Week in Review - Tornados up close and personal.

This week my town was hit with an F4 tornado. I'm still in shock. How do you move on and pretend that things are normal? I dream about it, I hear about it from everyone, and every time I leave my house I'm confronted with it. It breaks my heart! In addition to my town, just about every other town within 50 miles or so was hit with one or more tornados too. It started around 9:30 am and wasn't over until late that night. It was a day of stress, prayer, and thankfulness.

In the middle of all of the destruction, its wonderful to see a few things spared. Its also wonderful to see my community pull together and help their neighbors. So many are suffering, so many homes and businesses destroyed. I praise God that my family was spared!

Happy Good Friday!

Today was a wonderful day spent with my family. We colored eggs, watch our blue bird friends and just enjoyed each other.

The Happy Homeschooler

I just love homeschooling. Its such a great fit for our family. In today's world of rushing here and rushing there, over scheduled children, and lack of quality family time, we've created a relaxed, fun, family oriented life. My kids get to learn at their own pace, they get one on one attention day in and day out. We're able to sleep later in the morning, stay up later at night, enjoy breakfast, lunch and dinner together every day, travel whenever we want rather than when the school systems deems its appropriate, and study math in PJ's with a furry friend in our lap.

We can go outside in the middle of the day to try out two different homemade bubble solutions after learning about bubbles and the science behind them.

We can watch videos to learn more about topics we're studying. We can spend endless hours at the library. We can sit at our dining room table and bird watch over lunch. We can take the day off and head out to our local aquarium for some hands on learning. We can go on field trips whenever we want. Most importantly, we can spend our days together. Learning through living our life. To me, there's simply nothing better!

Celebrating Palm Sunday

Every year my family attends Mass on Palm Sunday. Every year we come home with several palm fronds which end up in my bedroom tucked behind my mirror. This year I decided it was time to learn more about the palm fronds, how to properly dispose of our old ones, and how to make those cool palm frond crosses we've seen other make. So...today we read about Palm Sunday, and found a simple yet effective way to make crosses out of our palms. Here's the tutorial we used.


How to make palm Crosses to tuck behind picture frames and hang on your wall


Take a palm that is about 2 feet long and 1/2" wide (if it tapers at the top, this is good!). Hold the palm upright, so the tapered end points toward the ceiling.
Then bend the top end down and toward you so that the bend is about 5 or 6 inches from the bottom of the palm.
About a third of the way from the bend you just made, twist the section you've pulled down to the right, forming a right angle.

About an inch and a half away from the "stem" of the cross, bend this arm of the palm back behind the palm so that it is now facing to your left. Make the bend at a good length to form the right arm of the Cross.

Folding that same section at a point that equals the length on the right side, bend it on the left side and bring the end forward over what is now the front of the cross.

From the very center of the Cross, fold that arm up and to the upper right (in a "northeast" direction) so that it can wrap around where the upright post of the Cross and the right arm intersect.
Fold this down and to the left behind the Cross...

...and then fold it toward the right so that it is parallel and under the transverse arms of the Cross.
Bring it up behind the Cross again, this time folding it up toward the "northwest" direction.

Tuck the tapered end into the transverse section you made in step 7...

...and pull through.

Turn the Cross over; this side will be the front. Trim the tapered end if necessary, remembering that the palm is a sacramental and any part you trim away should be kept and respected as a sacramental! Use that piece for burning during storms.

My son Ryan is afraid of storms. Now he's telling me he's going to burn a piece of his palm frond to keep our family safe during the next storm. Gotta love that kid! All three of them were able to make a cross for their room from the palm frond they brought home from Mass. How cool is that?

Happy day, happy day!!!

We are so excited to find that we have bluebirds successfully nesting in one of our nest boxes again this year. Last year we had an awful experience with the house sparrows in our yard. We have 4 bluebird nest boxes located on the fence around our back yard. Every year the house sparrows take over most if not all of the nest boxes. Last year the bluebirds successful fought for and won one of the nest boxes. We were so excited when we found the eggs, only to be heart broken a few weeks later when we saw the house sparrows start attacking the bluebirds and then finding the newborn baby bluebirds killed and thrown on the ground below the nest box. The house sparrows then proceeded to move in and lay eggs of their own.

My husband and I removed the house sparrow nest immediately and evicted them from the box. Shortly after that the bluebirds took the house over again and once again laid eggs. I was prepared for them this time and had done extensive research on how to help them raise their family without the house sparrows attacking them. We installed a sparrow spooker on the nest box and prayed it would work. It did!! They raised three healthy baby bluebirds last year.

This year they somehow managed to move into one of the boxes without much of a fight from the sparrows. They were too busy fighting off the resident starlings who decided they wanted the middle box that the house sparrows were nesting in. We have house sparrows in 3 of the 4 boxes, but somehow the bluebirds got one box. Sunday we took out a ladder and flashlight to look in the nest box. There were 4 little bright blue eggs in the box. So out came the sparrow spooker again to keep the sparrows at bay. This year the bluebirds went back in the box without so much as a look at the spooker attached. Don't quite know why it works, but it does. So now we're all anxiously awaiting the birth of our new bluebird babies in the next few weeks. Please keep their safety in your prayers!!

You know spring has arrived when...

Lately, our weather has very "spring like". Gorgeous warm sunny days, clear blue skies, birds singing, and thunder storms. But, some signs that I always look for that mean spring has arrived at our house are...

Dogwoods in full bloom...

Birds fighting over our bird houses...

Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird back in residence...and one of my personal favorites...

Hummingbirds back from their winter migrations!! What makes you really think spring at your house?

Science Experiment Time - Sour or Not?

This week we ended up doing the science experiment from last week's lesson on Monday. We simply had too many things going on last Friday to fit it in. We also had to get lots of different items from the grocery store to use in our experiment. So, here's what we did...

We had a bunch of cups labeled with various types of liquids. Milk, white grape juice, grape fruit juice, distilled water, mineral water, baking soda water, and antacid water. The kids took turns tasting the various cups to determine whether they were sour, sweet or salty. Grape fruit juice is really sour!

Next, we separated everything into which ones were sour and which ones weren't. Most everything was on the not sour side.

Lastly, we used our red cabbage dyed purple water we made to test for acidity in our various cups. We got some really cool colors!! One ever turned green! How fun is that?

If you're wondering where we're getting all of these neat experiments we're doing from, they are all from Real Science 4 Kids, Chemistry, Pre-Level 1. I absolutely LOVE this science program!