I haven't been keeping up with blogging very well!  The kids have taken over my job!  They each now have their own blogs, so I figure they can keep our families updated on what we are up to (and it's a sneaky, fun way to practice spelling and writing!)

This was taken on "Calvin's" birthday.  He is now 7 years old!

Apparently, he has grown in spite of being starved his whole life:

The sign says "Please Give Me Food or Money.  I AM Starving"

The kids finished up their achievement tests (Thanks A!) and they seemed to do very well. 

The garden is growing... the kids are growing.... the chickens are growing....

Everything is going well.  No real news, just a real boring post!

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EDIT:  The mystery has been solved.  It is a locust leaf miner beetle and it's very, very bad! (Back to catching them and dropping them in soapy water with the 18 million tent caterpillars eating my fruit trees and roses!)

Not homeschool related, just a post to show someone a bug infestation on my apple trees I was telling them about....

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Close up photo.....

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...apparently eating spots in the leaves......

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...seems to be making the leaves curl as I have found several inside a curl......

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As the weather gets nicer and we are outdoors more, I seem to be updating less and less.  Will work on that!

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Today, our chickens arrived!  They are cute little bundles of fuzz.  A few pictures......

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The Chicken Coop (with fencing soon to come).....

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Other things we've been doing.....

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Hubby put in a strawberry bed, a grape & kiwi fence (wayyyy in the background of this picture), a herb bed for me (my favorite!) & tilled up the big garden after Grandpa D plowed it for us.  Oh, and planted several apple, peach & cherry trees. We want to really expand our garden this year & thankfully, we have a master gardener living right next door to answer our many, many questions. (Thanks Grandpa D!!)

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The kids worked really hard helping us shovel topsoil & pick up rocks & sticks from the garden beds....

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... then took a break to play "Throw The Dirt Clod At Each Other"!

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They had a fun time with some cousins that came over for spring break and I was treated to a most refreshing facial with an avocado & tea tree oil face mask compliments of M. & K.!  Supposedly, I now look 10 years younger!  (No pictures because I forgot to ask sis for permission!  But the kids had lots of fun & hope to have more cousin times in the summer!)

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What else have we done??  Hmmm.....  we started learning a little bit of basic Latin using Getting Started With Latin by William Linney.  This is a great, basic, simple, easy to use book!  In the future, I plan to do a full scale unit on Greece, Rome, etc., but wanted to do a brief intro. so as to lay the foundation for our Latin studies.  We read a great Usborne Book:  Who Were The Romans?  And used a few ideas from Classical Kids by Laurie Carlson.

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A "Roman" mosaic.....

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The kids also used one of the ideas in the Classical Kids book to make their own catapult.  It was very simple; you only need a shoe box, a plastic spoon (thanks Grandma R. for supplying us!) and some tape.  They catapulted all of our marshmallows and then progressed to their leftover peas after supper. Our front porch ceiling will never be the same! 

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I'll have to update more later; this is getting too long & I want to go see what my bloggy friends have been up to!  Just two more pics......  The kids LOVE the American Girls Handy Book & The American Boys Handy Book.  Here, they were reading up on some type of new shelter they wanted to build.

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Happy Spring!!!!

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