Nature walk

Last year, we took the cousins on a nature walk and took pictures. It was so much fun! I finally made a page about it.

Scrapbooking

I never get time to scrapbook, and most of my pics are on the computer. I never even think of getting them printed, so I guess digital scrapbooking is perfect for me. I have been making the backgrounds for my blog, and now I am starting my digital scrapbook. I love it. It is so much fun, and I can finish a page in about a quarter of the time it takes me to traditional scrapbook. I think this is so much fun!!!! Periodically, I will show pages I have completed. The page I am showing today was made from a kit by bits 2 kits that was used for a scrapbook challenge. In the challenge, the page could only be made with the paper and elements provided in this kit. I was to late to enter the challenge, but I thought it would be fun anyway. Here is what I came up with.

American Indians

We are doing a unit study on American Indians right now. We are primarily concentrating on Cherokee and Cree right now because of our heritage. I would also like to study the Indians from the New Mexico area because that is where I am from. If you have any American Indian information you would like to share with me, please let me know. Today we learned what the meaning of our names sound like in Cherokee. It was extremely interresting. If you click on the links below, you can search for the meaning and hear the correct pronunciation. Here is the phonetic way of saying them:

Devin means Poet: Di go we li s gi di ka no he lv s gi

Paige means servant: A tsi na tla i

Brooke as Brook: U de ya s di s di

Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria

We have been learning about early America. We learned about Leaf Erickson, Christopher Columbus, and now early living in Jamestown. We had a fun project one day making boats out of tin foil and sailing them in the bathtub. It was a blast! After we were done, all the kids wanted to take a bath and play with their new boats.

Our first art project

Our first art project was basically done on the fly. I had no idea what I was doing. We just did it. We drew swans, and I found out Brooke is a perfectionist. She was devistated that her swan did not look like a swan. Of course, I told her I thought it was a beautiful swan. She yelled that it wasn't and ran off to cry. What an eye opener for me! Since then, things have settled down. We have art almost ever day, and I think all of them are excellent artists. I will post more art soon. The first swan is Brookes, 2nd Paiges, 3rd Devins.

Creepy Crawlies....Eww!

I think most people know I have always been afraid of spiders. Since having children and our last house having an infestation of fiddle backs, I have pretty much gotten over that fear...until today. The one spider that completely freaks me out is the black widow. I knew Oklahoma had them, but I had never seen a live/real one. That all changed as we were cooking out tonight. Somehow (I'm really not sure why) I looked under the grill and there were two. I think one was a male. They were on opposite sides of the grill from each other, and it freaked me out!!!!! So, I jumped on the internet and made sure I was right. They are both dead, but it took me about 10 minutes to work up the courage to kill them. This is what they looked like. These are stock photos. I took pics, but my camera is not good enough. They just look like a little blur.

School time

We are doing great! We have our good days and our bad, but I am really enjoying it. Today we went to the park and they played a while. We had a snack under a tree and read Squanto. We are enjoying this time together so much! My children are getting better at being obedient, and they are not fighting with each other as much. It is amazing how they get along when they have to! Even on the hard days, I still know we have made the right decision.