Our week in photos...

I pretty much adore the bed head this girl wakes up with!

Eating no bake cookies after FHE.

One day Mac begged and made me promise I would sit down and play legos with him. This is my favorite way, dumping them onto a blanket. I pretty much have no imagination so I like to stick with the books and re put back together the kits that Mac has taken apart. 

Oak's creation which I thought was pretty good.

This is the view of the hill behind our house through our window. Every evening it glows with the setting sun. I love it!

I had just gotten done doing the dishes and was cleaning the kitchen. Oak goes and gets a stool proclaiming she was going to do the dishes. She spent 30 minutes at the sink washing and scrubbing and kept saying "I love doing the dishes, I want to do the dishes all day!"

This picture did not do this sunset justice. It was more beautiful in person.

Somedays these kids are the best of buds and somedays (like today) they can not get along if their life depended on it. 

My parents stopped by on their way home from Utah. It happened to be my moms birthday the day before so we celebrated her. She also watched our kids so Hubs and I could go on a date to the movies. We saw Hobbit, the end was a killer. I can't believe we have to wait a whole other movie before we see what happens.

Mac's favorite thing to do when grandparents are here. Adorable, right?!

After the picture was taken above I sent Mac to bed because it was really late and I found him giggling with Oak in her bed. 

Super silly faces!

Saturday we headed to Medford to buy Hubs some dress clothes. There is NO place to do that in K Falls. We also needed to stop by Costco for some supplies for his office. When we got to Medford it wasn't quite time for the stores to open so we stopped by the Temple really quick. 

Love this compass they had at the Temple.

There were two of these deer right outside our window. We watched them for like 15 minutes.

And then because Hubs goes a bit stir crazy having to be cooped up in the house with all of us we went and did a little exploring to enjoy the beauty of the day.  Oak is on her 4th outfit for the day. She went from jammies to her church dress to comfies to this outfit. 

It was a good week. Other things we did...

We were invited to go hiking with friends and that was a lot of fun. 

We spent a lot of time preparing out talks for Sunday. 

We went for a long walk through our neighborhood.

We went to the park a few times and the kids always love making new friends every single time we go. 

We had to lower the asking price on our house and this week we got an offer, we countered and they accepted. It is all contingent on if there house sale goes through and if the house passes inspection I guess.

Our Homeschool week...

 Homeschool was good this week. We really only did it three days which is totally fine. 

I am trying to decide whether to start Mac on a boxed math curriculum or not and one of the curriculums I was looking at had a placement test and Mac tested to be working on the 1st grade level. But I realize that we need to be working on subtraction more. So will be doing more of that during homeschool.

We will be gone for about two and a half weeks and I haven't decided whether we will be doing homeschool while we are there. I am thinking maybe we will just do a few unit studies and some fun activities to go with them. 

I have been working with Oak to recognize her lower case letters. She loves these new Melissa & Doug magnet letters.

Working on word families. 

We have been learning to recognize coins. And we had read a book about them that we got from the library and it suggested we do coin rubbings. It was a total hit with these two!

I have loved using this game for homeschool. However I wish the letters came in lowercase also.

Working on sight words for Mac. 

Mac loves the learning activities we do with dice. He loved this activity which was rolling the dice to 100. He filled as many boxes as the number he rolled and he had to see how many rolls it would take him to get to 100. He switched colors everytime he rolled so he could count his rolls. He guessed it would take him 40 and he did it in 30.

Another dice one. I love this one because it is reading, writing and math all at the same time. 

I joined a Facebook group for the area and one of the mothers (who happens to be LDS) put together a field trip to tour the police station. The kids loved it and it was really fun. I was really shocked/impressed with how calm and controled Mac was. In groups he tends to feed off of everyone's energy and has a hard time controlling himself and listening.

I also was wanting to teach Mac our phone number. When doing copy work to work on writing his name neatly I wrote our phone number for him to copy. He copied it once and I kindof forgot to go over it with him since I was helping Oak with something. So later that day I thought I would go over it with him and before I could, he spouts off our phone number, all 10 digits. A week later he still can say it. 

Sunday Gratitude...

Today I am grateful...

...to have been able to speak in church today. So glad it is over with!

...to have been invited to go hiking with friends yesterday.

...to have been able to go on a long over due date with Hubs this week.

...that my parents stopped by to visit this week on their way home from Utah.

...for the sunshine here in K Falls, EVERYDAY!

...that we got an accepted offer on our house this week. Hopefully it will all work out.

...that my parents have been married for 51 years, today!

...just simple moments spent with my little family.

...to be able to make friends here so quickly. Making friends is very hard for me as I tend to think people wouldn't want to be friends with me. I know, I am silly!

...to be sitting down with my family in a few moments to eat Mac's favorite meal, beef stroganoff.

Our week...

Sunday we were invited to a members house for dinner. And they are a great family who also homeschools. They are about the same age as us, but have five kids. We really enjoyed getting to know them.

Monday morning there was still a little bit of snow to play in. So I took 30 minutes to get us all bundled up and just as I was putting on my last glove Oak has a meltdown and is apparently tired and doesn't want to go outside. 

Farkle was the game of choice this week for Mac. He won three games and I won one! He is pretty good and know what dice he needs all I have to do is add up the points. 

We finished off the BOB sight word readers.

But mostly homeschool was a complete flop this week because I didn't feel very good with migraines and a mild head cold and sore throat. We only got two days of solid work but we did things on the other days that were still learning just not book work or worksheets.

The kids really wanted to wash some hotwheel cars in the sink. They didn't do this as long as I thought that they would.

My nephew came home from his two year LDS mission to Chile. Wish we could have been there!

This little girl tested me to the nth degree. There was one day that was the worst. I am pretty sure I texted Hubs about ten times that day venting my frustrations with her. Finally late afternoon, Mac had joined her in testing me and I had about enough so I set them in separate corners and went to my room for a good 20 minutes. They had calmed down, I had calmed down and everyone was happy again. Then daddy came home, yay!!!

We had learned about volcanoes the week before and daddy and the kids made a papermache volcano and finally got around to painting it.

By the end of the week the temps were getting up to close to 50 degrees in the afternoon. So we headed to the park and rolled down the hill for at least 30 minutes, played with our remote control cars, rode scooters, went down the slides and played in the left over snow.

Friday our new friends (the ones who invited us for dinner) asked us if we wanted to meet them at the Children's Museum (we bought a year pass) so we had lots of fun playing with them there and then they invited us over to their house for lunch. Our kids get along great and we are glad to have some new friends. 

Oak talking on the phone at the museum.

Saturday there was an event at the fair grounds call P.L.A.Y Outside. It is an even put on to get kids excited about outdoor activities. There was so much to do that we were there for more than two hours. Although most of that was waiting in line to fish. Daddy really liked where the kids could learn to fly fish. There were also a few obstacle courses, some fun games and all sorts of great live animals to look at. 

There was a fishing pond with actual trout in it for the kids to fish for and then they could take home the fish. We opted to catch and release. And because the line was so long we only got ten minutes to fish. Mac caught one but Oak didn't. But they had fun.

We got a package in the mail from my dear friend who had made my kids these super cute hats. They love them!

Saturday also took us to the park because it was too nice to be anywhere else. The kids brought there remote control cars again and Mac was so sweet because he really wanted to share his with someone so he went and found some kids to come and play with it. He really hardly touched it. We also did more hill rolling. And Oak found a cute little girl to play with. They got along so well that the dad gave me his wifes phone number so that they could have a play date. (That is how nice people are here!)

My niece sent me this pic. It is my dad, my nephew and my brother.

They all have the same name Sr., Jr. and the III.

Love it!

I also have already gotten a calling and will be teaching CTR 7 in Primary. So excited to be in Primary but sad that I only got to go to Relief Society ONE Sunday in this Ward.

Sunday Gratitude...

I am grateful...

...for the opportunity to watch the big moon out our window in the mornings (photo above).

...that the people and ward members here are so welcoming and friendly. I am seriously overwhelmed with this blessing. It has made the transition so much easier. 

...that our kids are already making good friends.

...to have a calling ALREADY and to get to teach a Primary class again. 

...for the sunshine here. It may be cold here, but the sunshine definitely makes a difference.

...that the last two days the afternoons have gotten up to 50 degrees, yahoo!

...to be able to have Mac's Primary teachers over for dinner tonight. They are an elderly couple and are just the sweetest.

...for Hubs and the hard work and persistence he puts in to provide for our family.

...for hot homemade bread.

...to have the opportunity to homeschool my kids. It is frustrating and amazing all at the same time.

Our first snow in K Falls.

So all week they said we were going to get snow here. And the kids were disappointed everyday. Finally Saturday late afternoon, Mac yells, "Mom its snowing!" He was so excited and he sat at the window watching it until there was enough snow for us to go out and play in it. Thankfully I got the last piece of snow gear I needed for the kids, which was waterproof gloves that I could actually get on the kids hands. I still need to get me some snow boots, my toes were cold in my rubber rain boots.

 So after about 30 minutes of getting them dressed we were able to go out and enjoy the snow in our parking lot. THe snow was great packing snow, so Mac was able to FINALLY have a snow ball fight. It was a lot of fun. After it started to get dark outside we decided to go on a bit of walk. Then we came in and Daddy made homemade hot chocolate. When the kids went to bed they ended up opening up their blinds and watched the snow fall while they went to sleep. We woke up to about 4 inches of snow the next day (today). 

It will probably mostly be melted by the end of the week as it will get up to 50 degrees this week. 

Oak spent a lot of time just rolling around in the snow in the parking lot. 

Homeschool week 1

So I would say that our first week of homeschool went pretty darn well. I wasn't as organized as I would like to be, but I am working on it. And I think as time goes by I will be able to fine tune how we do things to make it go much smoother. Since I am homeschooling preschool and kindergarten we are taking it pretty easy and making it as fun as possible. We only had one rough day and although it affected homeschool it had nothing to do with homeschool. We decided we would work on learning about volcanoes this week and I think the kids enjoyed it. I know I sure did. Next week I need to be better about taking pics of all the things we do. 

Making playdough to make a volcano for doing an eruptioin experiment. 

After baking our volcano for a bit in the over we then did our experiment with vinegar, soap and baking soda.

I totally counted this as part of homeschool. I had the kids match the giant pile of socks we have. (I never match then!) At first they didn't want to, but we made a game out of it and I may or may not of offered a chocolate chip for every match. 

We found the children's museum and even purchased a year pass. It is nothing big or fancy, but the kids LOVED it! While we were there during regular school hours, there happened to be two other families with school aged kids and come to find out that they are homeschool families too. It was a great boost for me!

On daddy's birthday I had Mac do most of the cake making himself. I tried to let him do as much as he was capable of doing with only a bit of help from me. 

On Friday we went to the library for story time and loaded up on a bunch of books for our unit study next week which will be on money/coins.

Other things we did were letting the kids watch Leap From Letter Factory which was great for Oak. We watched it once a day and by the end of the week Oak could spout of most of the letter sounds, which she couldn't do at the beginning of the week. 

Mac has been reading me BOB books and to my surprise he totally LOVES them. And is doing really well with them. 

On Friday I finally was able to get our Workbox system mostly in place. Mac seemed to like it and looked forward to seeing what was in the next box when he was finished with one. I think it will help me be a bit more organized and help him to know how much he has left before homeschool is over.