Red Sea Project

Ansley has been studying Moses and the journey of the Israelites out of Egypt and into Canaan.  In conjunction with this her class had to do a diorama showing the exodus and the parting of the Red Sea.  Ansley worked very hard on this project!  We hate to take it apart but we used Elisabeth's PlayMobil people and she wants them back!   So we took some pictures so we can remember the project and thought we would share them with you.   This is the scene where Moses and the Israelites are going through the Red Sea that God parted and the Egyptians are in pursuit behind them.  The Angel of the Lord is between them and the cloud of fire is also between them that put darkness on the side of the Egyptians and daylight on the side of the Israelites.

Halloween

What a busy busy weekend!  We had fall festivals, Halloween parties, Halloween parades, Trunks or Treats and then Trick or Treating.  Our kids don't need any more candy!  :-)  And being in the house all day with the bag of candy staring at me is very very tempting.  I'm going to have to hide it from myself! The dentist is going to love us on our next visit....

John carving Ansley's pumpkin

 Getting ready for the neighborhood Halloween parade (Elisabeth, Ansley and their friend, Molly)

Our neighbor's dog, Clyde

After the parade there were refreshments at the pool parking lot.  They even set up a little pumpkin patch and each of the kids got to take one home.  Cute idea!

Saturday night we did "Trunks or Treats" at the church.  It was alot of fun and the kids got alot of candy.  Once the sun went down it was soooo cold.  Elisabeth was the warmest one with her furry panda suit on!

 John decorated the porch and the bushes with spider webs and spiders.  I hate spiders so I'm not sure why I bought all this stuff.   It did look creepy though.

Our little trick-or-treaters ( a hippie and a panda)

 Trick-or-treating with friends in the neighborhood

Our pumpkins

 We had a fog machine, 2 strobe lights, spider webs everywhere, candles and spooky music playing.  The kids LOVED that we did all of this and had a blast handing out candy! 

Renaissance Festival

Definitely not my favorite place!  I haven't been to one of these festivals in 20 years or more when John and I were dating. Now I remember why! A few weekends ago we decided to take the kids and spend the day at the Charlotte Renaissance Festival.  It was a beautiful day and parts of the festival were fun but overall it's just not my cup of tea.  It costs alot to get in and once you are in they nickel and dime you to death!  Plus lots of the entertainment is just lewd and crude and didn't make good entertainment for the kids.  The kids did enjoy the jousting and I really enjoyed the people watching.  There are some very INTERESTING people there that's for sure!  I hope the kids enjoyed it because I don't think I'll be going back year after year!

Where else can you see a storm trooper in a kilt?!

Swallowing swords......so very creepy to me

 

Pumpkin Patch Visit

Yesterday we visited Cotton Hills Farm to enjoy the wonderful Fall day and to pick out some pumpkin for the front porch.  We've been to this Farm before and it's alway fun so we returned to the same place again this year.  They have barbeque, a 4 acre corn maze, farm animals, face painting, etc.  But the best part is the Pumpkin Chunkin.  We love watching them catapult pumpkins way across the cotton field!  Crazy but very entertaining!  We had a blast and picked out 2 good pumpkins to help decorate our front porch and welcome in Fall.  I love Fall!

 Getting ready to enter into the corn maze

 Hmmm...which way should we go??

 Shew! We made it!

 Poor pregnant goat.  Doesn't look comfortable does it?

Karate kids

 View of the corn maze

 Roman Revenge....the pumpkin chunkin machine.  Fun to watch!



 Ansley took this picture.  Isn't it good?

A visit to the Fire Station

Recently Elisabeth's Girl Scout troop took a visit to the Fire Station and Fire fighter Diane told them all what they should do in case of a fire and let them try on her firefighter uniform. She was so good with the kids and they had so much fun while they were learning. Then they all took a tour of the firetruck and the firehouse.   The girls learned alot and even though Elisabeth came home slightly paranoid that our house was going to catch on fire she at least knows exactly what to do in case anything were to ever happen!

 Fire fighter Diane and Captain Sparky  :-)

Busy, Busy, Busy

That just about sums up our life right now! We are in full swing with the new school so my Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are very full of keeping 2 girls moving forward with their school assignments as they work from home on those days.  I'm slowly learning how to juggle helping both of them at once.  We are getting into a routine now.  And we've been able to take advantage of the flexible schedule a few times since we started this endeavor.  We've gotten up early, worked for awhile and then taken a few hour break to go consignment sale shopping and then it's back home to finish up school.  We've also finished early on Friday so the girls can have playdates with their friends that homeschool.  But the biggest advantage is NOT having homework to do in the evenings.  I am loving that!  Our quality of life in the evening is soooo much better! And they are learning so much.  Elisabeth is learning cursive and is starting to learn to do simple diagraming of sentences.  Ansley is doing much better in math this year and her confidence is growing.  She is doing lots of sentence diagraming/classification and is learning how to do a keyword outlines and then use them to give oral presentations and write summary paragraphs.  Not to mention they are both having the Bible woven into their history lessons.  They are learning alot and so am I!  It has been a very good decision for our family to pull them out of public school and put them in a different atmosphere.   Gotta run.......Elisabeth is done with her math test and I'm off to help them finish up their lessons for the day.  :-)

A Weekend in Charleston

This year to celebrate our "big" birthdays, Sheryl and I spent a girls only weekend in Charleston.  We stayed right downtown and we were able to walk to everything.  We took our time wandering through the stores and the market and then took a walk to The Battery and Battery Park.  It was nice to just do whatever whenever we wanted.  We could stop and sit for however long we wanted and talk if we wanted or just sit in the lovely peace and quiet and just people watch.  Everyone needs a weekend like that every now and then.  I think we should make it a yearly tradition......don't you Sheryl?  We had good shrimp and grits for dinner on Saturday night (YUM!).  We met up with a long time friend on Sunday and spent a few hours hanging out at the beach together.  Then she took us to a great restaurant (Taco Mamacita) on Sullivan's Island for lunch. It was delicious!  I just love the Isle of Palms, Sullivans Island, Folly Beach, etc, etc.  I could live anywhere down there!  I swear one day I'm going to retire there. I'm already working on my kids because I won't be able to live to far from them for very long.   I've told Elisabeth that if she really wants to be a dentist then the Medical College in Charleston is a great place to go to school.  And it's a great place to live too when she gets finished with school.  Ansley is already in on the deal because she loves Charleston and would love to live there.  I believe we're on our way!