elephant, but we weren't the only ones! The line to see it was 2 hours long! We did not want to stand in a line for 2 hours! We also packed a lunch to take with us and we sat down and ate it there. It was a pretty fun time.

I didn't take pictures at COSI (forgot my camera!) But, I remembered to take it to the zoo; however, I forgot I had it until we were almost done. I did manage to take a few:

Happy Easter

What a wonderful Easter day. We started our day with Rocket finding his basket. He just had to do it before church. Since we're always late for church anyway, we decided to let him find his now and let the other boys find theirs after church. The Easter Bunny hides their baskets and gives them clues inside little eggs that are shaped like bunnies. Since Rocket doesn't read yet, he got picture clues as to where he should look. After church the boys got to hunt for theirs. When that was done, we watched the movie Bedtime Stories that the Easter Bunny gave to us as a family. We also got the Game of Life, which we played afterwards. When that was done, we went to Oma's house to hunt for eggs and have a yummy dinner. All in all, it was a great day, but now....it's back to reality!