Oh wait just minute! In my rush to sum up the multitude of days in which I failed to post I forgot to mention one of our recent exciting aquarium happenings. I can't believe I dared to let this go by with out reporting it sooner because I know dear blog readers that this kind of juicy aquarium talk is just what your looking for when surfing for reading material! Now to the topic at hand. Seems to me every female in my tank looks pregnant at all times. Although I had never seen babies being born there has been three different times that I've found a lone survivor from a batch of fry. I had long since given up trying to watch for signs of imminent birth in order to protect newborns. So here I am refilling up my tank after a cleaning and I notice a fish that looks distressed is being harassed by all the other fish in the tank. Come to find out I apparently shocked her into labor with all my work on the tank and that the others were chasing her around eating her babies as soon as they were being born! I finally got to see baby fish being delivered! At any rate I have no idea how many she had in total. I did manage to save 13 and put them in a nursery tank. There were more but I was tired by 13. Besides 13 is a large number of fish which I will at some point have to add back to my regular tank. I would post a picture but right now they are so small that they basically look like orange rice with eye balls. I don't think I could take a picture where you could see them clearly. Ok, now take a deep breath, calm down as I know this exciting news is bound to have you all worked up, and resume your life as best you can.

We had a great holiday season this year. Ironically it started out with Cecil having pneumonia, then it seemed like nearly everyone we knew had pneumonia or was sick in some way. However, most everyone started feeling at least slightly better by Christmas.

Mom stayed Christmas Eve night as always. A far as presents go I think this was by far one of our better years. Emily got a 4 foot tall Savanna doll house for her Barbies, Brandon got an air soft automatic rifle, Cecil got a mini battery powered generator, I got a black wool pea coat and Beyond Paradise perfume, and the family got a wii.

We took off from school in total around 4 weeks between illnesses, Christmas and New Years. If fact Monday was the first day back since Dec. 11 according to my grade book. We throughly enjoyed our time together though. We had friends over for New Years which was a nice change from me and kids staying up alone. (Cecil always poops out.) We did the whole lots of food and fireworks thing that night. Our friends left before midnight and we starting playing wii. Cecil even stayed up! Around 1:30 AM I looked at the clock and realize we had missed the new year coming in! OH well at least we know we were having fun as a family when it did.

Heather and Aaron didn't make it in until this weekend. I hope they had a good time. We had lots of snacks, good meals, game playing and fireworks. I think the highlight of the weekend was the 7 shot aerial that fell over. One in the air, one under the trampoline, one at the storage shed, two at the house( I think?), one right past me off the roof of the car just missing Bran and exploding by the roof, and one that was headed for my husband and the kids car which my SIL blocked with a kick to have it explode within about 4 feet of him. As scary as it was no one was hurt and nothing was damaged. I think the funny parts was what was said in the confusion. It was pretty quite except for the explosions. At one point you hear in this wavering voice, "Daddy" and it wasn't Heather or Emily but me. Where was my brave hero? Then Brandon who has been hit before in a similar incident goes, "Oh, snap" in a really not me again kind of voice then pops up from behind the car to shout "I'm alright!". And Heather then deciding perhaps it was time to call in her husband since Daddy wasn't playing hero called out "Aaron" but sounded like she changed her mind about the time hubby takes a kick at the aerial flying at him. We laughed for quite a while afterwards but definitely decided we were through shooting off fireworks for the night. Heather has requested that Daddy buy more fountains and fewer aerials next time.

Other than lots of laying around, tons of late nights with movies and video games and way too much junk food that is our last 4 or so weeks in a nut shell.

Our beloved golden mystery snail Casanova has passed away. Our theory is that he "loved" himself to death. I looked up online to see exactly how long a snail was supposed to live any way and discovered that the more active a snail is the shorter it's life span. Needless to say it was no surprise then that Casanova had such a short but happy life. Luckily we have his many children to remember him by. Children which soon after his death began eating him. Concerned that it might upset my kids I asked them if they'd like me to take him out so they could bury him. Much to my husband's dismay they said, "Nah, lets just watch his kids eat him." I've tried to reassure my husband that we'd never ever eat him...but he still seems a little apprehensive.

This month our field trip was to a Dairy farm. Twin Lakes is a grass based dairy farm. This is good because the cows only come up twice a day to milk. They are not confined all the time. They have 2000 milking jersey cows, a few good bulls and currently about 500 calves! The main dairy building is on 500 acres but they have their cows spread out on 2,500 acres. It took us about 3 hours for the full tour. I felt a little sorry for the owner, Laurie Hannon. She was a wealth of information and very patient. We Moms had a million good questions for her. The kids however only had eyes for the cows, calves, open fields and best of all the HAY BALES!!!!! I know that the kids had a blast and Laurie claims it was good fun for her and her workers too. So, I'd say the Dairy Farm was a win/win situation.

We were able to see the containers the milk is stored in until the truck comes to pick it up, the cows being milked, the cows in the feed line, the newborn baby calves, the older calves in their hutches, the older cows enjoying the grass in the field, and we also caught the truck while it was there to pick up milk.

Huge drum of foamy fresh milk! Yum!


Aww... a newborn. They were so sweet.
Some would even try to suck on your fingers!


Mom, Can I have a hay bale for Christmas?


Got Milk? Cliche I know, but in this post
don't you think it just had to be said somewhere?

Emily has been hard at work making Christmas lap books. First she did this free Nativity Lapbook: http://www.scribd.com/doc/524998/Nativity-Lapbook



She drew a nativity scene on the front cover all by herself. Can you see baby Jesus there in the middle and the star in the sky? She loved this project. She likes to take all the people out of the pocket and set them up in the manger scene.



Next she made a free symbols of Christmas lap book from here: http://www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/lapbooks/christmas_symbols.htm





I put the Title on the front for her but again she drew a cute little nativity scene up by the star all by herself. She really enjoyed this book also. I read to her and talked about the meaning behind each symbol. I'm not sure how much sunk in but hey now she has this little book to remind her!

Now Brandon says he is ready for another lapbook. He collects wooden nutcrackers. He gets a new one every year and I think one of his favorite things about decorating for Christmas is setting these guys up. So, he wants to do a lapbook on nutcrackers. I have no idea if I'll be able to hunt down a free lapbook on nutcrackers, but I guess I'll give it a try.

Last month Home Depot had Pirate Ships for their Kid's workshop! Bran and Em loved them. Some of the kits we've done in the past were a bit tricky but these were pretty easy to put together. They kid's did an awesome job painting them don't you think? Can you tell which one is who's?



Home School Moms and Dads check out your local Home Depot and Lowes for their kid's workshops. They are a lot of good ol' family fun!

Since we are about to go on another field trip to a Dairy Farm I should probably finally post the pictures from the field trip we went on last month! You think?

OH my gosh I'm so behind on blogging! We had a great Thanksgiving despite a few sad moments. It was great because we just have so much to be Thankful for. I was talking to my husband about all that has gone wrong lately (dryer breaking, pipes bursting, etc.) and he pointed out how well I've been taking it all. He said these things would have effected us more 5 years ago. I guess we are finally growing up and have learning to be grateful for all we have.

We've been trying to stay on top of school work through all the distractions. Emily was slipping for a while (entirely MY fault by not being consistent) but she is doing better now. I've just got to make sure I don't let several days go by between lessons.

The puppies we were blessed/cursed with came down with what I believe was parvo. We could not save them though we tried. They first showed signs of being ill the night before Thanksgiving. The last one was buried Sunday. To lessen the kids loss we have agreed that after we bleach the house and yard and wait about 6 months or so we'll get a puppy. However, it will have to have all it's shots before it ever comes home. I can't stand the thought of helplessly sitting by watching another animal just slip away.

We started decorating for Christmas on Thanksgiving as is our tradition. We've already watched a couple a Christmas movies and listened to some Christmas music. I have every reason to be in the Christmas spirit but something is missing. May be it is just too early. It may just be that I haven't been able to go buy anyone a present yet. Nothing puts the spirit in me like picking out that something special or better yet giving to someone in need. I love to buy clothes and toys for my kids but then their rooms reflect that. Nothing compares to the joy you can get from giving to a child that doesn't have a lot. We are far from wealthy but around Thanksgiving I realized we have so much more than many. We are truly blessed and I'm looking forward this year to sharing our blessings with others. Hmmmm... may be I am feeling the Christmas spirit more than I thought! LOL

Since the last post the kids have done a couple of crafts and other photo worthy things. I'll try to get some pictures of those posted soon. For now I just wanted my blog friends and family to know I haven't permanently stopped blogging!