Great thing to do outdoors......

I just had my first experience with Geo-caching, and let me just say that it was a great experience for my family. I took T (5th grade) K (Pre K) and Tiny T (8 months) .This was the funnest thing we have done yet this school year. We learned that we make life what it is in our attitudes. We went into this as an experience.
We searched the Geo-Cache website by zipcode for one in ours. We found one that was by a rope swing, we thought was right up the street mountain from us. We programmed the coordinates into our GPS and well, we were wrong. It was a couple of miles down the road. We all loaded in the car and ended up driving there. We got as far as we could drive then we got out and began walking, still following our GPS. It said it was 0.2 miles from our car. I can totally do that carrying a baby in my arms and helping my 5 year old. Little did I know that we made a few mistakes;
1. We took the wrong trail.
2. It was 0.2 miles in a straight line from my car, that mileage estimate does not take into consideration the switchbacks, nor the slope.
3. We did not make a special bathroom break before we left. (We thought this would be quick)
4. We did have snacks and a drink, but we LEFT IT IN THE CAR.

Now I am sure that all of these mistakes would have normally made for one grumpy un-fun trip by all, but as I said we went into this as an experience. We were partially up the mountain trail when we spot a stripped rock.
We did really want to find the Geo-cache, but we were there for the hike. I was VERY unprepared for the challenge.
That was one of the clues on the website. We felt we were close, so we kept going. We really were wishing we had packed a snack. Look at this great picnic spot. That is the Great Salt Lake in the background.
We decided we had been out long enough and we had to go to the bathroom so we decided to give up head back. We see the other trail. The one we think we should have taken. So we decide to head back on that one, it has just got to be faster. We began hiking away from our car (which I could still see) thinking that we were headed to a switchback. We saw that it would need to go around this part of the mountain. So we press on. We keep getting farther from our car. We ended up in a neighborhood that is by a park we frequent. I decided to call my husband to come get us and drive us to our car. He was in the middle of some yard work (YEAH!), since it wasn't a complete emergency he said he needed 10 minutes until he could leave. I told him to just call us before he left, we might be back to the car by then. So we began walking through the neighborhood, toward our car, and it was a circle. The only way to get through is right through their yard. I did not feel comfortable with that. So I check my GPS on how to get back to my car. It tells me to go clear out and around this neighborhood (about 1 mile). I can see my car, approx 250 feet away. Remember that we still have to go to the bathroom. We see a "sort of" trail. We decided to try it. (yes, even after our previous short cuts were the long way) It was cutting behind the houses. Then we see a fence. Ughh, T hikes ahead and sees a path through the fence. So we forge on. My husband now calls and is ready to leave. I tell him to wait, we are so close, I will call him back. We keep hiking, and by now Tiny T, is hungry. What, another fence. T hikes up faster than us, and there is also a path. We hike down the rest of the trail for to the car. We made it. We hurry home and go to the bathroom. That took us about 2 hours. But the whole time we were laughing and making jokes and enjoying nature and each other.

We go pick up E (3rd grade) from her Girl Scout Cookie Booth. We decided not to give up, but that we were not prepared to do the harder one. So I programmed another one into our GPS at a park that I knew well. We begin searching the park (the GPS coordinates tell us exactly were to go). The website told us this was a hard one because it was small. We were searching where we thought it was, it was a very nice day, but getting cooler, and once again we were unprepared E was the only one with a jacket and she had shorts on. The rest of us had no coats. It was getting to cold for us. And we hadn't found it yet. We once again decided to head back. It was dinner time as well.
After dinner we decided we REALLY wanted to find one. So we check the website by zipcode and this time we chose easy level and easy terrain. Basically we just wanted the find by now. We program this one in our GPS and headout. We make it there in 3 minutes, and my GPS leads us right to it. Whoo hooo! The kids are so excited.
They had each brought an item to trade. We signed the log and put it back. What fun we had, and now they can't wait to go out and do more.



Note: This post is definitely not to discourage you from trying this. It was to show you that we had a great time and great attitudes through trying times. I am often known for biting off more than I can chew. I definitely recommend doing this is this spring weather. On the website notice the stars. Notice how difficult the find will be. Looking back, I actually couldn't have planned it any better. It taught us all many lessons; in preparedness, in how to deal with frustration, in when to swallow pride and ask for help, in giving up, but pressing on.

I have some amazing memories from this day, and will always remember it.

St. Paddy's Day!

We started the day off with a good book, St. Patrick's Day In The Morning. We read this as we ate breakfast. It was a great book for all ages in my house, we all loved it. Then we hurried through our schoolwork, we had a very exciting day planned.


We had to have lunch first. We had shamrock sandwiches, but when we came in there was a tiny bite taken out of them and green leprechaun dust was left. It looked like he had jumped in our milk. We drank it all and still did not find him. We decided he must have went back to the end of the rainbow. We would look later on, as we were busy getting ready to go swimming!

How crazy is this, Tiny T fell asleep while in the pool swimming. This cracks me up!

Later when we were home we had a little art lesson in primary and secondary colors. K was so proud of herself that she guessed what colors made purple. This is us making cupcakes for dessert. She was very great and kept the surprise a surprise. I am so proud, because she was so excited and just wanted to share it!



A few hours later......

For dinner we had green mashed potatoes, green rolls (they were green, but now I see it did not show up in the picture very well, and I already ate it, so I will not be taking another picture), gold nuggets (corn), Salisbury steak, and pistachio pudding, yummy!

And of course for dessert we had cupcakes, rainbow ones, with a little green leprechaun and some gold coins.

I got the recipe from my Family Fun Magazine subscription that I bought for free with Swagbucks.

We had such a fun day. My kids really loved it. They told me many times over.

Home School Hop Week 6.... Random

1. What time is it right now? I am embarrassed to admit it, but it's 12:14 am. I am very much a night owl.

2. What are you wearing? I am still in my clothes from today, Cute camo pants and a t-shirt.

3. What is your mood? Tired and enjoying the peace and quite of a sleeping house.

4. What is one thing your children learned today? They learned that it feels to work hard, as a team and get a great sense of accomplishment.

5. What did you (or are having) for dinner? We had pizza, my husband had a pizza party for a jr basketball team he coaches. So we just joined in on that.

6. What's one book you are currently reading? Curly Girl. Which by the way, I highly recommend if you have or know someone with naturally curly hair.

7. What behaviour (in people) is the most common but also the rudest? Entitlement.

8. What can you see out of your nearest window right now? Tree's and mountains! Yeah, I love where I live.

9. What are you currently praying for? I feel it is a little selfish, but I pray for myself and ask if I am doing the right thing with my family! I also pray for my friends baby. I think tonight I will pray for something more!

10. What is your favourite hot beverage? Hot Chocolate. I love Starbucks Hot Chocolate the best!

Homeschool Hop #5 What's my style?

Our Worldwide Classroom is hosting a blog hop. This week the theme is "What's my style?"

I will start out by letting you all know my story.

My children are 11 - 5th grade boy, 9 - 3rd grade girl, and 5 - preschool girl. This is our first year homeschooling. They have all been in public school up until October of 2009. I had many promptings from The Lord, and many signs that led us here. I will share a few of those with you. K - my preschooler, was in public school preschool when she was 3, I tried to get her into the school by us, but it was already full, so I drove her to another school a little further away. I really liked her teacher, so did she. I had to pay $80 a month, it was held at a public school and put on through the district, but they still charged. She only went 2 days a week for 3 hours each day. She was pretty shy. Then they had to close the preschool due to low enrollment. They offered me to move her to another school. I chose the one by us, since that was my first choice. They only had afternoon openings, so I took it. Then it began getting hard on both of us. She was to tired during school she would just want to lay down and rest. That was not allowed at school, they wouldn't let her. Plus I was not paying $80 a month for her to sleep at a school. She would come home very cranky, and if I let her nap, she would not go to bed at night. Then her teacher had some pretty disruptive kids in the class and would need to be stern with them. That in a way scared K. She began to wet herself at school, because she was afraid to go to the bathroom. I just decided for what I was paying and the complex she was getting, I could do better. So I pulled her out. Now on to my 3rd grader, she was very peer dependent. All she cared about was recess and playing with friends, she got into trouble often for talking. She was put into a gifted program due to her being so smart when she would apply herself. She did not "get" back into it because of her talking. I knew there was to much socializing going on at school for her. Next my 5th grader. He is at the other end of the social scale. He was anti social, and all the distractions at school bothered him, and made him angry. They told him he would just have to deal with it, and learn to work through it. So at school he would begin to hold in all of his emotions and then explode. I knew that I had some serious character traits that I needed to work on.

What is my style? Right now my style is more of de-schooling, as well as working on character traits. We are trying out all kinds of curriculum and styles of teaching, and a variety of learning styles. We do plan on homeschooling next year and will be more of a eclectic style I think. We plan on basically sticking to the same curriculum but adding in much more.

Muffin Tin Monday YELLOW!!

Yippee for Yellow!

We loved loved loved Yellow!

We had Pears (everybody's favorite)
Pineapple, wheat crackers, Mac and Cheese and fresh squeezed lemonade (also everybody's favorite).


I know I know not the most creative one, and I don't have muffin tins (I really need to get some), but they loved it and that's what mattered.

Now go have your own Muffin Tin Meal and then link up here. It's so much fun and the theme is just a suggestion.

This week has been very busy for me. Really not any busier than any other week, it just felt like a lot this week.

I had a regular school week, not to much, not to little. That was good. I am amazed at the things I can teach my kids. I am amazed at how much they learn and the questions they ask. I love that if they are more interested in something we can make the time for them to dive however deep into a subject they want.

I had my regular Cub Scouts, that I didn't even plan this week, someone else did.


Then Saturday hit! I had a cooking party last week, and the orders from that arrived, and needed to be delivered. E had sold over 400 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, that came and needed to be delivered. (Luckly, some people ordered both, 2 birds Yes) I had a baby shower to go to. (I did plan ahead and already had the gift thank goodness). And we had our yearly Chili Cookoff with our church. We had chosen our recipe but still needed to go to the store for some ingredients. I was planning on using some of the stuff from the cooking party to make our chili. The pan I bought for it was on backorder. UGH. So I had to go to my mother in laws and get hers to borrow, and y'all know I did NOT leave myself enough time to do that. Well glad to say that I did indeed get it all done by the skin of my teeth. I even made it on time to the chili cookoff. But I did not win. Sad. I did however tie for 4th place with the rest of the group minus the top 3.

On a happier note. E and I have been having it pretty rough this last little while with our hair. Weird thing I know, I know, but unless you have curly frizzy hair, I am sure it is difficult to fully understand what it does to you. I hate what I look like in the mornings, I have tried to put makeup on do my hair, wear cuter clothes, etc. But nothing really brought up my mood, I still looked the same to me, a frizzy haired girl. All my life I hated my hair, I have spent money on every hair product out there, and I can say in my experience they do not work. And now poor E is going through the same things I did as a kid, and sometimes still do. She hates her hair. She hates to brush it. She just pulls it back into a pony tail all the time. (so do I) She has asked for me to let her get it cut in a "boy" haircut. I decided that I wanted better for her, and for me. I wanted us to like ourselves. We do not always want to look like bed heads. So I was researching some options, even though I thought I knew them all. I was actually looking for a cute haircut, hairstyle. E and I are both the type that need wash and go/ low maintenance. We knew we would never have that with natural curls. As I was looking over some sites, I saw some recommendations to read this book. Curly Girl. I found it at the local library, but it was checked out. I put a hold on it. Then I decided I could not wait. We needed this book, and we needed it now. I went to the bookstore and bought it. Let me just say that this book has changed our attitudes and our looks. We are only into in one week and are loving the results. We both really needed this pick me up! We are both more confident in our looks and generally happier people. I am grateful for this book. She talked about loving yourself and being proud of who you are, plus of course how to treat/style curly hair. We have been following her plan and it really is a wash and go type deal for us, and we look great. I did not get any pictures of E yet, but here is one of me. You might not notice yet, but there is very little frizz. (You need to be on the system 3 weeks to be at your full potential she says) Oh and I almost forgot to mention, that I did not use any products on my hair. She recommends going al natural. So not only is it easier, it is cheaper.


Here is a picture of K and I checking ourselves out in the mirror.

So far buying that book is the best $8 I spent. That's right! It has given E and I a real bonding experience and much more self confidence in ourselves and our looks.

Oh I found a picture of E with her hair. It is not a close up. Here she is with all of her Girl Scout Cookies.
If you know of anybody that has a low self esteem because of frizzy hair. Get them this book.
She does have what some would consider "radical ideas" Meaning you don't shampoo your hair, ever. You do still clean it though.

Preschool Week of March 1st. Letter "Tt"

We stuck with our letter of the week theme again. (We just started last week)

This week is letter T. My thinking is that I would start with the letters that were easiest to write since she hadn't quite got the hand eye coordination down that is required. So far, it is going great.

I made this cute Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree, and every time we learn a letter she will put it up there and we will read the story.

This week for letter T we had a Teddy bear tea party with T and t toast.She traced turtles, built with toothpicks, played with tanagrams. She also did her favorite game and played I spy letter T. We did the Teddy Bear dance with her bear too. That was kinda like Simon Says.

For math we did this fun "party" game, that I adapted from this "parking lot game"
She loved it! She asked to play it everyday since. I have her pick the next Little People to arrive at the party and I tell her the number of their spot, and she puts them their. This has been really great for number recognition.

We learned who and what an Illustrator is. I cut out these story pieces I got from Kids Soup, and told her the line of a story and she had to arrange the pieces. I would tell her the next line, and she would rearrange them and so on. She loved this, and then asked if she could make up her own story with the pieces and tell it to our family. Of course I said "YES!" I am now thinking of making a bunch of random pieces on cardstock and putting flannel on the back of them and getting a board covered in flannel, so she can make flannel board stories, and I can tell stories like that.

And of course I printed off the Animal Sorting Game from Homeschool Creations, and she was sorting it faster than I could cut it out! What fun!

To see what others do during preschool check this out!

Wanna know what I'll be doing this weekend?

Yep, that's right, sorting and delivering all of these babies!

Oh and I am gonna be eating some too. Yummy!

Homeschool Blog Hop #4

I had been wanting to post in this since it began, but I just haven't taken the time. I always get caught up in hopping around though. This weeks theme is easy. Just hop! Whoo Hoo! To join the fun check it out here.

New Blog

There is a new blog in town that I just know is gonna be great!
Today is their grand opening! It is so worth checking out even if you are not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but especially if you are!
I haven't fully had time to look around it all yet, there is so much, but what I have seen has been amazing and very well organized. Their are 10 authors, that's right people TEN, so you just know there will always be something fresh, new and exciting.

I must say that I had heard this blog was coming, and I was just waiting for it.
I am probably just as excited as they are.

Now head on over and check them out. Here! Go Now, you won't be sorry!