They call me Snaps

Snaps, Snaparoo, Snapadoo, Snappy... It just seems to suit this spunky little girl:)

Our family is growing again

Meet our little miss. The girls acquired her from a neighbor the next culdesac over, last night. She's still getting use to things around here but I think she's going to be just fine :). We haven't agreed on a name yet. The ones in the running are Snaps, Vera, Ruby, or Stella.

Golden Nuggets

We finished our first month and our first unit in our school year this week, so that meant it was time to celebrate. We are using The Prairie Primer for our unit study and thoroughly enjoying it. It's based on The Little House On The Prairie books and the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Of course, we still supplement some of our core subjects like math and spelling, but otherwise we are able to seamlessly integrate all our subjects into our daily lessons.

Since we learned a little about the gold rush, I thought it might be fun to "mine for gold" as we celebrated finishing our first unit. Each of the girls had their own claim in which they could mine for gold. Scattered in their claims were lots of golden treats (ie fool's gold) along with gold cards that represented pure gold. On the cards were things to review from what we'd learned over the past month. Spelling words, math problems, and Bible verses. The girls had to answer each card correctly in order to collect all their treats. They had a great time mining their claims and realizing just how much they'd learned. Oh yeah, since we are spending the year studying pioneer living, I made each of them their own pioneer outfit. They get to wear their outfits whenever we have fun activities like today :)

Family Fun

Our family has gotten into Cowboy Action Shooting.  It's great fun for everyone and offers us the chance to live out a bit of history every month, along with dressing up, shooting competition, and the chance to pass down our region's history to our daughters in a way that is so much more fun than just reading it in a book.  We are new to the sport, but have really been enjoying it and look forward to watching the girls grow up with this as part of their heritage.  This weekend we went to Ruckus at Raccoon Creek.  The people are always so incredibly nice and just love to see little ones in tow.  Here are a few pictures of our time there.

 She loved sitting there because you could still smell the campfire from that morning.

 She looks like she's in trouble, doesn't she? 

 It was beginning to warm up quickly at this point; Hannah had reached her limit

Hannah turns 8 years old

Exactly a week after her big sister moved out, Hannah celebrated her eighth birthday. Wow! Time needs to slow down. Hannah is all about horses, so her birthday was all about horses as well. She loved spending the day as the birthday princess, and spending it with her family. Even Tess was able to get off of work and come to lunch with us to enjoy some birthday cake.

Flying out of the nest

I'm not sure how it happened, but the day arrived all too quickly...the day my oldest child flew the coop. After months of planning, budgeting, and apartment hunting, Tess moved out on her own. She chose a nice apartment, only a couple miles from home. She is LOVING living on her own and has surprised us all with her domesticity ;) Little Miss Hannah is still struggling with her big sister not living at home, but all three of the younger girls are really enjoying having their own rooms now :)