Nature Study Monday - VFW Park

Today we went to the VFW park which is one of my favorite parks around town.  It has all the things we need - lots of nature, bathrooms, shade tress, and tables and benches for sketching.  It is a very quiet and serene park although today the cicadas were very loud at times.

I just love these purple flowers.  I have seen them in several creek beds this summer.

I got my workout getting these two up and and down the ditch so we could walk along the creek.

When I caught up with the group Cooper was inside this pipe going for the other side.  Had we not had so many little ones, I would have let him keep going.

"but what about socialization???"

We forgot our sketch pads and Graham wanted to draw.  He found a feather and drew in the sand.

Good and dirty.

"We can't leave, we just found this!"

After our nature walk, we had lunch on our way to the pool.  I could not wait to get in the water!  Here in Texas it is starting to hit 100 degrees.  After we swam for two hours we went to get some ice cream.  All and all a great day!

Nature Study Monday - Edith L. Moore Nature Sanctuary

This is one of the many hidey holes we saw. 

Giant Polk Salad.  It was taller than me!

Graham - "It look like snakes Mamma!"

Somewhere in that mix of little boy heads are minnows she just caught.

Busted Lip and a Road Trip

Busted Lips

Barrett pulled a table onto himself Thursday night before bible class.  It was one of those moments that you get to watch happen in slow motion and know there is nothing you can do to stop it from happening.  Even worse, I had just turned around to tell him to get down off the table or it was going to fall on him!  So, after what eye witnesses called "Sarah going wonder woman on the table" I scooped him up could tell really quickly we were going to have to find an ER.  Luckily, there was a great emergency room down the street from the church so Nina and I headed over there to get his lip sewn back on.  

All my boys have fallen and bitten through their lips at some point.  You wash it  out and keep close watch but usually by morning it has almost healed up because our bodies are awesome.  But this time, I could tell from the moment I looked down at it that it was bad.  He ended up needing three stitches on the inside and five on the outside. 

Nature Study - Mary Jo Peckham Park

We joined our local Ambleside Online users this morning for a nature walk at Mary Jo Peckham Park.  Since I have boys, nature walk really means a race around the pond to see how many ducks and vultures we can scatter, how many baby ducks we can catch and of course, how muddy and wet we can get without actually getting into the pond.  With boys*, it is all about pushing boundaries.  Nature study with boys is about getting wet and rolling around in the grass.  They are such physical creatures!    

The race around the pond was fun and they saw several different birds.  Cooper did catch a baby duck and soon found out that this was not a petting zoo.  The momma duck came after him and I was secretly hoping she would peck him.  I really liked that he saw the natural consequence of touching a baby thing in the wild.  I hope he remembers that his strength always needs to be tempered when dealing with baby things.  Also, I hope he knows his momma would snap at anybody who tried to take him away from me! 

*When I refer to attributes of boys it is not a swipe at girls or to say that girls don't posses some of the same qualities.  I believe little girls should get dirty and build things too.  This blog is about my observations as a mother of four boys and what I have observed in real life. 

 The beginning of the walk.  In about two seconds both of them walk right out into the water.  Good thing we put on our nature walk shoes.

The dud egg.  After reminding them about the dud egg from Charlotte's Web Cooper turns around and throws it.  And I quote "So we can smell the horrible sulfur gas!"

Graham was saying "momma duck" over and over again.  I finally went and looked at what he was pointing at and sure enough there she was.  An entire herd of older kids ran past without seeing her. 

No eggs were disturbed or touched.

Marshall always picks flowers for me.  Even tiny little ones like this.  Boys can be incredibly sweet and thoughtful.

Marshall found a clam or what I think is a clam.  Quick to the nature handbook!

Nature sketching time. 

Graham joined in too.  He drew a rock. I was happy to see him join in the sketching without me telling him what we were doing. 

The smelly egg.

Hands still dripping with pond water.  He actually rubbed some in on his picture to make it more real.  We'll call that adding texture.

Keeping it real moment - Barrett cried for about twenty minutes walking around the pond because he wanted water (he has just had some before we set out).  Upon leaving, Graham pitched one of the worst fits I have seen, including hitting Cooper as he was buckling his seat belt in the car because he was not done riding the pelican and did not want to leave.

Brain Damage

It always seems a little hard to come back to this blog when I have been away for so long.  I have been relying on Facebook for so long because it is quick and easy to post and keep family and friends updated on our lives.  I have used FB to be my memory since the twins were born because as Bill Cosby's famous comedy routine said "kids cause brain damage." 

By that I mean six months of not sleeping more than two hours at a time. It was so bad that some days I  would walk past my bed and just touch the covers and fantasize about laying down.  I would do it all again in a heartbeat but just like stretch marks, memory loss for me is just another fact of motherhood and how children can affect you mentally, physically and emotionally.  I cannot remember things as well as I used to and now have to write everything down.  I forget birthdays of family and friends (once again thank you FB for that nifty birthday reminder thing!).

So, all that was leading up to this.  I am going to commit to using this blog to write more about our daily life.  I want to preserve it, not only for the boys but also for myself.  So I invite you all back into this little corner of the internet to follow along with the boys and I and our adventures.  

Three Weeks In

We are in our third week of school around here and so far this is the best year yet!  I have loved having Marshall start Kindergarten with us, even if he took a little persuading to actually sit down and do some work.  I think I have worked out most of the kinks of our day.  Chores are being done, books are being read, and math work is progressing.  All in all I am very happy with how things are going so far this year.  The biggest improvement this year is the cooperation of these two guys:

 For the last two years these guys have been pretty demanding and now all of sudden they will play for an hour by themselves with minimal input from me!  This means more uninterrupted school time which we are all loving. 

I am starting Tea Time Tuesday with the boys.  The boys actually love it and take special care to pour the milk and tea and love setting up the table.  I let them use real tea cups and if they can go a month without breaking any I will let them have a saucer.  Now, if I can just get Cooper to wear a shirt at the table but then again this is a manly tea time.

We had an awesome day today.  We got started right after chores and finished in time to go to our areas christian homeschooling group's kick-off at the park.  The boys all played and I got to meet some new mom and chat about curriculum, programs around Houston and how to keep it all balanced.  The boys got so dirty and sweaty but I loved seeing them run around playing games like tag and stick swords. 

And I really do mean dirty. Like, we have been throwing mulch at each other and a wet wipe is a joke at this point, dirty.

I had to go grocery shopping after the park and just for a minute I entertained the thought of letting them go barefoot so we could really represent what some people feel like homeschoolers look like.  Well the joke was on me because I had to actually walk barefoot for a time because my shoe was rubbing a blister and I could not take another step with it on.  I actually left one shoe on so I did not look like a complete hillbilly. 

After grocery shopping we came home and put up groceries and everybody went down for some quiet time.  Once we got up we finished school by doing our readings for the day.  Marshall kept calling King Harold King Harriet which was frustrating Cooper who was learning about the Battle of Hastings in 1066.  Cooper was so sad to learn that good King Harold was killed and he was the last English King.  We love history around here but it is a hard lesson to learn that good men don't always win but it is so important to stay good until the end. 

We ended our day with some water slide play.  We even found a gecko and I am counting that as science for the day!