My three gifts

We took advantage of the stunning fall leaves at my high school for some beautiful portraits of our family.  Of course, it's always quite difficult to get portraits of my family when I am also playing the role of photographer ... but we did manage to get one or two that will work :)  These are my favorites though, I love these little people more than I ever knew possible!

Six

Happy sixth birthday to the second boy who stole my heart ... my sweet little man with such a pure heart and a love for Jesus!  I adore my precious Lovebug bigger than the universe and am so proud to be his mama!  What a blessing my son is!

Today's the day!

Woohoo!  That stinky thing is finally coming off!  Six weeks flew by ... for me anyway :)  That might have something to do with the cast not being on ME.  It only took about a week for him to get used to it, and then it was as if it wasn't even on him.  He was such a champ through this whole thing, I am so proud of my little guy.  And I cannot wait to see his cute little arm again!

Pollution 101

The children are learning about different types of pollution this week with CC.  We ran an experiment to find out how easy/difficult it would be to clean water after it had been "polluted."  Both older kids hypothesized that we would be able to clean it, but quickly changed their minds when they realized how difficult it was.  It was quite a messy, and very fun process.  It was also a great visual to help everyone become more aware about water pollution.

A favorite project

I've done many furniture projects over the years.  I adore giving new life to old stuff with a few coats of paint.  But THIS project has been my favorite, by far.  These are beachy / coastal bedside tables created from old shutters that I've had laying around for years.  I don't even remember what year I picked them up at a yard sale, but they've been collecting dust for a long time.  I had the idea to turn them into bedside tables, but knew the woodworking portion would be a bit more than I could bite off.  So I asked my Daddy to help :)  He cut them down, fit them together, and added the tops.  Voila, new bedside tables ready to be painted and distressed.  I was literally giddy when I saw them put together.

Although my Daddy wasn't thrilled with them not fitting perfectly square together, I'm in love with them.  Creating something beautiful out of repurposed stuff is awesome.  And when the result is as gorgeous as this ... well, it's pretty satisfying too :)  So fun to watch these come together!

This Girl

This little beauty has been hungry for knowledge since the end of last school year.  She is so much more interested in "cool work" (as she calls it) than Angel and Lovebug ever were.  I think after seeing them work hard and learn all last year, she was so ready to jump on the bandwagon.  She has a morning notebook like the older two and is very busy learning ABC's and 123's, colors, shapes and the other preschool jazz.  She, of course, is picking up a lot of the CC grammar as well and adores singing along with the Timeline Song.

I know everyone says this about their children, but Sunshine is unbelievably bright.  She shocks me regularly with what she understands and her general level of thinking.  When she is set on figuring something out, her attention span is never-ending.  She is such a hard worker!  Her speech therapist always comments about how clever she is, and even recently invited her to join the local Infants & Toddlers preschool program, as a developmentally on-target peer with normal speech and development.  My jaw dropped open.  I knew that her speech had improved over the last year, but I didn't realize how much.

So very proud of this sweet girl.  And amazed that I get to be her mama.

A too-quick weekend getaway

We took the opportunity for a quick trip to the beach this weekend.  It had been planned for awhile, so naturally we found out it was going to rain all. weekend. long.  No matter to us, we still intended to go.  Although it was definitely wet, very windy, and way too short of a trip, we had a wonderful time relaxing.  And we had perfect Fall weather on our last day - even making it to the beach for a treasure expedition.  After particularly rough storms, it's miraculous what you can find washed up on the beach.  So many tiny, intricate, perfect little sea shells and other cool finds that are an awesome representation of Our Father's artistic eye for detail.

Sporting the iPhone again :)

Makin' It Rain

We're learning about the Water Cycle this week in science, so we made it rain today with this experiment.  The kids were so fascinated, they asked me to demonstrate twice.  Watching the cloud form (what you can see below) and then seeing rain droplets fall was pretty cool.  I love being able to visually show them a concept like this.  I'm sure they won't remember the paper they filled out, but this is much more likely to stick with them!

My apologies for being absent from the bloggy world recently.  I have reached a new definition of busy this season and am really trying to get back to a good blogging routine.  I miss it terribly!  We are chugging along with homeschool and are learning many new interesting things.