FORE!

The kids get to spend Monday afternoons on the golf course, practicing their swings and lining up their putts.

Or, as the case is with Cory, aiming at unsuspecting golfers with his extremely powerful hybrid weapon.

After one hole (which takes 1 1/2 hours for the group of 7 kids) it's back to the clubhouse for a cold drink...

They were wearing their matching Italia shirts (thanks Updikes!!), so I snapped a few extra photos at home.

Fake Out Foods!

For her birthday, Mary Beth received a cookbook called Fake Out Foods.  She's been incredibly excited to try some of the recipes out ever since.  Finally, a couple of weekends ago we made some corn dogs...or did we?

They were yummy... just ask Riley or our friend Kenny.

It never fails, I always seem to capture pictures of Riley when she's just taken a bite of food!  Instead of waiting for her to chew and swallow, though, Kenny took a big ol' bite and insisted I take the picture! 

Of course, when you start with brownies, and cover them in a peanut butter/powdered sugar dough, it's kind of hard to go wrong.

Ignore the fact that they kind of start to look like things you must clean up after if you own a dog...

We were simultaneously making the "corn dogs," while skyping and playing Headbandz with the gift giver

What a great trick to play on all your friends.  I'm sensing an April Fool's Day tradition of "Corn Dogs."

Mary's Solo of God Did

Mary sang on Sunday for the offertory.  We captured it on video for you.  The song was written by a friend of our worship team lead.  Mary was smiling and had a great presence up there all by herself.
She did a wonderful job!

Friday Fun

Recently we pulled out this fun game sent to us by some awesome friends and spent the evening doing a variety of funny and sometimes awkward challenges.  They kept us all smiling and having fun for the better part of an evening, and eventually I decided to take a few snapshots of the action.

We are already looking forward to playing this again and the new challenges we'll find.  It will guarantee an evening of laughter!

"Ski School"

This winter we gave up basketball for the middle two sport fanatics so that we could have weekends available for ski lessons at nearby Piancavallo.

Our original plan to have someone else teach them didn't pan out like we thought it would, and at the last minute Ted became their instructor...

They/We were only able to go up to the mountain three weekends, but the kids definitely got a wide variety of experiences.

Cory initially wanted to learn how to snowboard, but after two weeks of trying that, decided that skiing might be better--his sisters seemed to be doing much better than he was, and he got frustrated.  It was funny to watch him go down on skis the first time--he fell frequently and was initially very frustrated, but soon was excited to show me his progress.

One weekend, they drove up the mountain in the snow, and had to stop to get chains on the van.

Cory and Mary took up management positions in a niche in the mountain while their Daddy worked.

This was their second weekend to ski, and they got to experience skiing in fresh powder!  It offered a soft place to land.  But Cory complained that it made it even harder to get up when he fell with the board.

The last weekend they went up was questionable conditions--it had been warm and springy for a while at this point.  But we all went up, and Lucy found a place to sled--sort of.  It was kind of like sledding on moguls for her.

As always, there was hot cocoa.

The next day, Ted, Cory and Riley went back and went on the big lifts for the first time.  They seemed to like that.  

Looking forward to more skiing next year!!

School Work

Here are some recent photos of the kids doing and sharing various school assignments.

Class:  Co-op Cooking
Assignment:  Use fresh ground flour to make something interesting.

Mary used her flour to make homemade pretzels:

Riley used her flour to make sugar cookies:

I think she had an ulterior motive; I think she really wanted to decorate some cookies:

Class:  Preschool
Assignment:  Complete various Dr. Seuss hands on activities to correlate with books by Dr. Seuss

Lucy enjoyed having green eggs and ham omelets after reading Green Eggs and Ham:

I took the opportunity to teach the three oldest kids how to make omelets...hopefully this will pay off for me in the near future:

Lucy also got to experiment with Oobleck (a.k.a. a non-Newtonian fluid) after reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck:

Class:  Anatomy
Assignment:  Determine if building muscles in fingers will improve the speed at which you can write your name.

The kids are spending part of everyday opening and closing a clothespin for 60 seconds, and then graphing their results:

Class:  Science/Writing/Reading

Assignment:  Complete a Lapbook on Raptors/Birds of Prey using what you learn from reading various books on the topic.

Cory took a very long time to finish this project, but he was finally able to share his work with his Dad:

A glimpse into their school work!