Mr. Suspicious!!

Chip is a great dog, he good at his job of barking when strangers drive up, he is quite convincing when I am outside but haven't told him it is ok (some people are even scared of him which I myself find funny as he is such a wimp! Look here for the best Chip story ever!), he enjoys hanging out with the kids and the cows and chickens. Pigs are a bit challenging for him as that electric fence really does bite! When the pigs are loose they have no fear of him after only a little time has passed..they know he is all bark and no bite!

 The thing Chip does best, besides drool all over Papa, is be suspicious! If our neighbor guy is gone for a bit and then goes back TO HIS OWN HOUSE Chip is suspicious. He barks and carries on like the aliens have landed and are stealing all the dogs! Sometimes. The next time the guy will be home for three days before Chip notices and then the aliens have landed! Some mornings we hear furious barking, he's really getting into it, from under the porch, (remember there are dog snatching ALIENS out there!) because our other neighbor has started to (become an alien dog snatcher? Nope. Come walking up to the house at 7am? Nope! [Chip hates people who walk up the driveway they are sneaky and quite and they wake him up from his nap!] Nope!!)  our neighbor has the audacity to, to, to PLOW HIS OWN DRIVEWAY! Mow his own lawn or MY GOODNESS....start his 4 wheeler!!! REALLY!! Those aliens really are hard at work this morning!!

Chip will be 3 this fall and he is showing some signs of maturing.. Our neighbor, the one with the lawn mower, plow and 4 wheeler, takes a walk everyday with his wife and his little dog.. or just him and the little dog. Every day without fail.. never misses a day. Sometimes several times a day. When Chip was in his 1st year he would cause SUCH a ruckus every SINGLE time Mr. R took his walk. We'd have to go out and talk him down EVERY. SINGLE. TIME!!! He also tried to go visit the little dog who was also just a puppy then. She came on the yard once or twice and they did the sniffing thing. She stands about Oh.. 7 inches MAX off the ground as a full grown dog now so it was pretty interesting for both of them. He didn't know dogs came in that size and neither did she! Mr. R would call her and mostly she'd obey and go to him but once he did end up coming into the yard to get her. I think Chip went out on the road once too.. but we soon cured that. In Chips second year he would hit and miss.. some days the dog snatching aliens where out in full force and other days he was too busy napping. Lately he's been more missing then hitting and I for one am grateful. Mr.R still takes his little dog out several times a day for a walk but Chip has decided it is no longer worth his notice.. UNLESS... they decide to ride his bike ( Mr. R has a little basket on the front for the dog).. then the aliens are OUT and are going to GET him!!!!
  J got a chunk of rope out yesterday and attached it to Chips collar and started to work with Chip a little bit. Chip has never been leash trained, actually normally he FREAKS if you attach anything to his collar. But yesterday he did really well. Maybe he is maturing after all!! I have a funny feeling though that Chip will never outgrown his suspicious nature :)

~Snails~

This was one of the fun projects the kids school teacher Mrs. Hunt put together for the grade one group. 

We all made one as they are super fun!!

I had to help R a little bit as she found it hard to roll the clay.

Take 3 equal pieces of clay and roll them into long equal lines.

Twist the lines together and roll it up like a shell.

Make sure you attach the end firmly!

 This looks a bit like a braided rug when your done. 

Take another color and roll out a chunk big enough for the body..

we just doubled the length of the shell. 

Flatten half of the body and place the shell on the flattened part. 

Bring the head up and shape it.

Add eyes, ears, noses, mouths or whatever your snail needs.

Super easy and lots of FUN!!! 

The 3 R's

Reuse, Reduce and Recycle :) We made new crayons from old small pieces of crayon.
1st we broke the broken crayons into smaller pieces and took all the papers off.
2nd we placed the small pieces into the silicone ice cube molds.
3rd we baked them at 250 C for about half an hour! DO NOT BAKE THEM HOTTER!!! :) I opps-ed and put the oven at 350 and thankfully I noticed before I melted my ice cube trays!~!
4th we let them cool off and popped them out of the molds!! Now we have cool crayons to color with!!

Adventures In Sourdough ~ Cupcakes

We've been having a bit of fun with our sourdough starter!

These are chocolate cupcakes which tasted really good.. but are super sticky.

I think I put too much pudding mix in them? 

Maybe? 

Oh well half the fun is in the making :) 

The End Of The Tunnel.

E and L finished their PACE work books!! They have one friction science experiment to do along with monthly verses and PE for April and May and they are FINISHED SCHOOL!!!! J finished his PACE's a few days later amid much excitement!!

I'm already looking into curriculum for next year and we are still planning on doing what I call fun school and the kids know as FUN!! all spring, summer and fall :) Along with math review and lots of reading.

I guess I should say my kids LOVE their PACE work! They really do! They enjoy reading the stories and coloring the pictures and finishing pages and check ups. It takes them 4 days to go through a PACE. Tests and all and we all love how fast they can finish one and head on over to the next one. You never know what will strike their imagination or funny bone or their minds and I very much enjoy listening to them tell me what they are learning. BUT that being said.. Spring is arriving, abet slowly, and they are eager to go outside and PLAY in the MUD and GRASS and BUS and do OUTSIDE SPRING STUFF like bike riding and PACE's are really taking a backseat to fresh air and sun! And that is how it should be :)

So as it stands tonight as I finish off this post. L and E have their one science project to do with Papa And J has 2 art project and a science worm farm to do and they all have verses and PE for April and May to do and we are DONE for the term!! With Papa being home we're not getting that much school time :) (also how it should be as we are busy with other projects) and I imagine we MIGHT get these projects done next week... or we might not. I'm not stressing the end of the tunnel is around me and I'm basking in the sunshine that streams into it :)

Having a 'spot of tea' with their new hats from Grandma while the sun shines in!!

Hard And Soft Sounds~ School Fun.

A tiny science experiment :) Glass cups filled with different levels of water and a spoon are all you need to hear soft and hard sounds. Just tap the cups with the spoon and compare sounds. Super fun!!

What Happened To Spring?

Three days ago I was walking down almost dry earth on the driveway chatting to E that soon they should be able to ride their bikes on the driveway! Later that same day Papa and I noticed that where the grass was clear of snow it was greening up!!  Not anymore! This morning we woke up to snow! 

The snow really is beautiful as it covered everything with it's whiteness. It makes everything look clean and nice and I can really appreciate that. 

We got 6 inches of that fluffy white stuff this morning. Warm, wet, dripping mush! It was snowing when we got up and snowed until almost 6pm!! Papa figures we got about 6 inches. It was +5C and the snow was falling off the roof and trees in chunks while it was still snowing! The snow flakes started out HUGE and slowly, through out the day, got smaller and smaller.  I took these pictures later in the evening. With the naked eye it looked like there was a fine mist over the new snow several feet high. I didn't capture it on the pictures which is making me wonder if I imagined it :)  Papa did plow it off the drive so it might not take too long to get back to dirt.

It did put a few of our projects on hold... and got a few others bumped up the list and finished! Star was going to get out of her little pen and into a halter and on a line out in the yard and we decided not to do it just yet! Instead Papa got the cream separator out of storage, washed and set up. We took the plastic off the living room window and he threw me bags of kids clothes that needed to be sorted and repacked in totes and I got them all sorted and repacked and Papa took them back outside!! SO nice to have that big job done!! I sorted out an entire barrel sized black garbage bag for the thrift store! Now I just have my own clothes to find, sort and try on. Yes.. I'm avoiding it :) But it needs doing as I've only got two pairs of pants to wear and one of them are sweats :)

J decided to do more school then I'd planned and started and finished his last PACE on science, sans self test and test. He spent a good chunk of the day at the table doing school. L and E finished their PACE's with  cheerful smiles all around! All and all it was a productive and fun day, Papa headed out to Bible Study this evening which means MOVIE NIGHT with leftovers :)

SPLASH!!!

We went outside the other day to

 purposely to get as wet as possible 

and get some SPRING in our systems.

It was a little colder then I thought

 and we ended up 

only staying out for an hour.

But it was good because it gave us time to 

SHOWER 

before the baby woke up :) 

SPLASH!!! 

J jumping in the deepest puddle. 

Cool picture of the muddy water splashing up to his knees!!

J3 loved to jump in the puddles!!

 SPLASH!!!

At one point his boot got sucked off in the mud and he got very wet in the puddle 

and I picked him out of it, put his boot back on and off he went again!! 

R, she's a little bit wet and dirty :) LOL. 

YAY!!!! 

5 little Griggers huddled around the well casing :) We went inside right after this.

Well.. NO.

We went on the front porch.

Striped the kids to their underwear.

Put clothes, jackets, hats and gloves right into the washing machine! 

Hopped them in and out of the shower in quick order.

Got dressed in nice clean warm clothes.

And remembered fondly our hour outside in the very wet! 

I also got a short movie of them all jumping in the deep puddle which I may up load one of these days.

SUPER DUPER FUN STUFF!!!! 

*Star* ~Naming Of~

Why we had to call her Star!! 

Do you see it?

*HINT* it's the second part of the calf you see born. First being it's front legs. 

 Someone said recently that it looked more like a maple leaf and I can see that

 but her names already Star 

and Maple starts with a M. ;) 

~9 Kids For A Day~

B's needed someone to watch their kids for a few days so a few of us from the church group 

took their 3 kids for a day. 

They had a blast!! They played outside, inside.

In this picture they have made a town and have a mayor and all kinds of rules and regs. 

My crew learned quite a bit about how a town works from the B bunch.

All lined up and ready to head out!! Us to AWANA and the B kids to their house. 

We didn't realize until right before we lined up for pictures that we had in the house for the day 

a 10 year old girl

a 9 year old boy

a 8 year old boy

a 7 year old boy

a 6 year old boy

a 5 year old girl

a 4 year old girl

and a

1 year old boy

and last but not least

a 4 month old girl!!

Craziness!! In a GOOD way :) 

Doing jumping jacks to get rid of some energy!! 

I misremember why they are all sitting in a circle but I'm sure it was fun!

 Haha I remember they were trying to make words using only the 1st letter in the names of the people in the house. We only had one vowel so it was quite hard!