Thanksgiving 2010

Grandma dishes up her famous Cherry Pizza Pie- a Hanks boys and granddaughters favorite.

Grandpa working his magic with 5 of his grandkids. He's got his "show the kids pics from the camera" trick going on here.
Aaron found a new favorite friend- Grandpa! I am pretty sure he was saying a form of panpa by the end of the weekend.
The lovely ladies 4. From left to right- Katelynn (also called Katie B) age 2, Ashley 4 1/2, Emily 6, Rachel 4 1/2. They all played sooo well all weekend. We were sad to say goodbye to our cousins.
Drew was the turkey man of the day. Don't mess with Texas apron, Washington sweater and BYU Football! The turkey and all the food turned out great. It's funny we don't have a good picture of Kelly as she was in the kitchen making yummy things. Thanks again Kelly!
If ya'll don't look this good while you make Thanksgiving gravy, take note.
Don't Mess with Texas. He meant it.

Happy Holidays!

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Thanksgiving trip to WA

We headed to Pullman, Washington (population 24,000) home of W.S.U. and Drew and Kelly Hanks family. We left our home Monday Nov 22nd at 2 p.m. We anticipated going early to thwart delays from bad roads. We were all in good spirits and had good weather. We hit bad weather in Idaho with low visibility due to snow with high winds and pulled into Idaho Falls around 8 p.m. for the night. We spent the night at Le Ritz Hotel. We'd been there in August and throughly enjoyed our stay and again were not disappointed. We woke Tuesday to learn that the roads were closed due to a blizzard. We spent the day at the hotel with one venture out to Wal-mart. We played chess, Bryan and girls went in the hot-tub, and we all tried out the exercise room (homeschoolish experience). We ate free breakfasts, watched TV, colored, read stories, and were bored.

I bought TV dinners and was so excited to try them. Do you know how many different kinds of TV dinner there are? If not, check out your local freezer section. I bought 6 kinds thinking someone would like at least one. Well... we ate them. At least, we tried to eat them. We got full and tried lots of different flavors. None of them I would classify as great. They were fine. Alas my TV dinner excitement was brief. Plus do you know how long they take to cook? Each one is 5-10 minutes. My dinner was last and I was so hungry and the girls were long since done.

We made it to Pullman Wednesday night around 9 p.m. after a long day of cabin-fever, but great roads. I had a moment for the Jews in hiding, i.e. Anne Frank. What a life they must have had.

November

Build-a-bear party at our house with 6 kids and their teddy bears came to play Legos and a have snack. Mostly it consisted of my girls fighting over which bear got to wear the cute shoes and hair bows. Here's a picture to capture Ashley- pink dress, pink and gold bear "Goldie" with pink sparkly dress with matching hair bow, and red sparkly shoes.

We love playing the piano at my house.

Today we woke up to 5 inches of snow that stuck! At noon Bryan and Emily built us our first snowman of the season. He turned out to be the size of a snow goon- he was huge! He melted a little and now looks a little strange. Ashley lasted outside for 15 minutes then went to a friends' house for hot chocolate.

Driveway Art

The neighbor kids brought out their chalk and then we got ours and it was an art festival. We decided to trace around our bodies and each child colored in their own clothes. There were Emily, Ashley and Aaron, Cami and Brooke, Kenadee and Kole, and Jonathan.

Aaron loved it the most. He walked around with chalk in his hands. Sometimes we would eat it and sometimes he would color on the driveway. Usually he colored right where the other kid's person was and they would get mad.

November 5th and we were having great weather!

I let the kids trace around my body and then we had Bryan lay down next to mine. Bryan and mine look like they are leaping lovers. Bryan left, me on the right.

Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, All Saints Day, Veterans Day

As part of home school Emily and I do calendar every time. We notice the upcoming events and holidays, count how many days left in the month, figure out exactly how old she is on that day, etc. We have been learning some cool stuff about holidays I typically don't celebrate.

Rosh Hashanah Sept 9th and Yom Kippur Sept 18th.

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement filled with fasting. We checked out a few books and rented a video from the library and Emily got inspired. She wanted to set her 10 goals for the new year too. Here's what she came up with as her Jewish New Year's goals. She hung up her list so she could remember.

1) Be mise To Frenss {Be nice to friends}

2) Hellq mom 8 dad owt {Help mom & dad out}

3) Be ciend {Be kind}

4) Chaej my buthr's diepr {Change my brother's diaper}

5) Do the dishis

6) Hellp my sisdr owt

7) Feed my buthr

8) Play with my bruthr

9) Play with my frens

10) Play with sisir

Ten cmamins {10 Commandments}

All Saints Day (Nov 1)

A Catholic holiday of celebrating ancestors. We talked about our ancestors; primarily my grandparents. We went on my grandma's facebook page and checked out her pics. We read a book from the library and noticed all the food they make to honor their ancestors. We celebrated our family [basically I cried happy/sad tears].

Veteran's Day (Nov 11)

Both girls were with me and we checked out the VA's website. We watched a video, we played military themed kid computer games. The girls they printed out medals and then we colored. I wrote a letter and we will be mailing them out soon. We found out that the military celebrates every 11-11 at 11am. We had also set up a lunch date with a friend at the same time.

Emily wrote to my cousin who is a naval Vet. The medal says BRAVERY. Her letter:

Dear Sarah, I hope you had a good time in the war. Love Emily and Maegan {FYI- She didn't serve in the war}

For homeschool I teach Emily on Monday and Wednesday mornings and take her to Adelaide for lunch at 12:15. Thursday I keep her home all day and Ashley joins us. Thursday seems to have a lot of fighting, which is something you don't get in a classroom of 1. Aaron knows when I am teaching and I think he hates it. He knows he is getting the backseat and he knows there is not much in the homeschool room that he can play with. He likes to push buttons on the printer or computer, empty all the things out of the cupboard (boxes of checks, stapler, CDs), or eat markers, crayons, pencil erasers, paper. He will only be pacified with coloring on paper or me reading him a story for a few minutes. A neighbor asked Emily if she liked homeschool. Of course I perked up to hear her answer. She said she did and her favorite part was reading a story and eating a snack. We always have an agenda 1) pray 2) calendar and then any number of things. We always have recess and snack w/ a story. We read Doctor Dolittle and are now on Huck Finn. We also have writing in a journal, math (Saxon workbook pages, shapes, counting, money, playing store, telling time), handwriting (usually not too much, but mostly her numbers), language structure (apostrophes, Explode the Code workbook), computer games (from a list my teacher mom), science (she is basically in her own world of creating science projects for herself every day), plants, etc. Basically whatever the heck I feel like talking about, we do it. I love it most of the time. I wonder if I'll do it next year. Or for Ashley. Then I remind myself that I don't have to know that now.

A poem for Aaron

My Brother Ate an Orange

My brother ate an orange,

I’m astonished that he did,

He swallowed it completely,

He’s a disconcerting kid.

My brother ate an orange,

First he chewed it for a while,

Then digested it entirely

With a silly sort of smile.

My brother ate an orange,

It’s a novel thing to do,

Then he also ate a yellow

And a purple and a blue.

Thanks to my mom for finding this. Last Friday night he went for the blue. I found it Sunday morning.