Dance Party!

Last week we finally found a keyboard, we've had a piano for Evie, but it doesn't work so well when the other band members are downstairs and you're upstairs. A thrift store posted a piano on craigslist, so we headed out the next morning after a saw it and were able to get it. The keys on the piano light up, so tonight the kids decided they were going to do a dance party with the only light being the piano. I gave them some glow sticks as well and they had so much fun!

Here are a couple pictures (without the flash) the red lights are the keyboard (which also will play songs on it's own).

Here's a short video of some dancing.

Today was a good day, which was much needed as we have been struggling this past week. Nathan started second shift last week and will be on it until some time in February most likely. So it's been another adjustment on top of the many adjustments we've already been going through. I'm so thankful for a good day like today! 

Bonus picture: the rockin' Crustaceans from a few weeks ago. 

Sauder Village

In October we did two more field trips. One was a children's theater presentation of The Wind in the Willows.

Here are the kids waiting for it to begin. 


They all enjoyed it and we read through the book after seeing the show. The girls didn't want me to wreck the show by hearing the book first.

Our next field trip was to Sauder Village in Ohio which is a living history experience. This was a challenging experience as before we even entered the place the kids were fighting like crazy. Once we got in there was much complaining about only wanting to ride the train and not do anything else. By the end of the day it was a little better, but I am taking a long hard look at whether it is worth doing more field trips or not. There are two more we are signed up for and that is all we need to do to fulfill the commitment to the group. Anyway, here are some pictures from the day. 

 The kids on the train

They had a 1900s "Main Street" section which had a gas station and repair shop and this car which they allowed the kids to sit in.

As you can see it's a Ford model T I believe....

The kids thought the phone in the shop was pretty cool. 

17 cent a gallon for gas anyone?

They also enjoyed watching the pigs at the barn. 

They got to try their hand at butter making

And watch a goat be milked. 

There was also a museum that we did a quick walk through of. 

Evie enjoyed pretending she was in the snow. 

And they all enjoyed putting their face in as the bride!

And again as settlers on their way out west.....

Or crazy oxen :-)

Evie figured out it was much more authentic if she put her hair through.

There was also an Indian camp setup

But the best stop by far was the wood shop with all the toys!

We didn't find this until the end of the day, but all the kids had so much fun with the simple wooden toys!

The boys can home asking if Dad could make them some of the toys. We'll see if that ends up being another school lesson or not :-)

A visit from Nana and Grandad

My parents came up to visit for a weekend and we had some fun going to a brick expo!

The boys went straight to building on the big table of bricks....

And made some pretty cool things with a little help from Dad. 

Hannah joined them after walking around for a little bit with Nana and Evie

And soon Evie was there too!

There was also a legobot challenge that the kids enjoyed watching.

And there was lots of neat displays!

It was great having four adults, as each kid was able to go where they wanted. Here Kaleb is heading off with my dad to explore.

On Monday we headed out and hit a park and the local quarry before dropping my parents off at the airport. 

Enjoying the sunshine!

 The kids enjoyed the big swings too. 

And the cool playground!

The quarry was operating and pretty cool to watch. It was super loud, with the rocks being dumped and moving along the conveyor belt. 

There were even some swans in the ponds!

Thanks for the fun Nana and Grandad!

Honks and Waves

Towards the end of October the kids were enjoying the outdoors and decided to try a game they had done on our quiet street in Alpena on our new busy street in Indiana. The game is honks and waves. The goal, get as many people to honk and wave as you can. They dressed up and made signs that said things like "HI!" and went to the end of our driveway.

I didn't want to get too close and disturb their game, but you can see them at the end of the driveway here

They had a great time, I think they were out there less than half an hour and got over 100 honks and waves. They were super excited. 

They had lots of fun, but I told them they couldn't do it again, because there was a lot of honking and I didn't want our neighbors to get concerned. They were a little disappointed, but understood. If I hadn't stopped them I'm sure they would have done it for days.

Science Museum

Fort Wayne had a day where they opened a bunch of the museums for free. We took advantage of it and checked out the science museum. It had some pretty cool stuff, the boys enjoyed the two story slide the best. It was pretty crowded, but definitely worth going to again sometime.

The kids enjoying their different looks in the mirror

Playing with pulleys

And other fun things

Field Trips!

This year instead of joining a homeschool co-op we joined a field trip homeschool group. I figured it would give us a chance to get out and get to know the Fort Wayne area. Plus, the homeschool co-ops are way different here than what I'm used to....there are tons of options, there are lots of just pay and drop your kids off, there are a bunch of gym options and there is the we give you the material and you teach it and we only offer the class(es) we decide we want, all very different than what I've done in the past. Anyway, our first two field trips were back to back on the same day. First we went to an apple orchard, like 27,000 tree orchard that sells apples to Wal-mart. Kind of crazy! Unfortunately because it's been such a weird growing season they didn't have any apples ripe yet and the warehouse wasn't processing anything, but it was neat to see the apples on the trees and hear about the process from picking to bagging and see the machine that washes and bags the apples. The machine that sorts them also weighs and measures them and decides what bag to put it in based on the weight to get it as close as possible to the weight of the bag they are filling (3lbs or 5lbs).

Heading out to the orchard

This tree is grafted and has two kind of apples, red and yellow

Evie and I were hanging out across the wagon(?) from the other kids

I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of the machines that do the sorting and such, I guess I didn't think of it since there weren't apples running through them.

 

The second location was a bison farm! There we got to hear a little bit of the history of buffalo (or bison) and then they took us out into the fields to feed them. The kids had a blast feeding them and being so close to them.

Maybe not so thrilled to be there at the beginning...

Riding out to the fields

Bison! 

Isn't the baby cute? 

Here's Kaleb feeding them

Hannah hanging out with the buffalo

My, what a big tongue you have!

Afterward the kids enjoyed the see-saw by the farm store

And the girls turn

And smiling by the end