Who Needs a Classroom?

We may have spent most of this week playing at the beach, but that doesn't mean we didn't get some schoolwork done! Just check out all the subjects our dedicated little students covered:

Geology... ...Physics...
...Marine Biology...

...Meteorology...

...Art... ...Math...

...Spelling...

...Foreign Language (with a bit of Conflict Management)...

....and lots...

...and lots... ...and lots...

of PE!

They also learned about international economics as we watched those big ships haul their freight up to the canal, and Sawyer and Daddy had to employ some pretty high-level engineering skills to build their rock-bridge.

In fact, this was such an educational trip, we're pretty sure we need to get back out there as soon as possible. We might even just stay. For the kids's sake, you understand.

Lazy Days

We're taking a few days off this week and hanging out at our favorite vacation spot. We got here yesterday and are enjoying the peace and quiet. Sarah Claire went with us to the beach for a little while this morning. She hasn't gotten in the sand yet, but maybe she'll get a chance later today. I'm sure if I tell her not to put it in her mouth, she won't, right?

The big kids are having a blast running and playing and exploring. They brought me these flowers this morning.

And they walked out and threw lots of rocks in the water with Daddy.

In the picture above, they're running back to tell me that it's raining! I had already felt the drops where I was sitting, and we were surrounded by dark clouds, so we packed up and headed back in for a while. It's been raining softly now for a while. That might seem like a sad thing to have on a beach vacation, but we're loving it. It's such a rarity here that we enjoy it whenever it comes!

We brought our school books, so we're getting in some good reading time today.

Daddy gave me a hard time for bringing school stuff on our trip. He said that he never had to do school on vacation, but I reminded him that he also never got to wait until November to start his school year!

We were going to just read some books, but she insisted that we do handwriting, too.

Not to be outdone, Sawyer did some letter practice of his own.

The rain seems to have stopped, and I can see the sun peeking through, so I bet we'll be out by the water again pretty soon!

Seven Months

Guess who turned seven months old yesterday! Here's the "Monkey Picture." It's getting a little harder to take this picture now that she's mobile. She spent about thirty seconds sitting up with the monkey, and then she was ready to move!
"I've got places to go, Mom!"
While she's not quite technically crawling, she can get where she wants to go.

It won't be long till she gets it all together!
We love you, little seven-month-old!

Pajama Day!

(the boy can smile, can't he?)

No, despite what some of you are apparently thinking, our blog writer is not on strike. She's just busy taking care of the blog subjects. :) We're still here. This past Thursday was a holiday, so we've had a long weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday in this part of the world) with lots of good family time. It's been fun, but I'm ready to get back to our routine in the morning.

Yesterday, some time shorly after breakfast, Lee Anna proclaimed that we were going to have Pajama Day. For some reason it thrilled her to no end to be able to wear her pajamas all day long. The grown-ups did get dressed, but as you'll see in the pictures of our dinner below, the kids observed Pajama Day from start to finish.

We started our morning by watching the National Championship football game from the night before. It had only been over for a few hours when we got started watching it. We could have gotten up at 3 a.m. to watch it live, but we're too old for that. Jason actually set his alarm for 5 a.m. so he could check the score and see if he wanted to get up and watch the second half live, but when the alarm actually went off, he decided that he would really rather enjoy the whole experience by watching the game from start to finish. Or maybe he just decided he wanted to sleep some more.

Either way, we avoided checking email or facebook or any other internet-related sites that would have spoiled it for us and got started watching right after breakfast. Just for the record, those pizza commercials are not nearly as appetizing at 10 in the morning. It was a super game, and we had a great time watching it.

We hung around the house in the afternoon and got a little closer to finally having everything unpacked and organized (not there yet, just closer), and then we had a special treat for dinner...

Grilled hamburgers and hot dogs!

This is the first time in the four years we've been here that we've been able to grill food at our house. We packed a little charcoal grill in the crate that we just received last week, and this was our first time to use it. The burgers and dogs were delicious! Here are the kids demonstrating their excitement...and their slightly unorthodox hot-dog-eating methods!

Someone should really tell them that they're supposed to start at the end.
Sarah Claire did not get to partake of the grilled goodness that the rest of us enjoyed, but she has been expanding her horizons in the last few weeks. She's eaten rice cereal, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, carrots, bananas, and green beans. Here's the dinner she had last night.
And here she is enjoying it. She enjoys the green beans a little less than the other foods, but most of the time she doesn't spit them back out! I'm pretty proud of the fact that I took this picture with one hand while feeding her with the other. Impressive, I know.
And here's one more shot of the pajama-clad kiddos. We made our own dessert last night, which is a whole other blog post of its own. They didn't turn out quite a pretty as they were supposed to, but they tasted good! And they had sprinkles, which is just about all it takes to make these kids happy.
And when you add sugar and sprinkles to all-day pajama wearing, it's almost too much happy for them to bear. :) Happy Pajama Day, everyone!

Treasured Memories from Christmas 2009

1. Reading our Advent book together each night and hearing them quote the parts from previous days.

2. Making delicious Christmas goodies with my budding chef.
3. Hearing Sawyer call our nativity set the "activity set."

4. Teaching Sawyer that Lee Anna's new make up kit (and any other make up, for that matter!) is not for him.

5. Hearing unsolicited "thank you's" after they opened each gift on Christmas morning.

6. Rehearsing every time Daddy left the house for two weeks to give him his gift of a surprise Christmas Concert.
7. Splitting up at the mall so that Sawyer and Lee Anna could shop for each other.

8. Singing "O Come Let Us Adore Him" together to end our prayer time each night.

9. Hearing Sawyer sing Christmas carols nonstop all month long--until it was time for the concert!

10. Hearing Lee Anna recite the Christmas story on Christmas morning.

11. Watching Lee Anna decide on her own to give one of her dolls to a needy little girl.

12. Telling and retelling our new favorite Christmas joke: What Christmas carol do they sing in the desert? O Camel Ye Faithful!

We hope you had a wonderful, joy-filled celebration with lots of memories to treasure.

Merry Christmas!

You Know You're the Third Child When...

it takes you six months to get included in the blog header!

I guess now Sarah Claire is an official Arab Musician. We're glad to finally have her join us. Thanks to Nikki for doing another super job on our blog design! She is great to work with.

Check back soon to see what we've been up to!

It's Our Turn

Well, I finally did one of these cute videos. Lee Anna's friend Madison is very sick this week, so we decided to make this video to try to cheer her up. It's already been watched many times at our house, and we thought you might enjoy seeing it too. I'm pretty sure these are the only snowballs these kids will be throwing at each other, since they live in the desert and all!

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All She Wants for Christmas

Daddy worked hard trying to get a good picture of Sarah Claire's new pearly whites, although she was a bit hesitant to show them off for the camera!

Believe me, they're in there! She cut her first two teeth in two days, and now Sawyer and Lee Anna are pretty sure she should be able to talk and eat whatever she wants. We'll be keeping a close eye on them. I don't think Sarah Claire's quite ready for apples and carrots yet!

It's That Time of Year Again!

Sarah Claire's not sure what all the fuss is about, but she's enjoying it with the rest of us! We've had fun decorating our home for Christmas this week. While much of it looks the same as in years past, we've also added a few new decorations and traditions this year.

We had fun working together to decorate the tree.

The kids also love having this little tree (which I got a few years ago for $1 at Walmart) in their own room. This year it has this pretty tree skirt that GG got them, so it's even better.

GG also found this great Advent calendar for us, and we are enjoying that new tradition this year. Some days the calendar has candy in it, and some days it has other things. In the Day 2 pocket they found a coupon for a "Christmas Activity," so we worked together to make our annual Christmas chain.

In the past we've always just used plain paper strips for our chain, but they were ready to take it up a notch this year, so we decorated each strip.

Lee Anna was the leader of the strip-decorating efforts. Sawyer decorated a total of one, while she and I did the other 22. Maybe next year we can divide the work more evenly. Sawyer was much more interested in helping with the stapling part of the project (which I did not let him do, since I am not interested in visiting any ERs this holiday season).

They were both proud of the finished product!

And here is one more new tradition we've added this year. I read about this book last year and was able to order a copy while we were in the states. It has 24 pages with a door to be opened on each page. Behind each door is a beautiful illustration with a portion of the Christmas story. The idea is to read each door you've opened every night, up to the door for that day. It's a great, fun way for us to recount the story each night leading up to Christmas.

So this is what we see when we gather at the tree each night before bedtime. It's been a great beginning to a joyful season, and we're enjoying our traditions, old and new (although I may need an Excel document to keep track of whose turn it is to check the calendar, tear off the chain, open the door, and blow out the candle!). Merry Christmas!