Another First - Tent Camping

Our 1st experience camping in a real-life tent! Look at how awake they still are. . . at 1:16am in the morning! We had just finished up a late-night hike the park offered (it was fun hiking in the dark with limited flashlight use), and we had the munchies! :-)


These are our very special friends - the F family, who we were able to enjoy this experience with. We love you guys!


Look at them all. . . hard to believe they're all 6 now! And even harder to believe we've been getting together for almost 5yrs! Look at our babies!


The big boys and I enjoyed this wonderful experience together while Daddy & littlest man enjoyed some 1:1 time and he got to accompany Daddy to the office - such a big boy!
I cannot state enough how much we enjoyed this trip and what a wonderful job the park did at putting this program together - we so enjoyed ourselves. And our family has had an RV for over 9yrs so we love the outdoors and enjoy camping but it was a neat experience to tent camp. . . we will be buying a tent next year for sure to add to our future experiences!

Reading Anywhere. . . Reading Everywhere

These shots really speak to the truth about where we read/learn/discuss/research - yep, anywhere and everywhere! ;-) Boy isn't that the truth?! I walked out to the garage as we were getting ready to go for a bike ride and the boys were getting their shoes on. . . well, I found them hanging out together on the freezer just reading away. The next day we were outside playing in the backyard and they went back in the house and brought books out onto the deck and sat and read there. Reading is just a normal part of our everyday activities. . . just like eating and breathing!

Firefighters Survive Alive

Oh my goodness, this shot is just priceless! It truly captures how they felt. ALL. DAY! They were hooping it up! And their fire fighter hats were intact until bedtime and we could barely get them off of them for bath time! ;-D


Today we had our much-anticipated field trip to Survive Alive and we were very excited. I coordinated this field trip for about 10 kiddos and everyone really enjoyed themselves. The wonderful gentleman (a retired firefighter)who helped facilitate this program set-up for us was so great with the kids and just plain amazing! There was a police officer who came in and talked with us about his role with the police department and about gun safety. Then we spoke with the firefighters about fire safety and then we took the Survive Alive tour which involves fire simulation in a home. This gave the kids all good experience to test the knowledge of what they had just learned regarding fire safety and what to do in case of a home fire. They all did a great job! We really enjoyed our visit there and we also got to visit the Firefighters Museum which had an old fire wagon - it was amazing to see! After our visit we went over to Daddy's office and donned our new fire hats and chatted about our exciting field trip and what we learned. God bless the firefighters who so selflessly protect us!

K'nex Creatures

Ours boys really love their K'nex and will build with them (or anything else for that matter) for hours. . . the possibilities are endless. This seems to be ds3's favorite building manipulative right now. . . I think because he really enjoys making little cute, funny-looking creatures and then naming them and telling us about each of them. . . very fascinating!

Spend or Save?

That was today's topic - spend or save? We were reading and this was what littlest man chose for his reading, so when I was done reading it out loud he told us what he would "spend" on and what he would "save" for. Apparently, he's saving for a plane. . . so he can fly us all to Hawaii! ;-D Hey, sounds good to us! lol

Performances

We were invited to a performance today. . . via personal invitation, which was hand-delivered. We were told to arrive at a precise time and then we would be guided from there. So of course, I changed into a nice skirt and was then escorted to a front row seat where we were given a lovely, healthy snack to munch on while we awaited the starting performance. :-)
We were then treated to a lovely play performance which was a story they had all created together (yep, this is where the tears start). Then each of the big boys took turns playing a musical solo for us on their instruments. . . so we enjoyed a piano performance, guitar singing, violin solo and then the show closed with a gymnastic performance by our littlest man. And did I mention all the lovely decorations they hand-created? It was incredibly sweet. . . something I will treasure and remember forever. I feel so blessed to be with them to enjoy all their creativity and to be a part of it all! I am a Mama whose heart is overfilled with joy! :-)