June is about to end...

I can't believe it's been that long!!!

Well, back in March, I took on a project that took more time than I'd expected.

Devin and I decided to put a book of his ancestry together for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Initially we had thought that a nice little binder of names and stories and maybe some pictures. HA! A BOOK?! Obviously we didn't know what we were talking about! After we began researching, the name list grew larger and larger. We had NO idea how many names there were in our famiy tree. So for the months of March, April, and May, most of my computer time was devoted to the genealogy. It was a great fun and a great excuse for not updating my blog ;-) but really!! I thought of updating but we were keeping the genealogy stuff a surprise, so I couldn't publicly announce on-line! During this time we also had Kep's birthday party and my old friend Carol (she's not old, our friendship is old) and her husband's visit to Eureka, just to mention a few big events. I was trying to finish the cross stitching for Carol BEFORE she came, but unfortunately, that didn't happen. But I AM done with it now! I'll take a picture as soon as I frame it and post it here!

Did you know that headstones are this BIG?! This one belongs to James Madison Shelby.
In May, we traveled to Texas to see Devin's parents for their anniversary. We got to see many of our family members and got to spend some quality time, albeit short, with them. We, especially me, love so many things in Texas, by the time the plane from Austin landed in Denver for a short lay over, I was already missing Texas. We are DETERMINED to move there one day, hopefully not too long in the future!! While in Texas, we traveled to Athens and Comanche to visit Devin's ancesters' grave sites.

There's a little church called Shelby Chapel, which was named after Devin's great-great-great grand father (James Madison Shelby). It's in Athens.



There's a museum in Comanche where artifacts of town pioneers are kept. We are sure there are things that belonged to Devin's ancesters, but the museum only opens for 2 hours on Saturdays. If you want to go, call and check their hours first!

After we got back from Texas, Tes had just a few weeks to get ready for her first big ballet recital. After many rehearsals, it all came together last week!

<- This is the theater where the recital was. And this is Tes's class performing->

Oh, and before the recital was the end of year picnic for the homeschoolers!!

Christian Home Educators of Humboldt county holds an annual picnic to celebrate end of the school year. Though we continue to study during the summer, we joined the celebration! There was also used textbook sale where people can exchange, give away or sell their old stuff.

At the picnic, they even give certificates to all the kids! The parents get to request what to put on the certificate. It could be anything from learning the alphabet to completing Calculus to being nice to sister to learning to sit quietly.

This year there were 11 graduates from HS too and we also did go to the HS graduation held at a nice ball room. It was a wonderful experience. Each student's parents got to write a few paragraphs about the child and each student got to perform something (mostly piano and classical guitar).

Well, I guess that was long enough for now....

I'll promise (this time really!) to update more often!!!!!

SOooooooooooooooo, see you again very soon!!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

So it's Valentine's Day and most schools have some kind of Valentine's activity....

Well, we went to Christian Home Educators' Valentine Party! (which means no formal schooling today, not that any day is really a 'formal' schooling but you know what I mean) It was held at a church nearby. One of the homeschooling moms asked the pastor is she could use his church and he said "it's YOUR church, not mine. of course you can use the rooms!" so we did our best to give the rooms back the way we found them :) We were told to bring 40 valentines per family, so we made bookmarks with some scripture verses.... OK, I must admit, I did do most of the work, but the kids came with me to the store to buy the strings AND helped me cut some stuff out.

The kids decorated their own 'Valentine's bag' to put all the goodies. Every gift was so precious for there were barely anything that was not made by the kids themselves. And then there was this. M&M's were added by Tesla, but can you imagine what kind of time it must have taken to decorate 40 of these!!!!???!!?!? WOW!

We also brought finger foods to share! The kids had a great time eating and socializing! mostly socializing.

Then it was time for the group photo!!

You can only imagine how much effort went into keeping all the kids together and facing the same direction. This gathering was mainly for younger children, which made group photo op even more interesting. There are many older children in the group too. This Saturday is the annual Famous American day, when the children can dress up as any famous American and do a report or skit or whatever he/she wants. We've never been to one so we're looking forward to it. I also heard that there are 11 high school graduates this year! Graduation ceremony is some time in June and I've already signed up to bring some food! It is going to be so exciting!!!


Well, well that's it for now. I need to go check on the kids. They are awful quiet.......

Time traveling

It's been a relatively dry winter for us this year (note:relatively). Though it's been raining for 2 days now, it was pretty nice and dry on Tuesday, so we went out for a walk!

Our destination was Old Town Eureka. This was the main part of our town when the town first started 150 years ago. It is right next to the bay and there are many old buildings still standing. In fact there's a whole block that hasn't changed a bit since the buildings were built between 1884-1904!

While walking, I noticed a cute sign.





This belongs to a building that currently house a little restaurant/pub kind of place. It's right across the street from the pier.

It must have been beautiful in its prime! I can only imagine someone sitting by the window upstairs in turn-of-the-century outfit. I love everyday history!! California is a pretty new state and yet it's full of places that let's you imagine the past (my favorite time period is the 1920s). Can't imagine what it must be like to live back east where the history is much richer and longer. Or Europe or any other place with really long history.

Speaking of history, Kepler just studied the old Indian dynasty (Gupta) and is now moving on to the beginning of Islam. Next is China I think. He's also been reading a lot on his own. He reads over 1000 pages each month. This month he's about to finish Inkheart, which is about 530 pages long with almost no illustration at all!





Tesla got a new toy recently. It's phonics blocks. The package consists of color coded blocks with vowels, consonants, consonant blends, vowel combos, etc, activity booklet, dry erase board, dry erase marker and activity cards. She can look at the cards and try to spell the words shown using the blocks. Then she can practice writing them!



That's all for now! I better get school started!

Winter is here!!!?

So it's february and it's as warm as our summer days today! of course that only means that we're up to about 60 today :) But it sure beats the 40s. OK, so that's not much of a difference, but the temperature variance here is not much through out the year.

Not much to report, but I thought I'd stop by and write just to let the world know that we're alive. UCLA is ranked 2nd in NCAA men's basketball this week, so all is well :) But A&M is playing Texas in about 30 minutes, so we'll see how well this week REALLY is....

We're all feeling a lot better now and pretty much back to our routine. Kepler stopped going to his cub scout for a while, but we found a good den, so we are seeking to transfer. His previous den and pack were a bit too sedated for boys. They really didn't do anything boy-ish. Needless to say it was too unexciting to keep Kepler's interest. The new den we found does more boy stuff (outdoors, running, hopping, jumping, fixing bikes, you know things boys like, instead of sitting in a classroom and coloring...) PLUS he dropped wolf cub and went onto the bears which is for the third graders, so that should be closer to his interest level.

We're also considering martial arts and/or gymnastics for Kep and possibly Tes too. But there is NO authentic (?) martial arts school in Eureka, so I'd have to go and see what each dojo is like, before deciding on what to do! Gymnastics would probably work great for Kepler and there is a good gym in town that has a class for boys his age.

Sorry, no pics today, but i'll try to have some nice ones in the near future.

Well, I better go and get food ready for THE game :)

I love cats...

By now I'm sure ya'll have heard about the mountain lion attack last week in California. In Humboldt county to be exact. And yes, that's where we live! The attack took place @ Prairie Creek State Park (I think that's the name...I know how to get there, but I never really paid attention to the name...) where we've hiked several times. There are many Roosevelt elks there and the hike is very pleasant and easy, so we like to go there with the kids. Well, well, we need to rethink about this now! We always made sure that kids don't go too far from us, in case of a cat attack, but I wasn't too seriously concerned. Now I know was very wrong!

I thought about arming ourselves with firearms (is that legal?) but Devin reminded me that if the cat is attacking, by the time I get the gun out, it's probably got one of us in its mouth...and that might make it rather difficult to shoot just the cat and not the person! So perhaps the pen would work better. Of course in the case of the Fortuna couple, the pen broke, so I better take a very strong pen...hmmmmm.

Kepler always likes to collect big sticks and carry them along the trail "in case of a cat attack." I guess he was much better prepared than I thought one ought to be!

I can't believe I've been gone so long!!!

This really is becoming a monthly update!! I must get better at blogging!!!

So, Christmas came and went. We had a great time opening presents and just enjoying the family time :)

Some of the other Christmas-y events we enjoyed include Ferndale's annual tractor parade. Ferndale is a little victorian town nearby. It's the town seen in Jim Carrey's movie "The Majestic" (the movie was not great, but it really does show the town if you are curious!).

Another event was Tesla's first ballet recital. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take flash photo during the performance, so here's a picture I took before the show. She was one of the elves. We should be getting a DVD of the show in the near future....

On Christmas day, the kids really had a blast opening all the presents. Tesla is one of those people who would open ALL the presents first before really looking at each one carefully. Kepler on the other hand takes time looking at each present before going on to the next present so needless to say he took 10 times longer to open everything!!

As for the new year, we started the school back on the second, so Kepler didn't get much of a break. We finished our study of the ancient history and now we are into the middle ages, though we are still at the very beginning. Here's a picture of a Celtic ax we made in class. Of course it's only paper, but we had fun making it :) Speaking of school, we found a new (to us) math program that we really like. It is called Math-u-see. Many homeschoolers are familiar with it but we had been using more 'traditional' textbook (like in a classroom setting). But you know how boring some of those can get sometimes!!! So I decided to give this a try and Kepler absolutely loves it!!! Highly recommended for all kids! It uses blocks as a teaching aid and I didn't realize how much kids LOVE to play with blocks!! I'm planning on starting Tesla soon with the first grade level math very soon!

And speaking of Tesla, we're really doing school with her too these days. She is whizzing through her Kindergarten workbook so fast, we should be done before March! So we'll go right into the first grade stuff before too long! Why wait just because she's not 5?! She seems to be ready and eager to learn!

Reagan still LOVES trains and plays with them all the time. He does make different voices for different trains and makes up a story. It's quite amusing. I don't think he'll be reading yet, but he sure loves his abc's.

That's it for now~! Devin and I have been quite sick this past week. :P We're finally up and out of the bed, but Devin had to miss his conference in Santa Rosa today(to which we were going to go so we can visit Charles Schultz museum, but that'll have to wait for another day...Santa Rosa is where Charles Schultz lived and there are not only his museum, but many Snoopy stuff all over town from what I hear...).

I don't know about including photos all the time, but if you don't mind the photo-less blog, I'll try to update more often at least to let you all know that we're alive!

T'is the season

Can you believe it's DECEMBER!!!!!!

Time sure flies!

A week ago, we visited one of Devin's facilities to see Santa!

Yes, he works with skilled nursing facilities.

No, Santa is not one of the residents.

Every year Santa comes to visit the residents for their tree decorating party! And the children are greatly encouraged to attend, so we went! Kepler was happy to see Santa so he could personally ask him for ... petrified wood?! Yup. He asked Santa for a real petrified wood. Oooooooooooookaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. Santa was not too sure about this request, but we'll see. Reagan was a bit bewildred by the jolly old man in the red suit. But he was really good with this strange man :) Reagan probably couldn't tell the difference between all the other old people in wheel chairs and Santa. So he was polite and friendly.

On Satuday, we went to the annual truckers' parade. And we mean TRUCKS. 18 wheelers. Some with long red wood logs stacked up! And they are all beautifully decorated with many lights! Unfortunately it was pouring rain all day, so we staked out a good spot on the street where we can watch from our car. Luckily the rain let up just as the parade started! It was quite a sight!

Today, we are continuing in our holiday spirit and decorated ginger bread house! Tesla's is actually a ginger bread train. They are so quietly decorating, I thought I'd take this opportunity to blog! I'll post the completed photo later. I guess I should go and check up on them to make sure they are not icing the table!

Belated Thanksgiving Pics!

So, I got sick right before Thanksgiving! Yikes! It seems like I didn't catch a cold after all. It was just a sore throat and runny nose. Probably some sort of allergic reaction to something or another. It's been very damp so maybe it's mildew.

Anyhow, Devin went shopping the day before Thanksgiving to get ready for the Thanksgiving dinner. This year we wanted to make it more kid friendly, so all the kids helped in making the meal! It was a great fun!


After Thanksgiving, days are just rushing by as we prepare for Christmas!
We just got a new couch (the last one became a trampoline for the kids, so it was retired to the play room)! No more jumping on the couch! :) It's such a big couch + our living room ain't exactly large, so it's taking up most of the room. But it's in a U-shape with one side of "U" being a chaise. We love it!

But before the couch came, we had to move the old one out (meaning make some room in the play room) and steam vacuum the carpet! And while we were at it, we steam vacuumed the entire house! SOooooo, that's what we've been up to these days.

I'd love to write more, but the kids are practicing there circus routine. So gotta go!

We're baaaaaaack!

Well, we've been back for a week now, but we'd been busy unpacking and getting back to our normal schedule!

So, where have we been?

Here's a hint:


Devin had a meeting to attend in Palm Springs, CA! Palm Springs is about 2 hours east of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is about 6 hours south of San Francisco. And San Francisco is about 6 hours south of Eureka! So you do the math :) We knew about the meeting but Devin's work was keeping him in Eureka. At the last minute he was able to go, so he called home on Friday, Nov. 10 and said "How would you like to go to church on Sunday?" Church here refers to our old church in Concord (SF bay area) that we used to go to. Since we had to drive south anyway, we decided to stop in the bay area and visit our old church! It was wonderful!!!! The service was so calming and even the kids liked to stand and read liturgy for over 2 hours! The real commuion we took for the first time in 2 years was great too (we have communion once a month at the church we attend here in Eureka, but it's not quite the same). Praise God. And our most amazing God had arranged so that we were able to go to our chuuch's annual Pharaoh's festival. It used to be held in September, but they had moved it to November this year!! Pharaoh's festival is held at a park to introduce our church to the community and to raise money for our hopefully-soon-to-be-built new church. They sell a lot of Egyptian goods and food :) mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

We spent more time in the bay area than we had anticipated, so by the time we got to Palm Springs, it was close to 3 AM, Monday morning. Devin's meeting was Monday morning at 8 AM and unfortunately we had remembered the wrong hotel name, so we couldn't find the meeting in time. It was very warm in Palm Springs!! Even at 8 in the morning, it was HOT! It was probably in the high 70s at 8 AM, but to me that's hot!! So we decided to get out of Palm Springs before it got unbearably hot. On the way out, we saw dinosaurs, so we stopped to see.
I had seen these guys before but I had never stopped before. We found out that inside was a little creation store. They seem to be using these dinosaurs as an attraction to spread the word about creationism and Christ!

Of course, we couldn't pass through LA without going to my favorite Mongolian BBQ restaurant. I had been going to this restaurant for 16 years! Unfortunately, the ownership changed recently and the restaurant is not quite what it used to be, but the food was still great!! I got to see my Dad as well, since he now lives in LA.

From there it took us 14 hours or so I guess, to get back to Eureka :)
When we got back, raccoons had gotten into our trash can and turned it over, so we had a lot of cleaning to do. Those rascals. So we are finally back to our normal schedule, except it's been raining a lot and it's getting colder so I caught a cold ;P I'm not doing so bad, and I hope the kids don't get sick....

Anyhow, happy thanksgiving to all of you! And hopefully I'll be back soon to write some about homeschooling!!!

Belated Halloween Pics!

Soooooooooooooooo, I meant to come back more often..., but the time sure flies!! I need to get more organized or sleep less or something....

Anyhow, it's been a long time and we've been busy with school. But before we update you all on our school stuff, we must share our halloween pictures, right???

Well, we got some patterns with which we (?) were to carve the pumpkins! Well, well, kids picked whatever they wanted and I got to try my skills at carving them! The pumpkins were those that we picked at the pumpkin patch field trip! Once I was done carving, I was not too satisfied with the results, but when they were lit, they looked a whole lot better :)

Kepler and Tesla both wanted the picture of raccoon standing in a jack o'lantern, but since the pattern gets destroyed after it gets traced over once, Kepler was nice enough to let Tessie have the raccoon. He opted for a family of ghosts. Cute ones. Not scary ghosts. And Reagan got a simple design, since his pumpkin was tiny (the child had to be able to carry his/her own pumpkin home from the patch).

As for the costumes...Kepler wanted to be a starwars droid, but mom was not adventurous this year, so we went with the clone trooper outfit! I did make the blaster gun :) Tessie was a little mermaid.
And Reagan was supposed to be Thomas, but he didn't keep his costume on long enough for me to take a picture!! He did put Kepler's mask, though.

In the evening, we were going to go trick-or-treating, but the church we are currently attending was hosting a halloween carnival at a nearby fair ground, so we decided to check that out first!
Boy, were there a lot of people!! I think the whole town came to the carnival instead of trick-or-treating!!! There were age-appropriate games and a lot of candies! Silly Reagan slept through it all :) And poor daddy got to hold him for a few hours! Since the kids were having so much fun, we stayed there for 3 hours and didn't got door to door trick-or-treating. But we got more than enough candies, if you ask me!

Indian Summer!!!

(is this not an acceptable expression anymore?? maybe it's not very pc...)

Anyhow, it's been beautiful in Eureka this week!! On Monday, it actaully went up to 80, which of course is hotter than our summer days! Since we get a lot of rain in the winter, we must get as much sun as possible while we can! So, we cut back a little on the school work and enjoyed the outdoors this week!

Monday we also had Reagan's 2 y.o. check-up. He meaured 35 inches and 29 pounds. He's right about 50% and growing healthily :) Oh and Kepler had a cubscout meeting too. He's a wolfcub now. Tuesday, Kepler had his eye check-up. At this age, he is supposed have check-ups 3 times a year because the eye shape changes rapidly. Apparently his eye sight improved! Tuesday afternoon Kep has soccer practice so the other two get to play at the playground while Kepler practices with his team, King Cobras. Wedneday, Tesla has ballet lesson, so Kepler gets to read while he waits :) Then we go to the library to get MORE books ;) His goal for this month is to read 900 pages, which I'm sure he's about to reach very soon, if he hasn't done so yet.

Thursday, yesterday, was our field trip day! We belong to Christian Home Educator's group. It's a local group but very big!
We meet monthly for a park day, mother's night out, etc. etc. Yesterday we went to a nearby pumpkin patch! It was a lot of fun! We parked the car behind a large barn and from there we took a hay ride to the patch. There each child picked a pumpkin and took it home! And it was only $1 per child!!! I felt bad that that wouldn't be enough! I'll put the picture of the pumpkins after we carve them for Halloween :)
After romping around in the hay, we were off to a nearby park for more play!! In the evening Kep and Tes were off to AWANA. Last night was a Parent's night so we got to stay and watch what they do. Reagan actually enjoyed being part of the class, so I might consider letting him play there every now and then. The official starting age is 3, but Tesla has been so well behaved in the class since day 1, her teacher thinks Reagan can come to the class too (little does she know that Reagan and Tesla are two completely different people :) Though I'm sure Reagan would be just fine too.

All in all, we didn't do too much school this week, but there aren't too many beautiful days left! So we need to enjoy the sun while we can!

Oh yes! and here are the pictures from Reagan's birthday party!

I left my ____ in San Francisco...

(a sample of some stuff the kids got from daddy when we arrived in SF)















So we arrived in SF. But ironically Devin's luggage had gone to Eureka! Don't ask me how Devin got stuck in SF and the luggage didn't. My guess is that the luggage did get stuck in SF too, but the airline was too lazy to find it. So Devin had no clothes or shoes to change into nor did he have his glasses or contact lens solution! He ended up wearing his contacts for like 80 hours straight so I hope his eyes are ok. Saturday we rushed to a nearby shopping area to get Devin some new outfit. Then we went to ToyRUs which we don't have in Eureka. Kids had so much fun there (and so did the parents :) Saturday evening, as we drove around, the instrument panel went dark. uh-oh. Then we were told by kind passer-bys that our tail lights were out. uh-oh. Well, it turns out the fuse was blown. So we replaced the fuse but in an instant it was blown again. Hmmmmmmm.

Shortly before this happened, our CD player was making a funny noise. So my guess was that Reagan had put a coin in the CD player, which fell down somewhere and caused the fuse to blow. Unfortunately, it was not easy to get the CD player out, so we had to wait till the next day to do anything. The next morning, Devin took the car apart and found a nickel in the CD player!! That fixed the car problem, except the CD player is still now working. WE are still working to fix this one :)

So Sunday night we went out to SF to enjoy the touristy things at Pier 39. There is a two-story carousel at the pier and Kepler remembered. So Kep and Tes enjoyed the ride a few times. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera so there is no photo to show this :( Sorry. Next time I'll do better!! I just realized that my phone has a camera too.... oops. forgot about THAT!

Well, it got late, so we stayed another night. On Monday we took a 'field trip' to California Academy of Science. They were having a special exhibit on dinosaurs. Kepler should work as a docent! He told me all about each bone-what it belongs to, what type of bone it is, whether the dinosaur was a carnivore or an herbivore etc.,etc.... There's also an aquarium there so we got to see lots of interesting fish and a bunch of penguins.

Well, that's about it for our weekend excursion! I'll begin writing more about the school next time. Speaking of school, I must get back to school now!

Surprise!!!!

so I've been gone for a while AGAIN. But this time I have a really good reason!!
Last week, Devin was gone on a company trip to Arizona. It's their sort of annual get together to have fun and relax for a few days. This time they met at a nice resort in Scottsdale. So he left on tuesday of last week and was to return on friday. Kids were really looking forward to Dad coming home (so we can go to a restaurant as Dad promised before he left). We were getting ready to welcome daddy home by cleaning, vacuuming, scrubbing the floor etc. when I got a call from Devin.
His flight back from Arizona was to connect to another flight in Ontario and then in San Francisco before landing in Eureka. Well, you know how those flights are! Let me give full credit here to THE UNITED AIRLINES for really messing things up!! Especially those employees out in Ontario who REALLY WERE NOT HELPFUL at all!! :( First they told Devin that the flight to SF from Ontario (that's Ontario, California, not Canada) was delayed for an hour, so he'd miss the flight out of SF. When he called me I told him to just take the flight to SF and see if he could maybe catch the flight to Eureka. Afterall that could be delayed too, right? But the United employee told Devin that there is no way he would make that flight so just give it up. And since there were no other flight out of SF to Eureka that day, he got a seat on a flight the next day (saturday). But I told him that if he flew to SF on friday, we would come and pick him up in San Francisco. So he went to exchange the flight again. Now it had only been maybe 20 minutes, but when he went the United agent told him that his seat was already gone. To quote her "it's called supply and demand." Anyhow, I researched and found out that there was a flight to LAX from Ontario, then to San Fran from LA. So he got that ticket and safely made it to SF~! In the mean time we quickly packed for 3 kids, 2 dogs and a crazy mom :) and headed south to SF!!! It normally takes about 6 hours to get there because of the windy mountain roads. We didn't leave till about 5:30pm so by the time we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, it was about 11pm. Boy how the city looked so busy!!! I can't believe I used to maneuver that traffic!!! And all those people still dining in fine restaurants at 11 pm!!! Eurekans would all be asleep by 11! Anywho, I got to the hotel Devin checked into and was finally able to reunite the family ;) But the trip had just begun....

I'm getting better!

It's only been 2 days and I'm posting again!!!

Yesterday was tuesday, which meant that there was Kepler's soccer practice!
The practice is held at an elementary school in a nearby town, so while he practices, Tesla and Reagan get to play at the play ground. As soon as the soccer practice was over, Kepler ran over to join them at the play ground.

I saw other children running over to their parents with big envelopes in their hands.
?????
It was the official photos they had taken weeks earlier!!
Sure enough Kepler was holding his envelop with all the photos falling out as he tried to maneuver the jungle gym.... Well, the photos are not the most flattering of Kep, but I thought I'd post anyway. His uniform is bright, neon yellow, so it is very easy to spot his team :) Comes in handy on the game day with hundreds of little kids!

Well, well, I'm off to Tesla's ballet lesson! Gotta get all the kids ready!

it's been almost 2 months!!!

So sorry to have been gone for so long!!!!

For those of you who assumed that I went on a long vacation to the Mediterranean, I didn't ;P Sorry to disappoint ya'll, but we were actually in Eureka the entire time I've been away from the blog.

Was my computer dead, perhaps??? Nope.

So where was I??? I wish I could answer...but the time just flew!

So what have I done in the past two months???

Kepler's golf lesson ended and he actually went out on the course!!
Then Kepler joined a soccer team! He is currently playing in Mad River Youth Soccer league, which is a group north of Eureka, but we heard good reputation about the league, so we opted to go with them instead of Eureka league. He is really enjoying the game as well as time with other boys.

We also continued school till the first week of September, then took a week off for "summer vacation" so I can put everything away from last year and get ready for the new school year. Kepler is officially in second grade and Tesla is pre-K, but Kepler is doing third and fourth grade material and Tesla is doing Kindergarten work. Kepler is studying the Roman Empire now and he is really liking it! He seems to love history! He is also very excited about learning chemistry this year. For English he is beginning to diagram sentences :) Isn't that fun?! :P

Oh yes! Almost forgot to mention Tesla's birthday!! We had a birthday party for Tesla on 9/9, since 9/11 was a monday. We invited 2 homeschooling families that we enjoy spending time with and there was a total of 10 children in our modest home! But the kids were super and it sure didn't seem like there were that many people here! I should have photos from the event, but I was so busy chatting with the moms, I forgot to take pictures! Devin took a lot of pics, but I'm not sure what he did with the film.... If I see any pics, I'll post them!

September is also the beginning of cub scout year and this year we are NOT the den leaders. Since Devin's job is keeping him super busy with little sleep, much less any time for himself, we had decided that it would be best to pass the job on to someone who might have more time to devote to the scouting. We were fortunate to have found a nice parent to lead the den. Kepler is now a wolf cub and we are looking forward to more adventures this year.

Kepler and Tesla are both starting new AWANA year as well. AWANA is a church program that meets one night a week. At Tesla's level, the child is to memorize one verse a week, and at Kepler's level, the child would have to memorize at least 5 verses a week in order to complete the book and receive an award at the end of the year! So we've got a lot to work on!! It's not a serious thing to study the Bible, though. It's more for the fun in positive atmosphere.

Last but not least, I am planning on blogging much more often this year. I'm hoping to do so every day, at least to say 'hey.' Sooooooo, stay tuned for the next episode of "Days of My Children Turning."