Altering Girl Clothes

I love thrift store shopping!  I found 3 dresses and 2 skirts for Rebekah, but needed to do a bit of altering on a couple. The blue dress pictured above is perfect as a play dress, made out of knit fabric. The waist was much too big though. I was able to sew a white ribbon (already had it) to each side to make a tie. Perfect! Now it will fit much better!

Another skirt that was too big. The problem we always seem to have is if it fits in the waist, it's too short. I'm so glad I can alter clothes for her! On this skirt I just added 2 darts to make it smaller. I can easily take the darts out with a seem ripper once she grows, so this should last a long time. (Well, if she doesn't go play in the mud with it...)

One more. This is an old red skirt that I made Rebekah for her 3rd birthday (with a matching doll skirt). Yikes, it still fits her and she still loves wearing it, but it's much too short now that she's almost 6! I had some cute pink and red lady bug fabric already in my stash that I used to lengthen it. Do you think it'll fit her for another 3 years?!

Eraser Stamped T-Shirts For July 4th

The kids and I made these eraser stamped shirts for the 4th of July parade.  I found the idea at Cutesy Crafts.  I opted for dark blue shirts instead of white because my kids are so messy!  I showed them the pictures online and then I let them paint them by themselves.  I really like Caleb's creativity!

I only had acrylic craft paint.  After some internet searching, I decided to mix it with hair conditioner and use it.  It did turn out a bit crunchy, but none of the kids complained.  I haven't washed them yet, so I'm not sure how it will be after a wash.

This was a fun, easy project.  I was hoping to get pictures of all 4 of them lined up, but Matthew was sleeping when we got to the parade so that never happened.  I hope everyone had a happy 4th of July.  Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Letter From President Obama

One of the things suggested in our curriculum for the last week was to write a letter to the President. You can see Caleb's letter to the President on this post: Week 34 MFW Adventures & K. About a month later he got a packet from the White House! It included a letter from President Obama, a picture if him, 2 cards with pictures of their dogs, a map of the White House with an interview with the President, information about the artwork hung in the White House, and an activity paper about the White House garden with stickers! No matter what your opinion is about the current President, it's still really cool to get a letter from him!!!

Here is the address if you'd like your child to send a letter:

President Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Harvesting Chives

Last year, I picked some of our chives whenever I made baked potatoes, but most of them went to waste... I don't know why I didn't think about trying to save them! I read somewhere online about using chives in place of green onions in recipes. So, I decided to harvest (or rather, have my husband harvest) our chives. I cut them in 1 inch pieces with a kitchen scissors and put them in a freezer bag. I plan on using them for more baked potatoes, soup toppings, and in dips. I just had a good idea! I should mix some with cream cheese and spread it on crackers! Yum!

How do you use your chives?  Please leave me a comment!

Vacation - Road Trip with 4 kids!

We kicked off our summer with a family road trip! Our first stop was Nashville to visit friends. We went to the zoo in Nashville and played on this awesome playground.  It was definitely the best part of the zoo! There really weren't a lot of animals... And below is Matthew in his adorable hat that was too small! Apparently he has a bigger head than Joshua did!

The whole family by the elephants, which are somewhere in the background. Like I said, the playground was the best part of the zoo! Matthew is on Kevin's back in case you're wondering where he is.

Then we stopped at a random civil war museum, that turned out to be really neat. I think it was in Corinth, Mississippi.

Then we stopped at Tupelo Children's Mansion to meet Jacob, a boy we've been sponsoring, and get a tour. This is a wonderful place! Please consider sponsoring a child.  

We left Tupelo, headed for the Gulf Coast in Alabama! Another random road side attraction, a neat little waterfall.

The next stop was Caleb's favorite!  We toured the USS Alabama in Mobile.

There was also a submarine to tour, the USS Drum.  Joshua liked all the wheels and levers to turn!

We stayed the night on Dauphin Island.  Below is the picture of the kids seeing the ocean for the first time! I love this picture!

Beautiful sunset!

The next day we took a ferry across Mobile Bay to Gulf Shores, Alabama. Caleb loved the ferry!

We spent 2 nights in Gulf Shores. It wasn't exactly relaxing with 4 kids, but we did have fun on the beach. They were all a bit scared to go swimming, the waves were intimidating! We built sand castles and looked for shells.

I love this picture of Matthew!

Here are the kids on a dolphin cruise! We saw 3 baby dolphins, which is apparently a very rare thing!

On of our favorite attractions was Alligator Alley.  Kevin and I both held an alligator.  Caleb touched it so that Kevin would buy him a quarters worth of alligator food!  They also had several very large alligators, it was very fun and worth the money!

On our way back north, we stopped in Huntsville, AL to go to an air and space museum. Kevin and I thought it was awesome! The kids had fun too.

This is Caleb's souvenir. He found the biggest pine cone I've ever seen! It was at a random park in Alabama. We were surprised that Alabama and Mississippi had so many pine trees, even close to the Gulf.  We stopped at a lot of random parks to have picnics.  That's one way we kept the cost down, by eating sandwiches and snacks that we brought from home, and then we also stopped at a grocery store to re-stock.

We did go out to eat a few times. Our favorite place was a southern food buffet. My favorite thing was the craw-fish bisque. Kevin liked the apple cheese. There was also spinach souffle, sweet potato casserole, mac & cheese, gumbo, biscuits, blueberry muffins, and fried fish and shrimp, as well as a whole host of cold salads. Oh, and cheese grits! The kids were so well behaved that a local lady complimented us, made me feel good!

We had a crazy, great trip! Joshua did get a stomach bug at the end, so our drive home wasn't quite as fun... but he was a great little traveler. Now, time for summer fun!

Week 34, MFW Adventures & K

This was our last week!!!  Wow, I can't believe we're finished!  We took a field trip this week to see some sheep being shorn.  After we read the book, Mountain Born, I really wanted to take the kids to a sheep farm.  It was really neat to watch the shearing, and as a bonus, we got to see lambs that were only a few days old!  The picture below is a bit fuzzy, but that's actually a sheep on the ground in the middle of his haircut.

The sheep just got put back in the pen.  What's left on the ground is it's fleece!  A special thank you to my friend and her neighbor for letting us come!

Well, here's a look at our finished timeline.  I chose to do an accordion card stock timeline instead of hanging it on the wall.  Last year, our timeline was on the hallway wall, but pieces kept falling off and it didn't look the greatest.  The downside to having it in a folder is that they don't look at it as much, but I will probably use this method again.

Our last history activity was to write a letter to our President.  Caleb didn't want to do it, but he was sure excited to tell daddy that he sent a letter to the President!

Our last two states were Alaska and Hawaii.  I really wanted to do a Hawaiian luau at the end, but we finished our school year right before our family vacation, so we skipped the luau.  We also skipped a lot of the books about Alaska since we did a unit study on the Iditarod this year.

It's finally spring here so we were able to do something for our nature journal.  The kids drew the maple tree in our neighbors yard.  They've already drawn it in the fall and winter.  Rebekah's is on top.

Here is Caleb's last bible verse copy work.  I'm very pleased with how his handwriting has progressed this year.

This is Caleb's finished Names of Jesus poster.  Rebekah's is the next picture.

We made it to lesson #85 in Primary Language Lessons.  My Father's World has come out with their own updated version, so I think we will switch next year.  I may use the second half of this book as some review for over the summer.

Rebekah finished her Kindergarten year out great!  Her last letter was Y for Yellow (and other colors).  We played a matching game so she could learn the color words (as sight words).  I put the cards all over the room and then she had to find the matches.  Then she hid them for Caleb to find, but she hid them really hard and then forgot where she put a bunch!

I'm also very pleased with her handwriting!

And then we had to take all the books back to the library!  This is 2 weeks worth of books, and not all for school.

That ends our year of Adventures in US History.  It's been a great year.  Caleb's favorite subject is history and he's become very patriotic!  He memorized the Armed Services Medley and has been singing it non-stop!  He is reading really good now too.  He just read his first chapter book, The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog!  Rebekah has learned to read short vowel words this year too and is able to do some addition/subtraction problems in her head.  Joshua has learned a lot too!  His vocabulary is amazing, and he knows his colors and some shapes.  We've been very blessed this year, and we're looking forward to next year.  But first, SUMMER!!!