Giving Thanks

Giving Thanks for all our most wonderful blessing....

(this is what they wrote on their leaves for our thankful tree)

Liam--
Paper and scissors
Choo choo trains
Cars
Jesus
Daddy!

Delaney--
My family
Pete and Bailey
Jesus and Heavenly Father
the scripture stories

Cailin--
My guinea pigs
pens, pencils, and paper

The world, the church and Jesus Christ
my home especially my room
my life!

Ryan--
Nooggies
The Amazing Race
Mom and Dad
the prophet and general authorities
ice cream

Connor--
the general authorities over the church--to include the prophet
food--how we've learned to make good food by combining ingredients
houses--I'm glad I'm not stuck outside on a cold windy night (but, I wouldn't mind being stuck outside of a warm summer night, though)
and Yes, the Godhead!!

As, for Barry and I, each one of our precious kids, personal revelation, our home, life, that we are married to our very best friend--yes, that is sappy, but true. The gospel, and weekend getaways!!






Last year, we helped, along with other members of our ward, a church in Radford serve meals to home bound families. This year, did the same thing only we helped a local Pulaski church. Barry found out about it through a pastor of another church, whom he and the boys mow lawn for each summer.
The kids had quite a lot of fun putting dinner packages together. Afterwards, they delivered nine packages to homes.
Afterwards, they came home for fun with relatives, our own turkey and the fixing's. Of course, watching the ongoing Thanksgiving day battle of video game football between Barry and Brian
was a must!!

Be Turkey-ful from Cailin's blog

You are thinking about stuff you are thankful for because it's almost Thanksgiving, right? Well, you have that list posted on your bulletin board and you are adding one thing per day and you feel so great because you are doing something for the holiday. You wonder why they put out Christmas stuff so early, because it isn't even past Thanksgiving. Then, you read your list.

Family

Home

Games

Friends

Food

Life

Church

Then, you wonder why it has only the basic things. Why not delve into the 'food' subject? Man, I could talk about that for hours! So, to show the kind of delving into it I mean, I'm going to give you a list of stuff that I am thankful for.

Mac&Cheese

My Guinea Pigs

Activity Day Girls (ADG)

Apples and Peanut Butter
Horses

Saddles to put on horses

My cat

My room

My house

The vacuum

The computer

People who listen to me

Books

Laptops

TURKEYS

11 months old

Highlights for the month: Brianne is eleven months old. She is really starting to come into her own personality. She knows what she wants.... like my pork roast that she snached from my plate. She put it in her mouth and started nawing it like a pro.

She is supporting her own weight on now. This is against her will, most of the time. She has early intervention weekly. Susan, Brianne's Early Intervention Specialist puts her through several drills that are designed to help Brianne support her weight better. The drills are also designed to help Brianne with her posture, which in turn,helps her learn to walk properly.

It is quite a workout for her. She is usually a pretty good sport about it. Once she gets tired, she is done. She rages at Susan and shoots Vicki and I some pretty nasty looks for not rescueing her.

A Trip to Ancient China and India

History presentations have come again, this time we traveled to ancient China and India. We learned about....

China's pre writing form called pictogram's. Another kid presented on calligraphy. Their writing system is quite complex. To write well is considered an art form.

....Asia, and all it's geographical features and countries


....A time line of what and when certain items we still use today were invented in China.
For example--
ice cream, over 2,000 years ago

kites

pasta

sunglasses 500 years ago

fireworks 1,000 years ago, just to name a few.

...How silk was discovered, how it's made, and how they kept it secret for such a long time.
(the presenter even brought real silk worms to show)


....a power point presentation of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Others included--

The Chinese Zodiac calendar

weapons used in ancient china

Moving on to India.....we learned about,

Indian art

The custom of sisters giving brothers bracelets, for the promise and in honor, of their brothers protecting them. (we also learned that makeup and jewelry are worn by boys, not girls in ancient India.)

Fun in CC!

We're officially half way through our school year with Classical Conversations....my the time has flown by. We're having fun memorizing myriads of facts--geography, history, math, English grammar, Latin conjugations, and science--art and music theory too. Next semester more facts along with art and music appreciation.


On our last day of first semester, just before the Christmas break began, Connor and Cailin's class gave the rest of us a musical concert with the tin whistles the kids have been using to learn music theory.

For the past 3 weeks the older kids in essentials (the English grammar and writing intensive program) have been working on a research project on a person of historical significance from the medieval time period of history. On this last day, the kids gave oral presentations of their person. All but Connor, enjoyed dressing up as their person.

We had Joan of Arc, Eleanor of Aquitaine, William Tell, King John and the Magna Carta,

Cailin as Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and England, mother of two English kings, Richard the Lionhearted and John (Lackland).

Homemade Marshmallows

Every Thursday for Classical Conversations the kids have to prepare a 3 minute oral presentation on a specified topic for their fellow home school classmates.
This week Delaney's topic was "What do you think is the most wonderful invention ever made?

After talking about different topics--houses, suckers, Popsicles--she and I decided upon Marshmallows!

After learning a bit about this confection we decided to try our hand at making some for ourselves.

(Preparing the pan with powdered sugar and corn starch for the confection to be poured into.)

The afternoon was quite--everyone else was asleep, napping due to colds going around-- so Delaney and I had some peaceful time to ourselves to experiment.

Combining corn syrup and sugar with water.

Cooking it till it reaches a boil--then boil for a minute longer

Add the sugary syrup to 3 Tbsp of softened unflavored gelatin and mix for ten minutes.

This is what you get after 10 minutes....

....perfect marshmallow creme!

We then poured it into the prepared pan and let it sit for 2-3 hours. Once it was set it plopped out nicely. We dusted it with more cornstarch and powdered sugar.

Then cut it into squares....dust each one individually....then let them sit a few hours more. ( We found this really wasn't necessary.)

Taa-daa! Homemade Marshmallows! Mmmmm, they are quite tasty and have the same texture as the store bought ones.

Here's her speech

"What do hot chocolate and s'mores have in common? Why marshmallows, of course.

Marshmallows are a candy that have been around since the mid 1800s. They are called marshmallows because part of the early recipe called for sap form the root of the marshmallow plant. The marshmallow plant it a pink flower herb in the mallow family.

The marshmallows we buy at stores now use gelatin in place of the root sap, My mom and I tried a recipe and they are great! Try one....I think marshmallows are a sweet invention."

A Happy Halloween

Tradition abounds for us at Halloween. We love attending the ward's yearly 'trunk or treat' activity a few days before Halloween. The costume clad kids converge, once again, upon society to gather more candy, a few days later, as we gather at the Turpin's home for a pot luck taco dinner and more trick or treating.

In September, the kids started to think about what they wanted to be. Delaney wanted to be a 'Pegasus'. We devised this get-up, using her sweat shirt and lots of yarn. She loved it when we splurged and purchased a new set of wings for her. (our old set had lost it's definitive form)

Cailin wanted to be Hermione from the Harry Potter series. However, she wanted to color her hair and couldn't find any spray-on hair color that was brown. Sooo, she tweaked her plan a bit and became Ginny instead, because we did find red hair coloring.

For the past few months Connor has been writing a fantasy type book. He wanted to dress up as his main character, Randog, for Halloween. Randog has green hair and is part mer-person. Out of cardboard, he created the unique sword he's holding. He named the sword "thrice-cut"

Liam, by default, because I didn't have a wonderful creative plan for him, became a soccer player. The only thing that was important to him was having green hair, just like Connor. So, he's a soccer player with green hair!

The back side of Delaney's Pegasus costume.

With the help of my sister Elizabeth and a wonderful find at Goodwill, Brianne became a ladybug for the night. (The Goodwill find was the cute polka dot skirt.)

What a cutie.

And where was Barry and Ryan? Barry had to work the night of the ward activity. He was off for the actual night of trick or treating, but, he and Ryan stayed home and had fun playing video games. Brianne wasn't feeling well so they graciously offered to stay home and keep her out of the cold--how thoughtful :)

Playing games at the ward activity.

Connor had his first weekend camp out with scouts the same night as the trunk or treat activity. His scout troop came in from their camp out for the night. We were also joined by my brothers, Brian (and his wife Risa,) and Bob, who flew in from Spokane for a work conference, and came for the weekend to spend time with us.

I was amazed at how quickly Liam warmed up to Bob, as, he's never met him before. Soon Bob had him calling him "Uncle Bob, my favorite uncle."

One horse, two horse, three horse.... (from Cailin's blog)

OK, sorry I didn't get any pictures of this, but then Mom wasn't there to take the pictures. So I'm going to paint my picture with words. Good thing I'm pretty good at doing that.

It all started with me being extremely bored. I tried everything. I read, I wrote in my story, I drew, (though I'm not much good at it,) and I did anything else you can think of doing...well, inside, of course. It was very cold outside, though it's only the 6 of November. The frost this morning stayed longer than normal. Basically, unless I wanted my fingers to go numb, I didn't really want to go outside to jump on the trampoline or anything. So, I confessed to Mom and told her how bored I was. She asked Dad if it were OK if I could go with them to go horse back riding. Dad called Bro. Fisher if I could come on the Scout activity, and apparently, Bro. Fisher said yes. So I got to go. We picked up another Boy Scout named Norberto and we headed to Walmart. (No, this is not where we rode the horses.) This is when we pick up Bro. Fisher.

We headed to a house in Blacksburg, the home of Bro. Whitter (whit-e-er). He had three horses, but one, Cash, was a little too feisty for anyone but him to ride. The other two horses were Jane and Susy. They were a dark brown with beautiful sleek black tails. I only rode Susy. She wasn't as hard to ride as Jane. Connor also noticed the change in attitudes, and chose only Susy to ride. I don't blame him. I see perfectly why he did that. I had the same reason.

So, Bro. Whitter let Noberto and Ryan ride first. Soon they had mastered the art of leading and could lead the horse by themselves. Later, Connor rode, then me, and so far and so forth until Connor and I also had mastered riding them. Bro. Whitter had to go help a cow somewhere, (he is a vet,) so Bro. Fisher and Dad were left to watch us.

When Bro. Whitter came back, we took the horses into the forest. Connor and Ryan went first. Soon they came back, and Norberto and I went. Susy was getting a bit crazy.

(host of T.V. show): Why do you think Susy was getting so crazy?

(someone): Because Cailin's hands were so numb that she let the reigns slip. The horse thought it was in control, so it started going a bit wild.

Yep. That's the story. I hit my left knee on a tree and my right knee on a bunch of bushes. I had some control, but only about half I needed. It was a hard ride, but I survived without a broken bone or something. Over all, it was really fun, even though I liked riding Susy in the pen more than in the forest. But, hey, I'm not bored anymore.

The Planets of our Solar System

Our astronomy science unit continues with study of the planets. We used the mnemonic phrase "My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nachos" to help us remember each planets name.

Mercury, a terrestrial planet, is the first planet in our solar system. There's not much known, but what astronomers do know, is that it's quite hot (750*)during the day and because it doesn't have an atmosphere, it becomes freezing cold (-300*) at night. It's the smallest planet in our system and it's quite dry and dusty--much like our moon. Mercury has many craters on its surface due to asteroids crashing into it. To help the kids better understand craters, we made some craters in a bowl of flour. Of course they got a little carried away, but that was part of the fun! Hopefully it'll help them remember a few of the characteristic that are known about this planet.

Our next stop on our trip through the solar system was Venus.....a very, very hot planet (about 870 degrees). This terrestrial planet--which means 'earth-like', in that it has a rocky or earthy surface, you can stand on it--it stays hot all the time because it does have an atmosphere to keep all the warmth close to the surface.
It has many volcanoes that spew lava onto its surface. We experimented with melted butter, acting as lava, and poured it over our rocky, floury surface. We watched how the 'lava' cut little streams out of the flour, going where it wanted to go. After a while, observed how the butter hardened up again, and it was no longer liquid, changing to a hardened rock, just as real lava does after it comes our of a volcano and sits for a while.
I had the older kids give oral reports on two planets, one terrestrial and one gaseous, Cailin gave hers on this one.

We skipped earth, as we are pretty familiar with this planet, and moved on to Mars. Although there's much known about this planet, we didn't spend to much time reading on this one, because Connor gave his oral report on this one. We did have fun re-creating the biggest mountain peak in the entire solar system....which happens to be on Mars. It's a volcano called Olympus Mons. Ours isn't very big, but we did make it EXPLODE!

Liam loved this part!!

A future scholar at work.

The Asteroid Belt comes next in the solar system and once we cross over it, we came to Jupiter, the first gas giant in our system. It is made of gases, not rocks. There are many storms on this planet. One in particular is called the 'Giant Red Spot'. This storm has been observed to be raging over this planet for more than 300 years. (Astronomers have seen it in their telescopes since at least 1665). It has many moons and it's incredible mass or size has a strong gravitational pull. This pull is so strong that most comets and asteroids from space are sucked up in it's gravitational pull, hitting Jupiter, instead of our earth. Some people call it a "protective Mother to earth" because of this trait. God created it's massive size and gravity pull to keep our earth safe from asteroids and the such.

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is like a hurricane on earth. We made a hurricane in a bottle to see an example of what this might be like on Jupiter. They all took turns making hurricane-shaped funnels and were quite mesmerised with this project. Hopefully it'll remind them that Jupiter is a stormy planet.

Saturn is next, it's the most famous of the planets, it even has a day of the week named after it....Saturday. It's easy to remember this one because of it's bright rings. Saturn is a lot like Jupiter. They are both made of hydrogen and helium gas. It too, is horribly cold and stormy.

Beyond the two enormous yellowish-gold planets of Jupiter and Saturn are two enormous blue gas giants --Uranus and Neptune. These two planets have a great deal of methane in their atmosphere, which absorbs red light and reflects blue light, thus it gives these planets it's beautiful blue color.

These gaseous planets are also stormy (Neptune has a Great Dark Spot, much like Jupiter's Red Spot. However, through the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers see that it's gone, although another storm has formed on a different part of Neptune.)
Cailin did her oral report on Neptune and Uranus. She was thrilled to find that the names of some of the moons that orbit around Uranus are named after characters in Shakespeare play 'A Midsummer's Night Dream', in which she knew about them because of the play she was in during summer. It's fun to watch my kids have 'ahaa' moments in learning.

We made clouds to better help us understand about their atmosphere. The inner core of each planet is very hot, while the gases that make up its atmosphere are extremely cold. Gases rise from the hot core, but when they get cooled off in the icy-cold atmosphere, they turn into liquids and then solids (like ice crystals), making clouds. These clouds aren't made of water, but methane and other chemicals, however, the process is similar to what we created in our jar.

Letting the 'clouds' escape.

A few years back, when we studied the solar system for the first time, we made ice cream, to exemplify the cold nature of these planets. It was such fun then, we decided to do it again.

It's sooooo cold....with the rock salt added to the ice it brings the freezing point of the water down to 28 degrees instead of 32. Brrrr that's cold to hold. The kids brought out their gloves and scarves to protect their hands.

The delicious concoction is completely ready to eat. Mmmmmm, delicious....well okay, much of the salt from the ice seaped into the the bag and made the ice cream a bit salty, but they enjoyed it anyway.