Ready for school!

We are ready here for school!  I feel like I've been preparing all summer! Took some pics of our school room and areas to show you :)

Captain's desk...CHECK

 This is his own lesson plans I made so he could be responsible to see if he has done all of his work for the day.  He highlights each box as he finishes.  (The items in here don't represent what we all do together during "Morning Basket", which includes science, music, prayer, history and other fun extras.)  I got it spiral bound at Staples for $4 :)

 Captain's workboxes... (that bottom basket is the Morning Basket - shown on top are the library books that are recommended for our first chapter of Life science with REAL Science Odyssey)

Tot's area...CHECK

 Tot's trays for the first day of school

 Tot's 'A' basket - I sure need to collect more A things in future years...

  He's doing Carissa's Animal ABC's this year.  He knows all his shapes, colors, letters etc, so we're just reinforcing, learning sounds and having lots of fun!

And I just had to show off my pencil/pen/marker/everything caddy I made from a shoebox and lots of toilet paper rolls!

All About Spelling board...CHECK

Liturgical Calendar...CHECK (I got this free template from Sanctus Simplicitus.  All of her saints are PreVatican II, so my lovely husband changed all the months for me to reflect the current church calendar's saints. I'm hoping to figure out soon how to pdf them and share them on my site free for anyone who would like them.)

 
Geography wall...CHECK

History box of 'living books' (I'm using a mixture of Elizabeth Foss's American history study  at In The Heart of My Home with Jessica's 6 unit breakdown at Shower of Roses - our first unit is New World Explorers.  I really liked the idea of Living Books and will just be reading TONS to them about history - they seem to remember everything they hear out of books!)

More to come at the end of the week... ;) 

Summer Camping - Last big weekend before school!

Tomorrow's the big first day of school!  Back to blogging after the summer off!  I wanted to share our last fun weekend before school - our 9th annual camping trip with our dear friends from home. When it started out there was only one child between the three families...now we're at 9! It's been so much fun, year after year, watching it grow!

Rex LOVED his first solo kayak trip.  He did fabulous! 

We had a special visit from papa, with Tot's friend Lady the dog, Saturday morning.

Our Saturday at the beach was a drizzly one...but that didn't stop the kids from having hours of fun.

 (our friends brought their air mattress that was leaking for one last day of fun in the water before it got tossed!)

Campfire fun...

 All nine of the kids :)

 Tot was ecstatic because it was a weekend of never ending food (and that mister is ALWAYS hungry!)!

Sunday turned out to be nice again, so the kids enjoyed a few more hours of playing while we all packed up.

 Daddy and his three boys kayaking!!

Now off to bed to get some much needed sleep before tomorrow! 

The birthday that kept going and going and going.... :)

Happy 5th Birthday to our beautiful Rex!  I'm finally posting it!  He had such a great birthday - it seemed to go on for two weeks!  

First, we had a party in our hometown with the grandparents and aunts and uncles :)  His cake was Mars with Curiousity land rover on it! I'm not posting a picture since it had his name on it - it wasn't anything exciting though!   Some highlights:  My mom made him this awesome blanket! 

 A coworker of my mother handed down two TUBS FULL of dinosaurs - tons of huge walking ones - totally a hit as you can tell by the faces :)

Still playing with them for days back at home! (It came at the most perfect time - the weekend between my two weeks of tot dinosaur school!)

Next, papa took us to Splash Lagoon!  With a name like that, you can imagine the fun!

 Rex's FAVORITE thing is crossing these lily pads! He is the more timid one of the boys and he knocked our sicks off when he did it over and over again when we went to Captain's birthday!  So proud of him :) You have to use timing and balancing to manuever the lily pads and wait for just the right time...

Finally, was his party here at our house.  Here's my volcano cake! 

 As you can see, some of the dinosuars didn't make it fast enough from the lava flow!

 I love decorating their cakes at night when they're sleeping.  Their faces in the morning are priceless.  I loved catching this look on camera hours before the party! Just staring...

 And I had to share this sweetest picture of Tot and his little friend.  I glanced in the living room and these two had been following each other around and then sat down next to each other all by themselves in the room.  After that they each stood up, got their own book and sat back down by each other again and read!  Super cute!

Pray for no frost tonight!!!! I want TONS of applesauce this winter!!! I could have cared less about frost before having a farm - now I understand why they randomly pray for weather and harvests in church!  Please no frost!