A Truly Sweet Heart

We started noticing it in BC.  We watched "Kung-fu Panda 2".  In the middle of it (after multiple kung fu parts and some scary people), the panda has a flash back and remembers his mom being chased away by the wolves.  His mom puts him in a wagon full of turnips and then runs away to save her baby by sacrificing herself.  Of course, it's a very moving part, but Jaymeson burst into tears and needed to be held.  I was pretty sure that it might be because he didn't like the idea of her dying, but I thought he may have gotten hurt or something because he had seen scarier things in movies, and he'd NEVER done that before.  He's always a "super brave boy" and he's always telling me that he fights the bad guys just like daddy (especially dinosaurs).

The next day, we were watching "Megamind" and within minutes, Megamind is sent away by his parents to a new world.  As soon as he parts from his parents, Jaymeson ran to me crying and buried his face into me.  Strange occurance #2.  I was fairly certain at this point that he didn't like the idea of a baby being separated from his parents.

My kids often watch a movie on Sunday morning while I get ready and Jarett gets the breakfast taken care of.  There have been times where I hear the kids breaking out into a fight Of course, we all know the story of Moses and the Bulrushes.  His Mom put him in the basket and put him on the Nile River.  From upstairs, I could hear Jaymeson burst into tears and start running up the stairs so that he could be with me and have me hold him.  This confirmed any suspicion I had.  He really does NOT like the idea of a Mom and Baby being separated.

Today, without knowing it, the girls put on Hercules.  Jaymeson had never seen it.  I didn't think anything of it really.  It's a hero fighting the bad guys.  This is right up Jay's alley.  But, at the beginning, Hades sends his little bad guys to kidnap Hercules and make him mortal.  This is when Jaymeson walked in the room.  He began to cry, and climb up me before I had a chance to notice what was going on.  He was jumping up and down and just panicked.  He couldn't stand it.  Finally he calmed down when I told him that he got a nice Mom and Dad and he beat the snakes up.  Jaymeson even laughed for a second (although he wouldn't let me put him down), but when he saw that Zeus and Hera were his real parents and they were so sad because he was gone, he lost it again.

Can I just say how much it yanks at my heart strings when I see my little boy so deeply affected by the idea of a baby and his parents being separated.  Especially because it is going to so deeply affect me when my sweet little boy is going to leave one day.  I'm sure I'll be glad and proud of him as he leaves on his mission or off to school, but I'm not going to lie, I'll miss my little boy.  He's just the sunshine in my life (and pretty much anyone who really knows him feels the same, I'm sure).  I'm glad he feels that special connection with me too!!

What Home Schooling Looks Like

Well, I confess, I only have time to take pictures on the smoother days, so it doesn't always look like this.  But, as I get a lot of questions as to what goes on and how I balance things.... here you have it.  Some pictures that I took two days ago.  (Saryn is always happy to model for me!)

We each have a Math Workbook that we do a section out of daily.

We also have a workbook which covers maps, writing, grammar, science and social studies.

Music Lessons daily

Saryn pointing to the country we studied that day out of "Story of the World"  We talked about the Nazca Drawings found in Peru.  The kids thought that was pretty cool.

The girls all pointing to some of the fun places we've studied.  Of course, the boys sometimes get in the way.

Favorite places that we have studied thus far!  (Jaymeson doesn't get in the way quite as much.)  He just wants to be a part of things.  Jaymeson pointing to Calgary, Kaia to Peru, Saryn to Africa (supposed to be Egypt) and Kienna to China.  If I was on there, I'd be pointing to Mesopotamia, because I've found that fasc inating.

Art Class

Bookmarks we made yesterday

One of the things Jaymeson does, while we're in school, is fly around with his super capes and watch for bad guys.

Our bead creations from last weeks art lesson

What Jaymeson did for art while we did the bookmarks.

Kaia doing music lessons

On of the main questions I'm asked is "What do you do with the younger kids while you're with your older ones in school?"  Thus the pictures of Jaymeson.  He keeps busy, enjoys the stories, loves the art and has his own math book which he LOVES because he feels like such a big boy.  Benson, on the other hand, frequently gets in the way, but is starting to enjoy coloring, reading books and crawling around to discover stuff while we're in school.  Generally, he naps in the morning and we're done by lunch time, so it's rare that he's there for it, but when he is awake, he's doing better!

We still are loving home school.  It definitely has it's rough days, but overall it is so wonderful to spend time as a family.  This afternoon, we'll be heading to the zoo for phys ed and for science class!  Maybe a post about that will be soon to follow!

SPARK!

The new Science Center has opened in Calgary and we have partaken of the goodness.  We've been there multiple times and we've had a blast.  They have a Children's Museum section where the kids learn things and play with things and climb walls and act in a theater.  They make water slides, water falls, water paintings, block towers, magnetic bridges, rings spin and SO much more.  That's just in the Children's Museum part.  They have a section on the Human Body, on Weather, on Electricity, on Oil, on Sound.... the Works!  We have absolutely LOVED our passes and we'll be attending many, many more times!

Saryn has all her ducks in a row!

Jaymeson has played with these waterfalls for hours in total.  It's the first place that he runs.

Oh, and did I mention that we got to play hovercraft hockey??  WAY too much fun!

Not always a bed of roses.

 Saryn can be a fireball.  Saryn can be the sweetest thing on earth, as well, but she can definitely be a fireball  Violin seems to bring both of these sentiments out the strongest.  Music can be good for that.  Or in this case, bad for that.  About 2 months ago, we were practicing a song for Christmas and she had HAD it.  I jotted down a few of her comments that made me laugh (in my head - wanting to burst out so bad).

Saryn: "I don't want to practice today, can I do two practices tomorrow instead?"
 Mom:  "Why not now?"
Saryn:  "There's just something lost inside me and I'm waiting for it to come."

During the middle of the session that then started, I asked her why she was getting so frustrated and screaming.  Her answer as simple, "I don't know, all I know is this:  (pause, the screaming...) "I'M SO TIRED!!"

I'm pretty sure that we ended soon after.  I just wanted to jot this down so that I can remember these times and laugh.

Sweet Little Benson

 

You can see why Kienna has a hard time practicing Cello when Benson is awake.

 

Watching "Baby Noah"

 After watching Baby Noah for about 5 minutes, I heard him whine a little and I came down to see him like this.

Tonight while we watched "Megamind".

And one of Jay - just because it's too cute too.

The Trip to Arizona - by Kienna Cahoon

with a few added notes by Mom.

 

My family (except for my dad), my aunt and cousin and I slept at my Gran’s house on August 16^th, 2011 and got ready to leave at five o’clock in the morning to start our trip down to Arizona.  We picked up Aunty Beryl and Aunty Brookie on the way down on the first day.  We were in the cars for 15 hours that day and then stopped at a hotel in Utah.  I was excited to be in Utah, because that is where I was born.  My sisters, Kaia and Saryn, slept at my Aunty Brittany’s house, but I got to sleep at the hotel.

We decided to travel another 5 hours the next day and went to St. George, Utah.  We went to a restaurant that had yummy, yummy tacos named Café Rio.  I remember that we were in a desert, there were a lot of desert kind of trees and it was burning hot.  We went to Brigham Young’s Winter House and saw really cool, old stuff in it.  We also learned a lot about silk making, how they lived in the desert back in the day before electricity etc.  It was a REALLY fascinating tour.

We went to our hotel, and went swimming.  I almost swam across the pool for the first time.

After swimming, we got ready to go to The Little Mermaid at the theatre.  It was an awesome play!  They had little glowing waves and the eels were so cool.  I got the see the Orchestra and they even had a cello.  I thought Sebastian was really funny.  After the play, we got to meet them and take pictures with them.  The Tuacahn Theatre is amazing.  I couldn't believe the ability to flood the stage and make it feel like you were actually under water and then  bring you up onto the land again.  They had really neat special effects, the songs were amazing with phenomenal harmonies.  They also had free babysitting for kids 2 and under.  Seriously AWESOME!

 

After St. George, we went through Zions National Park, and then went to the Grand Canyon!  Jaymeson almost got lost there.  I felt very scared because he might have fallen down into the canyon.  We got to climb lots of trees there and pretend that the grass was lava.  We got to see a lot of old stones that looked shiny and beautiful.  Some of them were over a thousand million years old.  We saw some California Condors and they were humongous.  I also got a Junior Ranger badge.  We had a lot of fun at the Grand Canyon.

Just wanted to add a little about the whole "Jaymeson almost got lost there" thing.  This was possibly the most terrifying moment of my life.  It's fun to see how Kienna can skim over it, but it was still a big enough ordeal that she remembered it almost 6 months later.  I can promise you that losing a child ANYWHERE is scary, but on the rim of the Grand Canyon is about as terrifying as it comes.  He had been strapped into a stroller the whole time, but we took him out to take a family picture and he wandered off pretty quickly.  We were in a large group, thought he was in the other half of the group, and wandered up to the shuttle where we all met up and realized he was gone.  My Mom and I got off immediately, but the shuttle bus driver had to shut the doors immediately (she was SO rude and unsympathetic I could have punched her), so our group was separated.  I had to leave the rest of my kids with everyone else, and all of them not knowing what happened or if he was okay.  My Mom and I took off, sounded the alarm to all these wonderful French people that Kaia had been chatting with, we all took off in a hurry and found him within a minute.  Luckily, we found him playing with some rocks, completely clueless as to the fact that he had made everyone have heart attacks.  A lady had seen him and was watching him closely to make sure he was okay until his parents came.  I burst into tears when I saw him and was so incredibly grateful that there are amazing people out there still.  We hear about all the creeps, but I felt like I owed the world to those people who helped us that day.  We reunited about an hour and a half later with the other group who had to stay on the shuttle bus and had a good cry/sigh of relief.  

We had a super fun trip down to Arizona and did lots of fun things.  It was also kinda boring in the car all the time, but I promised when I was sworn in as a Junior Ranger, I will never, never ask, “Are we there yet?”, so I didn’t.

 I had to include this picture because it shows more what Kienna was doing when she was being "sworn in".  She was picking at a bun and eating little bits through the whole thing.  I wish I had this on video, it was seriously hysterical.