Something Fun.....

I have a fun thing for everyone. A BLOG GIVEAWAY!!!! Yeah I am so excited. We are doing the around the world theme with our schooling so when I found this game it was perfect for us. Of course I wanted to share it with everyone else too.
To get our extra copy I would love to hear where you would love to travel. So just leave me a comment between now and April 30th telling me where. Then on May 1st I will draw a name and announce the winner.

Such a nice day.......

Dh decided to take the day off again today. So we decided to take the boys to the Zoo. It was such a wonderful time. The weather was so nice and it was not crowded at all. Here are a few of my favorite shots from the day.
They make me so happy. Love those smiles.

Ok this boy is so not driving any time soon. LOL

Checking out all of the birds.

Sam is always wants to try giving his brother a shoulder ride. The thing is his brother is about 70 pounds. That is alot for his little shoulders.

So his dad gave a little help. Until Gabe decided that he was afraid of hieghts. LOL. I mean Sam is 10 feet after all. LOL.

What we did for Earth Day...

As a surprise field trip for the boys we took them to the theaters for Earth. It was a really good film in my opinion. There was alot of similar shots to the Planet Earth series on the Discovery channel. I liked Disney's version a bit better. With James Earl Jones narrating the movie he was able to add in alot of humor which was great. The movie was a bit long though, 90 minutes, and we did feel all of those 90 minutes. If you have small children or children that have a hard time sitting for that long you might want to wait until the movie comes out on video.
They are doing a nice thing though if you go and see the movie this week, for every ticket bought they will plant a tree. That means we got four trees planted yesterday. :) Overall it was a good time and I recommend seeing it, wether you see it in the theaters or on DVD.
What did you all do for Earth Day!

What happens when your child does not feel challenged....

Recently Sam has been asking me alot if I could add extra this and that into his schedule. The problem is that we had no room in the schedule. Well that means time for a new schedule. After all what is the point of homeschooling if you are not learning the way you want right. ;) I talked it over with dh and we decided to let Sam redo the schedule. We were not crazy and let him have full control of course. Other wise math and english would be gone from his schedule. What we did was make a list of all the classes that we thought he should have and then how many days a week it should be there. Once we made this list we gave it to Sam. The rules was he could only add to it, classes and/or day amounts. He added abunch more days no extra subjects though.
After that was finished I wrote out cards for each class that was chosen. There was also enough cards written out for each day. I then gave Sam all of the cards. He then set about designing his (and Gabe's too) schedule.

Once he finished the schedule seemed a little over whelming to him. I told him that he could take out any cards that he wanted, just do not go below what we had originally had set for him. On most of the subjects he stayed above what we had chosen. If you look over at the table that line of cards is what he removed.

This is what the final schedule looks like. I think that he did a great job. This is only the first week of working with it and he seems to be liking it. They have been getting all of their work done, so that is great. Sam is pretty proud to that he got to make the schedule.

A high flying kind of day.....

The easter bunny had left the boys a kite set this year, so we decided to take them to the park this weekend to fly them. It was a wonderful beautiful day. While they waited for daddy to get their kites all set, They explored a little bit.
Gabe proudly showing off the pine cone he found.

The silly easter bunny was very excited to find a package set of kites with their favorite transformers on them. However that silly bunny forgot to read the package and see that one of the Kites was really tiny. Ooops!!! ;)

I think I need to be worried. He is only six and is trying to take the care. yikes!!

While his little brother was trying to go for a ride, he lent his kite to Sam to try a bigger one.

Working together on trying to get it up.

Success. It was a great time flying kites.

My boy always in love with nature and watching the water.

Sam was comforting his little brother after he ran into a spider web. A great big old spider web went right across his face. He cried pretty good about that. Sam poured some water onto his face to wash it away then gave him a nice hug. I love brotherly love!!!!

Of course the spider web was forgotten over a big bowl of Ice cream. Yummy.

Sam was so proud of his Vol-cone-o. It was such a great day.

I hope that you all have a great Earth day today. We have a nice surprise planned for the boys. I will let you know tomorrow about it. Just don't want them reading this and finding out early. :)

I hope that you enjoy this video of Gabe. He had so much fun flying his kite.

Bowling time

Wow I did not mean to leave the blog again, at least that it was not as long as the last time. LOL. I had good reason though. Dh had the end of last week off so we got busy doing things as a family. It was great. We surpised the boys on Friday and took them bowling. It was so much fun, they wanted to know so bad where we going. We kept teasing tem and saying things like oh it is a Science Field Trip. They never figured it out until we pulled into the parking lot. They were so excited.


We had bumpers put up for the boys (ok me to hahaha). I got some videos of each of the boys trying on their own. Sam was really excited that he got his first strike. However though his little brother did beat him. He was okay with that though since Gabe did not get a strike. LOL. Gabe did great though because dh has had to help him in the past, this time all on his own.

Some Random Shots.....

O.k. still trying to play catch up on the pictures. Here are a few more shots that I hope you like. The boys have been having alot of fun during play time lately. The love their collapsable bus. Who says that homeschoolers do not ride the bus. LOL

This is a rare shot over the last few months. Since DH has been working so hard this tax season, the kids did not get to spend much time with him. He did try to make as much time as possible though for them. That is why I love this picture. Nothing like boys spending time with their dad. :)

Of course we started our planting. I have always wanted one of these Root viewers for the kids. I thought that it would be so much fun for the kids to see the roots going. I will share a picture of how much they have grown soon.

Oh how this little boy makes me smile. This was the view I had one day while trying to get some of my work done.

I found a really fun art project one day on how to make your own Kaleidoscope. I thought the kids would love to make them, I was right of course. Sam even added on a string so he could make it into a necklace.

Today is a great day here since it is the offical end to tax season, but there is another great thing about today. It is our friend Kate's birthday. Happy Birthday Kate, may it be a great one! Make sure to stop by her blog and wish her a happy birthday.

In the Neighborhood........

Another in our absence post.....

We needed to go to Joann's one day for some supplies for the Greek costumes. I decided to make it a nice gym class and take a walk there. When you go for a walk with these boys it is never just a walk. LOL. I thought that I would share some pictures with you.

When we first left there was a portion of sidewalk that was getting drenched by the sprinklers. The kids had so much fun with it. Gabe had to stop and put his hands on every one of them. The boy and his water, LOL.
Then there is the balance beam portion. I just loved this picture because Sam was already doing the beam but got off to help his little brother. I love the brotherly love between the two of them.

We even had some nature watching time. Here is a flower that Sam thought was very pretty.

Then Gabe had me take this picture of the birds. He made me laugh when I told him that I got the picture of the birds. His response was that those birds were to be his friends. He is such a cutie.

Then on the way home Sam noticed this flower and wanted to take the picture of it.

This was just a little bit of our walk and it was pretty tame compared to most of them. LOL Needless to say I was still exhausted by the time we got home dealing with all of Gabe's curiosity.

It's All Greek To Me...

See I promised that I would be back. LOL. I thought that I would share more of what we were doing in our abscence. Since the boys are studying Greece now, we thought that it would be fun to try some of the plays. Of course they had to dress like they were the ancient greeks. It was alot of fun. I had a video of them preforming an Aesop Fable, The Tortise and the Hare, unfortunetly my computer seems to have eaten it. Sorry, because it was really cute.. At least the pictures of them dressed up were safe.
Gabe as the Tortise

Sam as the Hare. ( They wanted the Hare to be really yellow, to funny)

We had gone to Joann's the morning before to get some supplies for their costumes. When we go to Joann's I love to check out the remnants bin and see what they have. This is the lovely treasures that I found (Gabe is modeling).

Here is a shot of what the Greek outfits looked like when completed. Sam loves it so much he would put it on all of the time. He finds it very comfortable. LOL.

THE END IS HERE!!!!

Well the ending of Tax season that is. The hubby finished up work early this year, so the late nights are over. Yeah we are going to have him home so much more.
As you can see the boys are pretty thrilled with that news. He has been greatly missed by all of us. I wanted to thank everyone that still checked in on us while we were missing. Thanks for sticking it out. I thought that I would share some pictures of what we have been doing.

Well to start with I thought that I would share a picture of Gabe. He has found a new favorite place to play. I swear that this kid has no fear and will try out anything.

The boys made musical glasses for art and music class one day. They actually had their dad home for it so they put a little concert for him. I did get a video of it so I will share that soon.

We of course have been doing a lot of sensory work lately. The boys favorite by far has been the mud run. I am still cleaning sand from places. Gabe was sitting in it by the end. So much mess, but yet so much fun.

We recently got an order from Montesorri N' Such. There was a couple of very popular items. First is the Sew and Sew. The kids are in love with it. Sam said that it was like a stress reliever for him. It has been lots and lots of fun for all. My favorite though has been the Magnetic Mosaic boards.

The set up is a magnetic dry erase board. Then it comes with a bunch of pictures for the kids to fill in. It is kind of like paint by number, just with magnetic foam squares instead.

Gabe did a fire truck for his first one. This is actually the one that Sam did for him. I forgot to take a picture of when Gabe did it. So Sam felt bad for him and recreated it so that he could have his picture taken with one. Sam did a parrot for his. He loved this project so much, he has been doing them each day.

Finally I will leave you with a video of a sensory activity that the boys did a few weeks back. I set up a finish line for them and they had to race their cars across it. The only catch was that they could only move the cars by blowing on the cars through straws. It was alot of fun for them.

I am going to take tomorrow to spend with the family but Monday I will be back with more posts for everyone. So until then I hope that you and your families have a great Easter.