Creativity

First, a cute picture of Harrison sleeping. He sleeps all over that bed.

Elizabeth made this fun game where a bunch of random words are written on strips of paper and placed inside this box. A person takes out two of the strips and puts the words together and much laughter ensues. 

And she got this idea from Phoebe who was making water droplet art on the table. Elizabeth added colors and white board and water dropper and came up with some pretty cool designs.

Phoebe's Turn at the Cotter Tens Fractal

So Phoebe made it to the spot in Level B of Right Start Mathematics where she does the Cotter Tens Fractal. This is a hands-on exercise that helps kids learn about 10's. (How many 10's are in 100? How many 10's are in 1,000? How many 100's are in 1,000?, etc.)

Here are Elizabeth's and Jonathan's Cotter Tens:

With Phillip's brilliant idea to print off the triangles instead of color and cut them out ourselves, we saved a lot of time and effort. If anyone would like to make copies of Phillip's version, feel free to email me and I'll send you a PDF or Word document. (You'd be surprised how many people have found this blog doing a search for Cotter Tens Fractal. You just don't hear a lot about that topic.)

*Edited 11/17/14: Someone emailed to request the preprinted fractals and I thought, "There's got to be a way to attach it to the blog." And of all the brilliance on the internet, there is! So here it is.

Preprinted Fractals

Dad Gets Back

Phillip was gone last week preaching a revival at his home church in Vandalia, MO. 

When he got back, he took pictures of the kids 'just 'cause.' I think he missed them a little. :-)

We spent some time with friends while he was gone so that we wouldn't get too bored. 

We went to a park called Lost Maples. Maple trees in Texas—who knew?

A Downtown Day

Founder's Day was going on at the Alamo yesterday.

The kids are looking at Koi in the little canal below.

Gun replicas. The boys especially liked holding these.

Unbeknownst to us, we were with relatives of a Alamo hero: William Barret Travis.  Mr. Travis gave all the kids a mini-history lesson about the Alamo and the part Colonel Travis played.

Lunch time with a band playing nearby.

And Alamo City Comi Con was going on downtown also!! So cool. 

See that big ole spider wrapping up a bug? 

Alisa (the mom of the family we were with) used to work at these gardens years ago.

One of the small joys of living in a warm state. Water play at the end of October. 

Kids Again

I feel so boring with these blog posts with them being mostly random pictures of the kids. Seems like they should be themed or something. But on to it!

Harrison takes our Blokus game and spends a lot of time fitting all the pieces onto the board. This is a harder feat than you might imagine since the pieces are different shapes. He would pick up one piece to fit in a new one and then have to find a place for that formerly fitted piece. He calls this Making My T-Rex. 

We went to our neighbor's baby shower at Golden Corral. The kids were very impressed with the chocolate fountain.

And a far-away shot of our soon-to-be baby neighbor.

We found a free Halloween thingy at a garden center. Bounce house, hay bale maze, pumpkins, lots of bugs, and a few too many scary things.

Harrison is loving Avengers. Here's his new Captain American shield which he got as a prize for meeting certain potty training standards.

Off the Camera-Phone (Phone-Camera?)

Blogging is my way of scrapbooking and keeping far-off friends and family in the loop of our lives. It's neat to scroll through and see how these kids have grown. My goodness. So, here are just some pictures of the kids that I haven't posted before.

It was, like, 65 degrees outside, so the kids broke out their winter gear.

Harrison sleeps all over his bed. Jonathan said he's fallen out of it before. I never heard it. And apparently he didn't cry, so.... 

Elizabeth made some gorgeous flower cupcakes the other day. She's in the process of assembling them here.

Landscaping at Church

The kids and I only worked on the landscaping one day, but there were 5 or 6 Saturdays spent on updating some of the areas near the church building. Many people helped all throughout and were there on other days that we weren't; I thought I could find their pictures to add to the mix, but, alas..... 

Phoebe was a big helper to Ms. Marilyn who taught her how to put down the weed barrier. All the kids helped put the plants in the ground. Elizabeth was snack preparer and server. Jonathan ran errands for us ("Go throw this in the garbage, Bud!"). And Harrison used his spade to carry one rock at a time from the rock pile to the landscape.

There are some hard workers who dug holes, pulled weeds, planted, and shoveled rock every workday. They are much appreciated.

Here is one section of it completed.