April 2011

In April, Joe and Adler were in Fine Linen's production of Seussical the Musical. It was a FABULOUS performance, with a packed house every night for 8 performances. Always great fun hanging out with our friends at Fine Linen.

Cadets! Butter side up or down?

A Who family

Circus clown
Judge Yertle the Turtle
with Horton and The Marshall/Wickersham Brother

March 2011

Happy 14th Birthday Adler!
Presents! A summer sleeping bag for Scout camping.

Tacos for dinner

Strawberries and Angel food cake
You are a great young man!

Erik the big winner!!At our credit union's Annual Meeting, Erik won a drawing for $100. He had lots of great plans to spend it on, especially LEGOS!

February 2011

Erik was working on a Boy Scout Merit Badge in Pet Care. This required him to take care of our Dog for several weeks. For the most part, ever since we got Daisy, Adler had been her main caregiver. This time gave Erik and Daisy a new, special bond. He did very good on his responsibilities, and since Daisy was not a good candidate to take to the troop meeting, he and Adler filmed this video to show to the troop. Things like this are more special now as they are the memories that we hold on to since we lost Daisy in August. (read more about that in the August post)

January 2011

Hanging out by the fireplace before heading outside for the night.

Hot cocoa is a must!

The year started out with Adler's scout troop doing a "Freeze-Out". They raised money for a local food pantry and a homeless shelter and experienced what it was like to be homeless. They spent the night in cardboard box "houses" that they designed themselves. For some reason, we didn't get a picture of the box!

2011 the year in review

It has been nearly a YEAR since I posted anything. I wonder if I really should be a blogger! I think about doing it a lot, just never get it done. Sounds like a great New Year's resolution! Joe and I are on a business trip and I have the whole day to myself, so I am going to attempt to recap the whole year, TODAY! Enjoy!

A Charlie Brown Christmas

I have been feeling a bit like Charlie Brown this year and getting frustrated with the commercialism of Christmas. We decided to forgo most of our decorating this year, and only put out a few manger scenes. We also decided for the most part to forgo the gift exchanging at our house. Sounds pretty boring. But my kids tell me it was their best Christmas ever. Just before the season, I somehow happened upon a very inspiring blog. www.aholyexperience.com. Their experiences were the impetus for our celebration.

For the last year and a half, I have been doing books for a local ministry that provides a chaplain to a facility that serves children who have been removed from their homes for some type of treatment. The chaplain and his family decided that they were going to spend the day on campus and invited us to join them. Thanks to several generous donors, we brought some bounce houses and stockings for each of the kids who were unable to leave campus to be with family. We were blessed.

First LEGO League Robotics

This fall the boys were invited to join other homeschoolers on a robotics team program sponsored by FIRST and LEGO. They met every week to build a robot and work on a research project. We took 3 teams to Mountain Home, Arkansas, for competition on December 4^th.

We brought home trophies for Robot Performance, Robot Design and Quality Design. Our teams were also finalists in the award categories of Innovative Design, Champion’s Award, Quality Design, Gracious Professionalism, Programming, Project Research Quality, Judge’s Award and Robot Design.

Each team was required to do a research project on a body system and how biomedical engineering is used to help in that area. At competition, the team presented the project to judges. The teams chose vision, lungs and voice for their projects.

In the Robot Performance Competition, our teams placed 4^th, 5^th and 16^th out of 35 teams. One of our teams went on to win the single elimination competition.

I forgot to take pictures of the robots, but if I can get one from someone else, I will post it.