Mining Camp

Early in January the kids and I went with my parents and the Willmans to the mining camp restaurant out near Apache Junction

A couple pictures of the kids playing outside:

And one of the whole group inside waiting to get our food

Picnic Dinner

One nice day in January we decided to eat dinner and play at the park near our house and here are two pics from the evening:

Miss Terra drinking a smoothie

Daddy playing with the big kids

New Years Eve

For New Years Eve we met up with the Willmans at my parents house and counted down to the new year, which conveniently happened at 7pm.

Most of the activities had terrible pictures (if any at all) So I'll just be linking to some videos on Youtube

We popped a balloon each hour and did an activity that was listed in the balloon.

One balloon said to have a dance party- which basically involved me dancing around like an idiot trying to encourage 6 preschoolers to dance with me (without any luck) Fortunately for you there is no video of this part of the evening.

We also had treat bags and the kids enjoyed their snack and I have a video of them snacking and my niece thinking she is drinking Elmo

Katie had printed out some sheets for asking the kids questions about the year and I decided to film my kids answering the questions, just for fun.

Here's:
Parker
Aria
Terra

One activity was based on some Japanese New Years tradition, like pin the tail on the donkey, except it's pin the features on the face, I guess.

And the biggest hit of the night (other than the junk food) was wrapping Grandpa Murphy up with streamers and then having him break out

Then the countdown

We went home and slept most of the night (except when our neighbors were shooting off fireworks at midnight) so we could be ready for our busy day the next day.
 New Years morning we had family pictures with my family, traditional "Hillbilly Special" brunch at my aunts and then a birthday party for my nephew, who just so happens to have been born on New Years Day.

Parker turns 5

Parker turned 5 at the end of December and we started the day with our traditional "birthday child chooses WHATEVER they want for breakfast". 

Parker found Cookie Crisp cereal and was blown away by the idea of eating lots of cookies for breakfast so that's what he had picked out.

So excited to eat cookies for breakfast

He loves reading the box, including nutritional info... He tried to convince me that they weren't unhealthy because of all the added vitamins (Nice try buddy)

He spent more than a month looking forward to his 'Space Party' because he was so in love with all thing space.

And it was hard for him to understand why we would wait until the day AFTER his birthday but eventually the day came and he was so excited. We decorated with a few decorations and the piles of space stuff he already owned from our homeschool unit and Christmas presents.

Space stickers

Start balloons, streamers, and not one, but TWO solar system models

Part of the 'decor' was also this chart that Parker and I made together, so that Parker could find out what the favorite planet is:

We have to wake Aria up at 4pm each day so we know she'll sleep at night, and she didn't feel like partying, she wouldn't change out of her pajamas, leave her blanket or move from that chair

Parker also helped me make a planet pinata and he decided to paint it like the Earth

Terra, trying to break the pinata

Ryder, with a bit more gusto

Parker's turn

Just a goofy picture of Parker

Opening presents

A couple days later, Parker made me a card that said "I love you and I appreciate your present for me" (though appreciate was a bit hard to translate from his spelling.) 

We had gotten him a book and a telescope.

I had a coupon, so I just got a store bought cake, and I made the cake pops to look like our Solar System

And here is a video of us singing Happy Birthday

Christmas 2012

So I'm going to begin catching up on the blog.

First we had our traditional Christmas Eve eating and presents at The Murphy's

All the cousins, except Jovi, at the time (9 kids, 6 and under)

Opening presents:

Then Christmas morning at home:

About to open pressents

Some of which included disguises:

And Umbrellas, which may have been the favorite, at least at first.

Then later that day we went to the Tiemans and had some brunch and opened presents:

Here they are playing with the remote control helicopter 

And then playing outside

Homeschool Space

So our second unit study this year was space.
Parker immediately fell in love with all things Space.
We were actually still technically studying art (which the kids didn't like much) when I checked out about 70 space books from the library.
Parker picked up one book, was mesmerized by the information he found and never stopped learning. So we started the unit early and continued it over a month longer than 'planned' (Big perk of homeschooling:  tailoring to my kids interests!)

We were meant to move on to learning about the Earth next and we have, because Parker thinks "it's okay to learn about the earth, because it's part of space"

And Parker's knowledge of space facts would astound you! He knows what kind of galaxy we live in, what stars are closest to us (after the sun). He can name the planets in order (and in size order) and the dwarf planets, the history and order which the planets and dwarf planets were discovered. Length of each planets day and year and number of moons. Also any distinctive facts about the planet...for example: "Mars has Ice poles and an atmosphere of carbon dioxide and iron rich soil with a diameter a little bigger than Mercury"... Yes he really uses words like iron-rich and atmosphere and diameter. He's such crazy smart kid!

Inspired by our study of space we had field trips to Meteor Crater and Lowell Observatory

Many of his Christmas/Birthday presents were related to space and his entire birthday party was space-themed

A few pictures from our time learning about space:

Playing a space game on the computer, where he gets to make his own planet

I got a big refrigerator box from Lowes, drilled holes in the top and shoved Christmas lights into the holes to make 'stars'

Reading a book (about Saturn) in the star cave

"Napping" (they did not sleep)

Parker didn't wanted to have stars and no planets, so he made the solar system and taped it on the box:

Parker used a bunch of balls to make the solar system outside. The big one is the sun and then he has balls in relative sizes (the smallest ball for Mercury, largest for Jupiter, etc) for the planets around the sun.

Similar scenes happened in our loft pretty often.

Using my music stand and a formerly neglected space shuttle toy to make landings and take-offs.

And then the music stand became Cassini-Huygens.

Yes, I'm sure you didn't know that Cassini-Huygens was the name of the spacecraft sent to orbit Saturn and it's moons, but my 4 year old did!

Some more incredibly smart/adorable quotes from Parker about space:

"Mom, I think Mercury and Jupiter must not have seasons, because their axis' are like this" (putting his arms straight up and down vertically). It actually took me a second to realize he was right. If there is no tilt to the axis, then there are no seasons.

"I think if we lived on the sun we would not need a calendar" I thought he was being silly, but realized he was a genius when he explained that it would always be day and there is no year because it's not rotating around a star.

Pretending to be the Universe (Yes he was really pretending that he was the universe, as in... the whole entire universe) He said it was really hard to move around because "Whoa, I'm everything."

For a long time he would call me different planets, but not by name, by distinctive characteristics of a planet. For example:
Parker: I'm hungry you ten hour planet!
Mom: Did you just call me Jupiter, you fastest planet? (Jupiter's day is about 10 hours long)
Parker Yes! Did you just call me Mercury, you planet closest to us?
and on, and on, and on... this sometimes went on for 30 minutes at a time.

We started talking about how much we love each other in terms of space. I love you more than Jupiter's diameter, and I love you more than the time it takes Neptune to revolve around the sun!
And his primary teacher said they were talking about how much God and Jesus love the kids and Parker said "Yes, Jesus loves us more than the time that Neptune goes around the sun!" So Funny!

Bowling

We went bowling over the summer and the kids really seemed to like it, so when we got a good coupon we went again. We were able to bowl three games- And I am proud to say that I won two of them (Aria won one) I'm not great at bowling...

But it was super fun!

Posing with the bowling balls:

Aria taking a video as Parker watched his ball roll down the lane.

The kids are not so strong so the balls went SO slowly done the lane most of the time, and got stuck more times than I can remember.

I took a whole pile of videos while we were there, some of the bowling and some of the kids messing around while we were there. So I made a playlist of all of them, and you can click here to view them

New Glasses

I got two new pairs of glasses, and I LOVE them:

And the best part is I bought them online and both pairs plus the eye exam were cheaper than I used to pay for a single pair!

Candlelight Dinner

Parker wanted to have dinner by candlelight...

So we did.

Colored Bath

We do a lot of different kids of baths, many involving food dye.

One time I put colored water into a pile of squirt/spray bottles we have and then stuck them in the bath with the kids

Fun times followed: