Welcome Fall

It is a beautiful Sabbath day. It is raining outside. I love it!

School is now in full swing. Emma is working hard, as usual. She also started a new year of violin. On tuesday we start homeschool swim. Rachael will be swimming, too. Rachael is continuing to be a reading rockstar and will soon be reading short stories.

Funny Girl!

Rachael was assigned to give the article of faith today during opening excercises in primary. I came in and caught the tail end of it. She started off repeating the article of faith in her own sweet little voice and then decided teddy, her stuffed animal of the day, wanted to finish for her. Teddy has a very high squeeky voice. Comedy ensues. Gotta love sunbeams!!!

It is official, my niece is going to be baptised this weekend! She is such a great kid and I am so glad that we will be able to make the trek to see it. Six hours in the car= gotta find a good book to listen to.

yesterday I told the girls to go put church shoes on. I am always scrambling at the last minute to get out the door. When I got downstairs Rachael was wearing my high heels. Well, they were church shoes, lol!

Here's Rachael playing with her animals. She is the truest animal lover I have ever known!
Emma reading her scriptures

Roosevelt elk we spotted on our Father's Day carnick (car picnic)

Happy Father's Day!!!

Another beautiful day in paradise. Sunny, but not hot! How did I get so lucky?

Anyhoo, Rachael brought me an old ballerina barbie thing last night. I got so excited! Anytime she shows interest in anything resembling a human I get excited. So, she hands me the doll and asks me to take off the ballerina costume. She then puts the costume on one of her stuffed bunnies. I should have know, lol! The bunny did make a cute ballerina.

Emma has discovered Scratch and made her first animated video. She asked me to save it for her and I proceeded to accidentally delete it. She was, understandably, devastated. Poor girl is already sensitive and then her mommy deletes all of her hard work. That was a "going down in history bad mom" moment.

I got my 2 new cricut cartridges in the mail yesterday. I got the 50 states and zoobaloo cartridges. My cricut machine is a die cut machine. I have been wanting these cartridges forever to use in our home school curriculum. Now I can print out millions of states to do cool geography lessons with Emma and the zoobaloo cart is an alphabet with an animal for each letter. I will use zoobaloo with Rachael for our preschool lessons.

Love the inversion layer!!!

It is evening here on the north coast and the fog is rolling in . I love walking outside at night into a lovely mist.

Rachael picked out some dinosaurs from the dollar store today. They were little triceratops. She found her big t-Rex which then became mommy dinosaur. She even put the "baby" dinosaurs into "mommy" dinosaur's arms to be rocked to sleep. She also put some Polly pocket clothes on the little dinosaurs. She is so funny!

Rachael also spent a good hour floating feathers above our air filters. They really stayed up a good long time.

Emma had fun shopping at our annual neighborhood yard sale. She came back with gifts for everyone. She has such a generous heart. I love that she is always thinking of others.

It's Father's Day again. Happy Father's day to the best dad I know, my super hubby!!! He is always available to his girls for hugs, tickles, and long talks. He is always sharing his testimony with the girls, which I love. He continues to be an amazing provider of physical and emotional comforts for all of us. We love you!!!

Cloudy day fun

It's a beautiful cloudy day here on the north coast. Many around here are dying for a glimpse of the sun. While I do enjoy a sunny day here and there, I love love love our coastal weather! It's about 55 degrees today and totally gray.

So, we don't have a typical summer here. It's great! I am using my fresh berries and making cupcakes! Cupcakes in the middle of June with no air conditioner on. I made the jam recipe from this months FOOD magazine. They are pretty good. Without the jam and frosting they remind me of cornbread a little bit. Not what I am going for in a cupcake. But, once you scoop out the middle, add some homemade raspberry preserves, and swirl fresh chocolate butter cream all over the top they are a great little snack. Rachael really loved all of the scooped out cupcake leftovers.

What's the point of having a blog if...

...you never blog? I thing I will make a goal to blog on a more regular basis. I can keep friends and family in the loop while keeping a record.

My girls are growing up so fast! Emma just finished second grade and had a very productive year. I am having a tough time finding books that match skill with maturity level. Thank goodness Grandpa B just sent her a box full of books! She is tearing through The tail of Desperaux and the Little House books.

She is still so creative. Yesterday she made some amazing jewelry for herself and her American girl doll. She also found some fabric scraps and made a little cat pillow. It is shaped like a cat! She is counting the days until swim lessons and enjoying her time on the computer. She has recently decided to become a computer programmer when she grows up. Though we have had a few, ahem, slow practice weeks with the violin, she is really sounding great!

Rachael is not our baby anymore! We keep trying to remind ourselves that she is 4 and a half! She is in the joke telling phase and we are getting a lot of "why did the chicken cross the road?" jokes. She is as creative as her sister. The other day I found her making a frog catapult out of bristle blocks. She spent a happy afternoon painting bats and leaving them all over my friends refrigerator! She is really into counting and asks me to count up to different numbers at various times of the day. She loves counting everything she finds. We are still doing a great job learning to read and she loves surrounding herself with books.

Bob and I are as busy as ever. Bob just got a prestigious award at work. We are very proud of him! He gets to rotate back to the lab for a few months and then to traffic ( I am not sure what that entails, but it should be interesting). He is still compiling tons of genealogy. I am busy canning, sewing, crafting, weeding, cleaning, reading, etc.

Bob and I got to take an overnight trip to the Medford temple a few weeks ago which was refreshing and lovely.

Everything is great here!

It's been too long!!!

Here's Emma at the discovery museum being "so emo"

Rachael, Kalin, and Emma

Kaylin, in the middle of a story

Rachael with Kennedy. She loved the babies and kept going back and forth between Kennedy and Lily to check them out.

Emma holding up her new quilt grandma just finished for her.

Uncle Josh and Kennedy at the unbirthday party.

Rachael enjoying grandma's backyard

Rachael, Sophie, and Bella playing together in grandma's playroom, sorta. Can you tell that my mom has 7 granddaughters and no grandsons?

Rachael, Bella, and Emma out exploring at grandma's

Sophie, I want to steal her!

more playroom fun

It has been soooooooooooooooo long since I blogged! We have been very busy these last few months including a trip to see the family in Sacramento. I want to get a few pictures for the fam posted.

Feeling Better!

Oh man were we sick! I had a stomach bug that lasted 7 days! My house looks like a bomb dropped, I have laundry piled to the sky, dishes everywhere, and I am so happy! You know how it is when you are that sick, you just don't care. You know you are feeling better when you start to conquer the fallout.

Emma got her first perfect attendance certificate from her dad and I. Emma was always at the top her her class in school and was so accomplished yet she would come home every month crying because she didn't get the perfect attendance award. She has severe asthma and would never have gotten the dumb award. So sad that her school had a monthly assembly, party bribes, etc for attendance while never seeming to acknowledge academic excellence. If I didn't believe in the "government schools only exist to turn out good little workers who don't ask questions" conspiracy theory before, well now......

Happy Love Day!

My darling Emma made valentine's at activity days and anxiously awaited her chance to pass them out to us. My favorite was her dad's. Her love note simply said "I love you as much as I love mommy" How cute is that?

1 month anniversary!!!

We did it! We completed an entire month of home school and nobody is dead!!! Seriously, it has been great! We haven't had many "off" days and we are actually having a lot of fun

I just finished assessing Emma for math. It is nice to know where she is so I can concentrate on what she needs. We are almost finished reading Island of the Blue Dolphins, which Emma loves. She really loves anything dramatic. We have acquired several educational games. We love Boggle, Yahtzee, the scrambled states of America, and the castle puzzle game just to name a few. We checked out a melody harp and both girls are having a blast playing it. We just finished a unit study on Fort Humboldt and made a great poster with pictures, sun prints, and sketches. We also completed a geology unit study and can now boast a fabulous rock collection. Emma is also making wonderful progress with her violin.

Rachael is now reading short words. She continues to astound me with her fine motor skills. She cuts and colors as well as any crafter. She loves making music (although she assures me she is not interested in the violin). We also play preschool games and make lots of nature collections from our walks.

All in all I am very pleased with our work. We are starting to fit into a rhythm. I would never say schedule because it is just not us.

I just remembered that I am teaching Relief Society on Sunday and the teaching schedule got switched so I had better hustle.

what's new?

Here is Emma in front of a miner's cabin at Fort Humboldt

Emma and Rachael enjoying each other

I am now starting the 4th week of homeschooling. I still feel like I am on a freaky roller coaster. I really want to get on, and then as I am traveling the first hill I desperately want to get off. You know "what the heck am I doing on this thing?" Anyway, as frightening a prospect teaching my children on my own is, I am thrilled to be doing so.





We are still working through the bugs, although everything is starting to feel more organic. We have days where we are doing science experiments, art projects, venturing into the world of Spanish and then there are the days when we just get through some basic workbook stuff. There are so many days that Emma would have missed school with her asthma that we have been able to school at home that she isn't missing anything anymore. I am also seeing a lot of the holes in public education and as I tailor her curriculum to be more well rounded and integrated we are surging ahead again. The learning is now so much more natural and less drilled facts for state test passing. She is learning concepts as a matter of course now and everything is making so much more sense.





Of course I couldn't do what I am doing without my husband who wholeheartedly supports me. He is a very educated man (an engineer with a masters degree) and it makes me feel so good to know that he trusts me to teach my children and prepare them for college, etc. He is my best friend and my hero!





Rachael loves having Emma home and she loves to sit at the table and learn right along with her big sister. Life is good right now. Very busy, but good!
a

Here's to 2009!

It is past time to post. We have been so busy so far this new year that our collective heads are spinning! The holidays were a wonderful whirlwind and we are now exploding into the new year. After 2 years of diliberation and lots of prayers we finally decided to homeschool. Emma has suffered with asthma and misses an average of 40 days a year of school. She hasn't fallen behind in school, but she is bored and tired of being sick all of the time. So far homeschooling is challenging and wonderful at the same time. Rachael climbs up to the table to "school" at the same time and will sit and color for hours. Rachael is also learning to read and loves to participate in science experiments and art lessons. 2009 is full of promise.