One of our favorite places

I am way behind on my blogging, since we've been living in the RV full time for about a full month now. We have a tent trailer and a car still to sell, and the basement and garage to clean out the rest of the way, and then we can really hit the road for good.  We've been sticking close to home while we try to sell the house, but we're getting impatient!  

We spent a fun last week at Crystal Hot Springs in Honeyville, UT.  I'll have to blog about that later.  Last night we stayed in Logan, UT, one of our favorite cities!  We had found a perfect place to boondock up Logan canyon across the main road from Spring Hollow campground, but since we had no cell service, and Bill has to have it for work, we ended up at Wal Mart.  :~p

This morning I took the kids to Gossner cheese factory for boxed milk and squeaky cheese.  I love that place!  I remember going there with my parents as a kid, so it's kind of nostalgic for me.  There's. bunch of construction going on in the front right now.  They ripped out the grass and picnic area last year for more parking.  I hope they don't change it too much.  Here's a pic of the kids with our FOUR cases of boxed milk and bag of squeaky cheese.  YUM!!!

We went to our favorite park by the Willow Park Zoo yesterday evening when we got in.  The zoo was closed.  We may try to make a stop there before we head out today.

Our first time out

We are taking our RV out for the first time this week!

Mr. M has a writing camp at BYU in Provo this week, and rather than driving 45 min up and back every morning and again every afternoon, we decided to stay at a campground near Utah Lake in Provo called Lakeside RV.

We are having a blast! I am already completely in love with this lifestyle. We've been swimming at the pool every day, we've been to two different parks so far, I lost count of how many games of Catch Phrase and Charades we have played, and guess how much TV watching has been done? Virtually NIL! It's really been heaven.

Here's pics of the crazies all tucked in on our first night.

Brave by Sara Bareilles

I am pretty picky about the music my family listens to. I worry about the message that a lot of the music on the radio will send to my kids. I know they probably don't pick up on most of the negative messages, but some day they will start to and I don't want them to think that I approve of it, and I certainly don't want them memorizing lyrics to those songs. As a result, we mostly listen to CDs or my Ipad.

Hubby and I were in Sam's Club this morning, and they had this video playing on the myriad of TVs for sale. As soon as we got home and put everything away, I headed straight to YouTube to find it.

Here it is.  Brave by Sara Berreilles

I also found this video that I thought was beautifully done.

Gravity by Sara Bereilles

She definitely has a new fan!

Enjoy!

Susan

Create

I am up late preparing for the next few days of school.  Printing, reading, watching.  I will be teaching our first art lesson from the new Family School curriculum and this video is part of the lesson.  It touched me deeply, and I wanted to share it.  I don't consider myself a creative person, AT ALL, so this seemed to strike a chord with me.  I love how this curriculum helps me teach a full picture of subjects, instead of just an earthly view of things.  I am filled with the Spirit every time I prepare and every time I teach.  It's everything I was searching for.

I was also inspired by this beautiful painting of the creation that we will be using in the lesson.

• Title: Jehovah Creates The Earth
• Artist: Walter Rane (LDS Artist)
• Medium: oil paint

Communing with Nature and finding Fuzzytigger

I know it's been such a long time since I blogged!  Homeschooling has been quite the adventure and we are starting our 3rd year now!  Time has been at a premium and my health has been a roller coaster, thus, not many posts. My plans are to make more time for this because it's good for me and hopefully someone else can enjoy and become inspired at the same time.

One of the things I have loved most about teaching my kids at home has been the fact that there are no limits to the teaching opportunities. We learn wherever we are and whatever we are doing. I learn right along with the kids a lot of the time and we relish searching for answers when I don't know or are not sure my thoughts are accurate.

This Sunday one of these learning experiences presented itself when myself and bubba woke up with sore throats. Hubby wasn't feeling great either, so to avoid the chance of getting others sick at church we decided to commune with nature for our Sabbath day and take a drive in the mountains to see some of the beautiful fall colors.  We chose the Alpine Loop as our destination and off we went!  (I'll spare you the gory details of arguments about who was sitting where that commenced before we even left the garage) ;~)

The colors were amazing!  I just ADORE our mountains and ADORE fall!!

We stopped at Cascade Springs for a nature walk and had fun counting wildlife and reading the information signs posted along the trail. While we were walking, my path crossed a fuzzy little black and orange caterpillar crossing the wooden walkway. I stopped to look and called everyone over to see. Another lady and her kids stopped to see also, and said it would be safe to pick up. (I'm far too trusting of people who sound like the know what they're talking about, but luckily, we were ok this time). She said she thought it was a Monarch caterpillar.  We passed it around and oohed and awed at it's peculiar little self.

Much to Hubby's dismay, I wanted to take our new little friend home. (Shhh...we probably weren't supposed to). We found a nearly empty water bottle in the car and poked air holes in it with a paper clip, added a couple leaves off the ground and gently coaxed our furry friend in before we headed out. (Insert some drama right before leaving).

As we continued our drive we brainstormed ideas for names and had a vote. The choices were Oatmeal, Tigger, and Fuzzy. Fuzzy won the vote with Tigger a close second, so we compromised on "Fuzzytigger" as 'her' name and everyone was happy, except Hubby, that is.

We had a pleasant drive home discussing how the absence of Chlorophyll in the leaves was what made them change color in the fall, followed by a few classic Scooby Doo episodes that Hubby put on the iPad when everyone started getting restless.

After we got home and everyone took a little snooze, we did some googling (seriously, what did we ever do without the Internet?) and found that our little Fuzzytigger was actually a Woolly Bear caterpillar and would turn into an Isabella Tiger Moth if all went as planned. This discovery both delighted and excited 6 of the 7 of us. (Hubby has sort of a phobia about moths, so his mood went from 'not happy' to 'I'm going to silently protest this situation since my wife is determined to let the bug stay'.  Yes, he puts up with a lot to make us happy!). Oh, and I was extra happy after the few moments of panic when our google search initially turned up some scary looking pictures of caterpillars that are dangerous to handle. Especially black, orange, and yellow ones, the article said. 8~O

We also learned that we could put her outside over winter and she will hibernate, freeze solid through, stopping her heart, and thaw out in the spring before she gets ready to do her transformation. Cool beans.

Over all, a pretty exciting and educational 'sick Sunday', I'd say. I call it a happy memory day.

Veteran's Day

We have been having a lot of fun adventures and are loving home-schooling! We have actually been hotel-schooling a lot lately, to be honest. My husband had business trips to Las Vegas, Phoenix and Albuquerque the last couple of months, so we tagged along with him and had so much fun! I have tons of pictures and stories to tell about our trips, but right now I wanted to share our Veteran's Day celebration with you.

We received our flag that had flown over the capitol a while ago. My eight year old was SO excited when it came, and so was I. :~) We haven't had time to do anything with it yet, so I decided Veteran's Day would be the perfect time to finally pull it out of the box again and give it a home.

Here is the box with Senator Orin Hatch as the sender. It actually came quite a bit faster than I had expected.

Inside was another box containing the flag and a certificate with the information about the flag.

The certificate states that it was flown on September 1, 2010. I love that it shows it was flown for my kiddos. I am so glad we found out about this and did it. I think it ended up being less expensive than going to the store and buying a flag. Nice bonus.

The older kids holding up the flag.

We hung it on the wall in our kitchen and said our morning Pledge of Allegience. We will get to do this every morning now.

After I worked on the core subjects, we did an art project. This is a big deal for me, because I am kind of phobic about kids and paint. In fact, this may be the first time I have let my kids use anything besides watercolors. (even the watercolors are rare additions) We made a flag using the kids handprints. They had a lot of fun and so did I when I wasn't stressing about the paint getting everywhere. Luckily, I only let the kids see my panic a couple of times.

The final result.

I survived paint and the kids had fun. We are all so happy with the results and the kids are excited to show it to Daddy. The paint washed right up with no problems, to my great relief.

I also wanted to have my oldest right thank you letters to some of our family who are serving in the military. We didn't have time for that today, but I am going to make sure it happens tomorrow or Monday.

Happy Veteran's Day and thank you to all those service men, past and present, who have helped to secure our freedom.

Tomorrow's the big day! We're ready to roll...I think. :~\ ;~)

I found these maps of the US and the world at Costco for cheap and we put them up in the office. The kids were having fun looking at them tonight.

We found this kid's desk at IKEA for $20 and the kid's desk chair to go with it for $14.99.

I had been looking on KSL classifieds for a desk for a while, but never could find anything that wasn't 60+ miles away. I am really happy with this one that we found. Most of the teaching will probably be done at the kitchen counter, but I felt like Mason would need a quiet place to do his worksheets sometimes. It can be hard to concentrate with all the other kids doing different things. We put it together last night, and he has sat at it every chance he gets. :~) I will let him decorate his pencil holder (formula can) tomorrow if we have time. I got the flag for around $1 and will suffice for our Pledge of Allegiance in the mornings until the one we ordered that has flown over the Capitol Building gets here. I cut a Crystal Light container down, added some beans for weights and poked a hole in the center of the lid for the "flag stand".