Pool Party

Kathryn and I went to Will and Christina Iscrupe's birthday pool party today. Kathryn is getting better at diving. Last year all she could do were belly flops. Just look at her now. Here my graceful mermaid is diving for the dive rings.
This is Will and Christina opening their presents
It's time to cut the Birthday cookie . Yum yum chocolate chip.

Good News Cruise

For Kathryn's final production of the year. Samantha was an officer on the cruise. Grace and Kathryn were passengers.
This song was the kids favorite because it had the most fun beat. It was called the word game. They made words from the title Good news Cruise. This one says " We grow in God's word"

Kathryn had three lines in the show. This line was right after a storm had rocked the boat. She said " It's so calm and peaceful now" The yellow things they have on are life jackets.
This song was called "Got Jesus" Lostin Leftfield was just discovering about Jesus and how to get Him in his life.

The play was a huge success and the children had a great time putting it on. Kathryn's friend Grace ( tallahassee) came to see her with her parents. Kathryn has decided she wants a break from performing for a little while so we will probably skip the Christmas play this year. She is a little ham thoough and I love seeing her perform.

Fun at Lowes

Kathryn, Samantha, and Grace went to Lowes last weekend and made this planter box. You plant a seed near the glass window and watch the seeds sprout. Kathryn has been doing the free clinics at Home Depot for three years and at Lowes for about 6 months. The more she does them the less help she wants from us. She is getting better at handling her tools on her own and barely hits her thumb any more. After we come home we paint the projects and find a new "home" for them. Sometimes in her room and sometimes elsewhere in the house.

Last day of soccer

Thursday was Kathryn and Grace's last day at soccer for this year. Unfornatually it will be Coach Roy's last day of soccer in America. He and Ms Mary are moving back to England so they can be closer to their children and grandchildren. They will be greatly missed.
Coach roy, Ms Mary, Kathryn, and Grace.

Their new 4H t Shirts finally arrived today ( the last day of soccer) We have been waiting a long time for them. We got pictures of the front and the back of the shirts.

Alex's Lemonade Stand
Today at Albertson's we held a Lemonade stand to benifit Pediatric Cancer research. This stand was started because of Alex Scott a little girl who lost her 4 year battle against cancer. When she got sick she told her parents she wanted to have a lemonade stand to raise money for her doctors to find a cure. In her 4 year batttle she raised 1 million dollars. Since then almost 16 million dollars has been raised due to these lemonade stands. We dedicate this stand to Alexandra Scott and to Daniel Phillips who lost his battle 4 years ago to leukemia. To them and to all the children who have won, lost, or are still battling our prayers go out to you. This nice lady was our first customer. Many people who stopped at the stand did not want any lemonade but gave generously.
Some of our corporate sponsors included McDonalds ( Pictured here is Lo, a McDonalds representative, who brought us the cooler and the cups), Chick fil a ( who donated 5 gallons of fresh squeezed lomonade.), and Walmart( who gave us a $25 gift card for supplies). And a special thank you to Albertson's for allowing us to set up to have the fund raiser.

As the Albertsons patrons would come up to the store the children greeted them with an American Flag sticker and invited them over for lemonade and to make a donation. All total we gave out about 100 glasses of lemonade. Thank you to all the children and parents of K12 , TCHF, and TEACH who came out to hand out lemonade. With all of your help we had lemonade, cookies, muffins, fresh fruit, brownies, coolers, a much needed tent for shade, lots of hands helping, and wonderful fellowship.
Kathryn is helping to make some more lemonade.
This was the last group shot that we did that has all the children and parents in the shot.

The children passed out stickers, tatoos, and glasses of lemonade. They were just too cute.Here is one of our little attention getters. Isn't she adorable.

All total today we raised $258.45. Tomorrow we will have a 2nd stand and raise even more for research.

Habitats

This particular project has been 12 weeks in the making. We began by discussing the various habitats and for the last 6 weeks we have been adding critters to the various ahbitats. We used every art medium that we had available to create the habitats and animals. We painted, chalked, tissue papered, glittered, and even recycled to make this wonderful picture. What you can't see in this picture, because I could not get far enough away, is this thing is from floor to ceiling and corner to corner. This is our laundry room wall. It was the only wall space big enough to encompass the whole project. I am going to be sad to see it come down. We are going to leave it up over the summer and add more to it. But when we start school in August it must come down.

We added a line from each habitat to the place on the map where it belongs. Yes, there could have been more than one place for these, but we chose the largest concentration of each habitat to mark. We also reviewed the seven continents as we were labeling the habitats.
This diorama of the Great Barrier Reef we did very early this year but it was still on the shelf in the office so Kathryn wanted to add it to the wall. Click on the picture to see more details. Our Aunt Nancy went to Africa last year and when she found out about Kathryn's project she sent her several photo albums of pictures from her travels. (they are sitting on the diorama) We took several pictures from the albums and made scrapbook pages so we could put them on the wall to display them

I think the ocean was Kathryn's favorite. We made these string octopi, glitter fish, and several other things. For the background ocean we used chalk. By the time we got up off the floor from coloring this we were both covered in chalk. Thank goodness it is not permanent and washed out easy.
We learned the difference between a jungle and a rain forest. The above picture is of the jungle. notice no emergent layer. We used bird feathers and created birds to put in the trees. She also added snakes and a few other things. The jungle is still a work in progress. The picture below is the rain forest and all its defferent layers.
A close up of her string octopus.

Yesterday was Kathryn's 6th birthday. She celebrated it with Haddy, Hannah, Grace, and Sam at Build A Bear. This was before the party. She helped me set up and was waiting patiently for her guests.

Eva made the cookies and Kathryn decorated them.
Here is Kathryn and Hannah listening to Ms Casey ( our party hostess.)
Ms Casey was so much fun. She had them hopping and skipping all over the store moving from place to place.While one animal was being stuffed she had the others play games like monkey in the middle and a hula hoop game where they had to hold hands and step through the hoop. It was funny and the kids enjoyed it.Here is Kathryn getting her Labadore stuffed. She is naming her Katie.
Happy Birthday little one Mommy and Daddy love you.