Taking the plunge

It's been a while since I've blogged. Facebook seems to be taking over!

But I wanted to blog because I joined Weight Watchers today! Something I should've done a year ago after I lost 20 pounds not after I gained it all back and now have to lose it all over again! Hopefully through the program I will learn some life-long habits to help me keep it off! It's going to be a hard week as I am pretty addicted to sugar at this point and I don't have the extra points I had when I was dieting last year and was nursing. Hopefully the high school reunion I will be going to this June will help with motivation. I officially start counting points tomorrow...

I am also excited because my sister is sending me a dvd by a nutritionist her father-in-law went to last week (to help him fight cancer). I am very interested to hear what she says about how food affects us and some insights about how to eat to feel better & help our bodies work better. Hopefully I can incorporate some of those tips as well - I know eating more beans is on the agenda!

Our First Lapbook

Lapbooking is a recent trend for homeschoolers. It's a way to put together all that you've done to learn about a certain subject in one place to use for review and so forth and I guess be able to hold it "on your lap". Ever since someone told me about it last summer I have been shying away from doing it. Anything that I don't understand or seems overwhelming, well, I just tend to avoid (ask my sister how many years it took me to learn how to use the popcorn popper she gave me). But after looking at other examples on the internet and coming upon a good topic that seemed conducive to lapbooking without me having to come up with too much extra on my part, we tried it out. Below is the result...

The subject: Farm Animals

This month we have been focusing on goats, cows & horses so when we finished, I put this together to remember our unit...

Above: Lapbook all closed up. Below: Opened up...

Above: Top left is a picture of a horse head that Alyssa drew, Top right are lift the flap information about the 3 types of farm animals that we actually studied. Alyssa told me what she remembered and I wrote it on the back of each picture. Bottom right is a scripture verse we talked about (would've been nice to memorize some of it but we didn't) and bottom left you can see part of the barn story Alyssa made. She drew pictures inside and told me her story which I wrote down about a farm.

Above: Top left is the Favorite Animal Chart Alyssa made on the computer - horse was the favorite animal followed by cows. Top right is the Farm Crossword puzzle I made for her to do. Bottom left, Counting by 10 barn dot-to-dot downloaded from www.kidscrafty.com and bottom center is farm animal babies and their mothers which I cannot remember where I downloaded that from...

Above: This is the back of the lapbook. I made a pocket to store the Farm animal puppets we had made on big popsicle sticks and I also put a picture she had colored. I got these from www.dltk-kids.com & www.clker.com.

Alyssa had no idea what I was talking about when I told her we were going to do a lapbook and I did pretty much put it together myself (after she did the work of course) but now that she's seen it she says she wants to do one for "every unit" we do. Not sure sure about that but we are moving on to wild animals so maybe we'll try another one out when we're done studying them.

Happenings...

It seems we have a fire in our fireplaces about once a year. Gregg was actually trying to burn some of our firewood so we'd have more room in our garage so the upstairs was HOT! Here's a pic of Josh "roasting" (or toasting) a marshmallow. Everyone loved the s'mores.

We celebrated our "100 Day" - counting to 100 by eating pancakes shaped into a 100 (thanks Gregg!). We put together a 100 piece puzzle & we were going to hide 100 of something but I couldn't quite figure out what that was going to be. I also thought about us eating 100 of something but again, 100 marshmallows seemed like a lot of sugar. Matt was actually sick with strep throat so shortly after he took this picture, he began to really not feel well. We watched a horse movie "Dreamer" instead as we are also talking about horses this week...

Here is Alyssa ice skating today. This is her second time. She LOVES it although she is very hesitant to stop using the "walker" (actually should it be called a skater since it helps kids skate??). At the end of both times she's gone she will let go and skate a bit along the side. It has been fun to see her try skating and not get frustrated because it takes time to learn...

Making Butter

The past couple of weeks we've been talking about farm animals. This week it's Cow. So, yesterday we tried our hands at making butter. We could've made it using a jar and taking turns shaking it but we read about using a mixer and that just sounded easier. So, we used the mixer and I have to say, I'm not sure what my kids thought but I was enthralled with the process. Watching it turn from cream to a really stiff whipped cream (although not sweet so it didn't taste so good!) and then it started turning yellow and separated into the curd (butter) and the whey (basically skim milk). It was really cool and it tasted like butter! I used more than they recommended so we ended up having quite a bit of butter so I've been using some of it in making banana bread today. Pretty cool - and pricy so we probably won't begin making our own butter on a regular basis!

New Pics from Christmas

Here are some pics from Christmas - I feel like I'm doing things twice - posting on Facebook & on here...hhmmm...

Merry Christmas 2008!

Nathan, Luke & Matthew

Grace & Alyssa