Books, Books, and more Books....
Ok. big shocker here I am behind on the book list, again.. Surprised? I am not. Well this list covers two weeks worth of books. Tonight we are going to the library again so maybe I will have more books for you again soon. Time will tell. LOL. There is so many great books on this list. i hope you have as much fun with them as we have.

602.) Clifford's Family by Norman Birdwell
603.) The Amazing Ghost Detectives by Daniel San Souchi
604.) The Counting Race by Margaret McNamara
605.) I Dreamt I Was A Dinosaur by Stella Blackstone
606.) Little Ghost by Kate Khdir
607.) Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley
608.) Art Is..... by Bob Raczka
609.) The Bravest Knight by Mercer Mayer
610.) Green as a Bean by Karla Kuskin
611.) From Head to Toe by Eric Carle
612.) Think Big by Nancy Carlson
613.) Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn by Stewart Ross
614.) My Race Car by Michael Rex
615.) Little Bitty Mousie by Jim Aylesworth
616.) Lynx by Jost Schneider
617.) Parthenon by James De Medeiros
618.) Big Pig and Little Pig by David McPhail
619.) The Great Pyramid by Elizabeth Mann
620.) The Parthenon by Elizabeth Mann
621.) The Voyage of the Mayflower by Allison Lassieur
622.) TOO LOUD LILY by Sofie Laguna
623.) Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? by Eric Carle
624.) Where in the Wild? by David Schwartz
625.) The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
626.) When is a Planet not a Planet? by Elaine Scott
627.) Peanut's Emergency by Christine Salat
628.) Where the Giant Sleeps by Mem Fox
629.) Bug Jokes by Pam Rosenburg
630.) The Sinking of the Titanic by Matt Doeden
631.) Marco Polo by Charles Parlin Graves
632.) Ain't nothing but a Man by Scott Reynolds Nelson
633.) Don't Know Much About Dinosaurs by Ken Davis
634.) You Wouldn't Want To Work On The Great Wall Of China by Jaqueline Morely
635.) Max and Ruby's Christmas Tree by Rosemary Wells
636.) Dog's Rule by Daniel Kirk
637.) Monster Jokes by Pam Rosenburg
638.) Louvre up close by Claire d'Harcourt
639.) Dragon Dancing by Carole Lexa Schaefer
640.) The Little Crooked House by Margaret Wild
641.) Making The World by Douglas Wood
642.) Hello Sun! by Hans Wilhelm
643.) MOOSEKITOS by Margie Palatini
644.) Avalanche Annie by Lisa Wheeler
645.) Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer
646.) Beardream by Will Hobbs

I was checking out my friend Kate's book list the other day and she shared about a contest. It is a reading contest. Perfect for us here. You can even win a vacation just for reading to your kids. Make sure to check it out over here and sign up. Happy reading!

Maybe someday things will slow down so I actually stay caught up on the blog. Well in the mean time I have a huge bunch of pictures to share with you. To start of with here is a photo of Sam on the way to the library. Look at that face, can you tell that it is his favorite place to go.

These boys and their eyes. He is just so pretty. Gabe loves to pose for the camera. Then the one below is of Sam playing his new board game, The Iguana Factor. He loves it and it is a fun way for him to practice his multiplication skills.

This is actually pictures from last weeks unplug your kid project. That is how far behind I am. The theme of the week was scissors. I thought that the top picture was really cute. Sam loves to try and teach his brother for the project. Well Gabe hates to hold the scissors on his own so Sam decided to hold him and the scissors. The bottom picture is the project that Sam did,
a flying ninja. The big guy is getting pretty good at doing his own laundry. He has it for his life skills once a week.

The next group of our photos is from how we celebrated Earth day. The first one is of Gabe coloring pictures from their Planet Earth coloring book.

We bought the boys new t-shirts from wal-mart for Earth day. They both were cute and funny. I got a good shot of Gabe in his. It was perfect for him. Sam's shirt was really cute to. It had a picture of a whale on it that said Save the humans.
We did have have picnic out by the fountain. The boys always have alot of fun there. As you can see from the next few photos.



I did mention that the library that we normally attend is closed for a few months. Well the new library we attend has a cozy corner and my guys decided to take a little nap. LOL

It has been really nice having dh home at night now. He is getting to spend lots of time with the boys. It was really sweet to see him reading with Gabe.
A very proud Gabe with his coral reef puzzle that he put together.
This is a shot of how we take it easy on some nights. There is always some books reading around here.
This is the new project for unplug your kids. The theme this week was birds. Sam found a project on the crayola web site called the Dazzling Peacock. Make sure to check out others over at unplug your kids. Come back for next weeks theme....Green.

As most of you know we are studying Australia right now. Well Gabe wanted me to make a video of him showing what he has learned about the animals there. I thought it was so cute I had to share. Hope you enjoy it.

Lowry Park Zoo---
Over the weekend we went and saw my grandmother, she lives in the Tampa area. While we were there she took us to the Zoo. It was so much fun that I thought I would share some of the photos with you. There are way to many to put on so hopefully I get the rest put on a Flickr account soon. Here are some of the highlights for you all.
They had a bunch of these statues that the boys could sit on and play. Gabe loved the Komodo Dragon one.
We went into the Lorekeet Landing and it was really neat because the birds actually landed on our shoulders. I felt bad for the boys though because the birds did not want to land on them. They really wanted the birds to though.

Well they meet a really nicee Llama though. The Llama is trained to stand nicely for pictures. Gabe was saying Cheese over and over again so the Llama was actually trying to get a snack from him.

Then of course they had to go and fly in the Bananas. The overall decision is that this was so fun. Sam said that he does not like eating them but he sure does like flying them. LOL.

Then the boys got to feed the Giraffes. OMG it was the biggest head I have ever seen. It was a really cool experience though.

We had such a wonderful time. I hope to get the rest of the pictures up soon. Lots of fun things to show. Including their trip high above the tree tops and then even riding on a Camel. So Make sure to check back for them soon. Have a great day!

I just got a new camera and I am having a lot of fun with it. I thought that I would share one of the video's that I was able to take. Gabe is such a cutie. He wanted to show all of you how he dances.

This is one of Sam. We went away for the weekend and Sam wanted to make a video of an experiment that he was he is so funny. He calls himself a little scientist.

----Happy Earth Day----
I wanted to share some quick information For Earth Day with everyone. I have a bunch of links to share with you. So here you go.

http://www.adventureecology.com/
http://www.powerhousekids.com/stellent2/groups/public/documents/pub/phk_001537.hcsp
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/
http://www.scholastic.com/downtoearth/ (We have the book on this site and it is wonderful)
http://earth911.org/
http://dnr.mo.gov/earthday/edaykids.htm
http://www.planetpals.com/earthday.html
http://www.ecokids.ca/pub/index.cfm
http://www.epa.gov/kids/
http://www.maxandstar.info/earth.htm
http://www.greenfibres.com/pages/default.aspx
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/
http://www.collectivegood.com/
http://www.kidsrecycle.org/index.php
http://www.loveearth.com/us/
http://www.nrdc.org/
http://green.msn.com/partners/stop-global-warming.aspx
http://www.planetfriendly.com/news.html
http://www.epa.gov/recyclecity/
http://www.epa.gov/recyclecity/
http://tiki.oneworld.net/
http://www.foe.org/

I hope that you enjoy all of this information I will try to be back soon and share pictures of everything that we have been up to. I hope that everyone has a wonderful earth day today.

Have a really fun day!!! Get creative. Who knows maybe you can even try a new hair style.

Silly times, puzzles, games, and even some music for good measure.....
Well as usual we are keeping plenty busy around here, so much so I think that it is driving us a little bit crazy. I mean check out Gabe's poor face when I said we had more work to do. LOL
He loves to pull out different games and make his toys play with him. He adapts it so there is rules for them. I love seeing this because he shows his creativity with the way that he plays it.
Sam has been working really hard on studying up about the human body. He has a book filled with different jigsaw puzzles about the body that is a fun way for him to learn about the body.
My silly little boy. He saw me stick a pen in my hair the other day while I was getting some work done. So of course he wanted to try it to, even though I explained his hair was to short though. He still wanted it done. I went and got one of the hair pieces from the bathroom and put it on him so he could stick it in that way. Well that was enough for him, he wanted it off, did not like that one bit.
This is our attempt to make colored sand. I tried it with the food dye. It looked really pretty but came off the hands as you can see. I am going to try and make some new ones today, this time with paint though. I will let you know how that goes.
I wanted to share this with everyone. Sam let his dad and I sleep in a little on Sunday. That was so nice. Well he kept his brother occupied and he built this to give to my grandmother. He is just so sweet. :)
Ok. Sam told me the other day that one of the reasons that he loves homeschooling so much is that he gets to have a say in some of the stuff he does. This was one of those projects that he had a say in. Can you tell how much he loves it. He made his own aboriginal click sticks out of paper towel rolls, all his idea. I think that they turned out so cute.
Have a great day!!!!

Some Gardening and Unplug your kids......
To start off with I will share about our gardening that we did this weekend. It feels so weird to say that we did gardening because we live in an apartment with no land what so ever. I still want to do some gardening though, and so do the boys. So we are using pots to garden in and using any space that we can to put them. In the master bedroom there is always plenty of light so we are growing our own herbs, tomatoes, and peppers. The kids are very excited about them, so much so that they wanted some of their own plants. I picked up a package of butterfly garden seeds for them. We planted them this weekend. One big pot to put out beside the front door and three little ones for the front window.

Gabe was so excited to plant. He was willing to help with everything including getting the new bag of soil out. (he calls it mud. so cute)
Sam helped fill in all of the pots. Now he is ready for the seeds.
Look who has finished with all the long hours and was able to enjoy our weekend with us. The boys were so happy. Daddy even made time and took them to the pool this weekend. It was a really great weekend.

Now this weeks theme for the unplug your kids was food. The boys are studying Australia right now so we decided to make some Damper Bread. It was really easy and alot of fun to do.

Gabe waiting so patiently for his part and singing us some songs. It was classical in honor of his favorite show, Little Einsteins. The milk carton has little einsteins on it.
Sam was working very hard on all of the measuring. He measured out all of the ingredients for this recipe. I just told him the measurments that he needed.
Gabe was sneaking the raisins. Such a hungry little kid he was. LOL
He stopped though to watch his big brother sift in all of the ingredients.
Time to clean the bowl. Really yummy!!!
The Finished product. (like the tree, thanks to Gabe. He wanted it to look pretty) We made the cinnamon raisin version. It was really yummy with some butter spread on it warm. Of course we had to have a glass of nice cold milk to go with it.

Here is the recipe that we used if you would like to try and make some. We got it from this book.

Delicious Damper (Makes 1 Loaf)

Ingredients--

-2 cups of A/P flour, 4 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/2 teaspooon of salt, 3/4 to 1 cup of milk, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/4 cup of raisins, and 1/4 cup of sugar.

1.) Preheat the oven to 375'F. Grease a cookie sheet.

2.) Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt. Add in the rest of the ingredients and mix until you have a soft dough.

3.) Form the dough into a big ball. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the bread sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Here are a couple of other link to recipes and even a little history on the bread if you want them. See here and here.

Make sure to check out everyone elses projects over at Unplug your kids....Join us for next weeks theme, scissors.

Have a great day!!!!

I am playing a little bit of catch up on the photos now. Things have been crazy busy around here. I just have not had a whole lot of time to put these up, so they are from the last couple of weeks.
This first on is of Gabe. He really enjoys board games now. He loves to sit and play them with his imaginary friend. He says that she is made out of air. LOL
My big guy, he is growing up so fast. It is hard to believe that he is almost 8. I love watching him learn. He gets so excited that he rarely stays seated. Now if I can actually get him to finish a project that he starts we will be doing good. Any ideas?

Now my little guy with his developmental issues is hard to stay in one spot on doing his work. If he does not like what he is doing it becomes even more of a challenge to get it done. I finally found with him though if I have him stand at the Kitchen counter he will actually do the work with out a fight. WOOOHOOOO!!! A solution that I can use. That is since I end up spending most of the day in the kitchen anyways. I can my work done and do school work with him.
Gabe for sensory work the other day played with his playdough. We are in spring and decided that he needs to make a snowman. LoL I guess that has to do with living in South Florida he has no clue when snowman are actually around.
Well this picture is for you Kate. See Gabe is upside down and smiling. This is a picture that they made together and I asked Gabe to stand next to Sam so I could take the picture. He decided that he needed to lay down. Silly boy. The picture is their "Great Barrier Reef" since we are studdying Australia. It was great Sam went through the book on the Great Barrier Reef and was learning so much about the creatures that live there. I love homeschooling. I mean an art project took on a whole new life it was great.


These two are of my silly boys deciding that they need to be like their Daddy. They wanted to see what they looked like in his paints. Such cuties they are. Their dad is really tall so the pants were really long on them.

Sam was cleaning up his desk the other day and Gabe really wanted to help. Cleaning up his desk is really only a one person job, so instead of telling him that he got creative. Sam put his art box on the floor and had Gabe organize that. Gabe was so happy to have such a special job. It was wonderful to see him come up with a solution on his own.
Here is a couple of the art projects that Sam has done for Australia. The first one is of the X-ray art. It was a type that Aboriginals would do. The second one also done by aboriginals is called bark art. In our case we took some cardboard instead of the bark. Sam covered it with his oil pastels in all different colors. Then he painted over it in black paint. Once he was done that he scratched a picture into it so the oil pastels showed through.

Even though Gabe does not look so happy I still had to share a picture of them doing their favorite thing. Reading.

Well that is it for now, have a great day!