Our First Last Cub Scout Meeting

It was a big day for Raef and Zach.  This was their  Cub Scout meeting. They are turning 11 next week and are now officially in the Boy Scouts. And with a last minute push to the finish line, they were able to earn the Arrow of Light award.

And here they are crossing the bridge from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts. It was a good moment for both of them.

Pinewood Derby

Well, here is our adieu to the Pinewood Derby. At least, for the next four years. Raef and Zach competed in their last one a couple of weeks ago. It was rough getting there, as we were frantically putting the contraptions together a few hours before the race started. Mama was not too happy.

But somehow it all worked out and the wheels stayed on for all of their races. And amazingly enough, they even won a few.

The boys had a lot of fun.

Don't Judge Me

We made it to the park a few days ago. I took a few snapshots.  The kids really had a lot of fun, despite the darn wind.  

This is Harry being a monkey.

And sweet, sweet Julia.  She spent about 20% of her time on the playground equipment, and 80% on the swings.  She pretty much would like me to push her all the time.  I am good for about 5 minutes, and then it is time to do something else.  


Nope. Not according to her.


I refused to push her at all. This is my new, anti-whining strategy. So, she just laid on a swing and swung herself, superman-style. She seemed happy, and I was happy.  


Then some lady had the nerve to put her in a baby swing and start pushing her.  And here I am sitting on the park bench messing with my phone, the wind rippling through my hair. I felt obligated to stand up and look like I cared what each of my kids was doing...you know, busy enough so I had some excuse for why I wasn't over there pushing my darling daughter.


And then I thought...Hey, don't judge me because I am not pushing my daughter on the swing.


Maybe I just don't want to!  There, I said it.


Why did I care what that lady thought?  I should have just sat there and continued to play on my phone.  Yes, I am THAT kind of mom.

This is Eli's pose these days.

And Raef and Zach continue to progress as Webelos.  Way to go, boys!

He Loves Hot Dogs!

I took the kids shopping and bought them some hot dogs.  Harry was really, really  happy.  He was hugging those hot dogs, caressing them, cuddling them.  Aaahhhh! HOT DOGS!!!!

Eli really likes to go to Cub Scouts with Raef and Zach.  He started becoming aware of Cub Scouts over the past few months when we take the whole family to pack meeting.  He just loves it. Now he wants to go every week. I took him with me when I dropped them off. Of course, there is nothing for him to do there, so I took him to get some frozen yogurt instead. 

He really loved the frozen yogurt. Yummy!

Then we went back to pick up the boys and we stayed a bit so that they could play with their friends.  Frozen yogurt, friends, fun.  A perfect night for a 4 year-old boy.

Birdhouses

Cub Scouts..the push is on.  I came to the stark realization that the boys are getting close to turning 10.  And there is a whole book of Cub Scout stuff that has to be completed before their birthdays.  I got the book out this last week and we have been working on stuff.  One thing in the book was to make a birdhouse.  This had "Dad" written all over it.  

Rinar did a great job.  Here is the finished product.

They were finishing up their projects at night out in the garage. Of course, Eli wanted to be in the middle of it.  It got pretty late before they finished.  Eli's latest thing is to tell us that he is not tired. "I never go to sleep!"


It worked out pretty well for him....well, almost.

Not Even Worth a Cupcake

This is a picture of our church building.  I love how it sits next to the "G" on the side of the mountain, which stands for Galena.  The boys had Cub Scouts last night. They were so excited.

I peeked into the window and took a picture of them. They are filling out a US map, having a contest to see who knows the most US states.  Guess who won?

 Yep, that's right. My Zach was the champion, so he got 3 pieces of candy.  Raef did about as good as all of the other kids.


Can you tell I have absolutely nothing going on in my life right now?

I took these pictures and then promptly left my nice, new camera at the church. I didn't realize my mistake until this morning.  {{GAG!!}}  Luckily, they were doing a children's music time this morning.  I took my three youngest over there to do the activity and also to find the camera.  

The camera wasn't there.  I knew I would have to make some phone calls when I got home to see if I could find it. Luckily, someone had given it to the bishop, so it was all good.

But music time was not!

My kids were terrible. This is the second time we have gone and they acted the same way before. They all cried, wanted me to hold them, screamed, punched each other, pulled hair, pulled clothes, fought over the same toy ( even though there were a million different toy choices), whined, prostrated themselves on the ground.  I finally reached my breaking point. I hastily threw them all in the car to go home.  

There were cupcakes.  I didn't even tough it out for a cupcake.  

Now you know it was bad.

Wonderful Things

I have been doing nightly spring cleaning chores around my house. Isn't it a wonderful thing when you can look at a corner of your house and it is sparkling clean? Everything is in it's place and the dust has been vamooshed for a while. I reclaimed two rooms of my house and a corner of my kitchen. It is like a breath of fresh air, my soul feels lighter and it builds momentum. With one corner done, I find the courage, desire, and energy to take on more decluttering tasks. It is great. Of course I am saying this while I am sitting at my desk where paper and junk is about to fall on top of me. But I will come out conqueror soon enough.

The boys have been participating in Cub Scout camp this week and it has been so much fun for them and me. They get to do lots of activities, crafts, and sports for four hours every day and I get a mostly quiet house. Plus, when I clean something up it actually stays that way for a while. Wonderful.

And in other news, Julia made a big step in life today. She rolled over from her back to her stomach and then from her stomach to her back. She is a very content baby girl so most of the time she is fine just laying on her back and looking around. Tonight I put her and Harry on the floor while I dealt with getting Eli to bed and Raef and Zach. She was not happy. I laid her on her back and she starting crying. The next time I came in she was on her stomach. Then when i was finally able to start feeding both of them, she was on her back again. Bravo, Julia!

Bobcats...Done!

My boys are now Cub Scouts. This is the first Pack Meeting we attended as a family. The wolfs led the flag ceremony, so Raef gave the instructions and Zach carried the flag with Trevor.

Then they gave out patches for advancement. Both of them finished the Bobcat requirements. It took us a couple of days, but we got it done. They were so proud of themselves. It was cool.

That is Eli's little head you see at the bottom of the picture. He stood up there for all of the awards. He had a grand ole time at Pack Meeting.

I got a pin too.

Here I am with the fabulous photographer Brook. Now I am really wishing I had remembered to put some makeup on before I left the house.

Julia was just happy that somebody finally took her out of the house. There was finally something new to look at instead of the same old stuff.

And Harry was ecstatic. The boy can do some serious smiles. I love how even his eyes smile.

A Day In the Life of Our Homeschool Family

I had a great day today.

(I am just going to forget all of the times I yelled at my kids today and move on to the good stuff, okay?)

We did a lot of school work today and it was very enjoyable. In the mornings we do a small devotional. We sang a Primary song, which today was "Children All Over the World". It is a wonderful little song that I have fond memories of when I was a kid. My mother taught me that song when she served in the Primary. I have always remembered it. My kids love it as well. After the song, we knelt and said a prayer and then stood to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Then we read one little section from "Preach My Gospel". Right now we are in the section on commandments. When I finish all of the lessons, I think we will start working on scripture mastery.

After our devotional, we did our poem memorization. They are currently working on "Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore" by William Brighty Rands. It is a funny poem and they love it. So I would guess that they will have it mastered in the next couple of lessons. They are learning them more rapidly with every attempt. It is great.

We practiced violin next. Zach is still working on Gavotte from Mignon and Raef is still plugging away at The Witches Dance. I am pleased with their progress. They enjoy the violin (Zach all of the time, and Raef almost-most of the time).

Then it was on to a few history library books. We are talking about ancient Africa. It won't take long to get through that, and then we will revisit Egypt and the Middle Kingdom. They love the stories of ancient Africa, especially "Too Much Talk". It is a cute story.

We zoomed off to Kristina's house to meet with our homeschool group for a Mad Science class. It was on chemistry. When they finished the lecture, they ate cheese pizza and played on her little playground in the backyard.

I was so diligent and therefore I am going to pat myself on the back. I actually came home and continued doing schoolwork with the kids. We had taken a little break and then continued where we left off. We did math and they are working in their Math-U-See book and subtraction, namely -2's. They were very relaxed sitting at our new table getting all the problems done.

We then moved on to grammar and we did a little review of nouns, verbs, pronouns and the months and days of the week. We made month cards yesterday and drew a picture for each month and I hung them up on the wall today. I did this because I realized that they both did not know what months went with what seasons. It is a nice little addition to our schoolroom. Plus, they have ownership in the display because they made it, so it means something to them.

**As a side note, I just have to share the stories they wrote as a grammar exercise on Monday.

I started the story and then they had to finish it...

Raef's story...

I was walking along the road-and I stepped in quicksand with
water. I kold Dad. He bot rope. I came owt. and Dad left . The End.

Zach's story...

One morning, I woke up and discovered I had turned into a raptor.
I would swing my tail and be so mean to everybody and go outside. and bite
everybody and eat grass and step on trucks and cars and bulldozers and dumpers
and scooters.

**But I digress.

After grammar, we worked on history some more. I really want to move on to Egypt again and make some progress before the year ends. There was a map exercise in their curriculum so we labeled the map to kind of review where everything is. They seem to really know what we have learned. We also read some more books and reread some of their favorites from Africa. I also had them color some review cards so that we can keep reviewing the main ideas of the things we have already learned.

At 4pm we met the cub scouts at the church and took a few of them to some neighborhoods to pass out bags for the Scouting food drive. The kids had a ball. They ran a whole lot and didn't seem to get tired. Their favorite part was probably holding on to the outside of the car as I drove slowly down the street. They were my two little stunt men. They had a blast.

We headed to Wal-Mart afterwards because Zach was desperate to spend some of his allowance. He kept asking me what time it was while we were passing out bags because he was worried that the store would close. As we were walking up to the entrance, he verified that the store never closes. He was dazzled and exclaimed, "Wow Mom, this store is amazing!" Wal-mart may have a new tag line for their advertising. My kid has officially given it his "amazing" stamp of approval. Then he spent some of his money on a transformer and Good-n-Plenty for Raef...after some coaxing from me, because Raef did not bring any money and was not happy about it.

When Zach paid for his merchandise, he had a lot of one-dollar bills. It was fun to watch him pay. He handed the cashier one dollar at time. It was very cute.

It was a successful, educational day. Homeschooling is really a wonderful way of life. I highly recommend it.