Field Trip--Dairy Museum and Castle Park

We currently have our home school scheduled into four days a week. We usually work Monday through Thursday, with Friday being either "Fun Friday" or "Field Trip Friday" depending on what we have planned. The beauty of homeschooling is that we can be flexible. This week, for example, we planned a big field trip with friends. It fell on a Tuesday, so we just rearranged the school work to suit us. Love it! :)Last week's field trip was a dual--Field trip/Fun Friday. We have been studying early American pioneers and also reading the Little House series and both had been focusing on dairy cows that week. One of our school activities was even making butter...so fun! Anyway, I remembered that a small town up the road from us has a dairy museum and I thought it would perfectly complement our studies. This small town also has the coolest park around (at least according to my kids), but since it's an hour away we don't go often.

We had a great time! Since it was a weekday, we had the entire museum to ourselves. The lady running the desk started a short film for us (about the importance of cows and how they are milked) and then left us to explore on our own. The kids enjoyed the displays and especially liked the dairy trivia game.

Outside the museum is a little culvert full of water. My little nature detective Henry found a duck's nest with some egg shells in it. He was pretty excited and tried to entice the ducks to come back to their nest, but they weren't interested. ;)
Adventure-man Jonah reached into a hole and came out with this carcass of some kind of creature. There are certainly some parts of living in East Texas that I am still not used to yet! I don't even know to what animal that belonged!
Bridget's favorite part of the morning was feeding the ducks. She used to get a piece of bread and throw the whole thing out. This time she was so consumed by tearing it up into teeny, tiny little pieces that her one piece lasted longer than the boys' two pieces did!
We had to snap a group shot before we left, since they had put up such an adorable fall display. :) I just LOVE the self-timer feature on my camera. It makes me happy.
After the Dairy Museum, we headed to the castle park. Oddly enough, I didn't take a single picture there. It was a beautiful, sunny, fall day...we had a picnic lunch and played for hours. There were a few parents and toddlers walking around and a couple of older adults walking the paths around the park, but we mostly had that place to ourselves too.

After we had spent the afternoon at the park, we headed to Sonic for mini-sundaes. Actually, Jonah and Bridget had mini-sundaes, but Henry enjoyed a plain vanilla cone. On the way home, the kids all fell asleep and I got to relax to some of my favorite music.

It was an absolutely perfect day!

Wow!

Loose Tooth

Henry lost one of his front teeth a few months ago and now his other top front tooth is very loose. He pulled on it a few weeks ago but at the sight (or taste?) of blood, he gave up on it. Now it's precariously hanging in there and he can twist it sideways and let it sit all wonky in his mouth. I'm thinking we're going to lose a tooth today! :)

Update at 2:20...He lost it! The tooth held up through lunch, then came out when he was eating a cookie later on. :) Henry is so excited! And I just love his new smile. Simply adorable!

Wordless Wednesday

Sleepy Henry

A while back Henry was working on school at the dining room table while I worked on some things in the kitchen. He came in to tell me he was done with what he had been working on and asked what he should do next. I suggested he go finish his Math, knowing that he had left some of it to do later. He replied, "Really?" I told him yes, wondering why he would question it.

Quite some time later I realized I hadn't heard from Henry in a while (and he should have been done fairly quickly with his assignment). Checking first in the dining room, I realized Henry was missing. I looked outside where Jonah and Bridget were playing, thinking that he had joined them. They said they hadn't seen him. When I walked back in the house, I saw this:

Later I had to wake him up as he was still napping at 4:00 that afternoon. I asked Henry if he had been pretty tired and he said no. When I asked him why he had decided to take a nap, he told me, "Because you told me to." I denied telling him to nap.

Henry said, "Yes you did! When I asked what I should work on next for school you said, 'why don't you go finish up your nap?'"

Florida Vacation Part 2--favorite pictures!

Mary Beth felt the need to clean the outside of the door to the public restroom.

I felt the need to take a picture of her doing just that.

My father in law is a goofy guy. Here he is announcing that he's ready to go for his morning walk.

We took the kids bowling for their first time ever. Henry loved every minute of it.

Jonah enjoyed bowling too; but then again, he enjoys everything.
My sweeties on the beach. I try to take this same picture every year. There is something about it that I just LOVE.

Sam and the kids resting at the airplane museum. I have the best family ever!

I am totally and indescribably blessed to be this awesome man's wife.

Cousin love.
Somehow I missed getting Henry in this picture, but this shot shows how well they all get along.

Matthew and Bridget had so much fun on this roller. It's some kind of miracle that neither one of them got hurt on it.

The whole crew.
These are the fun people who are crazy enough to vacation with us! :)

We are so grateful to have had a chance to go to Florida once again with our very favorite people. The Lord is so good to us...to HIM be the glory!!!

Florida Vacation

Last Saturday morning we headed to Florida for our annual beach vacation. We met Jon and Kelly (and Jordan and Matthew) and Dave and Mary Beth at a nearby gas station at five a.m. and hit the road.The nice thing about leaving early is that the kids sleep for the first few hours of driving. When they wake up we're already in another state and half way to our destination. We dressed the kids in their travel clothes and told them we'd get them up in the middle of the night...they were so excited they could hardly sleep!

That lack of sleep contributed to much of this on the drive down:

Sleeping kids are such WONDERFUL travelers! :)

Once we got there, we quickly unpacked, settled the house, gave the guys a shopping list (eek!) and Kelly and I took the kids to the beach.

The kids didn't waste any time jumping right in...it was breezy but that didn't stop them. They ran right down to splash in the ocean and then spent time building things in the sand.

Here's the kid crew right before we left the beach the first night...Jordan and Matthew were pretty cold by that point, but it didn't stop them from playing!

It was a beautiful drive down, and a perfect first day on the beach.

When we headed back to the house it was getting late, so we had pizza for dinner and settled in to our evening routine: kids snuggled up on the couch for a movie...

...and cards at the table for the adults!

The next day, Sam and I tried to convince everyone that we should all learn the Hoedown Throwdown (It's a Hannah Montana song. Don't worry if you haven't heard of it--I hadn't either!). We got Jon to join us and we got the first few steps nailed down before deciding we were not going to pick it up as easily as we had assumed. ;)

We spent time at the beach and the pool, but it was fairly windy (which made water activities a bit on the cool side), so we all piled into cars and went to visit the nearby Bass Pro Shop. We took the obligatory picture by the shark out front (notice my daughter is the one with her finger up her nose)...

...and saved Henry from getting eaten alive.

There was lots of time for cousin-bonding, as evidenced by these two clowns:

We spent the rest of our days doing a myriad of activities: mornings and afternoons at the beach...followed by time in the pool (in our backyard, of course!), playing at the park up the road from our house, spending a morning at the air force armament museum, going bowling (a first for our kids!), visiting the science museum, and lots of reading time for mom. :)