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Since moving into our new home we've had two big snow storms. I think it may be a  white Christmas this year! We love snow! Gwendolyn is still young and needs to stay inside most of the time, however, the big kids are able to go out and play with mommy or daddy. We have a nice little hill behind our driveway, perfect for sledding (whether or not  grass will grow there in the spring remains to be seen). Jason also took the kids across the neighborhood to the play area yesterday as the snow fell. It is a beautiful white world out there. Having just read  The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis as a family, we are all really grateful that we live in Pennsylvania and not Narnia. As the snow falls we are charmed by the lights of the Christmas tree and excited by our stockings hanging from the banisters, waiting for Christmas. Having snow before Christmas is really magical and only makes the upcoming holiday more exciting. ...

We have now entered "the most wonderful time of the year". Christmas music permeates the car when I turn the ignition, I'm beginning to think about baking cookies and buying toys on-line and we started our yearly advent countdown to Christmas (we have enjoyed this same set of verses for 3 years now, days1-12,   days12-25 ).  But before Dec. 1, we spent two weeks learning about the pilgrims and talking about Thanksgiving. The book recommended from  Five in a Row , A Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin was a fun introduction to New England and cranberry bogs. The book also includes a recipe, we love that! We also read through a short chapter book, Meet the Pilgrim Fathers , by Elizabeth Payne as well as a handful of short kids stories from the library about the pilgrims. My favorite of these: The Pilgrims Thanksgiving from A-Z , Laura Crawford and Judith Heirstein. The craft ideas for holidays can be overwhelming. I tried to hone in on a few ...

This past weekend we drove down to D.C. to visit family and introduce Gwendolyn to her aunties, uncles and cousins down there. As much as little people do not like driving in the car for long, the trip was still a success.  We loved seeing everyone. Here are a few shots.

For two half-weeks we read the book Another Celebrated Dancing Bear by Gladys Scheffrin-Falk. This book was so much fun and we really enjoyed learning about Russia. We made paper versions of the Russian stacking dolls (Matryoshka) and we made paper buildings with the very beautiful roofs. We enjoyed reading about the four very different habitats found in Russia. The Taiga, Tundra, Forest and farmland. There are also Mountains, the largest freshwater lake in the world, (home to the only freshwater seal, the Nerpa) and the longest river in the world.  We are fascinated with animals of any kind and Tristan especially enjoys the animals of the arctic. These animals were his take-away from our weeks learning about Russia. He chooses to think that all of Russia is the far north, frozen taiga. I was interested to learn that some people see the brown bear a symbol of Russia. It is big, fierce and has no natural predators. It is also indigenous to the Russian forests an...

Baby Gwendolyn has brought friends and family out to our apartment. We have enjoyed seeing Grandma, Nana and Poppi, Aunt Becky, Uncle Dan and Aunt Jordi and also our friends Mindy and Pat Walsh. Here are few of them. The older children also have enjoyed holding and cuddling their new little sister. She is just in awe of them. We have taken her outside a little already in her stroller/carseat. She is not as keen on the outdoors in the cold.

Gwendolyn Joy Pickering. Our new little addition. What a doll baby! Born November 6 at 7:15 pm. She weighed 8 lbs and was 21 inches. Big brother and Big sister are so doting and are also enjoying all of the visits from family as well as the celebration of baby's arrival with cake and gifts. So far they are excited about her. Jason and I are thankful for her -much anticipated- birth and we are so happy for her good health and the blessing of another little one. She really is such a darling!

The last two weeks have been kind-of busy and up and down. Now we are officially over due date for baby, and though I've been here twice before, it's kind-of stressful. I have been trying to keep up with the schedule of things with the kids. It's been somewhat challenging between our home-search and weekly visits to the midwife, but we have completed two books since the last post. The first week we read Allen Say's book Grandfather's Journey . This book is about a Japanese man (Allen Say's grandfather), who moves to America and has many adventures before moving back to Japan. After years of living back in Japan, he feels drawn back to America, but never returns. Allen Say is such a celebrated children's author and I happened upon his book Tree of Cranes while I was picking up Grandfather's Journey. These two books complimented each other very well. We enjoyed making origami this week. Learning more about Japan as well as the diversity of America. We wer...

Last week we read, How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman. This book is silly and fun with such a great fall theme. We all enjoyed reading this story each day. Monday we  began the week talking about Salt. How it is harvested and used. We began a little pot of salt water to set in the sun and watch the salt fall out as the water evaporated. We colored a NaCl poster and talked about salt being a compound of minerals. Sodium is a mineral that our body needs a little bit of, but not too much. It is truly amazing that God gave salt the ability to make food taste better when used a little bit, but if you use too much it is disgusting. Our bodies need just a little sodium for proper function. God is truly amazing and as we sat down for circle time and Bible reading to start our day Monday, the passage for the day was Matthew 5. You are the salt of the earth. If the salt loses it's flavor, how can it be made salty again? I am totally blown away by God and how he w...

Colorado Springs Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Garden of the Gods with Pikes Peak in the background Carrots we grew from seed Venice gondola watercolor Shadowbox craft ( Papa Piccolo ) Painting our clothespin airplane crafts at the Marriot Residence Inn in PA ( The Glorious Flight ) Number art,  Residence Inn, PA

Last week we read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton. Anastasia does not enjoy this story, but Tristan likes it, so it was cool. Our week mostly involved getting moved into our temporary living situation here in PA, so I didn't feel that  we gave the "schooling" top priority. We made a steam shovel craft and practiced drawing trees and things in motion. It really makes me appreciate the illustrator (in this case Virginia Lee Burton) when I attempt to draw something similar to what they have done. Yeah, not as easy as it looks! We made a transportation collage and talked about all the modes of transportation. Thanks to Grandma, we were able to do some road building for our matchbox cars and discussed why it's easier/faster for cars to drive on a highway that is smooth and straight versus a hilly, curvy road. Mike Mulligan is a great book for counting practice as well. Counting trees, telephone poles, cars, horses, etc. We didn't get to quite...

We have had two weeks of "school" since I last posted. The week of our pack-out in Colorado Springs we read the book Papa Piccolo by Carol Talley. The kids loved this story about a Venice tom-cat who adopts two mischievous kittens. We talked a lot about the unique city of Venice with streets made of water. It was a heavy week for vocabulary as many of the words were new to us. Intersting moral lesson about the Fox and the Grapes, and  we did watercolor and a fun gondola shadow box craft . Then the movers came and our week ended. On this side of the move we read Glorious Flight by Alice and Martin Provensen. The true story of Louis Bleriot, the first man to fly across the English Channel. Our week was full of high flying fun as we tried many different paper airplane folds and got to paint and glue together a paper clip airplane magnet craft. We also discussed the story of Daedalus and Icarus as well as reading a biography about the Wright brothers. This week we began le...

Since we found out that we are officially moving to Pennsylvania, things have gotten pretty crazy. Besides the normal crazy of two little people and a Very pregnant mommy! But in this time God has shown himself powerful, and faithful. I have taken each day in prayer and so many of the days as I begin the day in God's word, the passages that I read are pointed directly to my circumstance that day and minister peace, hope and strength. He is my tower of strength, my refuge, not to mention my sustenance and joy. So... if you are thinking about moving, or just feeling like life is spinning out of control, my advice. Take it to God and find your peace in His everlasting arms. He wants to take us to such deeper levels of trusting Him. He wants to be our "all in all". That means everything. I find it too easy to depend on myself or others most of the time, but the last two weeks I have been learning to trust God in little ways (they feel big to me!). He has shown that He is all...

This week our "school-time" has centered around the book The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills. This is such a sweet story. The first time reading it out-loud, I had a hard time finishing the book. It's a tear jerker! Anyway, I can appreciate any story that centers around quilts and friendship. We also read The Patchwork Quilt , by Valerie Flournoy, also a good heartwarming story. Anyway,   The Rag Coat  is set in the Appalachian mountains and there is reference to carding cotton, I figured our activities for the week should have to do with natural fabrics and what we can learn about them. First I introduced some natural fabrics and showed the children pictures of the plants and animals these fabrics are made from. Then we did some water absorbency/resistance experiment to see which of the fabrics repelled water best.  Then we tried our hand at natural dyeing. This turned out to be tons of fun, chopping up fruit and veggies together, making our dye baths and the...

This week our story for school time was  A Pair of Red Clogs by Masako Matsuno. We enjoyed reading about Japan and Anastasia really connected with the emotion of the story. The poor girl's shoes were broken; she really seemed moved by that every time we read the story. Anastasia was also able to point to Japan on our little laminated map of the world by the end of the week, which I think is amazing! Anyway, Tristan seemed to enjoy the story too, but maybe not as much as some of the others.  We talked about the culture of Japan and how Japan is a group of islands.  We talked about weather and how weather is forecast. We kept a weather forecast log of predicted and actual weather for the week. Turns out it was a really rainy week. You can tell that the children's drawings of rain and clouds are pretty abstract. We also did a fun activity making rain come through shaving cream clouds. They enjoyed that one. I got this idea from bath activities  for kids. ...

This week we had quite a patriotic week. Starting off with the holiday/balloon festival and then using our book of the week Lentil , by Robert McCloskey for school. We enjoyed the patriotism displayed in the story and learned a little about America, our armed services and our flag. We also enjoyed some musical study, playing and singing every day and playing on little harmonicas. We looked at musical notes and their importance to the band and read lots of fun stories about bands. (Fun book of the week: Chuck's Band by Peggy Perry Anderson. We also talked about the science behind sound, how it travels and how we hear sounds/tone. Science also involved reviewing our 5 senses, focusing on taste and how taste works. We turned lemons sweet by adding sugar water to make lemonade, and we tried to identify taste with blindfolds. Art was challenging because the story of Lentil is illustrated with charcoal and this is a difficult medium for 2 and 4 year olds. ...

There is nothing quite like an early morning treck downtown to watch hundreds of hot air balloons ascend into the skies from Memorial Park. This is our second year watching the ascent and it is so awesome! The balloons were blown towards the northwest this year and the big lake is southeast of their launch point. Not many were able to navigate over to touch down on Prospect lake. As we were leaving we even passed one balloon that came down right in the middle of the street downtown. Oops! All in all the balloons are amazing! They have a way of bringing me back to some other time, where it actually made sense to travel this way and there was nothing much better to do than experiment with flying. The cloud hopper balloons are very impressive, the single rider, the pilot sits in a seat instead of a basket and ascends, feet dangling, totally exposed up into the middle of the sky. Thankfully we had clear blue skies this morning. The scene was picture perfect from the ground. I can ...

This past week of school our study centered around the classic story Madeline  by Ludwig Bemelmans. We enjoyed learning about Paris and a little about France overall. We are adding to our geography skills, identifying North America, Australia, China and now France. The kids also knew the Eiffle tower by the end of the week. Hopefully these are hooks that they can build upon as they grow. Counting 1-10 in French has proven difficult. I guess because I already knew the Spanish numbers, I use them a bit easier, as where we have all been struggling with the French. We will continue with our counting in 3 languages and it will get easier for all of us. Anastasia loves to say "bonjour" and "enchante". She asked me around midweek to help her with her "words". I knew what she meant and we sang our little hello, nice to meet you song. Tristan's favorite part of the week was our crepes. We made them midweek for dessert. We filled ours with half of a banana and c...

This week we have enjoyed some great math lessons. We started with making number cards. Tristan didn't finish his on the first day, he is very meticulous! He did manage to get them all done by midweek. They are so cute! To end the week, we counted and sorted M&M's. Then we ate them! Yum. All week and all of last week we have been totally harassed by the dog who lives behind us. Thank God for fences! The constant barking has been getting to me, though. I think she's just lonely now that the kids are in school and after school activities. Poor thing. I can only pray that God is teaching me patience.