P.E. all day today!

Yep, you read it right! Today, we had P.E. all day today and what a great time we had with our friends!

We started off at the Peavine trail for a 1 1/2 hour bike ride through the dells. The sunflowers were amazingly beautiful! Then off to the pool for about 3 hours of swimming and lunch.

Some might say ... "Oh my, why aren't you doing school?" And I would say ..."We have all the time in the world for school. That is what is so great about homeschooling! We can make this day up on another day."

Latest project of mine

Designed and hand crafted by ..... me! If you haven't figured it out just yet, Shae's soccer team was named the "Bumble Bees". I took on the project of making the team banner and here it is.

This is all made of felt and is 5 foot by 3 foot. I just hope we don't get anymore players or I will have to remove or shrink my flowers.

Who needs paint?

Shae comes to me and says "Hi!" proudly with her toes glowing in this lovely shade of pink. Then I got a closer look and noticed that they were in fact not painted pink at all.
She carefully put bakers clay on each of her little toe nails. Ha!
Her creative little mind at work.

Mother of the year!

Meet our new friend, Emily. She has moved into our pine tree in the backyard. She is a brave bird and a good mother to be. She allows us to check on her daily and get up to 1 foot away from her without flying away. The other day we had a pretty hard monsoon rain. We thought of Emily and wondered if she was still sitting on her eggs while getting blasted with wind and rain. We ran out in the rain to check on her and there she sat getting soaking wet protecting those eggs. I told the girls that she has won the "mother of the year award". They asked me why and I told them that I would of left to find a dry warm spot. ha,ha,ha!

They got out some ribbon and made her awards to hang in the tree. Brave Emily just sat there proudly receiving her awards as the girls placed them on the tree branches around her. You can see how close they got to her and she never left her eggs.

Way to go Emily!! You deserve these ribbons of honor!

Lets make a cute bow!

Here is the team uniform for this season! Yes, it is yellow and black. So, maybe the team name will be bumble bees or Shae says lemon heads.

I'll keep you posted on that one!

So of course I have to make a cute bow to match! This is how to make one.
Here are the measurements for making one bow.
First, pick 5 different colors / patterns of ribbon.
white is 5/8" cut @ 5" x 2
black polka dot is 5/8" cut @ 5" x2
yellow is 7/8" cut @ 9" x 1
soccer ball is 7/8" cut @ 9 3/4" x 1
yellow and white stripe is 1" cut @ 10" x 2

I use a glue gun. A dot is all you need.
You can see the order that this bow is stacked. Put a small glue dot after each stack then add the center. The center knot is tied very loose and wraps around the back and glued. Then add the clip of your choice.
I use a alligator clip for quick in and out.

The soccer season is starting and we are so glad! Shae had her soccer clinic this past weekend and the game is in the air. She is very tiny compared to a lot of the kids ... but we tell her that she is mighty!

Her new uniform is bright yellow and black (pic to come).

Honk'n Huge Zucchini!

I promise we have nothing as far as vegetation enhancement in the soil in our zoo garden!

It must be that great soil and compost mix from Watter's Nursery!

Check out a few of our latest picks from the garden. Look at the one Kayla is holding! Ha! It is the size of a baby!

Well done Shae!

Shae surprised me with her ease on the sewing machine. She just went with the flow and sewed her little heart out.

She was so proud when she finished her palm tree pillow! It is displayed nicely in her "beach " themed room.

Fire Watch Tower Field Trip

We went on a special visit to one of the Coconino County fire watch towers.This was up at the top of the Mogollon Rim at an elevation of 8,074.

It is much like a tree house way up high.

The girls were super excited to go up the many steps. I on the other hand got up one flight and about peed my pants. I had a hard time getting to the top of the second flight. The railing was thin yet sturdy and the steps were very narrow. Looking up ahead was a trap door that was shut but the lady opened it via a rope. Totally bizarre and I was super scared of this situation since I am afraid of heights. Kayla and Shae zoomed past me and said for me to move on.
We are at the top now and inside this so called watch tower made up of one room much like a little living room. It had a deck surrounding the entire tower which totally freaked me out. There was a runner rug on a little section which made it feel like there was somewhat of a floor underneath you but the rest was open spaced metal that you could see all the way down to the ground. YIKES!

This is what the inside of this tower is like. The lady works here every day in the summer all day long and she has a little house at the bottom. She communicated via CB radio with other watch towers in the area.

This thing ( I can't remember the name of it) is how she locates an approximate fire location from the smoke that is visible from her tower. She lined up the string right on the smoke and locates the fire location from her map.

She is showing us the watch tower locations and fire watch areas. She is a master wilderness fire locator and has done this job for many years.

She has one humming bird feeder at a open window for entertainment. These hummingbirds are constantly at her feeder. She has used 200 lbs of sugar so far this year. I caught this one and got the perfect shot of it. Her view is amazing!

This day she had 9 active fires that they were keeping watch of. In the distance in this photograph below you can see the smoke of one of the fires she was watching. They were all caused that morning from lightening.

Below is the map she read to locate fires via the smoke.

Another look at her watch tower from the ground.

At the base of the tower at this time of year her area is surrounded by lady bugs which come to mate.

The girls played with them and we scooped several of them up and brought them to Mimi's garden.

They were all over this tree.

We had a fabulous time up north this day. What an experience the girls had. On my way down the hatch from the watch tower the lady commended me for homeschooling the girls and said "good job." That was a great feeling! More and more people are seeing the need for it and its rewards.

Garden Time

My mom has a love for gardening and it shows!

These are just 2 of her gardens. Above is her vegetable garden and below is her Dalia garden.

Shae spent a lot of time in the garden with Mimi.

These Dalia's are beautiful and very large.

This is a dinner plate Dalia that Kayla is holding.

Dried flowers make beautiful vases

While at my moms the girls made beautiful vases with dried flowers and leaves that my mom has collected and dried.

I am seeing a project for my art class!

While visiting this darling friend came for a visit!

FINISHED!!

Way to go Kayla!!! She worked hard on her shirt and wanted to finish it so she can wear it to visit her grandmother. She even got to use the serger! That is her favorite machine to use.

The shirt came out fabulous!!! She is wearing it proudly above!

Incentives work wonders in my household!

My oldest loves to read and I will find her reading throughout the day. She has found the early love and enjoyment of reading.

My youngest on the other hand needs an incentive to make her want to read. I am finding this to be very rewarding for her. She is very competitive and therefore a reading program works well for her. Before bed time the other night I went into her room to find her reading while hula hooping. A clearer shot and hula hoop frozen in time.

Just in the past couple of weeks she has been wanting to read more and I have not had to ask her to do her extra reading either.

We have been moving right along with our new ACE curriculum. For some kids this style may take some adjusting to as it is quite work book intensive. But it thoroughly covers the basics which I like and has ample review but not to much. They can get their work done in just a couple of hours and have the rest of the day for themselves. Kayla completed her PACE and came to me asking for her test. She received 100% on the first math test!

Way to go Kayla!

Her English test wasn't as good but a 94% so not bad. I told her that she needs to keep all her tests in the 90th and above percentile.

Kayla will be working on finishing her zoo research report this week then we will be start our study on Ancient Egypt lapbook style.

The Research Report

Kayla will be researching many of the animals in the zoo. The Lemur is one of the animals in the zoo that our garden project feeds.

Kayla has been given an assignment in her homeschool studies. She will be doing a written research report. She has chosen to do a report on the garden project at the Heritage Zoo. Today, she brought her camera and a note book and started on her research.

This is the bulletin board in front of the garden.

She will discuss the beginning stages of the garden preparations, planting, harvesting and our challenges with the peacocks and other critters eating up our plants.

She took several pictures of various animals and took notes from the educational boards that are posted at the animal dens.

This tortoise became her friend today. He came to her and let her pet his head for quite some time.

Sewing 101

School has started in our house. It is going great and the girls are having a blast and most importantly they are learning great things. Besides our academics .... Kayla has been along side me for both lunch and dinner watching, assisting and doing a little cooking with me. She loves it! She is mastering measuring and enjoying the end product.

The fair is coming up and so Kayla has started making a nice blouse for herself and she plans on entering it in the Yavapai fair. More updates on that as she progresses.


Shae is making a palm tree pillow and doing quite well.


This was Shae's first time working on the sewing machine by herself.
She is hand sewing the tree palms onto the trunk. She is doing a great job and I will keep you posted on the finished tree.