Encouragement

I came across this blog post this evening and thought it was encouraging. I hope you do too :)

http://www.elizabethesther.com/threes_a_crowd/2009/06/how-i-found-gods-will-in-a-sinkful-of-dirty-dishes.html

Today

Here's the big man standing on his own. He can manage a few long seconds but not much more at this point. Noah will be one year-old on Saturday! Sorry the photo is blurry, I had the camera on "landscape" for some reason :)

Sisters goofing around.

Weekend Excursion

This past weekend we took a little excursion we've been wanting to do for a while now. We drove to Hood River then turned South on Hwy 35 through all the fruit orchards to circle around behind Mt. Hood. While on Mt. Hood we did a small hike at Trillium Lake. You can see the day was beautiful!

The 2 mile hike at Trillium is smooth enough to take a stroller on. We discovered, even with a stroller, 2 miles is the limit for our family :) The kids were very tired and hungry by the time we reached the van.

Looking at a dead fish in the lake.

Noah the hiker :)

This was at the start of the hike. The kids wanted to stop and look at things so often that the 2 miles took about an hour and a half.

This picture was taken at a little farm near Hood River. We picked up some delicious corn on the cob but discovered apples aren't in season yet. We might try to make another trip in early October to get some fresh apples and enjoy the harvesty feel :)

We're all a bit squinty as we're looking into the sun.

Weston took this photo. Not bad for a six year-old!

First Grade!

Here's Weston on his first day of homeschool. He is now a big first-grader! This year I've chosen to use My Father's World Homeschool Curriculum. So far we are both enjoying it! We've been reviewing the letters and sounds, working on phonics blends, sound recognition, math, memory verses, an art lesson, a science lesson and much more. In addition to the core curriculum I'm using a couple of other recommended reading lists for chapter books to read to both Weston and Grace. They've loved Henry Huggins and Homer Price!
Grace and Elsie don't want to be left out. Grace has been practicing her letters and Elsie has been drawing and coloring lots of circles in an old workbook :). Although it's rewarding and fun, I'm realizing what a challenge homeschooling is going to be. I can only hope to be successful if I am daily relying on God to give me patience and wisdom. On my own I'm just cranky and tired. Good thing God does not leave me on my own!