Celebrating

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving and Adam's birthday at my parents house. Adam turned 5 on Monday of this week! His cake of choice this year was a baseball field. Adam sure keeps life interesting around here. he has his own ideas and agenda for just about everything. i try not to let that drive me crazy :) i joke that there's the 'normal' way to do things, and there's the 'Adam way' to do things!

Adam asks some really good questions, like "are there silly bandz in heaven?" and "does Jesus have any multi colored ones to trade?" but seriously, he does have some good thought provoking questions, keeps me on my toes.

Last weekend, we also celebrated his birthday along w/ his cousin celene. They both have november birthdays. All the kids enjoyed Grandmas lovely birthday ice cream cone cake.

We are thankful for this little guy! Happy birthday dear Adam

Trip to the "north farm"

The boys and i did an overnight adventure earlier this week to my dad's farm near williamsport. He is there for a couple weeks doing the corn harvest. My mom was also up there this week, so we thought it would be fun to join them for a couple days. We had a good time!

My dad has owned this farm for a few years. No animals, just land/fields. They got the trailer put in just this year. There was a very old house on the farm, which they tore down.

Since it rained all day Tuesday we had to find indoor things to do....

They played in the huge corn pile...

Did some crafts...Wrestled a little too much....And we went to Reptileland which was just 3 miles from the farm...

The each touched an alligator and a snake. They were pretty proud.Do you know the difference between a crocodile and alligator? The croc's snout is more narrow, and when it's mouth is shut it has teeth on the outside. (just 1 or 2 on each side, i think), and the alligators snout is wider. I never knew the difference, but would have guessed it the other way around.

My favorite were the huge turtles...excuse me, Tortoises. These guys were huge! as were the anacondas, which i didn't take a picture of. I joked that everything was big around there. We went out to eat and got 99 cent "baby" cones that were bigger then any normal sized cone around here!!

Looking forward to more memories at the north farm.

Photo contest

Last month i entered Clay in a "cutest baby photo" contest. I found out today he got 2nd place!!! It was through a local consignment shop and there were 30 some entries. Here's the picture i entered. . . . I totally took this picture just for the silly little contest!

The best part about getting 2nd place is that Nadene's baby got 1st place!! Go Emma!

Thanks to the Grandma's who stopped in and voted who knows how many times!!

7 months

Clay is 7 months old!

On sunday we dedicated him at church. It was great having our families standing up front with us. The boys also sang a song during dedication. And Rod's brother prayed for us. It was a special family event!

Something we started doing with Clay, that we never did with the other kids is sink baths. He loves them. Each time he baths the kids take turns being his "bath buddy". Last night was Adam's turn. On a selfish note, while Clay is bathing with his bath buddy, i get to do dishes and catch up in the kitchen.
No signs of teeth yet on our little guy, but he chews and slobbers like none other.

School researching

We continue to look into schools around here, to find the best fit for our boys. Rod and i knew that Dayspring Christian do things a little different, using the Principle Approach, but we didn't know a ton about it. So we started reading up on it. It is an interesting approach to teaching! On one hand, it's a wonderfully Bible based system which bring God into all subjects, and teaches christian character, biblical reasoning, and our christian heritage. Super! Their vision is to educate children in the biblical principles that formed our nation, train them to help bring our country back to it's Christian heritage. It seems very patriotic (not a mennonite school :) but not so much emphasis on current government, as much as teaching that America was at one time a Christian nation. if we want our government to become that again, we need to first change the people! So that's their vision; to restore America, by using this principle approach to help build character in our young people.

In some ways to me they seem so "deep" or "proper" with some of their methods of teaching. There's a lot to this Principle Approach method and i'm just not sure if it's the right fit for our family. Only 50 schools in America use the Principle Approach. One difference using this system is they use what's called the Notebook Method. Each student has a notebook (for each subject, i think), starting in K, they use it to jot down their own notes of each subject. They have it with them all the time and refer to it as needed. It helps them to have a consistent tool and makes them in control of the learning process. Also this way parents can see what is being taught. i want to learn more about that, i like this idea since it seems like an organized thing to do. They might use this in place of textbooks, i'm not sure. Another difference we've read about is that they refer to the Noah Webster dictionary, written in the 1800's, quite often. Because God was still in that dictionary, whereas nowadays, God is taken out of dictionaries.

The school sets the bar very high, which means there could be a lot of homework given out. They even have 1st graders giving speeches!

We still have some people we want to talk to. But it's looking like a possibility. I'm sure this was boring for most of you. sorry! Let us know what you know about the school- good or bad. There website is http://www.dayspringchristian.com/ if you wanted to read up on them at all. The main reason we started researching them is because they moved into our back yard! well, a little farther then that, but only about 3 minutes away.

We should probably have our mind made up by spring.

bible verse

so proud of the boys for quickly memorizing their quarterly bibe verse for sunday school. it helped that they already knew a song using these verses.