Finally!

I have been trying to find time to sew for the last month or more, so today I said that I would get Gracie's jumper made even if that was the only thing I got done.

Well, I got her jumper done, from cutting out the pattern to adding the final touches. I did not do laundry, or clean up around the house. I did manage to get some groceries and take care of children along the way. I also took "potty training Luke" to the potty about a zillion times, and cleaned up three puddles.

The pattern was a real old pattern that I had never used. The material was given to me a few years ago by a dear friend. The final product is not much like the pattern, I changed the straps and added the ties and made it a bit longer than the pattern stated. The material t-shirt weight knit and has flowers with little red dots among the flowers. Becky is going to pick Grace up a plain red t-shirt to finish off this outfit and then it will be off to church in the morning.

Author Fiesta-A Nice Surprise

I want to thank Cay for the lovely letter and book that arrived in the mail today. Cay gave us the opportunity to guess the May author of the month

for the Author Fiesta. We were the first to guess Patricia Polacco, so we received a book as our prize. We have proudly placed her letter in our Author Fiesta binder.

Make sure you keep watch of the Author Fiesta site, for the next chance to guess the June author.

Author Fiesta-Emma Kate

The month of May is coming to a close and so is our Patricia Polacco -Author Fiesta.

We have had a great time learning all about this wonderful author.

Make sure to visit Cay, and check out all the information and printables she has made available on the Author Fiesta website. Thanks for all your hard work, Cay.

We have read almost all the books on the reading list which is now in our binder. (I saved the Christmas books for December.)

I wanted to share our current "favorite" Patricia Polacco book, and what we have included in our Author Fiesta binder about it. Emma Kate is a book I am sure we will return to again and again. It was especially a favorite of the younger group of kids around here.

We have devoted a page in our binder just for Emma Kate. We were very excited when we saw that this book was dedicated to Dr. Seuss and Horton. We are all about Seuss around here, and have been for the past several months. Mainly because of this. Gracie was especially excited to discover a picture of Horton in the Emma Kate story. (You will have to search for it if you want to see it!)

I made up a copy work sheet for Grace to do, and we added this to our binder.

We all drew imaginary friends and added these to our binders. This is Gracie's friend Marcus.

I love the Enchanted Learning website. I found this really cute elephant puppet on this site. We just printed it, colored it and then cut it out. We have had alot of fun with our puppets. I also printed out some of the others from this site and we have been enjoyinhg numerous "puppet shows."

We just can't wait for the Author Fiesta for June!

Pictures from a beautiful Thursday

The package man showed up today-hooray, hooray!! He brought us a new Lauri brand manipulative- Fit a Space. Kim and Luke love it. We have been concentrating on colors and shapes, and this will be a great addition to things we all ready have around the house.
Mark had religon class, and so we drove around looking for photo opportunities. This is Amy's view from the co-pilot's seat.
A family of Canadian geese. (Our only photo worthy nature sighting.)
Grandma and Grandpa enjoyed nice comfy seats for Matt's ballgame.
Kim enjoyed fun dirt play during Matt's game.
Keep your eye on the ball, Matt.
Down and ready.
A view of the fans.

Memorial Day "Good Luck"

The kids had time to enjoy a beautiful day yesterday, looking for 4-leaf clovers.
How much luck do you get from a 5 leaf clover?

A New Sighting

I have decided that a need a new recurring blog title. "A New Sighting" as a title will mean that Mom is very excited because we have spotted something new.

It means that the kids think Mom is a little nuts taking picture after picture of the new wildlife.
It means that we will be studying all about this new wildlife (usually a bird) over the next several days.

It also means we will be revisiting the sight of the "spotting" at least 3 more times in the next 4 days.

(O.K.- maybe I am a little nuts!)

Today, on the way home from Grandma and Grandpa's Memorial Day picnic (pictures to come) Daddy spotted this Green Heron. Way to go Dad! And I also have to thank Dad for taking me to my favorite bird spotting location even though I know he wanted to really get home.

This is a photo I googled to make an identification.

Backyard birdfeeder carnival

Marianne, over at Learning2Love had as idea.This is what she posted a week or so ago. " I have an idea! What if we watch our feeders for a week with our kids, keep a list of the species of birds that visit, and then send me your list, including what state you are in and maybe a picture or two, by Memorial Day, May 26th. I will post the carnival on May 27th. The official bird watching week can be from May 18th - May 24th. Post in the comment section if you're interested, and send me your links by May 27th and we'll see how this goes! This will be so interesting!"

Well, we had a very successful week, and more importantly, the kids had a wonderful time. They were constantly on alert for another bird sighting.

The highlight of our week had to be when Mark yelled, "I see a bluebird, a real bluebird in the backyard." Well, we hear bluebirds and occasionally see them out in the back woods, but this is the first time in the yard. The proof we have though, is just this very blurry photo, but Mark really wanted me to include it.

We have a real long list, and alot of photos. I guess I will post our list of birds that visited our backyard over the last week first.

bluebird

nuthatch

downy woodpeckers

chipping sparrows

house sparrows

gold finch

house finch

cardinals

mourning doves

starlings

yellow-eyed grackles

cowbirds

blue jays

chick-a-dees

American crows

robins

red-winged blackbirds

tree swallows

red tail hawk

northern flicker

A very respecticle 20 species, and that was during a very chilly, rainy week.

Now for the photos.

chipping sparrow
Mr. and Mrs. Goldfinch
starling
A pretty pair of mourning doves

Mr. Cardinal

Mrs. Cardinal

chick-a-dee
yellow eyed grackle
tree swallow

red-winged blackbird
nuthatch
Mr, and Mrs. Downy Woodpecker
cowbird
A robin with a worm.

And almost as exciting as our bluebird, was this Northern Flicker. They usually hang out farther into the woods.

We have to thank Grandma and Grandpa H. for their love of the birds and giving us alot of their knowledge.

Now, if I could have sat in their yard for a week, the bird list would have probably been twice as long.

And last but not least, the bane of every bird lover, the squirrel thief.

Seussical The Musical

Tonight was the second performance of Seussical the Musical, and what a night it was!

Gracie Who and her friend wait for the doors to open.
Amy Who
Laura WhoDanny, looking good!
Amy and Laura during the final scene.

Gracie and friends stretch their legs at intermission.
A little hamming it up after the show.
Mark tries out his future in the theater.
Danny, and his assistant director, Becky.

Author Fiesta-Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair

No, I didn't have problems trying to turn this picture around. Actually, it is the base of our "Triple Creek" dam. Made entirely of Patricia Polacco books. I asked the kids what they would like to do to remember this book in our Author Fiesta binder and they wanted to build a dam.
We don't think that it would stop any water, but after a 30 minute effort, we finally got it to stand up long enough to snap this photo. Mark thought is was very fitting to use Patricia Polacco's autobiography as the top!