TN Part 3: Walking in Memphis

While we were in TN we had some time to visit with Mark's sister Kathy and her family in their new home. It was so much fun getting to see them and their new place and visit a new town. The kids had a great time getting as far west as they've been walking along the east bank of the Mississippi River.

We found a new horse to add to the collectionand a few tigers
We saw Beale Street and the Peabody Hotel all decorated for Christmas with its ducks.
We got to the Gate of Graceland (even though the kids have practically no idea who Elvis is)
and we just had fun eating some fantastic BBQ, playing on the playground and visiting with the furry friends. Actually the furry friends may have been the highlight of Alicia's trip. There were cats and dogs everywhere and we even went with Kathy to volunteer at the local animal shelter and while she and Mark walked their dogs the kids and I cuddled and played with some of their cute little kittens.

TN part 2: Love in Nashville

On December 10 we got to join my dad and Mary as they were married in the Nashville, TN temple. She is so wonderful, I couldn't ask for a better "step"mom. The ceremony and the time with her family afterwards was great. I'm just glad we could be there and that they are finding some happiness together.

TN Part 1: Flying High

Usually we get Christmas presents at the end of December. Not this year. Alicia and Ry got their Christmas present at the beginning. The first part of it being that they got their wish to ride on a plane. Actually I think by the time it was done they were all planed out! We did discover though that in an air port you can: watch planes, find a playground, sit with Santa, get pretty much any kind of food you want, get a massage, and a flu shot. Not that we did all of those things but I saw them all and thought to myself of that movie that Tom Hanks did a while back about the guy who lived in the airport and how it's totally possible.
The kids did really well with all the air time and the running/waiting in the airports. Even with a super late night to get to TN they both were troopers.

November

I'm going to have to look again to see if I can find pics from November. I think the big thing (as expected) was Thanksgiving. We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving in NY with Mark's mother and brother and mostly just enjoyed some movies and quiet time and a little of the shopping chaos. Other than that it was a blissfully quiet month and I can't complain!

A White Halloween?

Just a few days before Halloween this is what we woke up to....
beautiful but I still can't believe we had snow in October that stuck!

Anyways, thankfully it all went along fine. We had a great Trunk-or-Treat party at the church with...the amazing Indiana Jones
and the Cutest Cowgirl.
Here's a pic that also had Mark as Harry Potter and one of their friends as the bright and beautiful bumble bee.


Halloween night came and it was a cold and wet Monday, I wasn't really sure if we would go out or not but I'm glad that we did. Alicia and Ry enjoyed a fun night and ended up with lots of goodies. (Alicia's now a cat of her own making because she decided a little ways into the Trunk-or-Treat that she didn't like being a cowgirl.)

Fall School Pictures

Since we can't do school pictures we just decided to do a fall school picture shoot. Well, Alicia and I did, Ry didn't really want to do anything besides play around. Still, I think we got some good ones, despite the silliness that seems to abound whenever they have a camera pointed their way.

Birthday Bowling

A couple of friends have birthdays in mid-October so for this year's celebration we all had some pizza and then a fun night down at the bowling lanes. Mark and I haven't been since before we got married... actually the last time I went bowling is when I showed of my mad flamingo bowler skills to the delight (laughter) of a bunch of my friends that happened to make up most of our high school bowling team. The kids have never been and they had a blast too. Although I'm not sure if they had more fun on the lanes or upstairs where they have pool and air hockey. To top it all off everyone got to munch on some fun Halloween cupcakes while we were there.

Biker Girl

All I can say is that I'm grateful that she's got her grandmother and her father's coordination because it's definitely not my skills that allowed her to one night come in and inform us that she'd removed one of the training wheels on her bike because it was getting loose and had figured out that she could ride with only three wheels. We figured if she could do that then she was ready to go all the way so Mark went out and helped her take the other one off and gave her a few starting lessons and helped her get going and pretty soon she was peddling all by herself. The next day I went out with her and showed her that she could even start all on her own (frankly I was getting tired of having to get her going after every time she wanted to take a break). Anyways, she was so ready for it. I remember distinctly crashing into a big shrub bush the first time I went out with my parents - she just rides all around the upper driveway and yard with the only trouble being Ryan trying to get in her way. I have a feeling that come spring we're going to be out doing this... a lot.

Fall Home School Activities

Part of our homeschooling adventure means that I'll be using the blog to help document and remind me of what we've done so please bear with me. Anyways, so far we've had a lot of fun with home school and Alicia (and Ry) have enjoyed some interesting projects - not that I'm taking credit, they pretty much all come straight out of her curriculum books. Anyways, here's a few of the things that we've done for home school this fall.

One of Alicia's first projects was that she wanted to learn how to do a basic tie fleece blanket. I cut the strips as she tied them up and we finished this little baby sized blanket in an afternoon.

As a combination history and art project we learned about cave paintings.
One of her science lessons was about the moon and I found this neat idea on NASA's website for kids about using cocoa powder and confection sugar/four to show how the craters are made on the moon.
Another history lesson was about ancient hieroglyphs and cuneiform. We had fun practicing and writing messages to each other in the cuneiform and Alicia liked it so much that she wanted to learn to write in it so we could write secret messages back and forth.
Perhaps her favorite project so far was building our very own Egyptian pyramid. It ended up taking a lot longer than I thought because she wanted to make it as realistic as possible. Considering that all I gave her to work with were Legos I think it was cool. She not only made the pyramid but wanted to put all of the things a real pyramid would have inside of it and even made a couple secret passageways and entrances to fool the tomb robbers and the human form Sphinx guard and the golden top piece.

Falling Apples

Fall=apple time. It's Ryan's favorite equation and he knows it... well. Even with all the cold rain we decided to brave it out one day for an apple picking adventure. Because it was cold and rainy. Thankfully not enough to keep me from bring my camera along for some of our annual pictures. Actually I think we all had fun running around under the trees and enjoying our apple festivities.