Good Morning World! I had a wonderful night of sleep in my new bed! Here it is! Dh installed it last night:
He and a friend pulled all of the wood from the woods around here and built it from scratch. His friend had built beds like this before, and so taught dh how to do it. If you remember seeing dd10's bed, the railings in our loft and the railings on our front deck and steps, dh's friend also made these. Cool, eh?
I hope you enjoyed this show and tell. You can click on the image above if you'd like to see more similar show and tells.
This week has been great!I’ve gone for a walk almost every morning walking uphill for the first 30-40 minutes.I am very pleased with myself that I haven’t had to stop during that whole journey.I find that I am getting much more cardiovascularly fit!Each day I try to go a little further than I did the day before.On Monday I walked up to “the first lake” taking the “pipeline” which essentially is a path that goes almost directly up the mountain.
This is the pipeline path looking up:
This is the pipeline looking down:
This is the first lake (it is the lowest of a series of lakes that are managed to help control the water coming down coal creek that feeds our electric generator):
I didn’t stop at all.On Tuesday I went to a lookout above the second lake from the bottom in 41 minutes.I only stopped to take pictures. This first one is the second lake from the bottom.
Then these are some of the views I saw from the top:
Then on Wednesday I decided to take the road and see how high I could get.It is a gentler way, but much longer.I got to another great lookout, but I didn’t have the camera.Yesterday was intercession day at the base, so I didn’t have time to take my early morning walk.Today I walked to another place above the first lake, but I took the road to get there.It took about 45 minutes or so, and had some great views too.I am loving to go walking in the early mornings.Although it is cold outside, the mud is all frozen, and the snow stiff enough to hold my weight, as long as I go on the snowmobile tracks since they pack the snow underneath.
A week or two ago we finished the New World Explorers unit put out by Amy Pak at Homeschooling in the Woods.That unit was packed full of great activities, book recommendations, and a wonderful lapbook.The girls both made a notebook that is full of their lessons, a few notebook activities and things we did together in an ocean unit study last fall when we went to San Diego.
Besides doing this unit, we also have been making our way through many of the readers that go along with the same time period in Sonlight’s Core 3 language arts.They were a good match-up, and the girls read lots of books about things they were learning about.
One book we found especially good from our public library was “The American Story” by Jennifer Armstrong.I hope to get this book for our home library as it has 100 true stories – very living – about many historical themes.We barely made a dent in it as we read through the first 20 stories or so before I had to take it back!We also read Elizabeth’s Diary (a diary of a girl in 1906), Sign of the Beaver, Secret of the Andes, Plimoth Plantation, Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky, Treasure Island and probably a few more.We watched several videos put out by Schlessinger media from the library that proved to be interesting too.
Some of the activities that we did are in pictures below. The first week we worked on our lapbooks and learned some knot tying and made "limeys" like the sailors used to have to drink.
The second week they made "captain's journals" from cardboard, cloth and paper soaked in instant coffee to give it an old, weathered look. The girls then wrote journal entries as though they were sea captains. I was delighted with how well they turned out, and the stories were fabulous. The last picture here is my 3 yo dd's.
The girls also enjoyed making pueblo dioramas.
The last week we worked hard to put it all together into a lapbook complete with a photo album to remind them of the fun we had. You can see a slide show of the whole lapbook at my daughter's blog: MountainPrincess.
This has been a show and tell with Canadagirl. Join us through the Mr. Linky on her blog - warning...it is addicting!
On Thursday morning as the girls and I were sitting down to do our Bible reading, one of the girls looked out the dining room window and noticed this grey bird at one of our suet feeders. He is all grey except for black and white on his wings and tail. He has a longish black beak, and is about the size of the Stellar's Jays. I quickly grabbed my camera to capture some shots of him through the window, with the zoom all the way out and trying to avoid the baby's finger prints from looking out the window this morning. The bottom picture has him with the stellar's jay behind him. Pretty cool, eh?
If you'd like to join the fun or see other blogs that are doing Show and Tell Friday, hop on over to Mary's blog aka Canadagirl.
Hello Everyone! It's Friday and the sun is shining! Whippee!
For my Show and Tell Friday Hosted by Canadagirl I will be showing some of the birds who have been visiting my birdfeeders. I have two suet racks on trees, and two hanging feeders. I used to have three hanging feeders but Boomer the dog got ahold of one.
This is a stellar's jay, taken from my window.
This is a chickadee.
And this is a nuthatch, I think. It is hard to tell from the picture, and we do have some. It might be another shot of the chickadee! Nuthatches are a little bigger than the chickadees and go upsidedown to eat or crawl down the tree.
These are two Mennonite Cookbooks that I wanted to share. The top one is my very well-used copy of More-with-Less that I got for a wedding gift. I had an even more used one before that that I had taken with me to Europe when I was a young lady. This cookbook is awesome because it cooks without the extra sugar, and uses all natural ingredients. I can cook many things from scratch using it. It came in handy to make salad dressings and other things that I couldn't buy in Europe in the early 90's. Sometimes my dh brings it over to the base kitchen, and I can't find it...boy does he hear it!
This next one was sent to us from a man who visited with my husband while he was the program director at Camp MennoHaven in Tiskilwa, Illinois. He came across this cookbook and sent it to us out of the blue. It was published in the 1950's and has all sorts of traditional Mennonite foods in it. I used it last week, and will probably be using it much more. I also appreciate that it uses natural ingredients (as opposed to "a can of this" or other prepackaged foods.
We got our box of Sonlight books for reading for 1dd9 (aka Mountain Princess) and 2dd8 (aka Snow Crystal). I put the books together in the order of their schedules.
These books will be Mountain Princess's reading for her language arts. This will by no means be exhaustive. These will be the ones I will assign her. She devours many more books each day! Lately she's been reading the Magic Treehouse books. It takes her about a half hour to read a whole book! She reads all of her sister's books too.
This next picture is the collection of books that 2dd8 will be reading for her second grade year. She's on the second one already. Sonlight recommended a couple more that I didn't order because they didn't seem to be right for us. She is a budding reader, and I'm proud of how far she improved over the last year.
This year I am covering each of the paperback books with contact paper for book covers. It works great and helps to make the books last much longer.
Last Saturday afternoon, our family loaded up the Suburban and the Windstar and headed down the road to see a local site we've never been able to see before. In order to get to this place, one must go cross two creeks over very rocky terrain, and we haven't had a vehicle with enough clearance. We drove the van following the suburban until the first creek crossing because we didn't know whether the suburban would actually make it - we've been stranded in it a few times due to an electrical shortage. We just got the van back from the shop, and we just don't have a lot of faith in it yet. From the first creek, we were all in the suburban and just hoped that we didn't have to walk the two miles or so back - or have to try to tow the suburban back over the creeks! The suburban didn't give us any trouble in this back country, and we were glad!
This first picture is the only marker that there is a waterfall nearby:
After a short little hike we came to the waterfall. It is about 60 or 70 feet high. That is dh and 3dd3 at the bottom of the pictue.
Here is a view that includes my two other little models.
Here are the falls from underneath looking up.
It's not very often we get a picture of our whole family together. Some other folks came up to the waterfall that were willing to help us out. The final two pics are of a plant and its flowers that were in the middle of the creek wedged between some rocks. I thought that they looked so happy and full. Does anyone know what they are?
If you'd like to see what other fun ladies are sharing about today, jump on over to Canadagirl's blog and join the fun.
I've created a photo album of our trip to San Diego. You can see it here: San Diego Trip. Don't feel like you have to look through all 120 pics, unless you are really bored. I couldn't think of anything else to share, and it has taken me all evening to post half of those pics into my photobucket for our family to share. You are welcome to come see too if you want to.
It's that time again. Actually it is one of my favorite times of the week!
Just click on the image above to go to Canadagirl's blog and see who else is posting their own Show and Tells this week. You can join in too, just post whatever you want to share and leave a Mr. Linky at her blog, and see how many new friends you'll make!
Clippers, Pirates, Submarines, Historical Ferries and More!
Last Sunday on our last day in San Diego, our family along with dh's parents visited the maritime museum. We are gearing up to do a unit study on the Explorers in History by Time Travelers and this was such a wonderful way to start it!
Our first ship was this sailing vessel, which is actually one of the oldest active sailing vessels in the world. We climbed aboard and were immediately escorted back into time.
This next one is of the dining area. The table had ridges to help keep the plates in place while eating.
Surrounding this table were the captain's quarters...
...several "staterooms" which were amazingly small...
...the physician's quarters...
...and a dry goods pantry, which was also incredibly small. I didn't get pics of other parts of this ship for some reason, but it was amazing all the ropes that were hanging everywhere, how short the beds were, and how little space there was. It gave me a new appreciation for all the immigrants coming to America. Most of them didn't even get the staterooms. They were put in another area that just had a bunch of crude short bunks without any storage space.
The next ship we boarded was this pirate ship called Surprise. I took the baby from dh, so no pics got taken on this one. It was also neat, but more like a museum with less real lifeness to it. It did have cannons though, and lots of artifacts.
Behind it you can see the submarine we went to next. My inlaws had to get off of the first boat due to seasickness (they are in their 70s and couldn't take even the gentle rocking), and didn't attempt the pirate ship or the submarine.
It is a Russian submarine, and all of the writing was in Russian. It was so cramped inside. The walls were so short that I had to duck most of the way through. There were only three tiny privies for the whole vessel, which carried 78 men. Most of the bunks were strewn here and there in very tight quarters. Again I had the baby, so not many photos were taken. This missile launching room was in one end of the sub, and it had the most room on the whole vessel.
There were three other ships that we visited. One was a huge old ferry, which held most of the maritime museum. I took some pics on it, but they weren't all that interesting. Another was more like a tiny yacht, but it was too small to get any good shots on it, and too close to get any photos of it. One other ship we couldn't board, but just as we arrived it was coming in from a three hour tour, and the pirate ship pretended to shoot off cannons at it - very loudly!
My parting shot is Elly with her grandparents in front of the ferry. If you look close you can see some of the rest of my family coming into the picture from behind.
One thing have I desired of the Lord that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. To behold the beauty, the beauty of the Lord. To inquire in His temple, the temple of the Lord.
This is my everyday thoughts about being a mother to three little ladies (10, 8 and 3) and a toddler son. We serve God full-time, and I am a physician assistant. I have the most awesome husband in the world. I am trying to seek God with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind and all my strength.
