Beautiful photo

A nice hat tip to Jessie, of Our Elsie Rae of Sunshine, for this beautiful photo of my great-niece Josie, as she ran to meet her mom and their horses.

Catechism Lesson

Mom: What must we do to be happy with God in Heaven?

Gracie age 6: Know Him, and love Him and feed Him.

It's Time to Carve the Jack-O-Lantern

A Hike to the Bottom of the Falls

Who could ever imagine that we would be able to head outdoors on October 30th in Central New York and take a hike in 50 degree, sunny weather.

We found creeping myrtle plants still looking beautiful with their purple blossoms.

Mushrooms are still growing,

and this cabbage butterfly should be finding a milder climate soon.

Kimberly had the easiest hike to the base of Chittenango Falls. It is about 15 minutes from out house and just wonderful.

It is very easy to stand at the base of this waterfull and realize the greatness of God.

Just breathtaking

We finished the afternoon with a ride on the swings.

Oh, winter, we will smile when you send your first snowflakes, but for now we will keep smiling because you are nowhere to be found.

Our New Furniture

As promised, here are pictures of Gracie's new kitchen. It takes up the wall space of one wall in the living room. It is sturdy, and seems to be very well made. Hopefully it will be enjoyed for many years to come.

We all know that we have enough kids to play with it for years and years!

A Very Special Day

My favorite six year old had a wonderful birthday today. We surprised her with a toy wooden kitchen, complete with dishes and food. (I will post pictures of this tomorrow.)

Yesterday we celebrated with Grandma and Grandpa H. Gracie had the birthday dinner she requested, potatoes, gravy, butter, and salt and pepper. (Thankfully, Grandma added pot roast to the potatoes.)
Everything was delicious, and after dinner we had a yummy cake that Becky and Grace made.

Grace has been asking for a pop-up book for quite some time, and Grandma came through.

I think that it is one of the "coolest" pop-up books I have seen. Everyone was very impressed.

She also received a floor puzzle about Moses. It is made of foam pieces and doubles as a play mat,

which seems to work very well!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRACE....6 Years old!

I hope you have a wonderful day! We love our 6 year old very much!

It's Time to Party!

Here we are at the annual friends and family Halloween party. We had a great time. Daddy had to stay home with the babies though. I thought that they would be very uneasy around so many people in costume.

Gracie and Julia

Two beautiful Snow Whites

Kim and family

A lot of smiles for a wonderful time!

Saint Tekla

Thanks to Cay Gibson and her book Catholic Mosaic, we become acquainted with a new saint this week: Saint Tekla of Ethiopia. He was named a saint in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
While reading the book, A Saint and His Lion, we traveled to Africa and learned about a faraway land and about caring for people all over the world.

Inspired by the Catholic Mosaic, we thoughtfully decided on something we could do to help someone in a poverty stricken foreign land. We, through Heifer International, have donated a flock of chicks to a family in poverty. We had a wonderful time discussing what could be done with a flock of chicks, and we came up with many many ideas. We also have made a poster to remind us to pray for the family that will receive our gift.

Thank-you, Cay, for your continued inspiration.

Kim's coat is finished...

I put the buttons on this morning. I also made her matching pants.

We are ready for the snow.

It's Knitting Season

cute little booties for new baby Brendan

mittens for Ava

a baby blanket for Brendan

Static Electricity

The balloons from yesterday's soccer game provided us with an impromptu science lesson--static electricity.

Mark and Grace rubbed the balloons on their heads and then let their hair be attracted to the balloon, they thought that this was like a wonderful magic trick.

The balloon also was magically stuck to the wall, they also stuck it to their chests and on anything else that stood still. (Which means that it would not stick to the babies, they moved to much.)

Was it magic? No, it was science!

The Boys Soccer Team...Champions!!

This afternoon the Holy Cross boy's soccer team finished their season unbeaten, with a 4-0 win over Mohawk Valley in the championship game.

Danny, gearing up for the game.

Matt, the high scorer of whole North Country Athletic Association.

Seniors and their parents are honored during half-time.

Grandma and Grandpa enjoying a wonderful finish to a great season. ( ignore the Boston hat, Grandpa likes to cause trouble)

The sun in a little bit bright for the spectators today.

CHAMPIONS!!!!!!

Everyone look at the camera please.

Hip, hip hooray!!

Our Trip to the Rain Forest

We have been in the rainforest over the last few weeks, and I have to say that we have had a very enjoyable time.

We began our journey by reading The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry.

We then began the construction of a rainforest lapbook. Homeschool Share

has a wonderful unit to be used with The Great Kapok Tree. It has many of the elements that we used to make our lapbook available for free. It is a wonderful site. Everyone that homeschools should check it out.

Another book we have enjoyed very much is The Rainforest Grew All Around.
We enjoyed singing the words to this book to the tune of The Green Grass Grew All Around.

They included a recipe for Rainforest Cookies in the back of this book. It included many ingredients that are found in the rainforest.

A few of the books we enjoyed are below:

Welcome to the Greenhouse

At Home in the Rainforest
To end our unit I read the chapter book, Capyboppy.
We all enjoyed this story about the world's largest rodent.

Reflections of an Autumn Day

Greenlakes State Park

Wonderful!