Siblings are great!

I've been busy around here, but here's a few pictures until I get a chance to catch up on the happenings of the last week, Hannah's tenth birthday, Thanksgiving, and all sorts of stuff.

Judah climbed up on the couch and said "Cheese" until we came to take pictures of him.

A request for a fire from a cute little guy cannot be denied.

 Drew was asking his daddy for a fire over and over.  How could he resist?  I had to take the big kids to pack shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child at Five Below.  I came home to find out that he had wanted an outdoor fire.  So they were all three bundled up by the chiminea when we returned.

"I think this stick can go in the fire.  What do you think, Daddy?"

Who doesn't want to kiss those cheeks!!!

It's good to be king!

Judah is king around here now.  He gets pulled around on his luxurious chariot by any number of minions.  He loves it!  He doesn't even mind too much when one of the minions gets a little carried away in the moment and knocks him off on the floor for a little head bump action.  Although his royal highness does get a bit put out with the downpour of kisses the minute mommy announces nap time.

Judah is also trying to master the spoon.  It's a tricky business as you can see.

We found some dairy-free yogurt for him to try out.  Who knew that was even a thing?  He oscillated between trying the spoon and dipping his apple sticks in the yogurt.  Occasionally he tried dipping his whole fist in and sucking the yogurt off.

Then he got totally confused and started using the spoon backwards.

Can I be thankful early?

I know it's not time for Thanksgiving just yet, but today I am feeling really thankful.  Thankful for these little ones!

I love how Isaac is looking at Judah in this one.

When this guy gets tired, he sometimes will just lay his head right on the tile floor.  Kinda sad, huh?  I mean who is his mom anyway, and why doesn't she put him to bed?

I just found a couple more pictures of the never-ending tattoo on my phone.

Judah loves to climb in boxes, and our bench full of books is  no exception.

Raking has been the big fun outdoor activity in this wonderfully mild fall weather.  They love it!  The big kids all make big piles and call them their homes or something.  As you can see the tree isn't done with them yet!

I love this picture of this fat orange clad belly next to the pumpkin!

"Here's a profile belly shot for you, Mom!"

Genna's my tree climber!

Thank God for that face!  He's a stinker, but when all is said and done I could care less when I see that smile.

Physics, I know little about it and yet I am teaching it.

Granted, I am teaching it to a first, third, and fourth grader.  A wonderful benefit to homeschooling is that I get a second chance to learn things that didn't interest me or I was never taught when I was in school.  I actually enjoy teaching them the subjects I never cared for in school more because I am learning along side them and am more patient, allowing for a learning curve.  Whereas, I am decidedly less patient when I know the info like the back of my hand and they aren't getting it immediately.  On top of that, I forget to teach steps sometimes that I took for granted because I have been doing it forever.  The areas this comes out in the most are math, sewing, and other crafts.

Back to physics, we are using Elemental Science this year which requires doing experiments in Gizmos and Gadgets, Physics Experiments for Children, and a Kinex Gears Kit.  Brian helped me pick out the more important topics for them to do this year since the whole curriculum would have been too much.  We have made hovercrafts, an "Inertia Zoom Ball," a catapult, and a dart launcher so far.  Then we have done the first simple gear project in the Kinex Simple Gears Kit that I bought.

Genna's got the marshmallow catapult here.

Hannah has a super serious dart launching face on, right?

This is about as focused looking as Genna gets, EXCEPT when she is on the balance beam in gymnastics doing dips.

At first glance this experiment seemed too fun to teach us anything, but in the end I really understood how simple fans worked. I especially liked the part where we change the size of the driver gear and the driven gear to change the speed of the fan.  I normally don't think too much how things like this work, so I was impressed.

Fall Sports Come to an End

So this really happened a week or more ago at this point, but I'm behind as we all know.  All the kids' sports for the fall closed out.  Isaac's t-ball finished up.  Here is his team picture.

When handing out trophies, the coach made a point of saying how much Isaac has improved this season.

We had a pizza party in the freezing wind after the trophies were handed out.

Isaac's the tallest one in the back.  The girls in the back that is almost his size didn't come to a lot of the games, and that's why I thought he was by far the tallest one.

Drew's soccer ended as well.  He got a medal that he was not nearly as excited about as Isaac had been when he was in this soccer class once upon a time.  Drew made some improvements over the season, mainly not picking the ball up with his hands.  :)

Team picture

The girls finished up golf and I have no pictures of that.  They did not have an awards ceremony, but they were given a free (used) starter golf bag and clubs.  They are thrilled!  That First Tee program is really amazing.  They love it!

Now I have had a short reprieve from sports, mostly, until winter sports start up.  Genna already started gymnastics with some friend in the neighborhood.  Yay for carpool!  Hannah starts basketball practice this weekend.  The boys both opted for an indoor soccer clinic that worked out nicely where it is at the same time and place.  Yay for killing two metaphorical birds with one stone!

Saint Decorations (and more)

Genna really wanted to decorate for All Saint's Day, so I came up with a couple of ideas.  I think these are semi original, as I searched for them online when I thought of them to make sure I wasn't reinventing the wheel again.  I semi original because the basic idea is a wreath and a triangle banner which are not original, but adding saint drawings to them makes them unique.

First, during our read aloud time in the morning, I had them get their tracing paper and saint books out and told them to trace any saints that they wanted.  Then I asked them to color them to make them show up better.  I should have made them use markers, but I'll remember next time we do an art project like this that markers stand out more from a distance.  I think it turned out nicely, much better than if I'd had them freehand the saints.  Isaac and Genna would have been unhappy with that project.  Tracing was the way to go.

For the wreath, I spent some evenings while watching show with Brian drawing each of the children's name saints.  I used clothespins to clip them to a wreath.  It was simple and eye catching for all the trick-or-treaters.

After our All Saint's party, we went around the neighborhood with some neighbor friends of our and trick-or-treated a bit.  I have a couple of pictures from that part of the evening.

t. Agnes, St. Michael the Archangel, Arwen from Lord of the Rings, and Wolverine

On All Saint's Day, Drew and I took the big kids to German school and then we hit up Kmart to check out the discounted costumes.  We scored a cool Captain America costume for Drew and another costume for a birthday present for his friend.

Judah even got in on the action!