Thanksgiving in Review

We hosted a small family dinner for Thanksgiving this year, it was cozy and everything I ever could have hoped for. Seeing my family healthy, happy, and united brings a salty little tear to my eye. Thankful does not begin to describe my overwhelming sense of gratitude for the blessings we received during our challenging time this year. Over the course of a three month period we experienced concerning health troubles, job loss, the birth of our dear baby H, two year molars, a new job, moving out of state, losing our family pets, and essentially starting over. There is no denying the amount of crazy that went down in that time frame but I am thankful for the knowledge gained from those experiences. Most importantly, *I* learned what it means to minister within your own community and how to ask for and receive help. Humility is beautiful.

I was so enmeshed in the joy of turkey day and cooking that I failed to take snapshots of our individual dishes but our menu looked something like this:

Thanksgiving 2011

 Greenburg Smoked Turkey

Creamy Mashed Potatoes

Sausage apple cranberry dressing

Fresh Corn

Greenbeans from grandpa's garden

Cranberry Compote
Sweet Potato Casserole with Toasted Marshmallows
Homemade Crescent rolls

H takes mashed potatoes seriously

 My brother flew  into town over the holiday, he's a good little brother and I often miss his quiet presence. I don't see him often due to the demands of college on the East Coast and his military career, so our time together is extra special. He got a kick out of being called "Uncle", by his eldest nephew for the first time. Here are some pictures of him on our post turkey walk along the Paducah flood walls.

 

 

3 generations of men; Grandpa, son, grandsons.

Choo-Choo
All Aboard
next stop 
Christmas

Week 4: Thanksgiving

Theme: Thanksgiving

Vocabulary word: Autumn

Color: Lavendar

Number:4

Letter:D

Nursery Rhyme:Lavender's Blue

Field Trip: Thanksgiving celebrations with family.


This week revolved around a lot of cooking lessons in the kitchen (we hosted a Thanksgiving meal) other highlights include;daily nature walks observing the change in season, making a Thanksgiving grocery list with pictures and pointing out what we needed in the grocery store, setting the table, making lavender spray for our curly hair, lavender play dough, a turkey hunt, and learning about what it means to be thankful.

This Sausage apple cranberry dressing is significant to our weekly lessons because A assisted in every step of making it. First and foremost he washed his hands, he kneaded the bread, broke it, and spread it on our on the baking sheet to toast it. He even helped stir the browning sausage, chop the onion and celery with a real chef knife, and pour the stock over the mixture. 

Can you say Luh-duh? Now say it over and over again in a falsetto voice and you might be able to pronounce the name of A's turkey.

These little hands have a great future ahead of them.

Perhaps those little hands have a future in Turkey farming because they sure did enjoy plucking Luh-duh Luh-duh Luh-duh Luh-duh Luh-duh Luh-duh. Luh-duh

The letter D is for,"Die Turkey, Die! I eats you for Thanksgiving om nom nom". Not. (True story, kid loooves birdies and won't eat them.)

In other news, the lavender mist is really helping the frizz!

 At this point in craft time Mama turns on Turkey In the Straw banjo interlude and the crowd goes wild.

Lessons in cleaning up before guests arrive are vital.

2011 First Snow

Western Kentucky's first snow of the Holiday Season didn't wait until December to strike, good thing we rushed out to play because the snow melted off within 2 hours.

Black and White mode on my camera almost made it look like a winter wonderland

Truth be told, is was the most "colorful" snow I've ever experienced. It's like God decided to paint autumn with some powdered sugar.

'A' modeling the new winter coat he picked out. Purple camo accentuated with orange zipper and faux fur rimmed hood keep this toddler warm and stylish.

And of course, no toddler camo winter coat is complete without fireman boots

Baby's first snow

"eh eh oooh ahh"

Ba-by it's cooold outside!

Taking it all in.

Decides to haul neighborhood cat around in the wagon.

Trying to capture the huge chunky flakes. Photo just doesn't do them justice.

In celebration we followed up the snowy morning with an afternoon trip to the library, 22 Christmas books later, and a large peppermint latte from a favorite coffee shop, I think we are officially ready for winter.

Week 3: Eyes

Theme: Eyes

Vocabulary word: Iris

Shape: Diamond

Color: Blue

Number: 3

Letter: C

Nursery Rhyme:Lavender's Blue

Field Trip: Optometrist

Construction paper facial features taped on the wall started out as a fun way to play "pin the eyes on the face". A however, did not like the blindfold and turned our game into a discussion of feelings; "Mama the face is happy make him smile, The face is sad make him frown, This face is silly, etc...". We closely observed the eyes and learned how to identify the iris and pupil. Eventually this turned into a game of face having boogers, a cough, and other yucky elements. The big finale and end of face as we knew him was when he abruptly got his brows and lip waxed. Ouch! 

Shadow play was an activity we did to learn more about light refraction.A sheet simply draped over our shelving unit and a shadeless lamp provided two hours of entertainment.

Bed Sheet draped over shelving provides backdrop for our shadows.

What am I?

Perfectly timed shot of A's jumping shadow.

Learning about shadows and bending light, opened up the opportunity further our discussion about color. We sat up lamps with different colored light bulbs and mixed the emitted colored light on our sheet.

Mama had a follow up appointment with her eye doctor who was kind enough to let A look through the phoropter and do an activity with a pediatric Snellen chart. The whole car ride home he was chanting "cover right eye, cover left" and following through with the motions. He's been pointing to all the characters in his books and differentiating between their left and right eyes.

Eye week was a lot of fun. I have a feeling we will be finding googly eyes, from our craft projects, for a very long time.

Fruit for Thought and a Serial Killer

 Grabbing a pomegranate out of the fridge I began to remark how beautiful the garnet gem appeared, quite frankly it was attractive, sexy. I vaguely remembered reading about it in the Bible so I looked up the passage and it looks like God intended it to be that way.

Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine has budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened, and the pomegranates are in bloom: there will I give you my loves. - Song of Solomon 7:12

What a neat revelation, Amen! Then after a moment of reflection I violently hacked it. Why I busted out the unnecessarily giant knife, we may never know.

Look, Blood Juice Splatter!

Mmm, yummy! Take a picture.

... the gruesome scene reminded me that I'm 2 seasons behind on Showtime's drama Dexter- simply summarized, "a likeable Miami police forensics expert moonlights as a serial killer of criminals who he believes have escaped justice."- IMDB

The moral of this story is pomegranates are awesome, I'm easily distracted, and it should be illegal to blog at midnight.

Have a great weekend,
Me

Velocity

Physics, geometry, physical activity, the skate park is a home educator's mecca; our Monday morning shenanigans are starting to attract a small crowd.