Category Archives: family

Thanksgiving

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Thanksivng is my favorite holiday, I love everything about it. This year I am hosting a small Thanksgiving feast for my parents and grandparents. I am nervious and excited. It isn’t my first time doing a Thanksgiving dinner, a couple of years ago I had Dadzoo’s parents over, but for some reason I am more nervious about this dinner than I was last time. Anyway I am excited and planning my menu and tablescape.

What are you favorite Thanksgiving traditions and dishes?

Big Boy

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Usually on Friday nights my girls will have a “sleep over”. They will pick a room and they have a little party, there are usually snacks and movies until late. This week the schools had their “fall break” and Wednesday night wasn’t a school night so we let the girls have their sleep-over. When we put the little boy to bed he was not very happy. He kept calling to “get out!” and on a whim I did get him out of bed and told him he could watch a movie with the girls.

The kids were all downstairs, I was going about my business and forgot that baby boy wasn’t in his bed until Dadzoo called me downstairs to look at something.

Baby boy’s sisters made a little bed for him and he fell to sleep with the rest of the kids.

Guess that means he is a big boy now and can party with the big kids.

I only wish he would decide to be a big boy and use the potty….

Going a Berrying

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Is “berrying” even a word?

I don’t know if it is, but I like it, so I am going to pretend that it is.

I had the phrase “Lets go a’Maying” in my head whenever I thought about this post. Like “Let’s go a’Berrying”.

Anyway.

This year instead of buying raspberries at a fruit stand we took the kids to a real live pick your own berry patch and picked our own. We had so much fun, I think this is going to be a tradition. To find a pick-your-own patch near you you can go to this site: http://www.pickyourown.org/

Of all the kids I think our 2 year old was the best picker, he would fill his little pail then bring it to Dadzoo or I and say “I put in you bucket?” and dump his “waspbewies” into our bucket.

The older girls did a wonderful job too and filled their buckets, only eating a few.

(they promised it was only a few)

The little kids had the best advantage being that they were either at eye level to the berries or only had to look up to find them, where we had to look under the leaves.

(isn’t he handsome, I think he would make a good farmer)


The people who lived next door to the berry patch had deer, and of coarse the kids couldn’t stay away. The people who owned the patch let the kids throw apples to the deer.

We had an enjoyable evening and the family that owned the patch were super nice. We picked 20 pounds of berries (yipee!). We also took home 15 ears of corn, a few onions, pepper and tomatoes! We had a wonderful time, it made me really long for a little farm of my own.

Homeschool and Family Relations

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In studying different methods for homeschooling I came across many suggestions having to do with older siblings teaching the younger ones. This made a lot of sense to me, anyone who has had to teach others knows that the teacher learns more than the student.

While I certainly don’t hand over all the teaching to my older children, (they have their own studying to do), when there is a question asked that I know the other knows I refer to them.

This works really well, my oldest two are studying grammar and language arts out of the same book and one of them seems to grasp the concepts better, so she is in charge of helping the other when help is needed. I think it helps to solidify the concepts in her mind.


My 2nd grader is working of fluency in her reading, I have given her the charge to teach her younger sister sight words. So far it seems to be working, both of them are learning the things they should be.

A great side benefit to all this helping out, is that they are fostering strong sibling relationships, and that is always a good thing.