An Afternoon at the Museum

Borrowing an idea from The Boxcar Children, the girls cleaned and arranged their shells (I am not quite sure of their classification systems), created and "sold" tickets, and became curators of their very own beach museum. We viewed shells, sharks' teeth and even a feather from "an eagle, I think, but it probably isn't" that Darsie found. You are now invited to peruse the collections for yourselves....

The shell museum

Grandmother is the pro at finding sharks' teeth, but today Matt actually found 4 or so of these!

Some visits, we come back empty handed completely.
He did an awesome job! Good eyes!

Curator Katy Foreman

Exhibit #1 by Katy

Exhibit #2 by Katy

Exhibit #3 by Katy

Curator Darsie Foreman

Exhibit #1 by Darsie

Exhibit #2 by Darsie

Exhibit #3 by Darsie

A Recitation

The kids' Sunday school class (2-6 year olds) has been working through a series of memory verses this year. The kids got a tote bag (handmade by wonderful friends here!) as a reward and encouragement when they learned their first 5 verses. Then, with each additional 5 verses, they get a star to glue gun onto their bags. It's neat to walk around on Sunday mornings and see so many kids ages 3-6 with tote bags and one or two stars on them! What an encouragement to hide God's word in our hearts, and what a goad to we who are older, if these little ones can do it so well, what's our excuse?! It has definitely been an encouragement in our family!

Anyway, our homeschool co-op that we go to has an opening session each week where kids can share or perform as an opportunity of being in front of people. We have seen dancing, gymnastics, cheer leading, rock collections, girls scout presentations, puppets, singing... This afternoon, Katy, Darsie, Ellia and Ben recited Psalm 121 for the parents and kids. We have just finished it up in Sunday school, so Paige and I thought it would be a good opportunity for the kids to practice some public speaking (together, for support!). Here is the video that Matt took for us.

Picnic - y Weather

We went outside today to hang our birdfeeders in anticipation of this weekend's Great Backyard Bird Count and realized just how nice it was outside, so we stayed out for a couple of hours. We had lunch outside (Liam thought that was pretty neat!), drew the birdfeeders and a hawk (we think) that flew overhead, and just generally enjoyed being out of doors! It's amazing what that does for everyone's attitudes!

Nature Walk

We enjoyed our nature walk with Ellia, Ben, Mabel and Paige yesterday at Ridley Creek. It was neat to see the Canada geese and mallards this visit! Here, they all sat on the bench to look at the fly fisherman, so we caught it on camera.....

A Nice Evening Stroll

We headed out with Matt tonight for a short stroll before dark. It was just nice to get outside and to have it be daylight long enough to enjoy the evening a bit. The creek was much more melted than last week's visit, but there was still a good amount of ice. The moon was huge and bright, so we attempted to capture it here for you....

A Balmy 55 Degrees!

We had to get outside on a day like today, especially since it is supposed to rain/snow tonight and then be arctically (a word??) cold the next several days again. So, we headed to a park near us and walked along the frozen creek for a bit. The assignment, in addition to just enjoying being outside, was to practice walking quietly and listening and then to come up with one word to describe what we heard, two words to describe what we saw and three words to describe how we felt (thanks to Barb at the Handbook of Nature Study blog!). The girls and Liam all had a great time. It was wonderful to be outside!!

Our list:

One word to describe what we heard:
Katy: caw-caw-caw
Darsie: chick-a-dee-dee-dee
Mary: awakening (ice melting, birds calling, leaves rustling)

Two words to describe what we saw:
Katy: water coming (she wanted to say water coming out of a hole, but that was too many words, so she shortened it to this)
Darsie: the feathers (a pile of feathers on the path)
Mary: winter snow

Three words to describe what we felt:
Katy: I felt chilly!
Darsie: warm and tired
Mary: I love outside!

Darsie's list of what she thought she might see on our walk:
a tree, a creek, leaves (not sure what the grid-looking pictures are).

And Katy's ideas:
tree, ladybug, butterfly, cherry and acorn.

Liam was just glad to be outside and walking around on non-icy surfaces.
He LOVED it!

Part of the creek where the ice had melted a bit.
It was a wonderful sound to hear the water running!

A friendly jogger stopped and asked us if we would like our picture taken, so here it is. :)
(I'm sure Sarah Beth or Sara K. would do the same thing. :) )

The creek was still pretty frozen. I showed the girls how to pick up icy snow balls and lob them onto the creek and watch them explode. They loved it!

Isn't she beautiful??!!

So is she!!!!

And look at this cutie!

A view from the path....

The waterfall had huge chunks of ice hanging off of it, and the creek above it was pretty frozen!

The ruins of an old house built in the 1700's. It was a tenant house, had two doors leading into separate rooms on the first floor. The upstairs had a separate exit door called the funeral door for when someone died in bed and had to be taken out. Apparently, the front staircases were too narrow to carry a coffin down, so they put in another door that opened to the outside to get it out that way. Interesting....

This video is just to show how interested Liam was in the creek. If you listen carefully, you can hear him say "ice" and "bye water". I also had to get a video of him calling the girls by name, because you can actually tell the difference between their names now when he says them. "Da da" for Darsie and "Day dee" for Katy.



And what are the kids doing now as I post this? Liam is sleeping and the girls are outside without jackets (though I did make them leave on the long-sleeved t-shirts under their short-sleeved ones) playing in the remaining snow and enjoying the swingset. There will be lots of mud and wetness when they come in, I suspect!