HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving... a time to reflect and Thank not only those in our lives for all the wonderful things they do for us and in our lives, but most of all a time to give THANKS to our heavenly Father above! If it weren't for God sending his one and only son many, many years ago... we would be lost and bound for hell. Thank you God for sending your son, and for each and every blessing, daily!!! Even if you are going through a rough time, be it health, family, or whatever... God is there to see you through it!!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO EVERYONE!!! Have a wonderful day!!!

Cyndi

HAPPY 8th BIRTHDAY TO BREKYN!!!!!

Our little princess turned 8 years old today!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BREKYN!!

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake...

This week as I was working about in the kitchen preparing supper. The children were off doing their thing... some outside one the football field (actually the backyard) and some playing computer or other games. So as I went about on my own (very unusual to be by myself in the kitchen!!), I thought I would prepare some sort of dessert. I went through the cookbook I have created for our family and found the recipe for the 5 minute chocolate mug cake. This has come through my e-mail a few times and we have never given it a try. So I thought, I would get all the dry ingredients ready for each member of the family and then they could finish the preparations once we were all finished eating supper. As I gave out the mugs... the children thought they were having hot cocoa. Then I had them each add one egg... oh my they were not happy as now they "were not going to eat that". We added the oil and milk and until it was thoroughly mixed they were not thrilled with what I was having them make. It wasn't until we were actually cooking the cake and they saw the results of the first one that they were satisfied.

These cakes are very thick, almost brownie like in texture. They also are not sweet at all like a typical chocolate cake. We added frosting to take away the bland flavor. The cake does "grow", some almost 4 inches above the mug, but they never went over or made a mess. We made 7 of them... and we found we could have shared as even though a mug seems like one serving it was a lot of cake. The kiddo's ended up placing their's leftover cakes in baggies and enjoying them for lunch dessert the next day.






If you have 5 minutes and are craving chocolate... give it a try!!

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake
1 coffee mug
4 T flour
4 T sugar
2 T baking cocoa
1 egg
3 T milk
2 T oil
3 T chocolate chips (optional, we did use some)
some nuts (optional, we didn't use any)
small splash of vanilla

Add dry ingredients to mug and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips and vanilla and mix again. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes on high. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed.
Allow to cool a little and tip out onto a plate if desired. EAT! This can serve 2 if you want to share. I opened a tub of frosting and spread it on. We also tried some hot fudge on a couple instead of frosting, yummy. Daddy did carmel...


After eating cake... the kiddo's finished a movie that one or two had started earlier in the evening on the little DVD player. Well, it turned into all the kiddo's gathered around the little 8" DVD screen, then daddy joined them :-) Logan needed a bit more math help, so we cuddled into the rocking chair and finished what he needed to for the day :-) It was a good evening!!

Field Trip to the Button Factory...

This week thanks to a wonderful homeschool mom, we attended a field trip to the Muscatine Button Factory... now museum. We were told how they made the pearl buttons from start (getting the clams out of the river) to the finish (placing the buttons on the little cards to be sold). This was a very infomative field trip for all the children and us adults :-) The children were all given a worksheet to find and fill in the information as they learned. There were lots of hands-on activities as the children went through the different areas.

Have I told you all about our BIRD STUDY :-)

Well, this past week in our Science class... as we continue to learn about birds, the children were to make their own bird nest. So after we were done with all our book learning, they eagerly went outside to begin to build a nest. They talked among each other about what they should use, one of the children ran back inside to get "something" when I inquired about their activities. I had to let them know that the birds couldn't fly into the house to collect items for their nest, so out they went. I thought their cup nest turned out very well, muddy hands and all :-)

The rains did mess it up a bit, the following day, but it is still in the tree and might hold up to be used this spring for some bird family, we are anxiously waiting to see.

This spring we will also set out some fun items like shredded paper, bottle caps, fabric in small shreds, and such to see if we can find out "household items" in a nest somewhere around the yard!

We are having so much fun with Apologia Zoology 1!!!

Making Cookies Just for Fun...

The other day while Corben was eating breakfast, Rice Crispie's, his favorite cereal... he noticed several recipes on the back of the box. This led to mom, can we make cookies?? Well, being the good mom that I am (hehehe), I said sure, we had nothing planned for that day, so school would continue after the cookie making session. So he recruited his sister and away they went. I checked in a couple times, but really my children have come to be great cooks :-) They may ask a question or two during their baking sessions, but they do so well. Once the batter was mixed and ready for the pan, Griffin stepped in to do the dipping. Then the cookies were left to themselves... IN THE OVEN. I really should have gotten a picture of the little black coasters that were to be yummy cookies, but I was too worried about getting them outside along with that yucky smell!!! So we had a talk about when we make cookies they need to be followed to the VERY END!! We did enjoy cookies for several days and the ones that made it through the oven were quite good :-) More memories...

Happy VETERAN'S DAY to all Veteran's!!!

Well, today being Veteran's Day... I wanted to teach the children more in-depth what Veteran's Day mean's and why it is celebrated here in the U.S. So after looking up tons of info since I couldn't find a free lapbook... I was preparing to make a lapbook on our own. Well, then yesterday a homeschool dad posted a free lapbook for all us homeschoolers to enjoy. He saved me lots of work. I ended up incorporating his lapbook and some of the stuff I had found and we put together our lapbook today. We had fun learning about Veteran's Day and what a Veteran is :-) Our study included many in our family like both of the children's grandpa's along with their great grandpa's, their Uncle Brian, and then many friends... Miss Teri, Mr. Brian, Mr. Ben, hhmmm, there may have been others, I just am not thinking of them at this time. THANK YOU TO ALL VETERAN'S for serving and preserving our wonderful United States of America!!!!

More lapbooks... Horses and Dogs!!

Well, it just wasn't enough that we had a few lapbooks going on as family projects... the children were just dying to make their very own lapbooks. So, they each have some kind of topic in mind and as we get the time, each child will get the info for their lapbook and they will get to put together one of their own. We really had nothing going on last night and today, so since Logan had his topic picked out... I printed his off. He, of course, chose dogs. He is wild about dogs, any breed really. We keep telling him that he will make a great Veterinarian some day. He can't get over the fact that he has been told you have to go to College for 6 years to be a vet. So he really is not sure of that idea. He likes to think more along the lines of a dog catcher or humane society owner... Only time will tell. So here are pictures of Logan's first lapbook. He will also use this for 4-H as Dog is one of his project area's. He is set up to do a presentation in like Jan. or Feb., so he will use his lapbook and give his talk on dogs. He just started yesterday, so again this lapbook is not finished. He will work on it in his spare time and get it done as he wants. This is going down as a school project, but there is really no due date (other than early next year before his 4-H presentation). He is having a lot of fun working and learning :-)




Here we have Brekyn's Horse book. Brekyn has always been fond of horses, but that fondness has really been fed lately through a couple of great friends here in Wapello that decided they wanted to own horses this year. Our good friends the Chaney's and the Humphrey's became horse owners this year and Brekyn is great friends with Morgan from one family and Elizabeth and Hannah from the other family. Well, when Brekyn stays over with Eliz, they go feed the horses and care for them. So over the past several month's Brekyn has had this fondness grow to be pretty BIG! NO WE ARE NOT GOING TO OWN A HORSE!!!! (Maybe a bucket calf, but no horse :-) Brekyn would like to re-do her room in horse and likes to wear horse clothing and that is great, so long as we don't have to feed a horse!!! So of course, she chose horses for her lapbook. Since we had basically no plans for today, and it was just Brekyn, Griffin, and I at home all day... we started Brekyn's lapbook. We got pretty far on it, but I was starting to get a headache and chose to call it quits for one day. My head can only take so much cutting, pasting, and arranging at one time! So here you see Brekyn's mostly done lapbook... she needs to read a bit about some area's involved with horses to add to the lapbook, but the overall book is done. You may noticed we changed the "layout" of her lapbook compared to our first three... there is just so much you can do to a lapbook!! They are fun to make and contain tons of educational information!!

Our second Family Lapbook... on Election and Voting!!

This is our second attemp at lapbooking :-) This one is not a full kit, so we purchased colored file folders and printed off a free series having to do with the election process and voting. This is another great study! As you can see from the pictures we are not done with this lapbook either. We just started this lapbook this past week and will get the information filled in this coming week during school. There are a lot of great info in this that the children will be able to use for years :-) There is lots on age of leaders, voters registration cards that the children fill out, info on electoral votes, differences between the republican's, democrats, independents, etc. So here you see the lapbook (file folders) put together and ready to go and all the mini-books cut out and ready to be filled in and placed in the lapbook. Another great educational tool!!

Our new favorite part of school... LAPBOOKING!!!

We discovered lapbooking this year for school. We started a new Science curriculum this year called Apologia. We are doing the elementary series as a family class, the book we are working through is Zoology 1. The children are truly enjoying this study!! Well, there is a company (a few companies actually) that sells the lapbooking kits that go along with the study. We do another part of the lapbook at the end of the lesson each week. So at the 1/2 way point of the book we will have one lapbook done and then we will do a second lapbook for the 2nd half of the book. Here are pictures of our first lapbook... this was a kit remember, so all the children had to do was cut out the pieces, add the information, and glue them into place. These lapbooks make awesome study guides for quizzes, tests, and the future :-)

Griffin's "room" gets a new look!!

Here is Griffin's new Chicago Bears "room"... I say "room" because he is actually in a closet, we call it his cubbie hole :-) Ya see, with having five children it will be a rare turn of events when EVERYONE gets a room to themselves. Well, some of the children get along much better than others and it was just a much better situation to give Griffey a "room" to himself. We were going to give him his own place in the basement, but he was scared to be alone... even though the other boys are all down there. So I had this brilliant idea of putting him in the cubbie hole. He was thrilled, and after sleeping in there for a few weeks, I thought it would be appropriate to paint it for Griffin. Well since his favorite colors are orange and yellow, he decided this year he was going to go with orange when he chose his "favorite" football team. So he chose the Chicago Bears. So check out what his new "room" looks like :-) He really loves it!!

GET OUT AND VOTE TODAY!!!!!

For any of you have not voted early or by absentee balot... GET OUT TODAY AND VOTE!!!! YES, ONE PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!

A New Week...

Yesterday we did some of the main subjects for school of the morning, along with the chores that just need to be done daily. Then we headed off to take part in a "community service" project. Some friends in town had purchased a home awhile back and their oldest son's room never got painted. So we joined forces and painted the day away :-) It looked very nice and since their son was away all day, when he arrived home that afternoon, it was basically done and he was thrilled! It was fun spending the day together and doing a good deed also!! The kiddo's did all kinds of things together, from making "houses" in the backyard to playing games and just spending time together. It was a good day!

Brekyn had a couple of the girls over to our house once we headed home in the late afternoon and they played even more together. We took them home around 8pm last night as we headed to yet another friends house to watch the Red Skins get their booties kicked by the Steelers! Oh well... it was fun watching the game and I am sure my Pop-Pop was happy!! We don't subscribe to any cable/satellite so we don't get to watch Monday Night Football unless we are invited to our friends :-) Thanks Walkers' for the use of your TV!!

Today is just another gorgeous day!!! We are finishing up Math and Language Arts this morning and will soon be eating lunch and moving along with Science and History :-) Since I need to get out to vote, I may just ride my bike to head out to the poles and then to the library. Corben needs another certain book for his Literature Study. I am loving this weather and am sad that it will only be here for a short time longer :-( Unfortunately, Brekyn is not feeling well... she has gotten sick a couple times and is just not ready to get up or we could make it a family outing. I tucked her all in and she is taking it easy right now. Uugghhh, I feel so bad for her!!

Sean mowed the front lawn yesterday for the last time this year... he will do the back today. It is hard getting used to the time change... darkness came at like 5:15 last night. A couple of the boys took off to play football with some friends and I said be home around 5-5:30... They did good and were home at like 5:15, but it was already darker than I like for them to be out in. So it will be 5 tonight.

Well, I have a list of To Do's Today...
Vote
Clean Van/Vacuum Van
Finish Laundry
Library for book
Call Vet Dink needs a check up Appt.
Load van up with Goodwill stuff

I am sure there are more... but I haven't added them to the list yet, they will pop into my head throughout the day :-)

Have a most wonderful day!!!

More about Birds...

You all are probably getting tired about hearing about birds, but our science is focusing on the Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day... and well... BIRDS are a huge part of that!!! The kiddo's are just loving learning about birds and I don't want to lose that, so as they stay intrigued, we keep learning and doing to learn :-) Here we have a few more bird pictures. Ya see we feed the birds well in our front tree and when we have birds in the tree or on a feeder, the kids get excited. A couple of them just love to try to capture the birds in a picture so they head outside when certain birds show up and sit quietly and still to get a great picture. The other day a bluejay was the center of their attention!!! They did great with the picture taking so I thought I would share!!!





Then we needed a dessert for our party Friday evening. Griffin was really wanting to help me, so we searched for a fun dessert that would be good for the kiddo's. We found Bird Nests :-) SO... we captured them on film to add to our science study :-) Here is Griffin my great helper of the day with the end result :-)

Our Fun Family Filled Weekend...

Well, we started the weekend out with Friday evening going to friends where we enjoyed a few games with the children, ate lots of soup/hot dogs/smores/desserts, and had a great bonfire to sit around. Since it was Halloween and we don't participate in trick-or-treating, this was a great alternative! We enjoyed the evening... here are a few pictures...


Brekyn's hair is finally back to "normal" after three shampooings :-)



We all got an early start to our Saturday morning... We left the house around 7:20 or so... we aimed for 7ish. After grabbing some quick gas at the in town station at $2.02!!! (loving the lower prices!!!, it is $1.99 today WHOOO HOO!!!!), we were on the road for our almost two hour trip to a scratch and dent book sale. This is probably crazy to many of you all, but it was SO worth the trip for our family!! I was able to get the Language Arts I was wanting for Corben along with some writing and grammar curriculum books I had been checking out, but wasn't sure if they would suit us or not. The kids each got to pick out some fun educational things. Logan got none other than a bird book, it is pretty graphic and neat. Sean was VERY drawn to the art/drawing books, at one point he had like 10 books in his arms :-) We narrowed that pile down to 3. He ended up with a dog/horse/mixed drawing book. He also was able to pick up two charcoal pencils for 10 cents each!! Brekyn purchased a horse set, they aren't all that educational, but she is into horses lately and so she was thrilled!! Corben went with a paper airplane book. Griffin got a phonics wheel set. Then daddy picked up a couple books, one is Critical Thinking, one is tricky mindtrap puzzles, and another is Make amazing toy and game gadgets using normal household items. We all had fun looking and wandering through the booksale!! Thank you Rainbow Resources for the great prices!!!


After that we had promised the children we would do something fun as a surprise. It was somewhat a bribe... they have been unbuckling in the van or not buckling in at all or whatever and so we said if you ALL buckle in for 7 days straight we will do something fun. If we catch one of you all not buckled in then the 7 days starts over. Well, Brekyn, Logan, and Griffin all started the 7 days over a few times, but they finally got on track and into the habit and did very well... so we had our fun surprise yesterday!!! CHUCK E. CHEESE!!! Who couldn't or wouldn't like THAT surprise :-) They were all VERY happy with our surprise and we had a lot of fun for about 3 hours :-)








Then we left Chuck E. Cheese's and headed back home! We pulled off at a HyVee so that I could run in and purchase a box of generic drumstick ice cream cones :-) Ya see, it is MUCH cheaper to purchase a box of goodies than to go to a Dairy Queen or whatever for a family our size :-) So off we were again, eating ice cream and yet enjoying our family weekend!! Once closer to home, we had to stop to take Sean to a Birthday party. We played for a bit at the local park while the time passed a bit for Sean to go roller skating...





Then we had yet another busy day today, Sunday!! We had an excellent message at church, encouraging people to get out and VOTE this Tuesday!! Don't just vote, but vote morals and issue's!!!

Then this afternoon we enjoyed another park day!!! This time is was our city park. Our town is a Playful City USA :-) We got a grant to put in a 9 hole disc golf course!! Today was the grand opening! They gave away free disc's and had lots of other fun things going on! We played all together one round of disc golf and some of the more ambitious ones went ahead to play a second round :-)

Then this evening our county 4-H group held their recognition ceremony. Sean had put in for a couple awards. We knew he was getting one due to a letter we received in the mail. Well, he got them both!!! WAY TO GO SEAN!!! He ended up with Jr. Merit Record Book award... meaning he kept a great record book for his past two years in 4-H. The other award was for Jr. Spirit Award... meaning he has shown spirit by pitching in and helping when needed in many area's, not only 4-H, but also church, community, school, etc. Yeah Sean!!! You will see pic's from our evening, enjoying Subway party subs and brownie sundae's, then going on with the awards ceremony. The large group pic is of all that received awards, the small group is of our own 4-H group... the ones that showed up tonight for the awards ceremony!!! Go HOMEGROWN HELPERS!!!









GOOD JOB SEAN!!! YOU DID AN AWESOME JOB!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!!