My Parents are Coming!

My mom and dad are coming to visit for a week! They will be here in 2 hours! It's been 5 years since Dad's been here. We are sooo excited! Dad will be able to speak at Spencer's baptism on Saturday. I'm so happy that they are able to come be with us. It's so difficult to live so far away!

Lots of pictures will be posted next week! (o: YAY!!!!!!

A Lot Going On...

...but mostly not things that I want to share. Here is a small sample... We are getting ready for my parents to come visit (our home is a disaster), I'm pushing myself to overcome some physical hurdles because I'm tired of not being able to lose weight (that takes a lot of energy-but I'm seeing some success), we are plugging along with our notebooking for school, Elizabeth still only believes in sleeping 2 hours a day and eating nothing...anyway...just busy.

More later.

Notebooking

I am getting hooked on a new method for homeschooling. Notebooking. It's kind of like scrapbooking, but not. Each boy has a 3 ring binder full of plastic page protectors. We do different activities and then put the pages that are made in the binders. Ummm...this is harder to describe than I thought. Okay...examples. We just finished reading a Magic Treehouse book about the Titanic. We studied some glaciers. The boys drew a picture of a glacier and described what they drew. That went into the notebook. Then, they wrote/drew a page of one thing they learned from the Titanic book. That went in. We are watching the show, "America, the Story of Us". After they watch each hour, they have to draw and write about what impressed them the most. Also, they painted terra cotta pots and then planted seeds to grow things. I took pictures of each child and their pot and they used that picture to make a page to go into the notebook. They do their copy work and in it goes. (yesterday their copywork was the poem, "Try, Try Again". They wrote it and are now memorizing it.

Anyway...I here are a couple of pictures from Josephs notebook to show what the heck I'm talking about. It has been very successful so far because my boys loooove to draw and color. Doing it this way has made it fun and interesting for them. Every day they love showing their book to their dad and telling him about the newest pages.




This is the cover to Joseph's notebook. Each boy decorated their notebooks according to what they love. This is a picture of Joseph being a famous monster truck driver. Notice the spotlights shining on him? (o:

Here is our home garden page...page 1. We will be taking another picture soon to document the middle stage and then the final stage. Again.. I love that the kids are free to add in their own personality. He did the assignment...which was to glue the picture down and write what he planted. The rest was just his creativity flowing.

Here is Joseph's page after we finished Hour of the Olympics.

I LOVE this page. He drew the minuteman shooting the redcoat. I didn't notice he spelled 'fighting' wrong until I scanned it.

Can you imagine 20 years from now...the boys showing their kids these notebooks? I love the idea that they will be able to see how much they improve in writing, drawing, describing etc.

So, I'm thinking that I might have finally found the method that my kids don't hate. We are still doing Saxon math, which they love and some additional grammar worksheets, which are in a different binder.

So...what do you think?

Here is a website that I am using for some inspiration.... www.notebookingpages.com.

Happy Birthday Spencer! #8!!

This silly boy turned 8 today. He has had a great day! In this picture he is showing off the printing calculator that he got from G&G Anderson and the digital camera he got from us and G&G Nelson. He also got a train simulator game from us...he's been locked in the bedroom on the computer all afternoon. He said he is sooooo happy because he got the things he really wanted. I asked him if he was sooooo excited because he's going to get baptized...he said he was only some excited because it's not for another month and that he will get sooooo excited when time is closer. Funny kid.



So, Happy Birthday, Peppo! We love you!

Just a Little Cutie

I can not believe that she is getting so grown up! She's gonna be 15 months old!~Funny thing is...she is just barely 20 pounds. She's tiny...but still growing up. She says please and thank you...she plays with her brothers toys and plays dolls with her Mommy. She loves to sit on her Daddy's lap and play with his watch. And when Daddy comes home from work, as soon as he walks through the door, she says, "Hi Daddy!"

Tomorrow Spencer turns 8! Why does time have to go by so quickly???

Yesterday...after I went to the dentist to get my root canal finished up...we all went over to Travis's parents house and got started on digging up the old garden and also help do some pruning etc. We are excited to get started on our garden again this year. Since Elizabeth was so small last year we didn't do much, but this year we have big plans. Here are a few pictures of what we did. We all came home pooped out! That's a great feeling!

Connor has still been suffering from an earache lately, so I gave him my ear warmer thing to wear outside.

Little Miss having a break from all her hard work of...walking in the grass! It was kind of tall grass and she's not a super-pro with the whole shoe walking thing yet...so this was a well deserved break. (o:

Travis's folks have a giant old bush/tree/bunch of random shoots of bush/tree that is all bunched up in a big corner of their yard. It's dying from the inside out, so Travis started cutting and pulling out all the dead wood. The kids helped stack it all up in a pile. They (meaning Travis and our sons) are planning to made a little clubhouse in the middle of the bush/tree thingy.

Connor picked Mommy some 'flowers'.

I ended up digging about 3/4 of the garden myself while the others worked on the bush/tree thingy.

Joseph lookin' cool.

Here we were just getting started.
And here it is finished. We are going to let it dry out a bit and then we will have the kids help gather rocks and the big clumps of grass/weeds then we will add the fertilizer and stuff to it before we plant.

So...that's a good summary of what we did yesterday. I'm so glad it didn't rain. It was a gorgeous day..in the upper 60's. Perfect!

We'll post more pictures as we progress. We are sort of gardening novices...neither of us can remember how our parents did it when we were kids, so we are having fun learning and doing it our own way. (o:

Sick...sick...sick

So the last month we have been sick around here. We get over one thing just to have the next thing come on. It's been a real pain. We've been to the doctor and also just toughed it out. Oh, and then I woke up one morning with my face quadrupled in size on one side...infected tooth. I had to get an emergency root canal. That was fun! BUT...I would like to think that we are beginning to see the end of all the sickness. I have been washing everything and Lysol-ing everything in sight. I hope we can kill the germs and not be sick for a while.

Anyway...here are a couple of things that we have done lately....
Travis and I are working to help get Dick Muri elected for Congress to replace our current Rep. who is a schmuck! We really like Dick. I went to one of his meet and greet type meetings. It was great. The guy on the right is Dick and the guy on the left is Kirby Wilbur of talk radio fame. Travis had to work and was very jealous of me for being there. But wait...where were all the kids if I was at the meeting and Travis was at work???.......Well, they were.....

...at a party! Jake..the little boy that I watch on Mondays...turned 5 and had a little party at his house. He only invited our boys. They had an absolute blast!

Here they are at the party with Jake's dad. They were really sad to leave the party. I swear, Ellie (Jakes mom), got my kids more stuff than we gave Jake! She went above and beyond.

One sunny day we decided to go hiking at Discovery park. It was beautiful and we had a wonderful day enjoying nature.
Lastly...Elizabeth has decided that her favorite song is "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". She can barely speak, but she can sing that song. It's super cute and we are determined to one day catch it on video. This picture is of her intently watching The Wiggles sing her favorite song.

Isn't she a cutie?

Loving the Sunshine

The sun has come out to play the last couple of days so I've taken advantage of it we have gone out to play too. We went to Russell Road Park yesterday. Here are some photo's to prove that there is sun in Seattle.
Little picnic to give us some energy to play!

Joseph showing off his guns.

Spencer

Connor

Elizabeth...she didn't like the swing.

Her new snazzy shoes. She had to learn how to walk all over again! She loooooved the park though. She screamed a lot when we had to go.

Connor is a great climber.

Joseph looks so much like his Nelson cousins here.

I called this the 'chromosome'. Spencer had a difficult time getting up this thing at first, but I told him he wasn't allowed to say "I can't" and that he needed to practice. Within a half hour he had it mastered! That's my boy! With his hypermobility, he has a much more difficult time climbing etc, but he is really doing well.

We happened upon this little pirate ship park on the walk we went on after playing in the park. So, they got 2 parks in one day! Sweet!

My best attempt to get a group photo. I took about 5 and this is the closest I could get to seeing everyones face.

Before we left the boys had to draw in their Nature Notebooks.

Little Miss passed out at the pirate park. It was a great day!

Lately we...

Built a volcano out of homemade clay for science. We named it Mt. Vesuvius 2.

Celebrated Grandpa Nelson's 80th birthday!

Went to Costco and ate giant hotdogs.

Connor really likes Costco hotdogs.

Ate donuts from Krispie Kreme..(this is a chocolate Fling)

And a little toe jam too. (o:

Finally...we watched cartoons on our Directv.

That about sums up our life. Simple but wonderful. We have started a new math program and it is going wonderfully. That's about it.

Oh yah! I also enjoy wearing my Muggle shirt around and either getting funny looks or thumbs up from the cool people that get it. (o:

Helllllooooo????

So, we got a new computer...Elizabeth turned 1....I got a Nook and am addicted to it....Elizabeth can now walk~sort of~...I gave in and watched the Twilight movie~it was okay~....Travis still works at Walgreens and still loves it...we still go on drives to Seattle and Tacoma...the boys keep getting bigger without my permission...Elizabeth refuses to grow (10% weight at her 1 year checkup today)...I finally caved and am now reading all of Dan Brown's books and I like them...I still go to Weight Watchers, but thanks to all my stinkin health issues, I am stuck in the same place, but still determined...we are still sort of addicted to Facebook...I still love my husband and still have the cutest kids ever.

See, not much has changed, so you haven't really missed too much despite my extremely horrible blogging. I'll leave you with a picture of the family. (o: