Yeah Anastasia!!

Last Friday night Anastasia tried out for a part in the Queen Creek's Performing Arts Center, community theater play; Disney's The Jungle Book. We just checked the site tonight and she got a part. This is the first time she has tried anything like this and we are so excited. In order to try out she had to sing part of a song and learn a mini dance number. We are so proud of her!!! Way to go babe!!! She will have reherasal each Wednesday and Saturday until the performance which will be in November!

Interesting Article

We get a free monthly paper for our community that is delivered to our door. I was reading through it yesterday and found an interesting article. It was about enrollment up at area schools despite the housing market and it goes on to list new school openings. One happens to be a private school (the first in this immediate location). This is what the article said: "The private school strays from traditional classroom structure, and instead offers "multiage education," where students from all grades learn together in the same classrooms. It goes on to quote the head of the school, Tamera Lee, "Research shows that children in multiage classrooms often have a great sense of belonging and more positive social relations and attitudes toward school than children in same-age classrooms"

Can I get on my soap box and just say DUH! Isn't that just like a large homeschooling family? Isn't that how the original one room school houses started?That is a major benefit of homeschooling is that my children are around and interact with people of all ages all day long not just other kids their exact age. No where else in life are we age segregated to the degree of just your exact age except in school. My kids play with other kids of all ages and truly enjoy and include everyone.

Okay I will step down now. It's just amazing the flack that homeschooling still gets yet one on one tutoring and multi age interaction is proven over and over again to be more beneficial.

Our Family Vacation

We are back after being gone for a week to South Dakota. Jay's cousin got married and Joshua was a ring bearer and Anastasia was a junior bridesmaid. What a wonderful trip we had! It was great seeing extended family under happy circumstances. The kids were so good the entire trip and that made it really enjoyable!. I put together 4 slide shows of pictures below to highlight some of our trip. It's a good thing I learned how to do slide shows and I tried to limit the pics but it was hard!

The first slide show is of our flight and trip to Mount Rushmore. We flew with Jay's sister (Jutem) and her daughter Jocelyn. Ooh the stories I could tell about people staring at all of us trying to figure out the connection. I told Jutem my kids could just call her mommy 2. You know they all thought we were from Northern Arizona near the border to Utah. Anyways....The kids loved the plane ride and were super. They were so excited to open their backpacks to see what awaited them. The packs were full of books, treats crayons and coloring books. (It was a good thing I packed treats because gone are the days of free soda and pretzels they charge for everything.) As soon as we landed and got our rental van we went to Mt. Rushmore. It was only 30 minutes from the airport. However, we were staying in Pierre for the week and that was 3 hours in the opposite direction. There were no hotels available in the Rapid City area because of Sturgis. We didn't want to be that close to Mt. Rushmore and not see it. It was incredible. I think even Savannah and Alexa were impressed. We could have stayed in that area around it for a couple of days there is so much to do. We spent about 2 hours there and then headed to Pierre.

Our hotel was actually in Fort Pierre which is just across the river from Pierre and in a different time zone. However they follow Pierre which is central time (so we lost 2 hours going there) If they didn't follow Pierre then we would literally gain or lose an hour everytime we crossed the bridge. LOL. Aunt Teri thought of everything and was quite the hostess! She is the Deputy Secretary of State so on Thursday morning we got our own tour of the Capitol building. It is a beautiful old building that is celebrating it's 100th year this year. Afterwards we all went for lunch and then us girls went to a bead shop to make bracelets. The evening was spent at EliAnn's (the bride) making mints, eating pizza and watching movies. I was really thrown off not only by the time difference but the fact that it is still completely light out at 9:00pm. That was strange. Friday morning us girls went to get pedicures and our nails done. (Not to worry the guys were not left out during any of this. Joshua got to ride one of Uncle Bret's cows and him and daddy went swimming in the hotel pool.) The biggest event was Anastasia getting her eyebrows waxed. She unfortunatly has a combo of her daddy and I's eyebrows that grow half way down her eyelid. She was a trooper and they look fabulous. Of course she was beautiful even with her eyebrows before. In the evening was the rehersal and dinner.

Saturday was the big day. Jutem spent the morning doing all the girls (including the bride) hair and makeup. The kids and I just relaxed at the hotel. Daddy took Joshua to the church to get ready. The wedding was beautiful and Joshua did awesome. I was a little nervous as he was holding the real rings. He was so proud of himself and loved wearing the tux. When we got to the recption Savannah thought she was in princess heaven! When we got to our table she asked if we were at a princess tea party. She absoultely loved everything and was mesmerized. Joshua loved the shaking bells that he rang every chance he got in order to make the bride and groom kiss. It was a wonderful day!

The next days were spent sight seeing and relaxing. Sunday morning we went to church with Uncle Brett and Aunt Teri. They were having a special service down by the river as they were going to do baptisms. Arrangements were also made a head of time for Jay to do special music so he sang "I Can Only Imagine". After the pastor introduced all those getting baptized he asked if anyone else wanted to. Well Uncle Brett had never been baptized by submersion and said if he was going to he wanted it to be in a river like Jesus. So he suprised us all espically Aunt Teri and went forward to be baptized and Jay was honored to help. How cool is that!!!

After church we got to go on a 2 hr. boat tour up (or down?) the Missouri river and learn about its history and Lewis and Clark. It was a great relaxing time. The girls all fell asleep. The next few nights were spent relaxing at Brett and Teri's and sight seeing around town. We got to see the spot that is exactly the middle of North America. During this whole trip Savannah kept forgetting EliAnn's name and finally one time she asked "who got married?" I said "EliAnn" and she said "that's right EliAnn and what is his name? Isn't it Prince Charming" She was serious it was so cute. So we called Patrick, Prince Charming the rest of the day! What an amazing trip with so much to see and do and for our kids to get the chance to connect with extended familyit was great and we were blessed.

What do you do to make the first day of school special?

We are back from our vacation and I will be blogging all about it over the next couple of days. But I first wanted to know what you all do to make the first day of school special? I always take a picture and that week we make an "All about Me" Lapbook. I will post some pics of previous ones. This year we are going to have a special breakfast (my sister does this every year) and I am going to suprise them that morning with the table all set up with their school supplies (My friend Claudia does that). So I just wanted to see what the rest of you do if you have a specific starting date. I know several of you just school year round. We are officially starting back August 18th. So feel free to share your great ideas.

Thanks!!

Vacation

Just wanted to let everyone know I will be back in about a week. We are leaving tomorrow for South Dakota to visit family and Jay's cousin is getting married. Please pray for us we are flying with all 5 kids and I have to get everything packed today! I do have a back pack for each kid and am packing it tonight with goodies and activities and they can't open it till they are on the plane tomorrow. They are all so excited. It should be a lot of fun.

See you all in a week!

It's Another Birthday

Alexa is 2 today!!

We celebrated Alexa's birthday by having a luau party over at Aunt Brandy and Uncle Sean's. Alexa was so excited all day she kept saying... Birthday cake, candles blow out, aunt Brandy's swimming

She has definetly hit the terrific two's as I prefer to say. Alexa has grown so much this year and has to always try to keep up with her brother and sisters. She definetly loves being spoiled by Anastasia and Joshua and Savannah are her best playmates. She is definetly our determined one and wants to do everything on her own. She can aleady climb out of her crib!! Alexa is very independent and knows what she wants when she wants it. Alexa has taken on the role of big sister with pride and likes to help Tasha (sometimes a little too much). Alexa's favorites right now are cereal and milk, Pat the Bunny book, Praise Baby movies and any type of snack food or candy. You can always count on Alexa for a silly face and a smile!

Happy Birthday Alexa!!!! We Love you.

Our Fall Schedule

Several people have asked me to post our fall schedule and lessons that I have made.  So here they are.  As I mentioned before, I like using Manager's of their Home by the Maxwell's to help with scheduling.  This is a general daily schedule but on Monday's we will have Co-op and Tuesday's is PE.  I also print a schedule just for Anastasia to keep in her notebook.

Here is one but I am having a hard time pasting them in here.  I am not sure if there is a better way.  Every time I save it it cuts it off at 4:00pm when I went to 9:00pm.

Our Family Schedule