Happy Birthday Faith Abigail!

We also helped our friend Faith Abigail celebrate her 3rd bithday. She just finished unwrapping the best birthday gift ever.... a kid sized shopping cart! Her grandparents hit the jack pot with this gift. All the kids were very proud to pose with her for this awesome birthday party picture. Thank you Melissa for sending it to me!

And yes, this was another BEAUTIFUL day!

Happy Birthday Grace and Jacob!

We helped our friends Grace and Jacob celebrate their 5th birthday on October 3. The party was lakeside at a local park and the day couldn't have been more perfect. For some reason, I only got a picture of Jake by the cake...

I'm guessing twin sister Grace must be right outside the border of my picture... Good thing I wasn't the official photographer. ;-)

Here is our crew checking out the fish in the lake.I asked Lia to hug her friend Clare... and she did!

And a pumpkin pinata for the kiddos. Fun party!

2010 Family Retreat

We attended the family retreat again this year with families from our parish. Circle Lake is such a beautiful retreat center and we had great weather all weekend. We shared a cabin with another family. This cabin had two sleeping rooms. One with 5 bunks (for our family) and another with 7 bunks (for the K family.) It was cozy! Here we are on our first morning ready to head out for the activities. You can see the chapel here. What a beautiful little church.

And swans!

The kids had some scheduled activities while the grownups got to listen to talks by Bert Ghezzi on being a catholic family and learning from the saints. Here are the kids putting on a little performance for us. My sweet daughter sang and danced with the most gusto. She always finds a way to have fun. This year, we were blessed to have volunteer college students from St. Mary's at Texas A&M. The college kids took care of the kids during our talks and helped to organize all the family games and activities. They were awesome to serve in this way and helped to make it a really fun weekend.

After our morning talks, we hit the playground. David and Lia remembered how much fun this place was and took off running as soon as Noah's Ark came into view. Lia called it the 'bible boat' from her children's bible.

Mary K., Emily and I went exploring that afternoon as well. We found Mary's Garden and walked the rosary path.

We clipped roses in the rose garden. Shears are provided at the entrance and the girls loved bringing the flowers back to our cabin.

And it was awesome to be able to cross the bridge and walk to church from our cabin. Beverly was sweet to try and take a family picture for us. Unfortunately, our kiddos didn't want to pose for us so we just got one of us.

Isn't this fire pit impressive. It was part of the common area of our cabin. It would be really cozy with a fire in the winter.

And here are our sweet 2 year olds. Lia and Cecellia were helping to wash and dry the dishes as we cleaned the place up to go home.

Homeschool PE

We have homeschool PE on Tuesdays. It is hard to believe how many kids come to this! I'm guessing they have about 150 kids... it is really impressive. David is in the pre-school class and loves it. Lia isn't old enough to be enrolled officially, but the teacher allows her to join in anyway and they both have a ball. It is really sweet. If you look closely, you can see him (in his longhorn shirt) throwing up his arms to shout, "Excercise is Fun!"

Emily is in the 6-8 yr old class. They are playing kick ball here. This day was rainy so the kids had to play in the gym, but normally they would be outside. Emily is manning 2nd base behind the coach.

Happy Birthday Colin

My friend Ingrid is so creative! She threw her big 5 year old son, Colin, a Super Mario Brother's party. I love the decorations and guess what the kids are doing here? They are jumping on a massive roll of bubble wrap. Great idea!

These sparkly princess tiaras were the best party favor ever. Lia insisted on wearing it all day and even to bed. Girls!

And of note to Nana - Lia is all about that sweet blue butterfly outfit you gave her a while back. She is wearing it a lot these days.

Double Dave's and an Outdoor Movie

What do you do for fun with 3 small kids on a Friday night?

It isn't hard to please my family. They dearly love to go to Double Dave's and never tire of watching them make the pizza. After dinner, we headed to the YMCA for an outdoor movie. This month they were showing Air Bud and it was a beautiful night. Dog movies seem to work well with families. There was free popcorn and lemonade too. I think David served himself 12 times and probably spilled about half that amount. Luckily, it doesn't bother me as much when we're not at home. ;-)

Nature Club and Fine Arts in the Park

All of our fall activities have begun so we are very busy these days! Once a month, our homeschooling group has Nature club and Fine Arts in the Park. Nature Club meets first and we learned all about soil and composting. My little scholar arrived early and read all the information on all the posters before class. She was ready for her class and volunteered lots of answers and seemed to really enjoy the content. Like last year, they are learning the information necessary to become Junior Master Gardeners. After their talk, they made their own compost mix for snack... there was brown sugar for sand, chocolate chips for bugs (I guess), peanut butter for clay, and gummy worms to airate the soil... you get the idea. It was cute and the kids really liked the fact they could eat it. Then they went on their nature walk and collected composting materials... or something like that. Emily is finally old enough to go off with the group while I stay with the little ones. It certainly makes things easier for me.
:-)
After Nature Club, we eat lunch and the kiddos play at the park while we wait for Fine Arts to begin. Little Lia is getting to see quite a bit of her friend Clare. I love that they are starting to recognize each other. Aren't they sweet?

For Fine Arts, we gathered together to learn about the artist Giotto and listen to the music of Bach. This year, since our group has grown so much, the kids were divided into 3 groups and rotated through 3 stations. They crushed colored chalk with rocks and mixed it with an egg wash to make their own paint. Then they got to make their own masterpieces with the paint they made. At another station, they listened to the music of Bach while learning about his life, made white wigs out of cotton like they wore during his time and tried singing in a round. At the last station, they looked at some of Giotto's famous paintings and listened to some children's literature about his life.

I love how the little ones keep busy like the big kids. Lia and Clare are very busy coloring their own masterpieces here.