taekwondo, baking, park and friends...

I am late getting this up because we had a busy Saturday and I wasn't feeling very good on Sunday and super busy Monday. I am feel tired just thinking about it. But we had a good week last week.

We had a few minutes before we went in to our first day of taekwondo so the kids were being astronauts in the back seat.

Their first day of taekwondo! Oak struggled the first couple of days. She spent most of her time goofing off and poking and punching Mac. He tried so hard to get her to behave but she took it as playful and would get more out of hand. Once she got her uniform she has been much better. 

So we have setttled into a routine of doing our purchased curriculum on Monday and Wednesday and then Tuesday and Thursday I find some fun and different ways to learn with each of our subjects.

Mac is ready to learn his math addition facts and I found this fun dice game where he adds the dice together and write the equation in the column for the right answer.

I had Oak do the same sheet but had her add hers up and just color in a box in the column for the right answer. She did great. 

I got in a baking mood this week and we made english muffin bread, lots of granola, cookies. 

Oak had her friend from church over. 

We (I) made these cute pumpkins. 

It was one of those crafts that I had to do most of the work. But they turned out cute!

We got out our fall and halloween stuff.

The kids got to play with our neighbors while we helped them move. They just moved to a house so we still can see them. 

This kids got their uniforms and they are so cute in them!

The kids got out all of the giant puzzles and they did so great working on them together.

They did this one all on their own.

We went to the park one afternoon.

The kids pretty much spent their entire time playing with each other on this slide.

Friday night our ward had our fall party chili cook off. These two have so much fun together!

The perks of being allergic to tree nuts and not being able to have dessert at the party. We came home and he was able to pick a treat out right before bed. He was pretty pleased!

What our family room always looks like after the library. 

Oak insisted on me taking a picture of her before church. 

Oak's primary teacher showed her how to draw a 3D box and she came home and showed us. I was like "WHAT?!" Seriously this girl doesn't miss a beat!

I finally got my hair done. It was way over due!. This is my before.

And here is my after. I wasn't feeling very good thats why I don't look very happy. 

So I went to this place that I drive by all the time. The place was great and the lady who did my hair was nice but she took forever! It took 5 HOURS! Seriously! I have a ton of hair and she had to dye all of my hair one color, wash, dry and then do the high lights, wash then cut. And it just took way too long. Because it took so long I was super late going to the General Womens broadcast. And I was only able to catch the last part of Pres. Uchdorfs talk. 

After the broadcast I was able to go out to eat with some friends from our Stake. I am not usually much of a fan of girls nights but I had so much fun and I was so glad I went. 

While I was getting my hair done Hubs took the kids to their friends (the neighbors that just moved) birthday party at the park. 

Sunday the kids practiced for the Primary program. They are having the kids memorize their parts. And the kids have done great at memorizing. Mac also got a bloody nose during Primary. Thankfully he had a t-shirt under his dress shirt so he didn't have to go back in to primary scaring all the kids with his blood soaked shirt. 

Hubs has also been given a Stake calling. I won't say what it is yet as he has not been officially called and set apart and probably won't be for awhile. But I will now be a "Sunday Widow" most of the time. He has three callings now and is only asking to be released from one of them. He loves teaching Gospel Essentials and doesn't want to give that one up. 

Ostrich Farm!

The homeschoolers here take turns putting together field trips. This last week it was a trip to the ostrich farm. It was so cool. The kids loved it!

These ostriches were about 3 months old.

The big yolke is from an ostrich egg and the other two yolks are from a chicken and a duck.

She said that this was her biggest egg at 5 lbs. She said they are usually 3 lbs. She told us how she incubates them.

Grown or breeder ostriches. 

Mac loved these little baby ostriches. He spent most of his time naming them (Thank you Mr. Poppers Penguins!)

The kids got to feed them. We noticed they loved the spinach more than the feed. 

And they even got to hold a baby. The kids loved this!!

So cute, right?!

school, park, spiders and experiments...

Oak got this guitar from her birth mom and she was taking it very seriously. It was adorable!

Mac comes to my bed early in the morning and tell me he is going to play me a song about a boy who becomes friends with a zombie. There weren't any word, just music, with an occasional interpretation like, "here's the part about..." It was so stinking cute!

More playing with the giant cardboard box. 

Mac picked out arachnids to learn about this week for our unit study because he found a bunch of books on them at the library. I had the kid write a story about spiders and this was Oaks. She told me what she wanted to write, I wrote it down and she copied it. She also figured out how to write "mom" and "dad" this week. So she has written us lots of notes because she can write those words without help.

Mac writing his story. I am learning this boy likes to do things his own way. I always have in mind something for him to do and how i want him to do it and he will figure out how to do it his own way. It is frustrating to me sometimes, but I know it is also a great thing. So sometimes I have to embrace it. Part of the great thing homeschooling is child led learning.

Monday, Mac went to the homeschool center with our friends from church who also homeschool. I picked them up and they all wanted to come to our house to play instead of going home. The kids had fun playing together. 

Daddy was out of town for a night and then got home after the kids were in bed the next night. Since I rarely buy cold cereal and never buy sugary cereal, we have made it a tradition to go to the store and pick some out when daddy is out of town (which rarely happens anymore) and eat it for dinner. The kids were excited! 

After watching a movie the kids like to dance to the credit music. Mac said to Oak, "Put your hand on my shoulder like this. " It was so adorable. I don't know where he learned to dance, but he sure knows how to dance like a gentleman. 

One morning we decided to go on a walk after breakfast and before we started school. I loved it. 

This time playing the popcorn sight word game, Mac wanted to make sentences out of the words. He did pretty good. 

I tried to make math application a bit more fun this day. It lasted about 5 minutes before Mac had his own idea of how he wanted to do it. 

He is more interested in multiplication than addition or subtraction. This boy is ready to learn math facts!

Oak has been obsessed with hearts lately. 

Mac's drawing. He said that it is called "red sky at night, sailors delight."

Only for the second time that I can remember, did my husband suggest we go out to eat for dinner. After dinner we headed to the park. Isn't he the cutest! Right after I took this pic, Mac went down the slide and jumped down on my stomach after him. He thought it was hilarious, after I did it, I regretted it. Ouch!

The kids got along so well this week and were just really well behaved. 

They said they were playing "Milo and Otis".

The craft and art we did to go along with our unit study. 

It rained for a few minutes so the kids HAD to go out looking for frogs. We didn't find any though. 

But we kept exploring a bit. I was totally loving the big puffy clouds. We rarely have clouds so when we do I am always loving them. 

We make a trip to the dollar tree probably once a week. It is a great place for homeschool supplies. We found these spy kits and the kids loved them. 

The kids insisted they have spider webs and their craft spiders hung in their room. This WAS in Oak's room. I knew she wouldn't be able to sleep with it, but I didn't say anything because I didn't want to put anything in her head. Sure enough, 30 seconds after saying good night and turning her light off she came out asking for us to take it down. I don't really blame her, it really is creepy looking. 

We thought it would be fun to cover the map in Mac's room. It looks really cool. 

Oak goofing off while doing a science experiment with daddy. 

Mac has been begging to do a science experiment. We finally got one put together. We put  sugar, yeast in water and watched it fill a balloon with air. 

On saturday the weather was summer worthy. The kids got to play with the neighbor friends most of the day. 

Ready for church!

I just loved Oak's little bee!

And this girl has seriously had the giggles all week. She has laughed non stop. It is way better than the alternative which we experienced the week before. It makes me happy that shes happy!

Other stuff:

My kids have been very difficult lately and I was noticing that they were more and more mimicking my poor behavior in response to them. After watching a presentation for an online homeschool conference I visited the website of the presenter. I watched a few things on her website and was struck by her parenting technique (which is what her website is about). Two of the things she said that stuck with me was to not let your kids push your buttons and to always keep a calm voice and calm body when your kids are acting up. I am guilty of letting my kids push my buttons and not being calm when they are driving me nuts. So I thought I would try to work on those things this week. And I have to say that I think their good behavior was solely from me doing these two things. There were a few moments when I was about to lose my cool, so I left the situation and would go to my room for a few minutes to calm down. Which is exactly what I have been having my kids do to, if they can't react calmly to a situation. And that had helped all of us! 

Over the last few weeks we have also been putting the kids to bed earlier and earlier. They seem to benefit from the extra sleep. And wake up less grumpy. Our goal has been for them to be asleep between 7 and 7:30 and if we get them in bed before 7 they usually are. However I am going to have to start dinner sooner.

We also signed them up for Taekwondo again. They start this week. Mac wasn't very excited about it, but once he talked to Master Church he was really excited. Oak is excited, but nervous about it. I am excited for them to start, just not excited about the time it is at and the time it will take away form home. But my kids need it, and the benefits far out weight the negative aspect. 

Sunday we had the Elders over for dinner. We always love doing that.