Consider the ants.....

Proverbs 6:6 "Go to the ant, you slacker. Observe its ways and become wise."



For a summer school project, we have decided to study ants! We sent for our live ants for our farm, with the understanding that it would take 4-6 weeks for our ants to arrive. Well, you can imagine our surprise when we discovered them in our mail box within one week!




Our whole family enjoys watching these hard working creatures. I guess live ants at the dinner table is only the beginning of our homeschooling adventure!






This is the amount of tunneling in just 48 hours!



What do we learn from ants? To "do our work without being told to do it"!



Gracie and Jacob enjoy time on the couch with flashcards while Mommy works with the older boys.



We have been all working on memorizing Proverbs 6:6. Gracie walks around the house saying "slackers, slackers"! It is too funny. I think we need to work on teaching her the rest of the verse....or maybe another translation so she won't go to Sunday school calling people slackers!




These are our two favorite books on Ants: Are You an Ant? and The Life and Times of the Ant




Mommy also found lots of great ideas, and free printouts (coloring pages, projects, etc.) on this website: www.daniellesplace.com

Of course no good study on ants is complete without an "ants on a log" snack!

We are diving in!

Here we go, we are diving into homeschooling 101 this year! We can't wait!

Look what we have.....

We have all kinds of fresh tomatoes to enjoy at our house now! Even Daddy, a previous tomato "avoider" likes them!




We just have to be quick and clever to snatch them off the plant before the neighborhood bunnies and birds gets them!

Happy Father's Day!

Father's Day weekend we were able to celebrate with at least one of our Dads, Jeff's Father and we were able to talk to Papa in Arizona on the phone. He will have to wait for his hugs until December!

We are so grateful for the fathers God has given us. I am grateful for the Daddy that God has given our brood of 4.



Happy Father's Day!

Jacob is 3 months!

Yes, we have hit the 3 month mark! Our little one continues to be a joy and delight. He really is just sweetness through and through. He has a full faced grin that lights up a room and a contagious giggle that he has used quite a bit this month! He is amazingly strong, able to sit up with some assistance and he has discovered scooting this month too! (You will see some pics of how he has scooted himself off his play mat!) He has also discovered his thumb this month. We have also found out this month that he loves being naked and LOVES to take showers! (see pic) He takes such delight in his siblings, and they in him. It is so much fun to watch them all interact and love on one another. He has now moved into size 2 diapers, and is wearing almost all 6 month clothes, and some 3-6 month. He is a great eater and sleeper. He naps just in short bursts throughout the day, but will sleep 6-8 hours straight at night. He is growing up so fast!

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

What we have been up to

Here is just a few things we have been up to in the last week to catch you up!

Teaching them young....Gracie and Jacob reading an NRA magazine with Daddy.


Visiting with friends. One of Mommy's very good friends came and spent a night with us on her way South on a road trip. We were so excited to meet her. She even said we could come visit her sometime in D.C!!!


Our favorite library has a park outside. Sometimes we play at the park with Daddy while Mommy goes inside to pick out some books. What is better than that? Time at the park and lots of BOOKS, two of our favorite things! This is something we will get used to since Mommy and Daddy have decided to use primarily a literature based approach to our homeschooling next year. Which means, lots and lots of great books!


We also set up our little pool in our backyard this week and have been enjoying some sun and water every day this week!




This is our tent we mentioned in the last post. We have having such a blast going camping in our living room!



Last week we also had a chance to have lunch and play with some friends. Nine kids and three adults, but we had a blast! It was our first time to meet Mikayla who was also adopted from Ethiopia!

Momma's Girl: Chocolate

If you remember, on Gracie's first birthday she refused to dig into her birthday cupcake. I thought it was because she doesn't like to get dirty. I discovered this week it must have been because I chose the wrong flavor. Gracie LOVES her chocolate. Here is a view of our Choco-lover as she progresses through some pudding! :)


Yummy, this chocolate stuff is pretty tasty!



Oops, some dropped on the bib, don't want to waste....better lick it off.


This just keeps getting better with every bite!


Better get a closer look, make sure I am not missing any. I think I can reach some more with my tongue.


The tongue worked, but I think if I get my hand in there I can get a few more drops, spoons are for amateurs!

Our last week

I fear this may end up a whirlwind blog post. Probably because it has been a whirlwind week for us. On Memorial Day I worked and then on Tuesday we packed up and headed out to Pennsylvania for Great-Grandma Morgan's funeral. We came home late Saturday evening and have been trying to catch up since then. It was a difficult week for all of us. It is pretty much a given that a long road trip is hard with four small children, but it made it especially hard because we were so busy trying to take care of our four, it left little time to actually grieve Grandma's passing. Thank you for your prayers for our family during this time.

The kids did pretty well on such a long trip. Luke and Ben are pros at long distance travel. Gracie had the hardest time, 18 months is not a great age to be still for such a long time or be off of the regular schedule. One night she was up at 1130 playing peek-a boo in her pack-n-play instead of sleeping, which made for a very cranky toddler the next day! All in all, we survived (with the help of lots of prayers, books and snacks!!)














Luke did a great job trying to entertain Jacob.





Two huge blessings of this trip were time together as a family, and the opportunity to visit with extended family. The kids got to meet two new third-cousins, Max and Aidan and Jeff's extended family got to meet Jacob for the first time. For some family they met all four kids for the first time ever! We also got to enjoy some outdoor time at Aunt Debbie and Uncle Denny's house after the funeral.







Max is 7 months old!


A huge blessing was that Great Grandpa Shirey was able to meet Jacob and was able to spend time getting to know all four a little bit better. The last time he saw them was when Gracie was 4 months old at Great Grandma Shirey's funeral.







We were able to stay in a nearby hotel which was nice. It afforded us the ability to prevent from bombarding anyone with our brood. Not to mention it had a pool and free breakfast! Here are some pics of the kiddos enjoying the hotel.











On Thursday of our trip all of Jeff's family was busy working so we decided to drive near Pittsburgh. Jeff has always wanted to introduce me to a Primanti Brothers sandwich (which is a Pittsburgh staple, it is pretty much a sandwich with the fries and coleslaw sides piled on top originally intended for late night truckers who could get an entire meal in an easy to manage sandwich). It was delicious.


After lunch we headed to a local coal mine for a tour. Thankfully we had just missed the two school buses full of kids so our family had a personal one-on-one tour of the mine. We actually went pretty far in and learned about the different advancements in mining coal over the last 200 years. It was fascinating. The boys had a blast (no pun intended), and Gracie just liked playing with her hard hat and running around!











We were able to enjoy our first swimming of the season on our trip, both at the hotel and at Cousin Andy's home. Here are our little fish enjoying the water. Even Jacob got to swim at the hotel with us!









I am currently reading a book called One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp (it is an excellent book).



The book has encouraged me to start a "gratitude journal" of sorts. Writing down everyday things that remind me that God is the giver of good and perfect gifts even in the midst of life's circumstances. #52 on my list is from our trip home when we were about to hit a huge storm. Aren't storm clouds just the epitome of this idea? Gorgeous to look at, full of power, a wonderful gift even while the storm to come is brewing. Thank you Lord for your perfect gifts even in the midst of grief. For time to treasure family in the midst of loss.