The Foxes

We started out the month with a Parade! Ella’s troop was invited to participate in the Boy Scouts of America Report to State Parade - which happens every year, the scouts walk down Congress Ave. and present themselves at the State Capitol. So exciting! I got to walk in it as well and take tons of pictures for the troop! I even captured a couple of movies of the girls learning some AHG songs. It was a very chilly and windy morning but we did manage to get through it without rain. We also got to wave to Daddy and Liam on route.

The girls also worked on first aid kits in preparation for the hike we would take in March and, at the Mid-year ceremony, Ella received two badges (joining award and creative crafts) and four activity patches. One of the activities was volunteering during Scout Sunday. This was a tradition adopted in the 1940’s to: “make people in houses of worship aware of Scouting, and to allow Scouts to live out their “Duty to God” pledged each week.” Ella was paired up with a tall scout who tried his best to fit into a picture with her. :) They handed out Sunday morning flyers before worship service at the church which sponsors both troops.

Ella got to do a fun unit study of classical Greece! We made traditional Greek food, learned geography, read about the battle between Athens and Sparta, made a mosaic coaster and made (on my level of sewing ability) a traditional peplos outfit for Ella. Liam also continues to do great - I included a picture of him “writing” a get well card. We started a new online curriculum that he’s loving and we’re doing great with. We start out one on one with a prayer, bible story and memory verse. Then we’ll work on learning songs and fingerplays. Then we’ll go to the little red table and work on writing numbers and letters and usually a craft or coloring pages that also go along with the lesson. Then we snuggle on the chair and have “cuddle book” time. And we finish with worksheets and sorting activities at the big table with Ella. One of his new favorite thing is board games. When he’s done with school his favorite thing to do is pull out board games like Battleship and make up stories with the pieces and parts.

We also had a s.n.o.w… sort of. Less than last year - but we’ll take it! Liam stood out front with his sword and swung at the flakes.

Valentines Day! I treated everybody this year. I just had too many fun things I wanted to do for everybody. I made a B + J valentine for Bill at one of our quilling meetings a new board game for Liam and cookies for the kids to frost later that day. I gave Ella my childhood sticker book with all my collected stickers and a new book for her to start her own sticker collection.

Aunt Becky arrived in time for her birthday and ended up spoiling the kids even more with Disney store goodies and a shirt for Liam of his favorite Super Hero (can you guess who it is?) We also spent many evenings (or rather a few really late ones) catching up on the Twilight and Harry Potter flicks.

Homeschool group field trip to Texas Baptist Children’s Home, a foster care community in Round Rock. We started with a visit to the Chapel and then toured one of the beautiful homes which housed 9 girls in various forms of family separation and transition. The kids left messages for the girls on the front porch and left pictures for them to find when they got back from school. The foster parents we talked to were really amazing, the kids are so blessed there.

And….silliness with daddy. No need for explanation here.

So here are a few of the highlights:
Ella began skating classes with one of her favorite friends Sydney! They were so cute on the ice and did great… she also along brought her dad, brother, and favorite visitor Flat Stanley! He was visiting from Illinois - created by Ella’s best friend from our time in Chicago, Sarah.

He also spent time with Ella meeting new friends including Martha and her pet bird “Tweety”, introducing him to her ballet class and getting her costume fitted (she’s one of the playing cards in Alice in Wonderland this Spring) and he even kept her company while she worked on her cooking and cake decorating badges for AHG!

Speaking of American Heritage Girls - Ella took part in some exciting events this year, starting with a service project for the homeless. The girls made scarfs and helped assemble bags for the Bags of Grace ministry in Austin.

And here are some pics of the kids, doing a nature craft activity with daddy - using corncobs and birdseed (the squirrels actually liked it more) and singing one of Liam’s new favorite songs!

The month began with a fairly large project that turned out to be a great blessing and will for years to come. A mom at our church extended an invitation to those of us with little ones to take part in a Christmas ornament exchange based on a book of 24 advent devotionals. Each family was given one day and were to make 24 of the same ornaments. I was assigned Day 8, Mary is Chosen. Here’s a link for those who might be interested in taking part and pictures of the ornaments I made and the night of the exchange.

Visiting Santa!

Homeschool group visit to the Fire Station and Christmas Party!

American Girl Christmas Party - celebrating Felicity with paper dolls, apple pomanders, and learning a minuet.

I even got to attend a party of my own: a Christmas party for our AHG troop leaders. We made orange pomanders and learned quilling by each making a snowflake for our tree!

The tale of our Sick Tree: Since it went well last year, we opted again for a quick trip to our local nursery for a Christmas tree. However two weeks after getting it home and decorated I realized our tree hadn’t taken in water in more than a week. Unfortunately, mold, which can grow on both real and artificial trees, had spread on the trunk and in the water - ick! So by that evening, we UN decorated it, and put it outside. By now though it was December 22nd, just three days till Christmas. So I did some checks on line and called around and early that next morning I headed out to Loews in Austin and got a replacement, 7 foot artificial, pre-lit tree! It was also the floor model (did I mention that it was now just 2 two days till Christmas?) So without a box, they dismantled it and carefully placed it in my car. I drove it home, surprised the family, then proceeded to spray it down with lysol and let it air dry on our front porch for most of the morning. By the evening however, we finally had a clean and healthy tree, decorated and lit up to enjoy. Let’s hope next year is much less eventful. The picture of them at the table is Dad and Ella stuffing programs that he designed for the Christmas service…

Speaking of eventful… my aunt Linda arrived early afternoon on Christmas Eve. It was rainy and chilly, but we were excited for the night ahead. I hurried out for groceries but by the time I got back, the kids were up from quiet time and it was pretty apparent that Ella was way under the weather. She had a fever, had gotten sick at her stomach and was tired and listless despite the excitement of the day. The pics below of our evening say it all. She ended up in our bed, 103.6 fever. We opened pj’s but skipped church services and all headed to bed early. She asked for a “group prayer” that she would feel better by the next morning so she and daddy could still read their scripture at church the next morning.

Fortunately her prayers were answered. Her fever broke in the middle of the night and by the next day she was feeling better.

She and her dad were asked to read the scripture at church Christmas morning. Such an honor! They practiced and did wonderfully - here’s some pictures (in the second one if you look closely you can see the mic wire on her dress, just like the worship leader gets :)) and a movie of their reading as well as a song by the little ones!

After church we came home and promptly put our pjs back on for the rest of the day and finished opening gifts.

For the first time since our first year anniversary we made the pilgrimage to our alma mater, Oklahoma Christian University. A special place for us, obviously, and for many of our friends who were like family then and continue to be all these years later. It was such a joy to reunite and introduce each other to our kids and their kids and walk the campus again as Bill and Jen… where it all began. We had the opportunity to stay with and reconnect with great friends, attend Homecoming chapel and parade, and take the kids to a meet and greet with Belle and Gaston on the night of the musical Beauty and the Beast. Liam didn’t make it to the late show, but Ella loved it! We were so grateful to have this trip and even took our time on the 7 hour drive home, and splurge for a night at a great hotel with an indoor pool. *btw- the newspaper article below is from our freshman year!

Ella took part in her troops fundraising efforts (Yankee Candles) and sold over $300, over half of which was at her dad’s office! Here she is with her handbook, at a troop meeting, and lovin’ on daddy after the big sale.

One of the homeschool groups we belong to hosted a Thanksgiving potluck. Within the group, several families came together to represent different cultures/cuisines around the world. Some of the countries represented included China, Israel, Mexico, and Italy. They encouraged kids to learn a fact (or several) from each country that they didn’t know before and if they related the new learned fact they could get a stamp on their hand! We also had an amazing demonstration from one of the parents of a shofar, a rams horn blown as a wind instrument, used in biblical times both in battle and religious ceremonies and is used today in synagogue services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I included a movie of it below. He details the meaning behind the sounds which is a bit hard to hear so I explain it further. But the sounds are truly amazing to hear altogether - definitely worth a listen!

Basically there are three sounds/notes he’s demonstrating: the first is long note (Tekiah) - which represents God’s way of getting your attention. He says that the significance is not the shofar itself or the notes but what happens to you when you hear it. Next come three notes (Shevarim) - he’s not exactly sure what the meaning behind them is except that we know the number three is a pretty significant biblical number that often stands for God himself. Then come 9 or more short notes (Teruah) - which sounds like crying. And the last note (Tekiah Gedolah) is really long - and it represents God listening/responding to us.
So the significance of each of the four notes he plays is to 1) listen for God, 2) God speaking, 3) our response to God - crying out toward him and then in the final long note - God responding to us. Beautiful.

Ella’s American Girl group met in November to talk about Josephina. She represents New Mexico, still under Mexican rule in the early 1800’s prior the the Mexican-American War. The girls traced a map from the time period before the war. Painted flower pots since the character planted flowers with her aunt in the books, and were given cilantro seeds to plant later. They made and rolled their own tortillas and enjoyed them with butter and cinnamon. They also had churros, chips and cake. And they had an experiment to try and wash their hands (from the painting) with yucca root - a method Josefina used. I didn’t get pictures but I got a movie of a dance they did! Cute!

And lastly here are some pics of Ella’s science experiments. After our study of Caniforms we learned that canines have 25 times more olfactory (smell) organs than humans do! Which is why they are great hunters. Even though humans have great sense of smell too, it may be that we rely or are more influenced by sight than smell. So we made some lemon jello and poured it into two cups, one of which we dropped red food coloring into and had daddy taste both and decide the flavors of each. She hypothesized that he would guess the yellow would be lemon and the red would be strawberry. By sight and smell, daddy concluded that the yellow jello was pineapple and the red was cherry! He may have made different guesses but her hypothesis about sight trumping smell was right!

One of our other favorite experiments came after our study on Feliforms. Ella learned how to distinguish the difference between a leopard, jaguar and cheetah both by size and markings and read about lions, tigers, hyenas and lynxes. The experiment highlighted the delicate balance between predator and prey. We squared off a section of floor (territory) and printed pictures of cougars and deer. Ella stood two feet away and tossed in the cougar (representing one generation of hunting). It needed to land on (at least partially) 3 deer in one toss to be successful enough to keep it alive for the next generation. If it survives it produces one offspring (and every deer that survives produces another) for the next generation or toss. Conclusion: as the cougar population increased, the deer decreased, resulting in cougars not finding enough deer and not surviving to the next gen, thereby renewing the deer population, thereby resulting in better hunting for new cougars coming into the territory and so on. So she learned how important and inherent that balance is.

We were blessed with a relaxed morning of the big T-Day! I made time to cuddle up with the kiddos to watch the parade and then we had friends drive down from the Dallas area to spend dinner and the weekend with us.

Her breakfast success! She is always asking for something OTHER than cereal, which happens to be Liam’s FAVORITE breakfast item and for sure my go-to on weekdays when I’m organizing school. So we made the deal that several mornings a week we’d make something different and this was what she asked for: hard boiled eggs, apples and ham. yum! Also a camping moment (actually many afternoons spent this way).

This is a classically busy month for us. With two birthdays, a holiday and, this year, a trip with our church family. It all began with Bill’s 37th birthday. My amazing husband, though a year older, will forever be the 19 year old I fell in love with! I finally took on the great idea of good friends of ours to celebrate in small ways over a week rather than in big ways on one day! The week included a starbucks surprise at his work, a welcome home to a mountain of his favorite sodas, and a new bike!

This year we went on a retreat to Spicewood, TX with our church family. We feel so blessed to be a part of such a loving group of people who are so inspiring and encouraging.

Ella had another awesome American Girl meeting focusing on Kit and the 1930’s. She learned about everything from music, movies and fashion of the era, to politics and social changes. Since Kits favorite sport is baseball they made pennants and in honor of President Roosevelt’s penchant for collecting stamps, the girls had the chance to do some collecting of their own. So fun!

Ella’s own birthweek was full of small joys. Among them were: breakfast in bed and presents, an early morning bike ride with her dad before he went off to work, a new “Jack and Annie book” (from The Magic Tree House series), lunch (and a song) at Red Robin after church and receiving a sweet ballerina necklace from our close friends. Her birthday party was a Fairy affair. I made fairy wings for each girl, they played, potted some flowers, made fairy houses and decorated cupcakes. So fun!

One of the greatest blessings this year was the opportunity to join a new troop in our area. American Heritage Girls is a faith-based alternative to Girl Scouts and just a joy to be a part of. Our troop was founded over the summer with 53 girls joining! That’s unprecedented for a new troop! Such a thirst for this sort of thing for young girls. The badges, character and personal development, friendships and challenges are very much like the original GS group but without all the secular baggage. I signed up as the troop historian and I have to say I love being a part of it, putting on my uniform and seeing these girls come together in fun and faith has been a huge inspiration and blessing to us both. The girls were encouraged at their first troop meeting to dress up as a famous woman of American History. Over the summer Ella read a chapter book on Sacagawea and became instantly fascinated by her story and knew she wanted to be her for her AHG meeting and Halloween and, well, just as often as she could. Some of the other figures represented were: Elizabeth Blackwell M.D., Annie Oakley, Molly Pitcher, Mia Ham, Amelia Earhart, Belle Boyd, Florence Nightingale, Martha Washington, Jackie Mitchell… and no less than 5 girls dressed as Sacagawea!

Halloween was pretty laid back this year. Liam wore cowboy Woody pj’s along with his favorite boots, and Ella dressed up as Sacagawea (the sling was from her mommy costume last year). Not only did she have trick or treating to wear it to, but also visiting a nursing home with her homeschool group. She’ll get to wear her costume next spring as well when together we host her American Girl meeting on Kaya! This was also the first year we let her stay up past bedtime to help pass out candy to the neighbors. Fun for us all!

And finally here are some additional favorite moments of the month including Ella tracing a map of the divided kingdom for her history, her pile of AG books read over the fall as well as my sweet little boy warrior, and chef!

We continued with school being the primary focus of our days. We began a new science curriculum - Apologia’s Young Explorer series - which I can’t say enough good things about! Included are pictures of our first experiment: on camouflage. Ella built a habitat out of three colors of construction paper, we scattered the same three colors of M & M’s throughout. She recorded a hypothesis about which color she believed had the best chance of surviving in the habitat (orange) and then she had two minutes to locate as many M & M’s as she could find. In the end she was right! The orange edged out, but the green and yellow tied for second.

The weather started to cool down in the early morning - so we added walks to our day and found all sorts of nature to study and bring home to explore.

Another Daddy adventure - paper bag robots!

And Ella joined a new homeschool club - American Girl Club. They meet once a month, a mom and daughter from the club present one of the girls from the series, who the character was, what her family faced in their time period, what was happening in the world at the time (politics, world/national events, music, entertainment, beliefs, etc.) then they do a craft or two and have a snack all relating to the girl. Here Ella is dressed up in her Julie outfit. Julie grew up in the 70’s in San Fransisco. She faced divorcing parents and changes in the political landscape from the war. They listened to music, talked about shag carpet, got to watch a lava lamp in action, play with rubix cubes and the like. For a craft they made a Pet Rock and had some fruit punch and popcorn for their snack. There are about 20 girls or so in the club - so fun!

We also celebrated our 12th Anniversary! It fell the weekend we flew home from NY, so we kept it easy and went out for a celebration lunch with the kids to The Melting Pot. It was much like our last family anniversary dinner out at the Space Needle in Seattle. Overall they did great, didn’t like the food so much as the dessert! But my little boy couldn’t stop kissing on me - such lovies! And we made sure to up the specialness ante with some balloons and a chocolate fondue bar to take home. However, when we walked to our table, there were Happy Birthday balloons adorning it. Funny memory! They did change out to the anniversary-red balloons and we all managed a picture. Twelve years of joy!

And we also made time for sillies and snuggles - always.

We traveled to upstate for the week of Labor Day. For this mama, it was a week to do nothing… well I slept, and I read, I even cooked a little. It was a luxury to just be and I soaked it in. Unfortunately, we only really remembered to take pictures when we went on an excursion or when we looked up an only had a day left, so the pictures are fewer - but it was a joyful week and just right. We also had lots of rain, though with more allergies this trip. We lucked out on one of the non rainy days, we made our special visit to Fallbrook, where we were married 12 years ago for our traditional photo shoot with the family.

We also stopped off at Ontario Orchards, a roadside market, for some goodies and Rudy’s for some fish and chips by Lake Ontario.

Best of all we had some time with friends, family and Grandma!

And I had to include this picture, at the end of the trip there is always one of these photos… whatever you can do to make it home. We were home - in Austin - waiting at the curb for our shuttle bus. These tech benefits are not just for the kids, we parents sometimes breathe a welcome sigh of relief when everything quiets down in those moments.

Last year I had an amazing gift bestowed on me. A very close family of ours at church have blessed us in so many ways since we moved to town. They are a fellow homeschooling family with three kids in university (one of those now officially graduated and working in TN) and their youngest, Sarah, still at home. Last year, I was asked if I would like Sarah to be a mother’s helper one day a week. I wasn’t sure if this was another way of saying babysitter - but I certainly liked the sound of it! It was so much more. Since Sarah takes ballet at the same facility as Ella and works as a teacher’s helper in Ella’s class we decided to plan for her to come over on Tuesday afternoons (ballet day) right around 3pm - a half hour or so before the kids got up from their quiet times. We spent the time chatting and I got to catch up on all she was up to. She would then help me get them up, play with them, feed them a snack and help get them ready for class and out the door - all without accepting payment. It was her way of learning the ropes of babysitting with a mom present, and volunteering her time and effort to help. What a blessing it was for me and the kids! I was able to catch up on phone calls, paperwork, or general housework, knowing the kids were blissfully playing with Sarah.

We also took a field trip with her and her mom to The Republic of Texas Museum in February which had some amazing places for the kids to explore, including a covered wagon with clothes to dress up in, “Great Grandma’s Backyard” with a 19th century kitchen to actually play in, and many photographs to enjoy. Such a memorable year with Sarah, we are so grateful we had that time with her.

We interrupt this regularly scheduled update (September) to do Homeschooling: First Grade Year-in-Review!

You’ll remember that Ella has been working through the Hooked on Phonics reading program which is Pre-K thru Level 5 (2nd grade). I updated last fall that she had finished Level 2 in just six short weeks. She kept on that steady track… here are her completion pictures from February, March and May respectively as well as the completed Disney collection storybook from April! Which means she’s now reading at a 3rd grade level. She has moved swiftly to chapter books, beginning with stories like the Little House chapter books, the American Girl series, Junie B. Jones, and her favorite - The Magic Tree House series! She can finish one of these (at least 10 chapter) chapter books inside of an hour and a half!

We continued English with grammar from First Language Lessons, where daily work varied from pronouns and sentence and verb identifiers to story narrations and memorization. The memorization she does now will help her invariably with training herself to retain facts later in school and life… I wish I’d had more if it in my younger years. Here’s a movie of her reciting her poems to date, she can hardly wait to finish them before wanting to watch the video back.

[Video to come]

Math this year was awesome. We started Level A which to my understanding is actually Kindergarten level, but I was happy to review some things with her and get her on the ground floor of learning to visualize math instead of trying to count her way to the answers with her fingers. We also learned for example that 37 is 3-ten 7, learned to figure sums on her abacus, worked on geoboards to study patterns, began fractions and learned how to measure in length, weight and volume. The curriculum is very teacher friendly and easy to use with lots of games to reinforce learning. As an aside, in the first picture, the second line 5 + 1 = is in fact a 6, she just transposes those with what looks like a 2 sometimes - it happens with E’s and 3’s also. I read that it happens a lot at this age, one thing at a time… The second picture is of the Swim to Ten game. The squares on the paper represent her abacus beads, the first 5 are darkened and the last five are light so she can easily separate into 5’s and 10’s. The colored tiles represent fishies and her object is to get them to swim to the end of the row without landing on an X (which requires her to start over). The white tiles on the table are numbered and lets say she turns one over and it says 2, she practices looking over the rows and determines as quickly as she can to move all the fishies except the first and last rows.

I had mentioned before that we were using Tapestry of Grace as a unit study for History, Geography, and Literature as well as an introduction to a biblical worldview. It has been both enriching as well as challenging. There is more in every weeks lesson plan than one family could ever imagine doing, and so I’ve had my own learning curve both in mastering breaking down the curriculum to fit our needs and in letting go of ALL the other stuff.
It’s been a sweeping view of the ancient world from Creation to Pharaohs, the Indus Valley to Ancient China, Greece and the Promised Land. Studies of religion allowed us to focus on our Yahweh of the wilderness to polytheism of the emerging nations. In addition to locating places on our world map, we also checked out examples online of their art, inventions and learned about their governments. We also tried to read books based on legends of their day. Two of Ella’s favorites came from our study of China; Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China by Ai-Ling Louie and Fa-Mulan: The Story of a Woman Warrior by Robert D. San Souci. She made narrative pages for each book read.
Lapbooks were also a big part of our studies and helped her to connect what she had learned with an activity that both tested her knowledge and offered her the opportunity to be creative. Here are two of her completed lapbooks.

It just so happened that our study of the Tabernacle, the Israelites yearly calendar, and the weekly feast of Sabbath fell during January, when Grandma Nancy was in town. Ella and I took the opportunity to host a formal Shabbat dinner, complete with traditional food, candle lighting and homemade challah bread. In about the fifth picture (where Ella is writing something at the table) you can see Liam in the background, peeking out the door, he’s actually on the lookout for the first three stars visible in the sky - the signal Sabbath has officially begun!

Ella and I composed a small lesson on the traditions of the Sabbath dinner. Ella read the large print paragraphs and lines and I read the small print ones, and the underlined words were ones she was to slow down and sound out (ones she’s less familiar with). At the conclusion of the prayer everyone is to wish each other Shabbat Shalom! So Ella wrote out a sheet for each person’s place setting with the words on them.

For science, we worked through Abeka’s Discovering God’s World and she began a devotional journal to work on her bible study and handwriting skills.

And then Liam: He had a great time last year being 2 years old! He still had quiet time in his room every morning during our school time, and we all enjoyed him both in active focused play like sorting pasta or playing Veterinarian to silly dress up, cooking time with mom to quiet moments on his own.

August was a record month for so many reasons, record breaking temps, still no rain, and the danger of grass fires. One such fire broke out mid-month less than a mile from our home. Fortunately it didn’t come any closer, but 30 acres and over a dozen homes were affected. The kids and I made the most of the hot weather by starting school! This year Liam is officially starting preschool work alongside his sister in the mornings. She does independent work while he and mommy work on his own worksheets and activities. He loves “doing school” with Ella, which lasts all of 15-20 min and then he’s off for quiet play on his own. He spends the time mostly in his room with lots of toys (which frankly he loves - alllll the toys to himself - yahoo!) while Ella and I have uninterrupted time to focus on her studies.

Daddy had more brilliant ideas - homemade stickers - made out of the left over paper you peel the stickers off of… they made all kinds of silly faces and wrote sticker notes to each other. He also made cardboard cutouts of the kids - but this time instead of drawn on faces - he endowed them with their very own clones. Stay tuned for the sharpie pen outfits that come in another month.

In the cool early hours of morning they’d go out and play and we got a lot of use out of our pool. When it heated up, we’d pass the time by playing, being silly, cooking - where Ella honed her salad skills - and dress up (note Ella in the Hiccup outfit - from How to Train Your Dragon). She came out one morning and told me she had just read a Cars 2 book on being a “spy” and one of the criteria was to be in disguise… so she came back out a few minutes later and asked if I could recognize her. :)

On the radio one morning, the dj’s were giving all the usual cliche’s about the heat: “its so hot I could cook an egg on the roof of the car….” when one person called in and said they had actually baked cookies on the dashboard of their car. You know where this is going - we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to experiment! And bake they did!!! Yummy! Bill even took a batch to work and passed them out afterward. Recipe: One chocolate chip cookie recipe. Drop by spoonfuls onto baking sheet. At approximately 1pm set baking sheet snugly on dashboard, preferably facing west. Bake under 100+ degree day (ours was 107!). Leave in for at least 3 hours (I left them in for 4 hours). Cookies will be soft and gooey - if you’re a crisp and crunchy cookie person, you might want to stick with a conventional oven. :)

And the big news of the month was that Liam turned 3 years old!! Here are some pictures and highlights of the day. Mostly because of the hot weather and the busy travel schedule a week later we opted for a quiet birthday celebration instead of trying to do a big party outdoors. He had breakfast in bed, followed by presents and later lunch at Red Robin where he got serenaded and treated with a sundae. That evening our very good friends - the Neil family - joined us for dinner and some cake and ice cream followed by an evening of Kinect sports at Liam’s request.