Mark is 16 Years Old

 My Irish boy and his new Newsboy hat.

 The duck call candle blow-out

 Mark and Luke with an Oreo cake

 Becky serenading us all. 

 The "final four"  Grace-14, Mark-16, Luke-10 and Kim-9

 Partners in crime

 Kimberly, Becky and Dan

 My Irish  boys and a few photo bombers

 Right before Dan almost killed Mark with a Poi ball

 These are very cool...

Grace-14

Borax Snowflakes

 We've started a unit about winter and snow...and hoping for some significant snow ourselves.  

I decided to help the kids make borax snowflakes.  

First you need to cut a pipe cleaner into three equal parts.  Bend into a 6 sided "snowflake".  Tie a string to the pipecleaners and the other side of the string to a pencil. 

 Make sure the edges of the pipecleaners don't touch the bottom or sides of the jar.

 You now need Borax and boiling water. 

 Add 2 cups of boiling water to the jar...stir in 6 tbls of borax.

 Stir....not all the borax will dissolve--it is a super saturated solution.

 Put your "snowflakes" into the jars...wait 24 hours.

 The next day we had crystals everywhere.

We were careful not to shake the jar as we carried them to the table. 

The big reveal!

 Amazing crystal snowflakes.

 Ta Da!!!!

These are very, very hard...and last a long time!

The Miracles of Jesus & Crafts

 "Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men." Matthew 4;19

 We are enjoying this Tomie dePaola book;The Miracles of Jesus, and I'm trying to come up with a craft for every story.  

 Today's story was the Catch of Fishes. 

 I printed out two copies of each picture of St. Simon Peter, St. James and St. John. We glued these pictures together for the project is as nice from the  back as from the front. 

We taped the picutres to the middle of a double layer of tulle, and then glued two  Popsicle sticks to the top and bottom of the tulle. We used clips until the glue was set.

 Luke working hard.

 Making the fishes.

 Almost finished..just hot gluing a ribbon to hang out crafts.

 All done!!