Dr. Uncle Johnny

     Two weeks ago I drove with the kids up to Bloomington, Indiana to see my brother John (we call him Johnny)graduate from Indiana University. It was a 10 hour drive and Tom was not with us. (He was in Colorado working as the pistol coach for the Wounded Warrior Games.)  I was a little worried about driving 10 hours alone with 4 children, but Tom did everything he could to make it easier for us, even though he was away. He got us a rental car because we don't trust our 13 year old van, and he also got us a hotel in Nashville so we could stop half way there.  
     Johnny is now Dr. John McGiffin, Doctor of Optometry. He already has an awesome Job lined up in Washington state just 3 hours away from where we grew up, and where our parents still live.  We're so happy for him and his little family!!

Here's some pictures of the trip

Johnny with his family after graduation

Johnny, his son Nathan, our brother Ben and his daughter, Lucy

waiting for graduation to begin

Beautiful Lucy!! This was the first time we've gotten to see her!!

Sarah at the dinner

William and Robby, fast friends already.

Alan waiting for Johnny to come out after the graduation

Kaitlyn waiting for Johnny to come out after graduation.

Nathan, Johnny's youngest son. He wouldn't let me get near him. So sad, because he was so adorable I just wanted to pick him up and kiss him!! :)

Johnny's family at the graduation dinner

Cousins at the dinner

Sarah had just put her hands over her face so that I couldn't take her picture, but I waited until after she took her hands off, and got her picture anyway!
We had a great time, and it was wonderful to see some of our family. Congratulations Uncle Johnny!!

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Eat your words

We have these alphabet cookie cutters, so yesterday for spelling practice, we made alphabet cookies using sugar cookie dough. It was a fun way to practice spelling, and they make a good snack!!

Springtime in the 1st grade classroom

Science....we learned about seeds, plants, and planted our own garden! History.... on our awesomely giant bulletin board!! (that we got for free)
Art... painting the classroom windows

Language Arts, reading, spelling...

Kaitlyn posts a verb on the
"verb" window

Our window of words, Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives....

And math is everywhere, just no pictures right now... :)

Pretty Sugar Cookies with marshmallow "frosting"

So, I've been a little stressed lately, and I decided to do something fun and creative to get my mind off of things. William and I made sugar cookies, but I thought I'd try something different to frost them. Even though it looks like fondant, it's not. It tastes much better. :)

Here's what I did:

I melted a bag of marshmallows with 1/4 cup of butter, then separated it into 4 small bowls. To the bowls I added food coloring, red, green, yellow, blue. Then, I added powdered sugar a little at a time until it made a soft dough. I rolled the dough out, and using cookie cutters, cut the shapes to "frost" the sugar cookies with. I just love how they turned out.

Shaving Cream fingerpainting

One of our favorite multi-sensory activities. Squirt out some shaving cream on the table. Let the kids put a few drops of food coloring of their choice, and the let them have fun!! We did this inbetween General Conference Sessions on Saturday.

Thunder in the Valley

Even though we've lived here for 14 years, we've never been to the Airshow they have at the little airport here. One of the reasons why we hadn't gone in the past is because we can always see the airshow in the sky without having to pay to walk into the actual show area. This year, Alan went with his boyscout troop to do a fundraiser for scout camp. So, we thought it might be fun to go this year. We also saw from the outside, some of the fun looking inflatable rides that they had on the grounds, so we went. Unfortunately, the inflatables cost extra, so because it was $30 just to walk through the gate, we passed on the inflatable rides. That made William really upset, but he got over it, eventually. :)

It was in the mid 80's which is too hot to be walking around on pavement in the sun, and that spoiled the fun a little, but we still enjoyed looking at the neat airplanes.

Oxbow meadows field trip

Georgia Cyber Academy had a field trip at Oxbow Meadows, an Evironmental learning center here in Columbus. The kids had fun meeting up with their other GCA friends and going on a scavenger hunt around the whole center.

Happy Birthday Oreo!!

The Oreo Cookie, which we love, turned 100 years old in March. To celebrate, we made home made oreos.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Suess!!

Here's just a few pics of our the kids (minus Sarah who was at her school), dressed up as The Cat in the Hat on Dr. Suess's birthday. We also attempted to make green eggs and ham. They tasted good, but didn't look quite right. Kaitlyn also read us all "Green Egg's and Ham" by Dr. Suess.

Making orange juice

With oranges in abundance and at a good price, we've bought alot of them in the early months of the year. It was a good thing, because many things can be learned from oranges. :) Here we are making juice from them. We also measured how much juice we could get from one orange. It was about 1/2 cup. Good thing we had alot of oranges!!

Shadow puppets

One of the unit's in Kaitlyn's science class was learning about light. She learned about things that are transparent, translucent, and opaque. To illustrate something that is translucent, Kaitlyn and William got to make a Shadow puppet theater. We stretched a white sheet across some PVC pipes, which as you know, we have in abundance, and put a lamp behind it. (You can also stretch it across chairs) For the pupets, you just cut out some distinct shapes of animals, people etc., and glue them to a popsicle stick. Here's a few pics of the fun.

1st grade science

We've been having fun in science learning about seeds. Today we made a poster depicting all the things that we've learned in the past few weeks. Her favorite part of making the poster was her own idea of what happens when there's a storm. (Not something we covered in class, but she thought it was important to include :)

School Valentine's Day Party

About 2 months ago I felt that Kaitlyn was having a really hard time not being able to interact with other kids at school since she's home with me. I thought about trying to find a school for her to go to, and I even did some more research on the schools around here. I found nothing new, and after much prayer I felt that as long as we live here, the best school for her is Georgia Cyber Academy.

So, I got onto the GCA family directory and looked up families that had 1st graders and emailed them all in hopes of being able to start doing some activities together. I got a pretty good response!! I have since formed a group on facebook called k12 in columbus.

To make a long story short, we decided to get together at the Columbus Museum for a Valentine exchange. We had close to 20 kids there!! There are actually probably around 100 kids here in Columbus that go to GCA, and 10,000 students in all of the state of Georgia. We went to the children's section of the Columbus Museum, where they have hands on activities, and it was a great place for the kids to play and get to know each other better. It was nice to see them go up to each other to give out valentine's and actually get to know some kids their age.

The party was at 2:00pm, after Sarah's school day was over (she had a half day), so she could come too.

Since the museum wouldn't let the kids make crafts there, we made some mailboxes at home to bring to the party.

Below is a picture of the flower Sarah got from her friend Blake at her school Valentine's Day party. She was really excited to get this from him. :)