a spring hiatus...

we love you all, but we will be taking the next month (april) off to spend more time together as a family...

april is going to be a busy month on our blossoming homestead...:)

blessings,

jessi & family

a week of birthday celebrations!

the birthday bouquets...

this past week we celebrated 2 birthdays!

the birthday bean & bean-ette...

aydin has officially crossed the rainbow bridge, and is now 7 years old (3/24)...

officially 7 years old...

birthday cupcakes with friends...
our friend caleb...

while at target, aydin got to pick out a birthday present, he chose legos (of course!)

aydin in his the rainbow keyhole scarf that i knit for his birthday (upon his request :)...

and our baby girl, evyn, turned 1 year old on the 27th!

i know it is a bit hard to see, but here is the birthday rainbow!

our baby girl turns one!

evyn in her birthday crown...

a side view...

evyn's first doll, from gramma...

the rainbow cake (made by papa!)

i think she likes it, no??

argh!...the cake fiend...

it turned into a week long celebration with both friends & family...a good time being had by all!

there was definitely a rainbow theme going on...from the rainbow cupcakes & birthday cakes, to the requested rainbow scarf to the rainbow that appeared on evyn's birthday!

an experiment...

a 'school' of fish...:)
image from http://fineartamerica.com/images-medium/schooling-cory-calantropio.jpg

orin & i have been butting heads a lot lately about our lessons...

he loves his math blocks, but not so much the ones that involve a lot of writing. i have talked with other moms of 9 year old boys & this seems to be common. they are all great at the story telling & composition, but not so much at the actual writing part.

while talking with one of my fiends the other night, she helped me to remember that part of the reason that we choose to home school is to follow our children's own paths...

this is true, and yet, there is also a balance...as homeschoolers we must walk the fine line of encouraging & pushing our children to do their best, but not push them so much that they 'wilt' & end up drained & burnt out.

today, after another "battle" i decided to do something that goes against every bone in my body, but may be just what orin needs right now...a bit of unschooling.

he has mentioned this approach before, as we know some other unschooling families, but i have always said no. it just goes against my grain not to have everything planned out & organized...not have a schedule?? (argh! :)

i do wish that i had a bit of that in me, so this is me giving it a go...stepping out of my comfort zone & trusting that orin can lead himself. now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term...unschooling is child led learning. they follow their hearts & what sparks their interests & i am there when he needs me. to help find books at the library, to gather supplies for whatever projects/experiments he may want to do...to look things up on the internet if need be, etc.

i told him that we'll give it a go for the next month & see what happens...i did a bit of compromising though...we will still do our main lessons each day, which this month is math (decimals, more exploration of fractions, & working more with money). but copy work, workbooks, journaling, & all other "organized" schooling will be put on hold.

orin is truly a bright & loves learning, he always has...90% of the books he checks out from the library are 'eyewitness'! so, while i am a bit nervous, i am more excited to see where this month will lead us!

happy homeschooling!

the first of many...

the first of many...well, of several...:) aydin, now 7 (as of this past wednesday) lost his first tooth recently.

aaahhhh...imagination!

aydin started swim classes in the beginning of march, which meant that we had to buy some new googles. this in turn led to much imaginative play...

here they are being astronauts, piloting their spaceship (aka blanket :)

notice how they multiplied once i got out the camera??...i love it!

slightly creepy...

this is ehren, our 3 year old...


it looks like a typical day of playing train engineer, right...so, then what's the the creepy part??

check out the 'cargo'...:)
(for those of you who don't recognize them, these are bodyless lego heads! )

chicken tractor...the photos! :)

i meant to post these last week, but we were having some gorgeous spring weather (high in the 60s!...lovin' it!) and we were all spengin as much time as possible outdorrs!

of course, now we are back to flurries :(


at any rate here are photos of our chicken tractor...




aydin busy sawing...


the humble beginnings...





a peak inside the hen house & nesting boxes , before adding the door & final wall...

helpers!...:)

a side/rear view...the access door for cleaning our their hen house, and the bit hanging off the end is the their nesting boxes...

a peak inside the nesting boxes...this all got painted. typically you need 1 nesting box/4 hens & this tractor will home to 6 of our hens, so we enlarged the box & added a divider.

we'll be using attaching old lawnmower wheels to allow for easy transport...

the sliding hen house door (closed)...

and open...

almost done!

i feel so self-sufficient! i built it nearly all on my own (as in no help from lance aka hubby). of course, i did have help from a couple little elves...:)

aydin was my right hand man for the measuring & building...he especially loved to sawing!



ehren was my painting buddy...and orin, well, he was busy frolicking. :)



we were planning on adding the chicken wire & hardware cloth today, but man...it is too cold!



wednesday & thursday are supposed to be nice though, so we'll see...

*this tractor is based off of these plans. they are amazingly detailed! however, after cutting all the wood, we realized that all of the measurements were wrong! so, we ended up winging it...i also modified the plans a bit. i did not want to deal with freezing hoses/a self-feeder. so we took those bits out. i also added the large access door on the right, for easy cleaning & a sliding door verses the spring door in the original plans. all in all, we are extremely please. but we still need to build one more for our other 6 hens... i like this design a lot, but i am going to see if there is another one out there that strikes my fancy...:)

happy homesteading! :)

a princess in training...:)

lance decked evyn out in one of our boys' royal cloaks...she took to it like a fish in water...

now, i have just one question...is this a good thing?? ;)

busy bees & spring crafting!

well, we have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring, & though it isn't quite here...we certainly have been busy little bees!

our first chicken tractor is almost complete! (i'll get those pictures posted this week, promise :)

aside from that, soccer is here (along with its 1 1/2 hour practices twice a week) & a game each weekend. aydin is taking swim lessons each wednesday evening

let's see...roots & shoots wednesday evenings (1x per month), chess club (every other friday), lego club (3rd monday of every month), and of course play group each wednesday at the local library. whew!

how to keep one's sanity amidst all of this madness??...lots of spring crafting, or course!

i have been working our our easter swap lots, again with bits of goodness


for this year's swap i knit limes & rainbow balls, & sewed up some sweet little spring bracelets.
(the bracelets were inspired by kelly purkey's spring bouquet )

i love these swaps because each one's basket gets filled with handmade goodies, of natural materials made with love. :)

this easter crafting got me wanting to knit some easter eggs...i had quite a few small, gorgeously colored remnant balls of yarns calling to me. so, i modified the lime pattern a bit & presto hand knit easter eggs for our nature table & the shop!

we also have two spring birthday next week...

evyn, our baby girl, is turning one! (hard to believe, i know) i was planning on making her birthday crown this week, similar to these that i made our boys, but with a spring theme. while crafting the bracelets for the swap, i was inspired to make her crown based on that same idea.

ehren, our 3 year old, is modeling her crown...

it fits him, but it'll look nicer on her better as the flowers will sit a lot closer together. we can't have her modeling it yet though, it is a birthday gift for her remember?? (shhh!)

(i'll post her birthday photos after next week's celebraton.)

for aydin, who will be turning seven next wednesday, i am making this noro keyhole scarf. he specifically requested a rainbow scarf for his birthday. :)

instead of the noro yarn, i will be using the kaleidoscope yarn from ehren's gnome hat. it has been patiently awaiting its second chance...

here is what i have done so far...i love this yarn!!

wooden spoons for our kitchen swap...

i just realized that i never posted photos of the wooden spoons i carved for the play kitchen swap...

all natural...

and with a beeswax finish.

i used found wood/branches for this project & it was amazing to see their true colors come out once i started applying the finish.

very cool...

grade 1, block VI (week 2) word families

monday, march 8th

this week was amazingly gorgeous & so we spent the majority of it outdoors...reading, playing, exploring...burning off the last few months of 'cabin fever' & working on the chicken tractor...

woo-hah!

aydin was my right had man, helping with a good deal of the measuring, board holding & sawing...man does this kid love to saw!

i see biceps in our future...(we like to do things the old-fashioned way around here!)

so far, we have the frame pretty much done, though we had to make quite a few adjustment s from the original plans.




we did get in a bit of lesson work...

we recalled our word families in the game show style like last week. aydin then picked his three favorite words (one from each word family) for us to draw in our main lesson books.