TG-tomorrow's-F

 This week started off wonderful.  I beat Dave's hind end in Fantasy Football.

 We celebrated his birthday. 

 School was going well. 

 Then I broke a plate into ten thousand pieces. 

 Gymnastics was fun. 

 I found a great Ice Cap in Rapid.

 Finally got my butt behind my sewing machine.

 Nate got a stuffy nose.  He doesn't handle this well.  When he is a grown man and has a nice little wife.... and gets a 'man cold', I'll have to do something nice for his poor wife.  I feel sorry for her already. 

After some Mucinex he was  a good sport again... We made a weather vane from a knitting needle, spool of thread, and some cardboard.  I can tell this only being our third week of school that I am going to need a lot more glue for my hot glue gun. 

  

With the ups and downs of the week... I'm happy it was mostly nice.  But I'll take a weekend please.  

A Little Break

Even though we(Dave) have been busting our humps painting, we took advantage of Dave's four day weekend last weekend to take a nice little break.  

We drove into the hills.

 Had lunch

 And spent the afternoon swimming and digging in the sand.

 This is one of our favorite places EVER!

 It was a great family day

 The boy did a little fishing

 It was nice to relax

On the way home we enjoyed watching a storm roll by.  The landscapes here are just so incredible.

 It was a day well spent.

The Hard Work

I know I told you that if you checked back you would see the new front of our house... but I lied.... Well, not intentionally.  There have been storms dancing around Rapid City the past two days so Dave didn't get the front finished up.  However I did load some of the working photos to show you.  Even though the change is drastically obvious in these photographs I promise once you see the paint and the trim done you will still be shocked.

 This is the sanding.... a lot of the trim on our home needs sanding.  

 This was the beginning day of painting.

 This was later on the first day.

 This was the end of the first day.... doesn't the porch look insane???

 We spray painted the existing porch and garage lights.  With some black paint and a good scrubbing on the glass it's pretty dramatically improved eh?  For three bucks to redo all of them?? Bargain!

 We've been drinking more......

 This was probably a few days in. 

 This is when we cracked open the big bucket of trim paint.  

 This is with some of the trim done.  You can see the porch looks completely different!  We plan to paint the front door blue.

 So until we get the last little bit done on the front this update will have to pacify you.   Pray for us... 

Keeping Busy

 Wonder why I've been so quiet?  School isn't the culprit.  Its the house.  We've been painting almost daily for the past 11 days.  I think we've only taken two days off due to weather.  While Dave does most of the painting it still throws everything off. 

 So normal tasks like laundry and house cleaning in addition to our new routine for school... then extra things like putting veggies from the garden up, getting the dog groomed... making sure we are paint splotch free for church.... all of this stuff makes the day full.  

We put some salsa in the freezer.  The only ingredient that wasn't from my garden were the onions, cumin and lime juice.  

As for the painting.  The front is nearly finished.  Dave has the trim on the two tallest peaks to paint.  Hopefully that will happen tonight.  The east side of the house has the top third painted and the bottom third painted.... For the east, west and north sides of the house we plan to paint the main body, then when it's all done do the trim on those three sides.  But we decided for the front to get the house and the trim painted.  I'll share a photo of the front after it is painted... hopefully tomorrow!  Check back!  You are not going to believe the difference I promise!

The First Clothes

Our Sonlight curriculum uses lots of cool books for teaching.  Today the lesson from the book Living Long Ago talked about the first people to make clothes and how they lived.  How they built their summer homes and how they set up caves in the winter.  The clothing explanation was pretty enlightening.  After our history lesson was finished I got to thinking about the 'first clothes'  I thought... we should make some!

 So I pulled out some paper bags for our animal skins....

 Used a tank top for a pattern guide. 

 Had Nate color in spots...so it would look like cow or horse hide.

 Once the front was colored I cut out both sides.

 Punched holes so we could lace it up

 Once they were ready I got some yarn and a yarn needle out.  Don't worry, a yarn needle isn't sharp.

 So I let Nate lace up the shirt himself!

 Pretty neat shirt eh?!  While he made it I reviewed with him the things we had read.... like how the people stank until they learned to stretch the skins out and scrape all of the fat off.  

 His noggin wouldn't fit so I had to adjust the sewing to get it over his head. 

 Later we went to Holo to get some things to make a mammoth tusk/bone/bear claw necklace.... you know to dress it up a bit.  It was a lot of fun!  

the animal in spring is a fawn.  I'm no Van Gogh

As part of our science lesson today we talked about the seasons.... We made this chart together. 

Tomorrow we will do a science experiment from this book!  I'm excited! 

First Day Field Trip

Today as part of our history lesson we learned about dinosaurs.  Our curriculum uses the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia for science and history.  All of the pages include info you can access online using the Usborne Quick Links.  This is a SUPER neat feature.  We read the book pages.  After we were done with our curriculum work we looked up the links for little videos and games.  This is what really set the info in for Nate.  Today when Dave got home he explained how fossils were formed... enough where Dave and I looked at each other like... holy crap!  So we decided based on our neighbors tip to take him to the School of Mines Museum of Geology.   

 After learning about fossils.... we were looking at real fossils! 

 I wonder what that does when you learn about something millions of years old and in a matter of hours you are looking at an object millions of years old!  

 I don't know how many times we've read Triceratops for Lunch.... but here we were! Looking at one. 

 Does that boy look pleased or what? 

 It was a great experience for our whole family.  We learned alot!

 There was some really cool hands on stuff there!  A girl working there came over and explained the different rocks to Nate.  She told him how pumice was made and he told her... My dad used that to wash my leg last night! (he had paint on his leg and Dave used Orange Clean to get it off)

A great end to a first day!