Butterfly house

The zoo has a butterfly house and the boys loved going in and seeing them up close. After Oliver got one to get on his finger-he was hooked. They (butterflies) have become cooler than the tigers!

Home made t-shirts

For a craft/playdate. The kids made home-made t-shirts. They each drew a picture and then we printed onto an iron on transfer. We only wasted a couple sheets until we figured it out-but the end result was pretty cute. The kids were proud of their artwork!!!!

BACK TO SCHOOL PARTY

Kids can always find a game with water involved.

The pinata that didn't take as long to break as we thought. Swinging a bat with 6 children around----tense!

Making their bookmarks.

"Do I have something on my face?"

We had a back to school party with another homeschool family. We wanted to do something fun for the start of the new school year, especially since we were going to be homeschooling and wanted the kids to get excited about that.

We grilled and had cupcakes for dessert. The kids played a couple of games like finding hidden pencils with candy attached and a horse pinata(it was almost to cute to hit). They made bookmarks with stickers and got a journal to take home. Everyone wrote down what they wanted to work on this school year and we put those into a container and gave those prayer requests to the Lord. At the end of the school year we will bring them back out to see how God has worked in us in those areas.

At the end of the night, we had a fire and made smores. It ended up being a late night but a fun time fellowshiping with friends.

And the Race is ON!!

The boys have been crazy about race cars lately. So they made their own race cars to have their own races. We cut old cardboard boxes and they chose a color of tissue paper to glue on and they picked their favorite number. Thatcher wasn't too excited to make it, I don't think he could "envision" the end product. But when they were finished they were so excited to "drive" them around and pretend to race.

Homeschool

The new school year was a big change for us. Oliver started Kindergarten. Since we are homeschooling, it wasn't sad to start the school year, but it changed our daily lives drastically. No more lazy days, just playing around. We developed a family master schedule that includes what everyone needs to accomplish in a day, including school. The boys started chore packs to help them learn how to do chores without me reminding them all day long, what to do and how to do it. Our schedule is evolving as we are learning better ways of doing things and different times that work better than others but it's good to feel like we are getting things done that need to be done.
Oliver is doing well in school and is learning a lot. I am so excited for him to learn how to read-that is such a big step.
Travis and I decided we needed to start spending more one on one time with each of the boys. So last night I took Thatcher out on a date. He got to choose what we did and he wanted to go to Target. So we went to the mall and rode the toy cars, he loves to drive anything. The ice cream store was out of business (???) so he got a pink drink from starbucks and we walked around the toy section at target. It was neat to give him my undivided attention and to see his personality come out without his brothers overshadowing. The last thing we did was to get pictures taken in the photo booth at the mall. He loved it because he got his own set of pics as well. We made silly faces and one actually looks like I am getting ready to punch him. Not sure how that happened. I hope we can continue to do this with all the boys.
Oliver then went with Travis this morning for breakfast. He chose Mcdonald's for breakfast and they also went to Starbucks for coffee, more for just visiting.
Next week we will switch, somehow working Sebastian into the mix too.