The Sandoway Nature Center

This is actually a little over due post. We went to the Sandoway house back in the middle of June. Ahh better late than never right. It was an amazingly beautiful little place. It was a nature center out of a home that was built in 1936. The people there were so willing to help you learn on anything. When we got there I handed my camera over to Sam and told him that he could take any pictures that he wanted. So all of the following pictures are complements of Sam. Hope you enjoy them. I personally think he is developing quite an eye in photography. :0).
These two shots are from the observation deck on the roof. Look at that view of the ocean, imagining waking to that every morning. The one below is of their little rock garden that they had.

These shots share a little info with you about the place and a shot of the front of the place. The fencing by the flag is where we were standing for the top two shots.

This place was full of sea shells from around the world. I do not believe that the info Above goes with the shell below but I could be mistaken. There was whole rooms there that was dedicated to shells. If I remember correctly they said that the shells have been collected over the last 40 years from everywhere.

They had displays all around of animals, some were statues like the one above but they did have some live animals there. Out back they had a small pool transformed into a shark tanks with some other fish in it. Out front they had other animals like turtles and birds.

This was my buddy swifty. He liked me, He stayed by the glass while I was there but hid when other people came around. Unlike this

bird. He Hated me. He would flip out any time I went near there. The workers said later that he does like women. I mean he was fine with my husband and the boys. Thats alright though I had fun with swifty.

It was a really nice place to visit, I hope to take the boys back there soon.

Time Zones....

Reading my blog you have noticed that we are very interested in studying things around the world. So an area that we could make fun for our studies was the time zones. We decided to make clocks painted to look like the flags of countries.

So here is our first set of them, our goal is to make a wall of them. We picked up the clocks at Wal-mart for 3.97 each. So the whole project has cost us less than 12.00. The kids are loving it because they get to choose each of the countries that we put on it. Then Sam has been setting the times. Each month we are going to try and add 2 new countries.

Sydney, Australia

Montevideo, Uruguay

London, England

Brasilia, Brazil

We put cities on them to since the only country that has one time zone is China. This way they can figure out the exact time zone. Hope you enjoyed the project and I will try to share others as they are completed.

Maturity....

My last post was about my youngest and one of the many things that makes him amazing. I thought this time I would write about my oldest and one of the many great things that makes him amazing. That would be his maturity. Sam has always been a very old soul since he was born. When other kids would run and jump in puddles he would not because he was far to mature for that, LOL. Well that attitude is producing an amazing young man. At 10 he is so much help to me. I mean do not get me wrong he still does have some of those younger moments, after all he is in the early preteen phase. Most often though he will jump at things when I ask for help. Here a some pictures to help capture him more.
He got his very own sewing machine for Christmas last year because he was dying to make all of his own things. He is responsible enough that I can actually leave him unattended to do it. In some ways he is doing better on the sewing machine that I do, LOL.

Probably the biggest thing that he shows his maturity on is with his brother. He demonstrates such a patience with him. We joke around here that he actually a better parent than us to him, it is just a joke though :0). Nah he is always watching out for him, best big brother ever.

For the past two years Sam has been taking dance class. He started taking just hip hop and has added on Tap, Acro, and now Ballet in the fall. The dance classes have helped him so much in his growth. He such focus when he is in there, it is amazing to see.

He even has an amazing creative side. I love his little firemen made out of playdough. He is always thinking of new things to make out every type of material he can find.

The thing that his dad probably loves best about his maturity is that he can sit and play board games with him now. Dads pretty happy about that one. ;0)

Needless to say as long as he stays on the track that he is on, the future is bright for him with the maturity that he has. I am such a proud mama of the two amazing boys that I have.

Imagination...

Oh my little guy oozes imagination. His favorite thing to say is "What if..." usually that is ended with some unusual possibility. He definetly keeps me on my toes with all of the stuff that he comes up with. I thought I would share some pictures from today on some of the silly things he came up with.
Here he was playing with a fabric tunnel that I made for him a while ago. Look at the smile he is such a doll. :0) Well to start with he was crawling to his platypus, Pepto. After that he stayed in it and pretended to be a log. Once he was done being the log he came over to the table where his brother and I were working. When I asked him what he was doing his reply was "I am a dragon". Who knew how much you could do with a fabric tunnel.

Here while he was waiting for his next lesson he was playing imagianary attacks on other countries and trying to conquer them. He did not use a single item for this except the map, and played awhile with it.

Then he decided to be just plain silly. Yup he is eating a lemon! That is my boy, gotta love him. These pictures by the way is just a 2 hour time period today. He is always trying new things out.

His imagination has always been strong for him.. He can be anywhere and entertain himself (as long as he is not tired) no matter what he has. One day I even saw him pretend his fingers where people. Oh I love that Imagination. What does your child create with their imagination. I would love to hear. Leave me a message telling me. Till next time have a great one.

Marsupial Love

Looky, Looky I made it back for a second day straight. Woo Hoo! Alright I will get to why I am here, I thought that I would try to get everyone caught up on what we have been doing and the boys have been loving of it. To start off with the boys are loving studying Australia, so much so they want to move there. :0)
The thing that they are loving the most are the animals, mostly the marsupials. This picture is actually of a poster that the made recently about the different marsupials. It has the fur pouches to store each animal in. They included on the back of each animal some info about it. Then to top it off the drew what each of the habitats looked like. They are pretty proud of how it turned out, I think that they did a great job.

I shared photos with you yesterday of the platypus that I made for the boys, I thought you might appreciate these. Gabe is having so much fun with his, he made a leash all on his own for it. As you can see he is pretty pleased with himself. The photo below is just to give you a closer look at what he did.

My other one ever so eager to learn, has decided to design his own stuffed animal now. He is making a wombat. Of course he is going to end up making two because his little brother wants one too. I am very proud of the ambition that he has.

On a side not if you look at his shirt that he is wearing it is another sign of how much he is loving Australia. It is a shirt that his dad painted for him of Ayer's rock.

This final picture is not of an animal (well if you ask him he will tell you that he is a monkey, LOL) but of Gabe's sewing project, Australian themed. He is making a boomerang pillow.

I will make sure to share photos of each of their projects when they are done. Until then I hope to be back soon, Have a great one everybody.

Pepto and Perry

Yup we went missing again.. Did you miss us? Goodness life sure does get busy. I have been wanting to get back to blogging so much. I really do miss it. Thought that I would share something I made from the boys yesterday. One of the things that has changed around here is that we are now studying Australia, and the boys are loving it! So I thought that I would make an attempt at designing and making my very own stuffed animals, I made a platypus for each of them.

Meet Perry and Pepto. I think that they came out pretty good if I do say so myself. I do have some changes that I would do making them again. The biggest thing that I would change is the legs. They ended up being a lot more narrow then I would have liked, oh well can not be perfect on the first try.

Gabe and Pepto

Sam and Perry (yeah he is a Phineas and Ferb fan)

They even tried building a platypus den to play in. Lots of fun going on with them already.

Well I would love to say that I am going to be back with a new entry tomorrow, but who knows. I have some ideas on where I can squeeze some time in for it, hopefully that works. So thanks to everyone that has stuck with me on this hiatus. Hope I will be back on a regular basis now. Until next time I hope everyone has a good one.