My Lil Helpers

Sometimes, my kids are so awesome that they help me do things around the house. Things that often seem so mundane to me, are exciting and fun for them. Esperanza and Ezra both help cook, sweep, do laundry, vacuum, feed the animals, clean out the car and other every day chores. 

Here's Esperanza helping make breakfast one morning. Oatmeal is hands down her favorite breakfast.

Ezra helped make laundry detergent the other night. He loved helping with this chore, it was so much fun for him.

Fun Day At ACE Today

We love our homeschooling/unschooling ACE group. Above photo is a small group of kids that Esperanza plays with - from left to right - Maddy, Sasha, Opal, Esperanza, Olive and Izzy. We had fun playing at the park today. It had been raining so it was rather wet, and Ezra wasted no time getting himself waist deep in mud puddles. I only got the before picture, but the after part is quite memorable as well. The kids always have a ton of fun and I am so grateful to have found a group close to us that we really enjoy being with.

The Wind In The Willows

We are currently reading the classic book The Wind In The Willows. Esperanza's love for animals has spilled over into loving books with animals. Every night, we read a chapter or two of this book before bedtime. It is such a great story, with great characters. The book was handed down to us from my sister Geneva and her kids.

Naomi's Short Visit

Naomi flew up to visit for a few short days. She came without Chance, and only briefly. The reason for her visit was to see George, as he has been hospitalized for the past couple of weeks and his health is not improving. He was recently diagnosed with congestive hearth failure, and will only get worse. It was a blessing that Naomi had an opportunity to fly home, to see him for what could be the last time.

The kids and I went over to my moms house to visit with Naomi for a couple of hours and they got some much needed love, hugs and kisses from their beautiful Aunt Naomi.

"I'm Not Getting Old, I'm Staying With Dad"

While at the library for the Dr Seuss birthday celebration, the kids overheard someone say that Dr Seuss was dead. 

Ezra asks me "Why did Dr Seuss die?"

"He got old and died" I replied.

"Why did he get old" Ezra asked.

"Everyone gets old" I say.

"Not me", says Ezra, "I'm not getting old, I'm staying with dad"

A Back Full of Poo

I just felt like documenting this for future giggles. Yes, that's Ezra's poop that went all the way up his back.

Roller Skating

 

When I was a kid, back in the 80's, we went roller skating at Golden Skate sometimes. I have some vague, but fun memories of that place. All my childhood memories are pretty hazy and vague. But I still had a pretty decent visual of what this placed looked like when I was a kid. As I discovered today, it is exactly the same as it was back then. Well, except for the music. The same maroon carpet lined the walls, the same big disco ball sparkled from the same spot on the ceiling and they even had the same roller skates. I would bet money that the skates Esperanza wore were the exact same pair I wore when I was her age and shoe size. They've held up well! Esperanza and I met our homeschooling friends Maddy, Izzie and their mom Amanda for some first time roller skating fun. The girls started off a bit wobbly, stumbled and fell a few time and stayed close to the wall. Towards the end, they were all much braver and better. It took me a little bit to get my skating groove back, but it did, and even I had a ton of fun! We will be back. A lot!

Saturday Night School

This is how we spent our Saturday evening last night. 

We are working our way through a phonics/reading book called The Ordinary Parents Guide To Teaching Reading. I'm no 'ordinary' parent, but who is? Especially when it comes to homeschooling, everyone does things a little differently, as is the whole point to homeschool. Anyways, the book teaches phonics in very simple, easy and quick lessons. Last night, Esperanza wanted to 'do' school, so we did. We don't 'do' school unless she wants to, which is usually at the most unusual time, and that is what works perfect for us. No one is going to learn much when they don't want to learn. Last night we finished 2 phonics lessons, a history lesson (we are using Connect the Thoughts), a few worksheets, browsed an informational picture book about backyard birds (February's theme is birds) and read 3 chapters of The Trumpet of The Swan (which clearly goes very well with this months homeschooling theme). Every night before we turn off the lights, we lie in bed snuggled under the covers together and read 2 or 3 chapters of this book. Just Esperanza and I. She loves it!

Valentine's Crafts

For Valentine's Day, we read a couple of books to learn a little about the history of the holiday and we did a couple of cute and fun crafts to spread the love in honor of Valentine's day. Our ACE group planned a Valentine's card exchange and gathering so we spent one afternoon last week making cards, using lots of glitter, glue and glitter-glue. It was quite the production, and our gathering with our homeschooling friends was fun for all. On another day, when we had Opal over, we made heart shaped sun catchers. Those turned out beautiful! 

Ice Melt Experiment

Last weekend, our beautiful and powdery snow turned to ice. Freezing rain fell from the sky for a couple of days, leaving a treacherous layer of ice on top of the snow everywhere. We don't get snow often, especially the snow storm we just had. When we do though, history seems to have a way of repeating itself and it always ends with an ice storm. We stayed inside for about 48 hours once the freezing rain began to fall (with the exception of me going out to check in on the chickens, bring them bits of food to keep them somewhat happy and break their ice water up) since the walkway, roads, ground and everything was way to dangerous to even attempt. Because we don't get this type of weather often, our cities become pretty immobilized for the duration of it. Other areas of the country are used to snow and ice, so they use de-icer chemicals and/or salt to keep the roads safe for drivers. As an experiment, we decided to test the waters (or ice) to see how well salt really works at thawing out ice. I have a book that had just the experiment in it as well so we used it as a guideline and got to work. As it turns out, the ice with salt on it melted a couple hours faster than the ice with no salt on it. Very interesting!

 The ice on the left has the salt on it. Pictures taken about an hour after each other.