Thursday, November 27, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving

This morning we headed to beautiful O'Melveny Park to take some family photos for our Christmas card. The boys weren't too excited to do it but I just love having pictures and seeing how they grow up through the years.

Here are some of my favorites.











Friday, November 21, 2014

American Heritage Day

Last week our PSP celebrated America! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go but Jon got the day off and was able to hang out with the boys a bit. The kids had to dress up or wear red, white, and blue.
My little cowboys!

Some of Jojo's classmates.

Some of Nathan's classmates.

Nathan and his class reciting their poem.

Jojo's class reciting their poem.


After the chapel time everyone headed to a room for snacks and all the displays from the year.

Photo booth fun.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Legoland

And another field trip! I can't believe how busy we've been the last few weeks. Our PSP had an awesome and very affordable field trip to one of the boys' favorite amusement parks. We decided to stay a couple nights and make it a mini-getaway! 

I'm so thankful that so many places make it affordable for homeschooling families to visit. Not only was our one day trip pretty cheap but they had an offer to get another FREE ticket to be used between January - March! Woot, woot!!!

Legoland has the actual set from the Lego Movie...very cool!

The boys love this ride.

The boys didn't want to be in this picture.


Jojo is having fun at least. 

PSP buddies.

Gotta' have this picture, right?

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Hawkeye and a Ninja

This year the boys picked fairly easy costumes for Halloween. They had a homeschool group fall party and plus some trick-or-treating.

Jojo wanted to use his bow and arrow that he and dad made over the summer. He had a variety of characters to choose from but he went with Hawkeye......we had to go totally homemade this year which was fun to create.
Hawkeye with Dorothy






Naynay wanted to be a ninja which was a cinch since we already had the costume from last year.....phew!

Can you find the ninja in there? If not then he is that good!!


And look who decided to show up this year......why it's Mary Poppins!

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Long Beach Aquarium

We've been so busy with field trips lately! The boys are having a blast though. We headed to the Long Beach Aquarium last month and we were all so amazed. It is an amazing aquarium and I highly recommend going. They have a lot of interactive areas where the kids can touch the fish. We spent a long time at the sting ray/shark petting area. The boys also spent about 20 minutes touching jelly fish. You could really spend a whole day at the aquarium.  Since we went with our homeschool group we got a great discounted rate! Otherwise it can be a bit pricy. We brought our own lunches and ate outside during lunch.

 











Thursday, November 6, 2014

Owl Pellet Dissection

It has been a busy school year for us and we are all enjoying it. Not too long ago the boys had a wonderful experience dissecting an owl pellet. Before our dissection we learned a little bit about owl pellets and how the process works. Owls have two stomachs and all the bones, teeth, and hard material they can't digest goes directly into the second stomach where it later regurgitates a pellet. Just in case you are interested you can watch an owl regurgitate a pellet on this YouTube video .

The boys found a ton of little bones including skulls, teeth, eggs, and so forth. These owls had eaten mice and some smaller birds. That night when I went to bed I began thinking about the dissection and could not fall asleep. Even though it was interesting it was also quite disgusting!


Dissecting a pellet with their pal.




Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Forneris Farms

This year we almost forgot to go to the pumpkin patch.... even though it's one of the things I missed the most when we lived in Russia. Admittedly, I remember looking at everyone's pumpkin patch pictures on Facebook and always feeling a little sad that we couldn't go to a pumpkin patch.

Not too far from where we live there is a family owned farm and they do a great job at putting on a "harvest" festivity. This year they are actually celebrating 100 years of farming in the same location!