Two Weeks Ago

Somehow I've completely failed to post for the past two weeks.

Week 16 presentations were tell about a famous artist.  Since Mollie Grace loves birds, she told about John James Audubon, the famous bird painter.  Ben talked about Charles Schultz (Peanuts comics).  Jim Davis (who drew the Garfield comics) is included in the book Discovering Great Artists, which is the source text for our CC artist study, so Ben decided Charles Schultz met the criteria for famous artist

 The last week of January, we had beautiful warmer weather so we spent a lot of time outside and rode our bikes a couple of days.  Ben and his friends call this area "The Canyons."  It's an eroded area along the side of the rode in our neighborhood.

 Mollie Grace made great strides with her reading and read several "Bob" books by herself.  As a reward, we used a couple of Book It certificates and had lunch at Pizza Hut followed by a visit to the zoo on Friday.

 Ben is drawing his own comic strips.  This is Mike the dog.

Mainly Snow

What's really random about this outfit is that Mollie Grace said she was a pirate.

The Weather Channel forecasted 3-5 inches of snow for our area Friday.  It turned out to be more like < an inch.  However, we were still excited about getting any snow.

 "Sledding" down the slide on cardboard.

 Annie walked around in the snow a bit and then we went back inside where it was warm.

 Ben and Mollie Grace probably wished we didn't homeschool last week.  The public school kids only had a three day week with Martin Luther King Day and a Snow Day; however, we did school all five days.

 Mollie Grace really wanted to build a snowman so we scraped all the snow off our cars and built these three mini snowmen.  They've been protected on our porch and only melted this morning.

 Ben wanted to build his own snowman.

 They had hot chocolate in front of the fire several times Friday to warm up after playing outside.

 Saturday afternoon we were invited to a skating birthday party.

This is what Mollie Grace really looked like a lot of the time.

Everyday Life

 Can you find Mollie Grace in this picture?  She's camouflaged.

 On Saturday the girls and I made "cloud dough" by mixing flour and baby oil.  It was messy but they enjoyed playing with it.

 Sunday was our anniversary.  We celebrated Saturday night.  John grilled steaks,  Mollie Grace and I made twice baked potatoes and veggie kabobs, and Ben baked a two-layer chocolate cake.  He baked and decorated it by himself.  All I did was pour the mixture into the pans.

 I haven't mentioned soccer much, but it's still going on through February.  They practice twice a week in the middle school gym.  For the past two weeks they've practiced barefoot with really hard balls.  The purpose is to make them kick with the right part of their feet.  It hurts if they kick with their toes.

 Telling one of Aesop's Fables for CC presentation Tuesday.

 Setting up for his presentation.  He made props.

 Art project.

 Science experiment.

 Ben is nearest the ball in the bright yellow shoes.  They won this week 5-0.  They've lost a couple of games, but they are pretty good.  They are learning a lot and Ben loves it.

 Just an idea of what the field looks like.  To score, you hit the big red square with the ball.  That is the only time play stops.

Ben recorded Annie singing Jesus Loves Me.

Hunting Camp

John took last week off to hunt.  On Monday and Tuesday, we had dance, soccer practice, CC, and a soccer game so we stayed home.  However, on Wednesday we went down to the camp and spent a couple of days in our travel trailer.  Both Ben and Mollie Grace got to hunt with John.  Nana and Grandaddy were at the camp so we got to spend a lot of time with them.  Nana and Grandaddy played many hands of Go Fish and Old Maid with Ben and Mollie Grace.  

 Doing school work in the trailer.  After two holiday weeks, we had to get school work done!

 Mollie Grace is wearing Ben's hunting clothes.

 Using her Christmas binoculars.

 I looked out the window and saw John and Mollie Grace walking back to the camp.  Mollie Grace is posing for a picture on the trail camera.  They went out in the early afternoon and sat in a stand near the camp.  They didn't hunt for long.

 John killed this deer on Friday morning.  John came out of the woods and got Ben to go back with him to bring the deer out.  Ben took this picture.

Mollie Grace was fascinated by the deer and went with John and Grandaddy to take it to the processor.

Hunting

Below are a couple of pics John took of he and Ben in the deer stand last week.  Ben is playing games on the Kindle.  They saw one spike.

A New Year

We started out the new year at the hunting camp.  John and Ben hunted Friday afternoon.  We spent the night in our travel trailer and came home Saturday afternoon.