Playing for baby giggles...

Daddy and Big Sister were having so much fun!

I tried to catch a little of the action here for you:

(Make sure your volume is turned up good and loud to hear him.)

Isn't he just sooo precious!

Hope your Saturday is going as well as mine!

{{hugs}}

Oreo Cookie: Personality check!

Have you seen those cards in the stores, usually of cats or dogs, where one feature is blown up out of proportion from the rest?

This is Oreo Cookies rendition:

It is also a representation of how much she loves school right now!

Isn't she just sooo fun!!

Our Little Race Car...

Oreo Cookie turned our baby into a race car!!!

The blanket under his Bumbo chair makes it slide real nice on the tile floor!

 He even comes equipped with handlebars! LOL!!

He loves every second of it too!!

Of course, so does she!

Oh, the giggles!! :-)

Homeschool Happenings and Daily Doings

Oreo Cookie made a raft and it started a sink/float experiment in the bathroom sink. We were amazed that a piece of paper floats on the water for a pretty long time even with weight on it before it is too saturated with water and sinks.

Butterscotch Chip Cookie has been practicing being a hair stylist on her mannequin. Chocolate Chip Cookie agreed to be her real life model... very pretty and stylish don't you think!

We found this dragon fly on the sidewalk out front of our house. It is in perfect shape, but is not alive. We put it in a see through container and plan to use it in our Science class as a real-life specimen. Very Cool!

Oreo Cookie told her Uncle Rick that she would catch him a lizard for Christmas! :-o Where was I during this conversation, I don't know, but... Butterscotch Chip Cookie had our first live siting!! I tried to zoom in on him to show you where he is. He then disappeared on the other side of the wall.

He was trying hard to look like a branch. Looks like he was already on the run in the second picture.

On Monday, Butterscotch Chip made our lunch of Grilled Cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and watermelon with fruit punch to drink. What a treat!

Grandpa Cookie gave Oreo the recipe for her favorite spicy pretzels. She whipped up a batch on Monday night... YUM! We will bring them for snacks on our trip this weekend.

Tuesday Oreo Cookie was our Chef of the Day. She made some super yummy chili cheese burritos and served them with sugar snap peas and watermelon with Blood Orange Italian Soda. These were sooo good! Last night we had leftover night for supper and Oreo made the rest of them for Mr. Cookie.

He loved them too! :-)

Oreo has been helping Mini Chip learn to crawl. This morning he concentrated extra hard...

And look what happened!! He has a concentration tongue!!! :-))) LOVE IT!! TOO CUTE!!

And when concentrating that hard, you blow bubbles...

And drool... ALOT!!    :-)   LOL!!

Well, school is over for the day and we need to pack for our trip. We are leaving tomorrow morning at 4 am to go to camping and boating for a long weekend.

Tonight the girls have Awanas at a local church here and are excited to be making friends.

Our First Week of School

We have now completed our very first week of homeschool! It has been wonderful too!! The kids were excited every day to see what we would learn and so was I!!

This is the girls working on their English or Language Arts, or ILA, or whatever you want to call it. Each one of their books was selected based on their own unique interests. I guess I knew that I had done that but I didn't realize how awesome and exciting it was going to be when the girls started getting into them.

For example, Oreo Cookie has been on the newspaper crew at her school for a couple of years now... she LOVED it! The curriculum I purchased for her is Wordsmith Apprentice and in it she is a newspaper reporter writing for the paper! PERFECT! Chocolate Chip really loved going to public school and I think she was excited to find that in homeschool she gets to do the same type of worksheets that she loved doing there. Butterscotch Chip is truly a model student for her new classmates! She is working in her new Jump In by Apologia book and she loves it because it is asking her for HER interests and HER opinions and she is using her own imagination to help her write better! Over the past month or so, she has been writing some pretty awesome stories - all self-directed and on her own. In fact, she has written a book. She wants to look into publishing it, so, you will be hearing lots more about that!

Mini Chip has been a very good student also! He has been practicing that fantastic smile of his and is receiving some crawling lessons from his big sister too! LOL! Don't you just wish you could crawl inside their amazing brains and see what's going on in there during moments like this! He has also been practicing his giggle, which is AMAZING and makes everyone giggle!!

The kids insisted that we get a picture of their "new school teacher"... they are so fun!

In this picture we are remembering our trip down to Arizona from Minnesota and what states we traveled through to get here. We also talked about what each state is known for and how hard and long the trip would be to travel on a bicycle or on foot or in a covered wagon. Thank God for Mom's comfy mini van!!

This is a picture of the menu I created for lunches. It is similar to the public schools menu with an added "Chef for the Day" so that each day of school, one of the kids is making lunch at their own ability level, without help. This includes the serving and the cleanup portion of lunch as well. The menu is for 5 weeks, we will then start the menu over so I will not have to create another. It is awesome and we love being prepared and organized for the day. Announcing the Chef of the Day and the menu is part of our morning routine along with the date, day of the week, flag, schedule, etc.

This was Chocolate Chips day. She wanted to have lunch served in a self-serve line similar to public school. She served pizza rolls, veggie sticks and dip, and cantaloupe. She was so happy!

Mini Chip tried on Butterscotch Chip's glasses, TOO CUTE!!

This is a lapbook we did on the Dr. Suess book "Are You My Mother?". Chocolate Chip read the book out loud to all of us and then we talked about the different parts of the book and what we could learn from them. We got the idea and all of the print outs for this project from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/

Each one of the girls had their picture taken, their height and weight measured, along with their signatures and some other things entered into a sheet for the beginning of the school year. We will do this again at the end of the school year. They filled out a question sheet that I had made too. It has questions like what is your favorite color, movie, book, etc. and questions like: if you could go anywhere where would you go... stuff like that. They also took some time at the end of the day to journal about the first day of school. We will put these things in a 3-ring binder we will be using for notebooking our experiences this school year. In the end it should serve not only to remember memories but also to enhance our learning.
Love to you all! {{hugs}}

I'M BACK!!

You may have noticed that I have not posted in a while. Here is some of what has kept me away:

• My camera broke right after we moved in here. I can hear the gasps as this is being read! I know! It is tragic! Don't panic for me too much, I started using Oreo's camera for now and it is a pretty nice one too. Mine will soon be in for repairs...
• We didn't have internet for a little while and then we got internet but it was too slow to upload any pictures with. This issue is fixed now that we have high-speed again.
• I have felt somewhat overwhelmed at times with all that is going on... just keeping it real here. :-}
• Prioritizing... the need to have things put away and not live out of boxes. With a little one and everything being so new, this has taken a good deal of time. Later, in a different post, I will show you some pictures of the house and what we have done with it.
• Setting up our classroom, schedules, routines, and agenda's for 2nd, 6th, and 8th grade.
• Exploring and just spending time getting to know the area... grocery stores, library, post office, etc.
• Spending time with Peanut Butter Cookie and doing the things on his to-do list before he headed back to Minnesota for school.
• Scorpions... God's creatures... hmmm... God is good... scorpions are bad!!

Here is some of what you have missed:

On August 19, we had hat day... just for fun.

August 22 - Chocolate Chip made rice krispy treats for all of us. Yum!!

The "Picture of Exhaustion", yup, he fell asleep right like that! That is one hard working Cookie Man!

August 25 - Chocolate Chip put on a ballet recital for Mini Chip! Applause! Applause! :-)

August 27 - Lots of swimming!

Scorpion #2 Located on wall in the Master Bedroom... Yikes!!...

Never had to call an exterminator before... first time for everything!

Maggie getting kind of big for her britches... she really thinks she is something special!...

I don't know about you, but when I think Arizona I DO NOT think lawn mowing... thanks Peanut Butter!

Baby smiles!! Life is Good!!

World's Greatest Daddy!!

Mini Chip's first boat ride... I mean swim... I mean...

Oreo Cookie loves her veggies! And cutting them up too!

That's Peanut Butter Cookie... always monkeying around!!

August 28 Mr. Cookie's friend brought us on a boat ride on Lake Pleasant...

a lake in the desert... wonders never cease...

Got some swim time in...

Watched the sun set...

...and the storm roll in...

BEAUTIFUL!!!

Always looking for treasures!

August 29 - Apple Crisp for Peanut Butter Cookie...

Little Nemo will be swimming in our pool and reminding us of Peanut Butter Cookie while he is away.

August 30 - Checking out a local mall...

That's right! Three of them fit in there now! He is getting to be such a big boy! LOL!!

YES!! They are actually playing together! Peacefully! Why you ask... because there is no one else... :-)

Ahhh! It is blissful having a baby... until they pee in your bath water!!

LOL!!! :-) TeeHeeHee!!   LOL!!! :-)

August 31 - Wow! Dad got the TV and Blue Ray hooked up... withdrawals!

September 2 - MILESTONE ALERT!! Mini Chip rolled from his back to his tummy! So Big!!

September 4 - Doesn't get any cuter than that!!

September 6 - Happy Birthday Mr.Cookie! Breakfast in bed from none other than our new egg gourmet chef - Oreo Cookie!

Mini Chip loves his Daddy sooo much!

Happy Birthday Daddy! Look at ALL those candles Dad! Can you get 'em all?!

Tomorrow it is back to school at our house... the rest of Arizona has been back to school for a month already but we are following our Minnesota schedule so we go back September 7. {{hugs}}