Happy Moments :)

To catch up faster I'm just going to combine this post. These are some of our happy moments that we had last year. They are out of order but still very important. :)

 I finally got my hair to be curly without being like an Afro. This didn't last long so every minute was lovely.

 Mike got transferred to a different position. He's lead of projects carpet cleaning. He's now charge of cleaning various church building. He absolutely loves it!

 Caught Lily and Ducati being nice to each other.

 This is the way Mike gets around. :)

 Lily learned to read. Very important day for her ♥

 Important and special moment... Lily smiled at me. Melt my heart♥

 Ducati enjoying some fall leaves.

 While singing, " I want Fabulous!" (high school musical)

 Date night! We've actually been on several dates but this one was really special. Our friends invited a bunch of people to their movie screening of Resistance Movement. At this screening a friend and survivor of the Holocaust spoke along with Gov. Herbert. It was just an amazing night.

 I woke up to Lily and Ducati enjoying the rain.

 Lily's tithing slip. " Give 10 to the prophet" is what it says.

 Enjoying Uncle Peter's backyard slide.

 And his amazing garden. It's a slice of paradise.

 A hike/ field trip to President Kimball's grave. This was a special moment for all of us.

 Going to homeschool group events

 where our kids made lots of friends.

Falling in love with how hilarious and goofy my kids are.

Jungle Jim's

 For the thousands of reasons why I love homeschooling there are a few con's for us.
1) I want to have more field trips than lesson time so I get side tracked really easy.
2) it can be hard to figure out a new approach on something when one of our kids are stumped. But this seldom happens since there's so many resources out in the world to help me.
3) Burned out! Just like anything that you might put 100% of your time into. So when times like this happens we just blow off the lessons for a few hours and have some fun!

 Today was one of those days. No one wanted to focus. We were getting on each other's nervous.

 So I found a super great deal on KSL for Jungle Jim's Playground. So after breakfast we headed out....without doing the dishes!

 Our kids had so much fun letting off some steam.

and screams...of joy!

 

  Mike and I were able to have a few moments of quiet time which was very nice.

 and after a long afternoon of laughing, joking, smiling, and having fun our entire family was happy and recharged again.

Medieval Fair

This is one of my many reasons why I love homeschooling.  I seen on-line that there was going to be a medieval fair in a couple of week at Thanksgiving Point so for those 2 weeks we focused all our attention on kings, courts, knighthood, etc so we can have a field trip to this fair.

So when we woke up that morning the weather said a 30% chance of rain so we just brushed that percentage off and went anyways. C'mon we have studied for 2 weeks leading up to his moment. So we packed up our wagon, warm coats and said a prayer that the weather will be well.

When we first got there we were able to get inside the fair using the homeschool price. Half off!!! Sweet! :)
There was a tight schedule here. Sword fights in one area, juggling and jousting in another area, story telling, music playing, magic sorcerer shows, etc. So we went everywhere.... even though that 30% chance of rain turned into 100% rain plus snow!

 When Lily seen this pirate ship we all had to stop for 20 minutes for her to play on it.

Mason challenged a giant! Poor 6 foot tall teenager. He had no way of knowing that my son would kill him during their fight

 And Mason loved every minute of this tournament to the death. See his smile for proof :)

 Distract & Destroy!

 Mason enjoying his victory into knighthood.

  Mike finally found his throne. Even snow couldn't get him off his royal seat.

 But the storm started to get to us so we decided to wait it out.... we really didn't want to leave. So we took shelter under a pavilion and enjoyed some hot chocolate.


Finally getting warm again :)

 We were deciding if we wanted to leave or not since the snow/rain slush wasn't letting up. But then a fire breather took pity on us and gave us our own private showing. That was really awesome!

Even though our trip was cut short due to weather we all had an amazing time. Our kids got to see their lessons come to life and see everything we have been studying. Mike and I got to see our kids light up with joy..... I can just gush on and on from why I love homeschooling.

Gotham Halloween 2013

For Halloween our family finally agreed on something that we can all be together. The last time this happened was when we were the Detroit Lions team. So this took a lot more creative and more work than I had thought but the outcome was amazing.

We have the evil Poison Ivy

 The brave Bat Girl

 Amazing Robin

And iconic Batman

 King of Villains, Two Face

  And hero in disguise, Cat Woman.

Before we went trick-or-treating we did some fun comic photos in the backyard.

 Then we went to our local senior assisted living center. I seen a sign out front that they hold a trick-or-treating activity for the local kids so we thought it would be fun. Our kids were so happy to have gone there.

 It turns out to help the seniors still enjoy the holidays they hold these types of activities. So outside each room a senior had a huge bowl of candy to pass out.

 Our kids absolutely loved this! They kept telling us that they want to come back again next year. (Me too)

 After the candy collecting everyone was invited to the cafeteria for drinks and treats.

  Of course we were there :)

Then later that evening I took our girls out trick or treating.

Mike had to work so Mason stood home to pass out candy. He only agreed to do this if he got a cut of the collected candy. So everyone agreed... hustler!

This was such a great Halloween. For Halloween 2014 Mike is staking claim to Star Wars theme. We'll see....

Fast As I Can

Mike has nudged me for months now to get back on track with our family blog. And my response has been.... "I will.... I will.... I'll do it tonight".

So here I am; catching up as fast as I can.