LIGHTS

31.  LIGHTS-homeschool co-op and it's leaders.

Our first day at the local homeschool co-op was today.  What a great group of kids and moms!  Em is taking a bible class with the youth pastor, PE, and world geography.  Her favorite was PE!  Rach's classes are Spanish, PE, and oceanography/lapbooking.  Her favorite was Spanish class, and her Spanish name is Josephina.  I get to play too!  I'm a helper in Chemistry lab and oceanography/lapbooking.
After classes are done, the kids are able to play games with their friends in "chess club."  There is, of course, chess available to play and a variety of other board games to choose from.
The morning FLEW by, we had so much fun!

snow tunnel 2011

We actually had enough snow this year for the annual snow tunnel...

The Creative Zone

Today's project was making a sculpture with modeling clay.  The girls chose to work together and created a nesting pair of bluebirds.

The artists

The art

Keepers pinning ceremony

Today, friends and I celebrated 9 months of achievement for six precious girls.  We were able to recognize them for finishing projects in the following categories, rubber stamping, cookie baking, latchhooking (by far the most time intensive!!), and soapmaking.  For these projects, they received a gold pin. They also received a silver pin for work in learning sign language.  In addition to the pins, they earned the patch for learning the goal and purpose of this group, as well as memorizing the following verse.  To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His steps.  1 Peter 2:21 This all is part of the Keepers at Home  group we joined in October.  

The girls are anxious for the ceremony to begin!

I was blessed to have a turn to pin my girls.

Six precious girls, learning to be Keepers at Home.

It's been awhile...

Hmm, it's been almost a month since I've blogged.  We've had some wonderful family times and have been busy trying to finish school.  We will be DONE tomorrow, June 15th.  YAHOOOOO!  We are looking forward to a bit of R & R for a few weeks, before July hits!

The month of July is going to be a bit crazy, but good crazy.  We will be spending a week at Camp Good News.  I'm excited for this opportunity to volunteer in this ministry. Then comes VBS two days after we return from CGN.  I will be teaching bible to the 1-2 graders.  I love this age group! Our theme is Saddle Ridge Ranch, I'm sure it will be a great week! And somewhere in there we will try to squeeze in a few school days!  We need to keep up with math facts and handwriting at the very least.

A few pictures of what we've been busy doing:

Cousins having fun in the sun!

A short but sweet visit with Nana.

Grand-dad playing with his granddaughters.

We helped celebrate Tim and Laurie's anniversary.  We went to eat at the Sebago Brewing Company and played at Deering Oaks Park playground.

We finally got out the fishing poles and discovered there are fish in this lake...

a 13 inch largemouth and...

a 3 inch "snack"

I finally got a picture of the nesting loon!

I don't know if it's a male or female, they take turns on the nest.  And no, I didn't get as close as this picture suggests.  I have a great zoom on my camera!

And, Em and Rach finished their latch hooking projects!  They have worked diligently on them since January.  We will be finishing it to a rug this week, but I had to share the project with all the stitches finished.  They worked HARD!

Well, I guess I'll sign off for now...until next time.

Sewing Lessons

Sewing Lessons 101:

Today, my friend, Karen, taught me how to sew these pajama shorts for Rachel and Emily. It was great fun, AND I feel like I could replicate what we did! I also learned I have been threading my machine WRONG for the past 5 years! No wonder I had such a hard time using the darn thing! Anyway, the girls loved the final product and are wearing them to bed tonight. SUCCESS!

Sing and Make Music

Em and Rach did a fantastic job (yes, I'm biased!) at the Sing and Make Music Festival. Since I wasn't able to make it, Eric video taped the performance. Enjoy!