Arizona Science Center

Friends of ours had free passes to the Arizona Science Center and they were not going to be able to use them before they expired and they were so gracious and gave them to our family. We were thrilled. We had not been here in a couple of years and it was a nice time with just our family and no agenda. We packed our lunches and headed out to downtown Phoenix. We all had a great time as there were things to do for all ages.

Yes, this is a bed of nails!! The kids were nervous to try it and then amazed that it did not hurt. (The nails retract......while they are down you get on the bed and then someone holds a button down and the nails come up)

Can you lift your body weight? This room was filled with all different physics activities.

Any guesses as to what this is?? It is your stomach and would the correct term be rectum??? LOL This was soooo funny! It is a slide complete with sound effects!!!

The kids thought it was great and gross all at the same time and it freaked Natasha out!! She did not like it at all. So we made her go down it (the poor girl) hehehe

Here she is coming out (our little squirt, OK no more comments ;) she was traumatized.

Savannah posing with Solar Man!

Competing in wheel chair races.

There was a room with "brain games" We had a lot of fun playing in here.
Joshua building a house with Lincoln logs.

Okay you have to check out this game if you have never heard of it before. It is called the Tower of Hanoi. The object is to get the stack of rings to the other peg on the right. There are some rules involved and it is a lot trickier than it looks. It kept Jay and I busy for over a half an hour. I came home and googled it (I love google!) and there are some online versions. Go check it out.

We were blessed to spend this time together as a family and we had a great afternoon!

Joshua's Birthday!

Seven Years Old!!! He is not my baby boy anymore! Joshua is growing into such an incredible young man. We are so proud of him! He is so compassionate, has a great sense of humor and is growing into a boy who loves the Lord.

To celebrate this special day we of course started the night before with all of his "lasts" as a 6 year old. Then while he was sleeping I decorated his room with balloons and streamers. He was very excited when he woke up.


Anastasia wanted to give him her gift right away (because she wanted him to be able to wear it to co-op)


It's a Star Wars Lego shirt. He loved it!



Joshua LOVES Lego's. This gift is from Jay and I.

This is from his brother and sisters.


We had co-op to go to first and then we had planned his party for after co-op at a park with all of his friends. We were also celebrating with another little boy from co-op who has the same birthday as Joshua, Ajay was turning 3. Well the splash pad at the park was broken and it was too hot to be outside at the park with no water play. So we changed and went to Ajay's family's community pool. The kids all loved it and had a great time!



Here is the cake that Anastasia made. She put cupcakes upside down, on top of the cake to shape it like a giant Lego. It turned out great!










After the party we needed to take the Roger's kids home so we ended up staying over there for the evening and the kids went swimming. Joshua said it was his "bestest birthday ever"!


(While my brother was in town Joshua went one night and stayed the night with his cousins and grandma took Joshua and Devin shopping for new clothes for their birthday). They weren't able to make it to the party due to the heat so then Papaw came over one day later in the week and took Joshua shopping to pick out a toy. Only a grandpa would come back with a mega water gun and nerf gun. ;) lol )

Another Year of Co-op

Our homeschool co-op (Families of Faith) started up again this month. The kids were so excited and couldn't wait to see their friends. There are about 20 families this year participating in co-op and one new family is our friends the Rogers. We are so glad they have joined! The classes have grown now and Alexa is happy because she has her own class now and is not with the "babies". She is such a big girl now! :)

This month Nikki and I taught together in the Pre-K class. We used Eric Carle books and the first week was all about caterpillars/butterflies, the second week was ladybugs and the third week was spiders. We talked about the life cycles of each and had fun art and game activities to go with each.

Pin the spot on the lady bug.

Painting 5 little lady bugs to go with the poem they learned.

One of my favorite activities was with the book "The Very Busy Spider" After reading through the book one time I had each child pick an animal from the book to be. (I made copies of each animal ahead of time to tape to the child's shirt.) I was the spider and I had a giant ball of yarn. All of this kids stood in a circle and as each animal was mentioned in the story I went to them with the yarn. They held on to it and we weaved a web by the time the story was finished. They really liked that.



They also made spider (blob lol) cookies and with Nikki they got to decorate a ladybug cake.


Tasha actually stayed a co-op this month, well part of the time anyways. She is having a hard time staying the whole time but she did pretty good. The other time Jay took her with to run errands since he is off on Mondays. Playing Cherrio bingo and hiding from the camera.


Joshua and Savannh spent the month learning about Hispanic Heritage. They studied Mexico, made a flag, made maracas, learned a dance, and learned about missionaries to those areas. They celebrated the last week with a Fiesta, complete with a pinata.

Anastasia is in a new class this year. There was a change in groups and kids so we did some arranging and made a 5th-7th grade class and then there is the 8th-highschool class. She is in 7th and I didn't want to move her up to the high school class yet. So she is the oldest in her class but is friends with most of the girls in there. She is excited about having a bigger class this year (there are 14 kids in that class). I am excited that we are using a set curriculum in there for the year. The kids are covering 3 subjects, Art, geography/writing (a unit study) and then critical thinking.

This is Anastasia working on one of her art projects.

I think it is going to be another great year in co-op! Next month I am teaching in Anastasia's class.

Jadon is 10 months old

Look at my big boy!! He is so full of smiles and coos. I could just hug and squeeze him all day! Jadon is now 10 mos. old and has 5 teeth. Believe me I know from personal experience! LOL I said my "big" boy but actually he is still a tiny squirt for his age. He is only 16lbs. But he eats well and sleeps well. He is finally on a good nap schedule, which is good for all of us! ;) Jadon crawls and pulls up on everything. He loves to clap his hands and he can even wave now and imitates lots of sounds. He is of course still the delight of his brother and sisters. Joshua absoultely loves sharing a room with him.
Here are some more cute pictures from the month:

Love the blue eyes!!

A Morning of Fishing

The weather is slowly starting to cool off, at least in the early mornings. So this Tuesday morning, Ben invited Jay, Anastasia and Joshua to go fishing. Ben and Marilyn are our pastoral partners from church. They are like another set of parents for Jay and I and have been such a blessing to us and our kids. Ben is the one who Jay went dove hunting with and Marilyn also plays the keyboard in the praise band at church.

They headed out to a local park about 6:00am. Once the girls and Jadon woke up we decided to join them since there was a playground to play at as well. I don't think there was a single fish in that pond but there were lots and lots of crayfish! The kids had a great time catching them and we let Ben take them all home. It started getting hot by 9:30 so we all called it a "day" and headed home to start our school work.

We caught a Big Tasha fish!

The bucket of crawdads

We brought some breakfast burritos with us to eat at the park .