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Simple joys

Each of the kids recently received $10 gift cards to Walmart as gifts from grandparents. They have been begging for chairs of their own to take outside, so it was the perfect opportunity to buy chairs. We found these cute camping style chairs at Walmart for about $9 each, but the simple joy of these chairs.....PRICELESS! I will come downstairs and find the kids circled round looking quite cozy. When I ask what they are doing they say "We are just chatting Mommy! We like to just talk to each other."

Jake loves to join in as well, although he uses it more to balance while standing than sitting!

Gracie and Jacob have their own "chat time" while Luke and Ben do some school work.

The chairs also make for a good train when lined up.

Afternoon snack and story time! :)

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for helping us get these chairs. We love them!

4 Years

This year our adoption anniversary happened to fall right in the middle of Easter weekend. Since Mommy was so sick, thanks to Baby #5, and the Easter weekend was so packed we decided to celebrate a little later. Every year in the past we have taken the boys to an Ethiopian restaurant to celebrate. This year we let them choose. They have been begging to try out one of our favorite restaurants, which is a Japanese sushi and hibachi restaurant, Kanki! The boys chose that without hesitation, and were so excited! The whole family had a wonderful evening! To make it even better, when another group was seated next to us around the hibachi grill, the lady sitting next to Luke leaned over and asked if Luke and Ben were from Ethiopia. She was Ethiopian herself, and we had a wonderful meal enjoying talking to her and getting to know her! Here are a few pictures of our evening. All the kids have been playing hibachi chef since our dinner!

Luke and Ben both LOVE sushi. Look what a pro Ben is at eating it!

Our normally talkative Luke was so quiet, he was just mesmerized by all that was going on.

As a special gift, we found an Ethiopian cookbook. The boys love it and can't wait to learn how to make some Ethiopian dishes!

Thank you Lord for four years with our precious sons. You knew exactly what this family needed, and our lives would not be the same without them.

A few more pictures

Here are a few more Easter pictures. Unfortunately, Jacob has been dealing with ear infections again and a horrible allergic reaction to antibiotics, so he was not his usual smiley self. I did get a few cute pictures, though!

Easter (part 2)

Although Mommy was very sick Easter weekend, we were still able to celebrate and remember what a special day it is. Luke and Ben kept greeting everyone they knew with "He is Risen!"

We had fun hunting for the Easter eggs we had dyed.

Jacob was not too sure about the whole fake grass thing!

He is Risen Indeed! (Easter part 1)

We hope you had a blessed Easter weekend, celebrating our Risen Lord! I am going to try to get caught up on blogs without overwhelming and putting all my pictures in one post. So here is part 1, our tradition of dying Easter eggs. We also have resurrection eggs that are a favorite in our house. The boys loved introducing Gracie to them this year.

One of Mommy's coworkers invited us to her church's family fun day. She told Mommy there would be pony rides, so we decided to go. Daddy and Mommy knew how much we would love to ride a pony!

There was also all kinds of bounce houses, slides, lunch and much more!

Gracie's favorite was the cotton candy! :)

More next time....

March School Update

This month for school we focused our extra curricular studies on all things new, Spring! We mostly studied seeds, plants, and flowers. We also spent a lot of time outdoors enjoying the spring weather.

We went on several nature walks. We also had a chance to go with Daddy to a special nature preserve with this really neat kid's station. It was a sand box and we got to make all kinds of animal "footprints" in the sand.

We read several good books on plants and gardening. Our all time favorite book this month, actually doubled as an art appreciation book. This beautiful book weaves the picture story of a little girl visiting Paris and Monet's garden with real life pictures, stories, and artwork. Our whole family loved this book! It was amazing how much the boys learned from it. We have a large child's art book as part of our Sonlight curriculum. Well, one day this month Luke was browsing the pages. He ran to show me two prints that he was sure were Monet's work! One was indeed a Monet, the other was also an Impressionist artist, but not a Monet. The boys are begging to go to an art museum themselves now. Mommy is learning just as much as the boys, as art has never been my strong point!

We found these really cute growing kits in the dollar aisle at Target at the beginning of the month. Perfect object lesson for our study this month and so cheap! All three kids took such good care of their own plants, remembering to water them and put them in the sun everyday.

Day 1: How long do we have to wait to see something??


Day 3: Gracie's is the first to sprout!

Each morning we water our plants and measure to see how much they have grown.


So far so good, our grass and plants are still alive and well one month later!


This month Mommy let us dissect one of her tulips. We had read all about the different parts of a flower, but it was a lot of fun to pull it a part and figure out which part was which and what role it plays. We got to squeeze water out of the stem, feel the pollen on our fingers, and look at everything under a magnifying glass.


Hey guys?? What about me? I want to see what you are doing too!!

For our next experiment we tried to put a carrot in a jar of colored water. It was supposed to soak up the water (since a carrot is a root), then Mommy was supposed to cut up the carrot to see how far the blue water traveled. Well, the hypothesis was good, but our carrot never soaked up the blue water, or maybe the water was not dark enough?

Even though our experiment didn't work out, Mommy used it as an opportunity to have us learn to help in the kitchen. We learned how to clean and peel carrots instead! :)


Gracie helps Mommy in the kitchen too. Here she is helping wash potatoes for dinner.

This month we were able to visit the NC State Animal Farm Days as a field trip. We got to see all kinds of farm animals up close. We even got to hold baby chicks!



We got to pet rabbits too.

Gracie was not too excited about touching any animals, but she did enjoy watching the turkeys, baby goats, lambs, piglets, calves, and foals. Spring is such a fun season to celebrate all things new!
We also got to try out "driving" a tractor!


Next we learned how to rope a bull! (Luke is so serious when it comes to cowboy work!)



We ended our field trip with some yummy free ice cream, made right from the dairy cows we visited!

Jacob was too little to touch all the animals, but he did get to try some ice cream!

I think he likes it!

We hope you are enjoying spring as much as we have been! Mommy has declared this first week of April as spring break! We are taking some time to focus more on the most important new life there is, the reason we celebrate Easter!