Fall is in the air!

Our recycled scarecrow! He was a lesson in art, creativity, problem solving and recycling!

These very cool ghosts that we made. The inside lights up at night and they're just super cute! Asher's cricket. One of the many joys of studying nature!

Oh sweet fall! It's crisp leaves, warm cider and Halloween! We've started off our week by studying a unit called "Remembering Fall" which was pretty cool even though it was outdated. So far this fall we have collected leaves and acorns, made some really cool ghosts and a recycled scarecrow. Visited the recycling center to learn about recycling, read Charlie and the Chocolate Factor and the Vicar of Nibbleswick by Roald Dahl. We've worked on journaling, reading, writing, math, habit training and learning lots of life skills. We're attending TOT which teaches the kids basketball handling skills while they also learn right from left, vowels, mixing colors, spanish, french and lots of other stuff. We're still in tae kwon do as well. Aybrin and Enoch should be ready to test the next cycle which I believe is 13 weeks from now. They're excited about that! And Asher loves both TOT and tae kwon do...it's so adorable! We just found out we're going to Myrtle Beach and Washington DC for Christmas this year and we're busy trying to fit everything and everyone in along with planning Christmas gifts! We're still balancing life, school and the photography business but all is well and God's a big God who helps us out constantly!

Our first day of school!

Monday was our 1st day back to school and it was a great day! (I've been trying to post this since Tuesday but the internet was messing up). We're trying to implement the Charlotte Mason method this year and I know it'll take a while to get the hang of it but we're on the right track. We did our journals, writing, reading, real life math, puzzles, then lots of nature time. It was wonderful. While I was outside taking clothes off the line I found this bug. So I snapped some pictures then found something on the clothespin that the bug was sitting on. I brought the whole clothespin in, put it in a jar with grass and left it. We looked it up this morning and found out it is a katydid and that these are indeed eggs! So we're already rolling right along in our nature studies! We're doing our sit down studies this morning and then heading into Ozark this afternoon for a visit to the library and a nature study walk. I'm taking clipboards for the boys to draw a certain animal and then write about it. We'll then come home and look it up in our Nature Study book and learn more about it. I'm excited about this part of schooling to us since it's new to us. I think it'll really teach the boys to be attentive which will really help.

I'm also posting a few photos of our excursion last week. We went with Jonna to Fantastic Caverns where we got some great photo opportunities! I'm trying to add Ben's picture but it messed up yet again (sigh)!!

New Camera!

We got a new camera for the business.. one I get to keep at home! YEAH!! So I've been taking a lot of photographs. Here are a few from last week. All the kids can now jump off the diving board so we're thrilled! Last week we also went to the Dance and Move at our library which the kids had a blast at. I was amazed how much Asher loved it! I would really like to find a creative movement class for him, especially since he's so upset that Aybrin played TBall and he was too young to do it. I need to get him in something fun!

I've also been visiting this blog called raisingolives.com Very inspiring and motivating. They have 9 kiddos so I like to see how big families handle their chores, housework, etc. instead of following someone's plan who has no children. Plus they homeschool which is super nice. It's amazing how much school stuff I have to get organized! And the kids are so young! I can't imagine how it will be when they're older!!

Ben's Vision of Aybrin

A few snapshots of recent times!

Look how cute Asher and Eleesia are sleeping on Janiece's lap!

Here we are at bike and bbq day at Mom's school

Flying Ninja kick!

The baby robins we watched hatch in our back yard. This has been the best spring for us watching our birds!

Asher's toad he found in the front flower bed. They LOVE finding frogs, toads and bugs!

Pop and Asher at the first T-Ball Game of the season

Here are the big T-Ball hitters!

Aybrin in his new Tae Kwon Do uniform

Aybrin with his cake at his reading party on Monday night

The Great Turtle Race

Jemma brought this fun activity home for the boys last week. We painted some paper plates, stapled them to green turtle cutouts, then had some races! Here's video of the races and reviews!

Our week so far

Well I don't have a lot of pics. But you can watch the video below of us getting our chicks this week. We also have 6 bunnies for our shoot tomorrow! Janiece's house really started stinking and we wanted to see the bunnies for a while so we now have 5 of them. Their in a tall pen but somehow one jumped out while we were in Fair Grove yesterday! We went to Oovvda Winery and the Potter's Mansion yesterday to do some videotaping for our video business. It was a great day trip!

Getting Ready for the Chicks & Bunnies shoot

This is a video clip from a hectic day of preparing for the
Chicks and Bunnies shoot for Captivating Time Photography.

Happy Resurrection Sunday!

Happy Valentine's!

Happy Valentine's Day!We took some portraits of the kids for Valentine's Day.
The boys got lip shaped suckers and the girls got heart suckers from Sweet Cheeks Candy Shop In downtown Ozark.

They had SO much fun and got SO sticky! After the suckers Janiece took them all to her house where they painted outside. It's been so nice out lately! Ben and I went to Marshfield to a Luv Bug meeting for wedding vendors at Whitestone Wedding Chapel (more details on that on Christian County Video blog).

All in all, it was a great day for the kiddos. Who wouldn't love a huge sucker, getting sticky without being in trouble, and painting outside?

We hope your Valentine's is great! Be sure to give extra love out today.

This is it!

This is it, our famous 5,4,3,2,1 portrait! And now it's over. Essa turned 2 yesterday so now they're 5,4,3,2,2! But that doesn't stop us! Since it snowed so heavily we went out to the studio today. Took the couch across the street to our brick wall and captured some great family snow scene shots. We're going to print them out big, mat and frame them, then put all the season portraits above our couch. What a great way to see how the boys are growing!

Another Blog! For Christian County Video

Well I'm now starting another blog. This will be blog number 3 that I help maintain (1 Janiece and I share the other 2 are pretty much mine). So the address is: http://christiancountyvideo.blogspot.com/ and it's for our video business. We're going to be at the Springfield Wedding Expo this weekend so that'll be fun.
I'm OOVooing with my Dad tonight. Totally excited about that. I haven't talked to him in quite a while. He's away for work. I miss him, we're the same personalities and it helps! We also had a shoot tonight. It was great. I love their family! We were meant to be related ;-)
We went to the Discovery Center yesterday. That was a blast. We can tell the kiddos are getting older as it's SO much less stressful! It's just going to get easier in ways because the kids are now 5 and under instead of say 3 and under. But I'm eventually going to have 2 more kids! But we need a bigger car and house first. But Janiece and Adam got us an AWESOME Christmas present with the Discovery Center tickets! It's highly recommended!

Tennessee

I can only put on a couple of these pics because my computer is messing up AGAIN! Ugh, it's taken me forever to update this blog.
These are some pictures taken when we went through the Smokey Mountains. We went to Panama City for a week which was SO wonderful! We had a condo right on the beach and slept every night with the door open hearing the calming ocean waves. On our way home we went about 6 hours out of our way to go to IKEA in Atlanta, our favorite store! We almost had to have a straw to breathe in the vehicle because we bought so much cool stuff! Then we went through the Smokey's, of course it was out of our way too. But Ben and Adam had neither one seen the Smokey Mountains! Neither had our 5 kids, so it was well worth it. And we went right through the Cherokee Indian reservation so there were teepee's set up to attract attention and lots of little stores. We didn't stop as we were in a hurry since we were in a huge rush to get home, but it was great because we're studying Indians in school in the next couple of weeks. At least we could show the kiddos out the window.
Scroll down to the next post to see a few Florida pics too!

Ahh, a sweet vacation

Ok I don't have a ton of photos here. Most of them I put on my 8 gig jumpdrive and now I can't find my jump drive ugh! But here's a few. Also, we have our famous 5,4,3,2,1 photo on our business site. It's http://www.captivatingtime.blogspot.com/ Our kids are 5,4,3,2,1 until January 27th so we made these huge numbers and took them to Florida for a shoot! But here are some from my little (not professional) camera although I did editing on a couple of them!

Aybrin had SO much fun running from the waves!

We went to Shell Island where these were taken. We rented a pontoon to get there and did our 5,4,3,2,1 pics on the island. We found some HUGE shells which I've now redone the boy's bathroom with! Fun, fun. Our cousin Ray made the 6 hour drive up to see us on Christmas Day then 6 hours back. That really made the week for Grandma!

Both the boys got buried but my camera died, so Janiece caught it. Here's one of Asher buried and one of me swinging Aybrin around. It was so fun!