Grapevines and Home Projects

Well, on the Cinco de Mayo, I wish I had taken a camera that morning to a local "Jack and Jill School" Science Fair because it was so cute and much bigger and grander than I'd expected! There were about 20 or so stations of SO many neat hands-on things for kids to do! There were people there from the zoo with all kinds of cool creatures. There was a petting zoo (we got to pet a chicken, a one-day-old calf, a goat, and 3 piglets, among other things!). There was a snack station with pretty cool snacks. There was fingerprinting stuff from the local police. There were stations on using your various senses. There were magnet stations. There were health stations. There were nutrition stations. Insect stations. We even got ladybugs! All very cool stuff! Very fun (and full!) morning (and day)!

Okay, so more random stuff . . .

Mark's been busy painting our BEAUTIFUL thrift store find--a Shaker-style table and 4 chairs (plus we got another set with 6 chairs that are already a beautiful dark wood stain and a slightly different style of chair--we love the mix-n-match look like that!). So, we're painting these an antiqued black and it looks STUNNING!! I'm amazed. Totally and utterly amazed. It looks like we've paid $2,000 for this set instead of the 40 bucks we did pay! We're so happy with it. And check it out--3 leaves!! We can seat a lot of people with this set! And it matches the hutch beautifully. The room is really coming together nicely!



And here are our grapevines!! We're planting our garden on Saturday. And we've ordered flowering trees and we're getting fruit trees and berry bushes, too! Anyway, here are our grapevines! We have 3 different kinds and they're growing so nicely! We're building a really nice wooden arbor that goes up and over as they grow. Those stakes are "in the meantime."


Look closely--we may even get bunches of grapes to harvest this fall!


We're having LOADS of fun with school, too. Like laughing and feeling great kind of school. M's doing such a great job reading and we've been playing lots of fun phonics games with our lessons and having so much fun with it! You know what it's like seeing those first steps and hearing those first words? Well, the thrill is quite similar with seeing them read!! And I'm so glad we share all this fun learning constantly as a family--it's a true joy and we're so happy!

Okay, so today we created a bunch of games. We wrote a bunch of words (M's been learning single-syllable short vowel sound words with double consonants like "bell" and "kiss" and "jazz" as well as using the suffix "-y" in words like "funny" and "lumpy" as well as many others) on pieces of paper and played SO many fun games and relays. He's really been liking charades as well and today we got a little more active with some fun games and relays and word walks.

Here we are in the playroom playing "Word Jump" -- the kids stand on the futon and jump on the word I call out. Crazy but fun. Mark got some great jumping pictures. First one to land on the word gets a point. First one with 10 points wins. Not that it matters, it's all fun!


Here we are playing "Swamp Stones" -- the hallway is a swamp and to get across, you must read the word to make the magic swamp stones hold you up. If you don't read it before you step on it, it doesn't have its magic and your toes dip in and get nibbled on by ogres and trolls! Lots of giggles in this adventure game! And of course they jump as far as they possibly can for fun, too.

Collecting words for the next game (we've even made clean up a game--I call out a word, first one to find it and grab it gets a point). This even got cheers of "Can we PLEASE clean up again?!"

"Word Twister" -- yep, left food on "fuzzy!" Right hand on "kiss!" This got quite twisty.


We also got in a violin lesson and a walk to the grocery store for some veggies for our Japanese dinner tonight (to go along with our fun history lesson about the Shogun in the 17th century and their paranoid fear (but with pretty good reason considering The Thirty Years' War in Europe) of the Christian missionaries--amazing how much war and unrest there has been over the years all in the name of religion, so sad how that divides people). With this beautiful weather, we also played in the backyard with some friends from up the street and later did a load of laundry and hung them outside to dry. We LOVE our house and yard!!
I love this picture! Mark got such a great shot with this one! What setting did you use?

Ah, laundry hanging in the sun and blowing in the wind . . . love it. :)