Homeschool Science Fair

Eric just participated in our local homeschool science fair. His project was on "Intrusive and Extrusive Igneous Rocks". This was a great experience for him, and I think he learned a lot, not only about his project (we all learned something from his project!) but also from the process of preparing his presentation, practicing it several times, and then being flexible at the fair to be able to answer the judges questions as well as questions from his peers. He also got lots of great ideas for next year. He got to set up next to his friend, Liam, who was also doing a presentation on Rocks and Minerals, so they enjoyed learning from each other's projects. Everyone got a certificate and a book of encouraging comments from those who looked at the project, and a judging sheet which showed ways they did well as well as ways to improve. If you ever have the opportunity to participate in a science fair with your child, I encourage you to do it, even if science is not your strong point! It really was lots of fun and not very difficult once we decided on a topic.

Leah and her new stroller!

Well, Christmas is over and we have had one of our most relaxing and enjoyable Christmas holidays yet as a family! Dennis' office closes for the week between Christmas and New Year's, so it has been really nice to have him around and both of us have had a chance to get lots of little projects done and do some fun things together as a family. Not to mention the chance to sleep in almost every day last week! (The kids actually slept in most days as well...which is very unusual!)

Christmas Eve morning, we had our own little impromptu Nativity play with the kids. It was very fun... Mommy and Daddy were Mary and Joseph, Eric and Bay doubled as shepherds and wise men, and of course Leah was the angel, who appeared to the shepherds and said, "Baby Jesus", which means of course, "come see the baby who has been born!" It is fun now that they are all old enough to do something like this together, and I am sure it will get better each year! Christmas Eve morning, my brother, Andy, flew in to town, and that afternoon, we all went to the Christams Eve service at church together, including Dennis' mom. Our church has 5 services on Cmas Eve, and I accompanied 2 of them on the piano. We then all came home and let the kids open a present and then my brother read to them before bed. Christmas morning everyone came over to our house for the activities. Leah had a great surprise for her under the tree, a doll stroller...and she was very excited to see it! Dennis was already upstairs, I was still down, and as Leah climbed the stairs and saw her stroller under the tree, she called out, "Daddy! Daddy!" in her cute little voice! She was so excited that she then proceeded to call out to me, still downstairs, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" It was a perfect moment of sheer joy that we will not forget :)

Anyways, after all the gifts were opened and everyone played with the kids for awhile, everyone left for the afternoon and we had a nice quiet afternoon before Christmas dinner together that evening.

Later on that week, our family and my parents and brother took a trip into D.C. We visited the Air & Space Museum, took the metro out to Bethesda for Dennis' celebratory graduation dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, visited the new WWII memorial (which is a beautiful memorial, and perfectly situtated on the mall) and then strolled through the National Christmas tree exhibits. It was a great day, the kids had a ball and everyone was completely wiped out from all of the walking by the time we got home late that night!

There are more pictures of everything if you follow our webshots link to the Christmas 2006 pictures.

A couple of the things we got accomplished the following week were:

I re-upholstered our living room couch, a project in the makings for about a year now! I originally was going to sew a slipcover, but my mom convinced me that re-upholstering would be much easier (not that it was at all easy!) I actually am 90% done with the project, currently waiting for 4 more yards of fabric to come in the mail as I calculated incorrectly and could not cover the back pillows. A separate post will follow later with details for those who are interested in my laborious project!

Dennis built a mantel shelf for over our gas stove! We actually realized we would like to have someplace to hang the stockings and so we quickly drew up plans for the mantel and he built it with time to spare on Christmas Eve! We are easily using up that black walnut from my dad's tree that fell 15 years ago!

Dennis made the next addition to our dining table, a bench for the kids to sit on instead of chairs! The bench is identical to the table, but in smaller scale. Eventually we will have chairs to match as well, but the bench is great for the kids and also for squeezing in a bunch of people when we have a crowd!

All in all we all agreed it was a great week, and as I write this, I am up early getting ready to start Eric back to school and routine again.

Hooray for Dennis!!!!

Well, we are so proud of Dennis and had a great weekend at his graduation! Heather's mom made it down for the ceremony as well. We spent a whirlwind of a time seeing some friends whom we hadn't seen in awhile, and hitting some of the local favorite eateries...but due to Leah catching a stomach bug, our visiting was cut short and we headed home. Now, as soon as those grades are transferred and a diploma comes in the mail, we will all breathe a sigh of relief!





We also can't believe that Christmas is just around the corner. We have all been enjoying getting ready-decorating our tree this week (although it is not huge, it is the biggest one we've ever gotten), decorating sugar cookies, lots of other baking and cranberry tea making (recipe to follow), gift wrapping, etc... Thankfully this year we have not felt the Christmas rush, and have really enjoyed the season of advent as a family each night at dinner time.

Cranberry Tea Recipe

1 package of cranberries, boiled in 6 quarts of water till popped and soft

1/2 gal. apple cider

1/2 cup orange juice

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 1/2 to 2 cups sugar, depending on taste

2 T. mulling spices

2 sticks cinnamon

orange slices, optional

Strain the cranberries through a mesh strainer, saving the water. Mash the cranberries and push as much of the pulp throught the strainer as possible. Combine in a crockpot or on the stove in a large pot set to low: the cranberry juice, apple cider, orange juice, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon. Tie the mulling spices in a cheesecloth packet or something similar. Sometimes I add fresh orange slices to the pot for added flavor and it looks pretty if serving from the crock, but is not necessary. Brew for several hours (I usually let mine sit in the crock pot all day). Once it has cooked, serve directly, or to save, strain the juice into a container and refrigerate, pouring each serving into a microwavable mug and microwaving to re-heat.

Boy Genius in Training!

Here is a picture of Dennis trying to get anyone to do his math homework for him to avoid doing it himself!!! Just kidding, but Dennis is very glad to have his math class completely finished and just one more test in another class and hopefully he is done for good! We have been doing so many things lately, it has been hard to keep track of them all, but I'll try to summarize a bit:

Kitchen: Heather and her mom finally finished putting up all of the tomatoes from this summer's garden. All in all, it was a year for records: in addition to the salsa already done, 44 quarts of spaghetti sauce and another 15 quarts of just plain tomatoes to be used for soups, etc. There is a picture of HALF of the spaghetti sauce and tomatoes on my webshots page. Now, to find a place to store it all until it gets used up! Next kitchen project, Christmas cookies and other holiday baking with the kids...one of my favorite places to be is in the kitchen!

School: Eric has been plugging away at some very exciting school projects this December. He made a glacier for science and we tested it in the sandbox. We have done fingerpainting for art, and even Leah had fun with that (Bay doesn't like getting his hands messy!) Eric is working on a big written report on the life of George Washington, which is turning out very nicely. We are in the planning stages of a science project for a science fair in January. We hope to be able to successfully tan a squirrel hide our cats brought in for us!

Advent: We spent an afternoon recently at our church's advent workshop. All of the kids got to do lots of Christmas crafts, and Eric made our family a beautiful Advent Wreath for use with family devotions. He even got up and sang some Christmas karaoke (though it took a little bribing to get him up there). We also just went to Eric's home school Christmas music program, which was great.

Field Trip to D.C.

Lunch break in front of the G.W. Memorial

We recently took a field trip with our homeschool coop to D.C. The kids and I took the metro and got off at the Archives station, where Eric got to see the originals of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, all of which he has been studying about in his Social Studies Curriculum. We then met up with our group for a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Most interesting fact from that tour: The Bureau prints about $700 mil a day, 95% of which replaces worn currency that is out of circulation! We then made the long trek back past the archives and spent a little bit of time in the Gallery of Art. Why did we want to go there? Well, since the kids are such big fans of Little Einsteins, they wanted to see some of the art that they are familiar with from their favorite cartoon :) Although it was a cloudy and rain-threatining day, we really enjoyed ourselves, wore out our feet, and learned a lot! I am including Eric's journal entry from his field trip journal. If I can get my hands on my mom's scanner, then maybe you'll see a scanned image of his artwork he drew from the day.

In his own words: "Yesterday, me, Mom, Bay and Leah went to Washington D.C. We drove up to the Metro station and rode for half an hour! When we got off the Metro, we walked across the street to the Archives. We saw the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and lots of others. I liked it a lot. Then we walked to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and saw them make money! Then we walked to the National Gallery of Art. My favorite one was a boy and a shark. We saw the presiden't motorcade go by and then we went back to where we started, the Metro! I think I had a great time at Washington D.C. I hope I can go there again."

Outside the Archives building

In the National Gallery of Art

Snack while waiting for the train

68 Pints of Salsa!!!

My mom and I just finished making and canning 68 pints of salsa from our garden tomatoes this summer. We have found that it is easier to cut up and freeze the tomatoes as they come off the vines, and then turn them into salsa and spaghetti sauce in the fall, when it is more conducive to heating up the house with the canner. We had a bumper crop of tomatoes this year, and this is only 12 gallon bags worth, there are at least that many left to turn into spaghetti sauce next week. I am including our recipe, it started out as a family fun magazine recipe, and has been tweaked over the years to make it more like we enjoy.

Salsa

4 large tomatoes
1 diced jalapeno pepper (I use my own pickled variety, but fresh works too)
1 4 oz. can tomato paste
1 cup fresh chopped cilantro, or 2 T. dried
1 diced onion
2 T. lime juice
1 t. cumin
1 t. salt

Chop tomatoes, onions and jalapeno. Combine all ingredients. Serve fresh or process in pint jars at 10 lbs. pressure for 25 minutes. 1 recipe makes approx. 2 pints.

Leah's Striped Dress

Here is Leah's latest outfit. I think it turned out pretty good, it went even faster than the last one since I was familiar with the pattern. I made the little headband with some extra fabric. Another change I made was adding the loop and button on the back instead of a hook and eye.

I have a friend who asked me if you can sew with knit without having a serger; it seems that you can. Although I would say the the places where I had the most difficutly with it being a knit was at the beginning of each seam, the fabric wanted to bunch up and despite my feed dogs being all the way up, it didn't want to feed. I usually had to start sewing a little further down the seam and then backstitch to catch the beginning. Trial and error. I think the other advantage was that this is a pretty heavy duty knit, meaning it is fairly thick, like a heavyweight t-shirt.

Well, she sure is cute and I sure am enjoying sewing for her!!!