The Zoo

Just a few pics from our recent trip to the zoo. Obviously, you can tell which animals we are our favorites. :)

Various School Activities

Just to chronicle, these are a few random photos from some of our school-day experiences. We have a lot of fun, I just don't always remember to actually take pictures, but here are some of our 1st grade memories so far:

Outdoor Math. The weather has been so tremendous that we have wanted to spend as much time as possible outside before it gets cold for good! So we decided to have math with sticks and stones and acorns!

Science Experiment: What would you look like without bones? Well, according to this floppy clay version, you wouldn't be able to do much! And you would have a flat head!

And now, you get to see the clay version with bones! We inserted toothpicks to simulate how our bones help us stand and move. Much better!

Still working on bones, this time we focused on the cranium. What would happen to your brain if you had no skull? And what about if you had no cerebral fluid in between your skull and your brain?

We placed the "brain" (egg) into its "skull" (Pyrex dish), and ran around the room. Well, our brain did stay in our head, but it broke all over the place! What was missing?

Cerebral fluid! Next, we added "cerebral fluid" (water) around our "brain" inside our "skull." Then ran around the room again. Yay! Our "brain" is safe and sound!

Exercise! Just threw this in because I thought it was so stinkin' cute to watch Brenner doing lunges! :)

Reading time! Aile had just finished her turn to read a page....

Another experiment: Why did God give us 5 fingers? Why not just 3? Or 4? Well, we decided to find out. With her newly constructed 3 fingers and a thumb, Aile made her bed, put away her laundry, and brushed her hair and teeth. Now we understand a little bit better just how smart our God is! This was challenging! Aile says that making her bed was the easiest of the tasks--it used mostly gross motor skills. Brushing her teeth was the most challenging--you need more fine motor skills for that!

Fractured

Well, it has happened. Three kids and seven years into our parenting, and the youngest one has inaugurated us into the realm of ER visits and broken bones. Somehow, Caelum was playing at a friend's house out on the driveway with a large bouncy ball. We think he was trying to jump onto it, and didn't make it. His left leg twisted under him, creating a spiral displaced fracture of the tibia.

Here is our journey through our ER visit:

Waiting...got him all propped up and semi-comfy while we waited for the doctor and X-ray team.

Waiting with entertainment...the kind nurse brought some toys, but he couldn't play with them, so she brought him movies instead.

The Break. The picture says more than I even need to say. It's a doozy.

Not happy about the IV. But it was very needed as they had to give him morphine for the pain--which by the way made watching Finding Nemo quite a psychedelic experience, I'm sure. When the pain started coming back in the middle of the night, he kept saying he wanted to go to the aquarium! They also used the IV to give him three other drugs to knock him out while they manipulated and casted the leg.

And here he is, all knocked out and casted.

The Cast. Toe to thigh. No walking. No pressure at all in fact. No getting it wet, especially with leaky diapers or blowouts. For the next 6 weeks. When he actually wakes up enough to realize all of this, he is not going to be a fan of this plan...neither is his mother.

As far as accidents and ER visits go, it definitely could've been much worse, so for that I feel blessed. Praise the Lord we have gone 7 years without this stuff, and praise Him that this wasn't terrible. I will remind myself of that while I lug my 34-pound toddler with a 5-pound cast around for the next 6 weeks. I will also visit my chiropractor more often.

The Heart of a Child

The other day we were driving in the car, and Aile was talking to me about how she wanted to give her heart to Jesus so He would help her be more like Him. She said all she wanted for Christmas this year is Jesus in her heart. I told her that was very sweet, and that I had great news: she didn't have to wait until Christmas! Jesus would come into her heart any time she asked Him to! So right there, she prayed about it. It was a touching prayer, and I was silent for a few minutes after, just thinking about what it meant. The kids were silent too.

Then, about 5 minutes later, Caelum breaks the silence with this prayer: "Dear Jesus, the open door. Amen."

I asked Caelum what the open door was that he was praying about. He clasped his hands together excitedly and grinned at me. "The open door to my heart!" he exclaimed.

Awesome!

The Wisdom of a Child

The other day I was having an especially frustrating day, and had lost my temper a couple of times with the kids. I said something about them ignoring me and I felt like they weren't even hearing what I saying unless I yelled.

Aile replied, very calmly: "Mommy, when I grow up, I am going to raise my children to be very respectful. That way I will never have to yell at them."

Thanks for the advice, oh wise sage.

Brenner's Milestone

Yay! Brenner can now officially write his own name!! If I can figure out how to get the saved image from the iPad to the computer, I'll post his first successes here! :)

Go Brenner! He worked long and hard on this, and I am proud of him! :)

Uncle Ryan's Science Class

So, after dinner tonight as I'm cleaning up the kitchen, my kids come clamoring into the house, surrounding my brother, who is carrying something in a baseball cap. They enter the kitchen, and suddenly the hat jumps. Then the frog jumps out of the hat. For a few comical minutes, Ryan and the kids chase the frog around the kitchen trying to catch him. (Admittedly, the kids were doing more directing than actually trying to help catch the frog.) Then I learn the real intent of bringing the frog into the house.

"Mommy! Uncle Ryan said the frog can swim really well! Can we put him in the bathtub? PLEASE!" I wavered for a moment, but I eventually threw caution to the wind and allowed the frog to be bathed. (Even after he urinated on Ryan's hand twice while the kids were running the bath water.)

So are few pictures to show that the frog did survive, and sure enough, he swam like a champ. In a further experiment, Caelum proved that frogs don't even drown when continually being heavily splashed by an eager 2-year-old.

The kids loved him a lot, and named him Mr. Xanopus. They were very sad to let him go back out into the woods.