Weekly Update: A day late.

 

Wow! This week flew by so quickly! So quickly that I didn't have time to blog! Eeek! So here is our weekly update, including our nature time. We had such a great week! 

 

Monday:

Some friends of ours invited us to join them to take a tour of a fire station where their friend works. It was so much fun getting our own private tour. This was the first time my girls had ever been to a fire station. 

We also had swim lessons and our first 4-H meeting. So Monday was a busy day!

Tuesday:

We spent the day doing our schoolwork and just being at home since Monday was so busy. Tuesday is our art day and we do a project from this awesome book called Art Lab. This week's project was a small painting on a piece of wood. This was a hit as the girls LOVE painting, and they thought it was super cool to paint on something different. 

Wednesday:

For our nature time we just took a walk around the neighborhood, and also checked out all the new plants coming up in our landscaping. Spring is really starting to happen! Oh, and Hannah found a tree to climb so she was happy. That girl LOVES to climb!

Weekly Picture: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 Things are starting to get a bit more green!

Peony coming up

Irises

Even dandelions! But of course that's not part of the landscape so it won't be staying.

Monkey girl!

Investigating under the tree.

The rest of the week went well just doing the usual stuff. 

My awesome hubby bought me a tumbling composter from Costco so we did spend some time putting that together. Took me about 4 days as the directions weren't quite as helpful as they should have been. Ha! But it is done now. Hannah was a super helper for most of it. She was even using a wrench to tighten bolts and I helped her use the drill. Ellie helped for the first bit handing us parts. When she got tired of that she became our photographer.

 

Hannah tightening bolts

 

Saturday the girls planned, practiced and performed a dance for all of us. They did several songs and did a great job! Of course I didn't get any pictures of the dance. Did get a picture of the cute poster they made to advertise. They even made little tickets for everyone. Love their creativity!

This weekend I took the girls to a gem and mineral show. It was so neat to see all the different rocks and minerals and gems, from calcite to quartz to agates and more! They loved it and we got some cool rocks in a little grab bag to bring home. When we got home they pulled out their magnifying glasses to examine all that we brought home.

This was our favorite!

We had a super awesome week and are on track to have another one. It is Spring Break for James so we are taking Spring Break from our homeschool this week too and heading up to the mountains for some hiking and fun for a couple days. Can't wait!

Have a wonderful week!

Blessings!

Wednesday Outdoor Hour: Poudre Learning Center Nature Trail

 This week for our outdoor hour we ventured out of our neighborhood to check out the trail at the Poudre Learning Center. It was a cloudy, gray day, but the temperature was perfect for walking around outside and enjoying nature.

The trail is awesome as it leads you along through grassy areas, past a prairie dog town, next to a couple different ponds, as well as the Poudre River. 

We saw all kinds of wonderful flora and fauna. We will definitely have to come back for more exploring another time. It will be fun to see the changes too as the seasons progress through the year.

We saw lots of these bird tracks in the mud along the trail...and lots of birds too! Geese, seagulls, blue herons, hawks and meadowlarks.

The girls were comparing hand size to bird track size.

Hannah found an old milkweed plant along the trail. Ever since we discovered milkweed last year, she is so excited about it.

Ellie found a super tall dried plant.

We saw new, green life popping up all over the place. Can't wait till everything is green again!

Poudre River

Don't mess with these guys!

Of course, who can turn down a good stump for sitting and climbing on?

Seagulls circling over the pond. Seems weird to see seagulls in Colorado...

Yard Picture: Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Blessings!

Daybook- March 16, 2015

Wow! It's Monday again already! We had so much fun last week that time seemed to go by even faster than usual. 

For Today... March 16, 2015

Outside my window... It is gorgeous and sunny! The birds are singing, the air is warm and there is hardly a cloud in the sky. What a perfect day!

View of the garden from upstairs in my bedroom. Can't wait till it's all green!

I am thinking... I would like to spend ALL day outside when it's like this!

I am thankful... for the other moms from church that come every other Monday to pray together for our kids and schools.

I am wearing...  Lots of purple and green for St. Urho's Day! Rolled up jeans, purple chevron socks, purple tank top under a green shirt, and a purple scarf.

Girls wearing their purple and green today too.

I am creating... my meal plan for the week. I find it so helpful to have a plan in place so I'm not scrambling at the last minute to fix something for dinner while the kids are "starving".

Love getting our produce delivered for the week!

I am going... Crazy! LOL! Okay, not really...well, maybe a little. Monday's are a busy day...errands to run, laundry to do, things to clean, school work to accomplish, and this Monday the girls have swim lessons. Whew!

I am wondering... about all the different homeschool curriculum I saw at the curriculum fair on Saturday. So many great things! Will I decide to go with a more set curriculum for next year or keep on with what we've been doing...

I am reading... Small-Space Vegetable Gardens by Andrea Bellamy...haven't gotten too far into it, but so far it's pretty good. Hoping to expand our gardening space this year by using more containers. Since we are just renting I can't dig up any more yard for garden space.

I am hoping... that we don't get anymore snow till next winter. I'm ready for Spring to fully be here!

I am learning... about fermented foods, and healing the gut. There is a class on Wednesday about the GAPS diet that I hope I get to.

In my garden... the spinach and lettuce are getting bigger! So exciting! Gotta order my seeds today so I can plant peas soon. If the weather keeps up like this, we may start seeing signs of life in our Winter sowing containers.

In my kitchen... we are making Mojakka today (a Finnish beef stew) in celebration of St. Urho's Day. Even though it's going to be 80 some degrees. I told you I was crazy.

In the homeschool room... we read more from Matthew for our devotions this morning, and did our circle time with poetry and singing. The girls are doing so well learning our hymn for the month, Amazing Grace. Our circle time is one of our favorite parts of our day. We get to sing, read poetry, memorize Scripture, and do our weather report.

We will do math and reading later in between running errands and other stuff.

The girls spend the morning reading together while I had my prayer group.

A favorite quote for today... 0% perfect, 100% perfectly forgiven and loved. -Ann Voskamp

One of my favorite things... Sunshine! I LOOOOOOOVE it!!! 

Post Script

 Oh, if you're wondering what in the world St. Urho's Day is...it is basically a celebration of a made up character that originated in Northern Minnesota somewhere. They say St. Urho is the patron saint of Finland vineyard workers because he chased hoards of grasshoppers out of the vineyards and thus saved the grapes. In the town where my grandma lives they have a statue of St. Urho and have a big festival every year. Which my family always took part in as often as we could when I was growing up. Passing on the fun to my kids now, to "celebrate" our Finnish heritage even though St. Urho is made up and they don't even celebrate him in Finland. But it's a good excuse to make some Finnish food and have a little party. 

 

The girls with St. Urho in Menahga last Summer.

 

Hope you have a blessed week! And don't forget, if you'd like to join in the fun of sharing some of your day, head on over to The Simple Woman's blog.

Blessings!

Weekly Update

"Sunshine on the water looks so lovely..." -John Denver

Hey, there! Just a quick blurb to catch you up on a little of what we did this week. 

What a beautiful day we had today! It was 80 degrees and gorgeously sunny! As John Denver would say, "Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy." And a little bit sunburned. Guess it's time to start thinking about sunscreen. 

Anyway, today was a fabulous end to our week. We had church this morning, and afterward got to enjoy a delicious lunch with friends outside. Then came home and had a little nap. Since it was so lovely we had to spend more time outside, so the girls and I got Nana (my mom) to go with us for a walk. You can't beat lake views with the mountains rising up behind. I never tire of seeing those gorgeous Rockies!

Yesterday was equally fabulous weather. Pretty much this whole week has been amazing! I think I shall be disappointed if it does happen to actually snow again at this point. Which can happen in Colorado. March is typically one of the snowiest months.

We got to enjoy the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Fort Collins with our good friends. The girls got all dressed up in green and had a great time watching the parade which was almost 2 hours long!

My lucky leprechauns!

After the parade the girls went off to hang out at Nana's house while I got to have some "mommy time" perusing the local homeschool curriculum fair with my friend. Got some good info and ideas to start planning for next year. Kinda overwhelming too!

Yesterday was also Pi day, so we had some delicious Razzleberry pie at Nana's house before heading home. I'll take any excuse I can to eat some pie.

The rest of the week was pretty much just the usual...cleaning, laundry, school, playing, etc. Hannah did get a hair cut on Thursday. Her hair was all the way down to her backside and it was just getting too hard to brush. We cut off about 4-5 inches and it's still plenty long. I didn't think to take a before picture, but did take a pic of after. She's quite happy with it, and so am I. It doesn't take half the morning to brush it all out now. 

Haircut! Oh, and you can totally see that I STILL haven't changed my chalkboard. Maybe this week...

Everyone's in bed now getting their beauty sleep to be ready for the new week. We have swim lessons coming up this week, and St. Urho's Day tomorrow, St. Patrick's Day Tuesday, so the week is looking to be lots of fun!

I hope your week was full of amazing, and the week ahead holds more of the same!

Blessings!

Wendesday Outdoor Hour: Signs of Spring

It's nature time again! Thankfully we are finally all feeling better so we could go out for some adventure. For our outdoor hour today we spent time in the backyard looking for signs of Spring. It was fun to look around and explore our own yard for "treasures".

We had so much fun and everyone came up with a good list of things that we saw as signs of Spring. New strawberry plants starting to grow, tulips and daffodils coming up, bugs and spiders everywhere, melting snow, warmer days and more!

It was also a lovely day for making some mud pies. 

Yesterday we also got some nature time exploring some trails along the Poudre River in Fort Collins. The day was made even better by getting to spend it with friends. 

We're gonna keep soaking up all this amazing sunshine that we can this week. Love Colorado!

March 12, 2015

One more thing...We decided it would be fun to take a picture of our yard from the deck every week to watch the changes as we go through the different seasons. So here goes!

Blessings!