Tapestry of Stress (oops, did I say stress, I mean) Tapestry of Grace....

At the end of each Unit in Tapestry, we have a feast or gathering to celebrate all we have learned.. We just finished unit II where we learned about ancient china, india, mayans, greece, the promised land and so on.. Here the girls represent china, india and greece..

Zack in his toga..

Here is Jennifer in her india costume, Olivia is from China and the rest had togas on..

Nicholas is arm wrestling his buddy Brian Donohoo.. It was sweet to let them join our Pentathalon. We were supposed to have 5 events that were the original events in Mount Olympus.. Running, jumping, wrestling, javelin, discus throw.. For the javelin, they were to toss a chopstick and for the discus,a butter lid... Instead of wrestling, we arm wrestled.. Being so cold up north, we had to make do inside.

Zack is arm wrestling a 10 year old, Jonah.. I was scared that he would go right down, but surprisingly it was almost a tie...

Josh barely beat Jacob the first time, but Josh did end losing to Jacob, but won first place in the long jump...

Ahhh. My football player stuck in a toga... He had fun at the olympics and was happy they included him and Brian, the two kindergartners.

Josh in his toga..

Halloween,Birthdays and Christmas, OH MY!!!!!

LOTS TO UPDATE, LOTS TO TELL, LOTS TO SMILE AT.....

Milkshake asleep all cuddled up with the stockings I was about to hang.. Who can resist such a cute face, I had to let her get her beauty rest.....
Nick with the final outcome of our tree. He is wearing his hulk shirt, which he is VERY proud of and wore for 4 straight days...:)

Nick helping dad figure out how to fluff the tree that we slaved getting in the cold ,harsh, garage..

See, these men worked hard to get our tree, by the sweat of their brows did they cut, I mean assemble the tree. Yes I am being facetious, I like real trees..

YIKES.. I had a hard time watching Nick and the boys swing sooooooo high only to be safe as to not fly off from swinging in and around, hanging by two little chains 3o feet in the air, you could see all the moms cringing, the dads smiling.....

We took a break from swinging to have lunch at the Rainforest Cafe..I wainted in line, while Chris took the boys for more rides, eating at Rainforest Cafe on a Saturday, at the mall of America On December 6, during Christmas shopping and Santa being there.. What can that spell...DISASTER.. But we were pleasantly surprised to only wait 40 minutes in line..

Zack loves the rainforest cafe, especially when all the monkeys start drumming and the cool thunderstorms, their eyes were huge..

AAAHHHH.. another scarry ride.. Nick and Brian go up and they drop down, go up drop down, They loved it..

From Left to right, Vitaly Brown (Our friend from Russia, who was adopted) The back of Josh's head, Nick and Brian in one cart, (Brian was a little too short to reach the peddle, but he is older than Nick) and Zack looking a little confused why a girl would hit him...:)

I'm not so sure about this mom...It's OK to bump people with this car..OK

That was fun, they only got scared once..

Nick with his proud shirt of Hulk..

At the Friday Night party, we had given the boys 5 minutes to come up with the most creative lego creation they could. this was Vitalys..

Zack's Creation...

Brian's Creation....

Josh' Creation..

And Nicholas creation....

The boys couldn't agree on the cake or what superhero it should be, so the lady at Walmart made a cake from both their favorite hero..She did a great job....

Here's HULK right in my own home...

We spent the "Cold" and rainy and wintery mix of a day on Nick's birthday at the Bydlon's eating, playing games and having cake... He is six now.. :(

Nick was so happy to get his Hulk costume...Nick got Hulk and Zack got spiderman the blue suit and the black one...

Here he is, SPIDEY...

Zack's shirt lit up, it was cool...

He turned eight years old... So Sad...

Here is Zack with Milkshake on his Birthday.. He is growing up to be such a sweet, and Godly little boy.. He plays peacemaker alot.. He does not like strife in the house.

Our little friend found the lid off the bucket of bird seed. He was in HOG heaven.. Then he invited all his little buddies to feast with him...It was fun watching this close out our patio window.

This is what the battlefield of carving pumpkins looks like when you leave them unattended for any length of time....

Nick is helping Mommy paint pumpkins for our harvest party at the Browns.

One of the pumpkins the kids carved...

My Creation ... I got the idea from a magazine and twisted it a bit. I was fun painting the whole pumpkin white and then addiing what looked quilty to me...

Another creation, first I painted it white and gold, glued leaves, then put a thick coat of sheer shine on, cut the top and used it as a vase..

Shalom!! It was three little Indians, but now it's three little Hebrews !!!!

Shalom!! Welcome to our Seder Meal... This is our Tapestry Passover Meal..

The end of the first semester...

Chris lead the Seder meal, he did a Great Job !!! Both of us being Jewish made perfect sense for the group to ask us to run the Seder Passover Meal... We really enjoyed walking through the process, and learning the jewish traditions..

Here is our Altar.. We happen to have a tablecloth that looked somewhat Hebrew.. We have a friend who loaned us the candles, the seder plate, and other cool stuff.. But I had to get Bitter herbs which was horseradish, a shank bone, an egg, Haroset (look it up) Gifilte fish, parsley, salt water and an extra plate for Elijah...We did make the children atleast try everything...

The Altar....

We had the children smash grapes to make grapejuice into a winepress, I must admit it tasted rather good...

Hannah and Olivia looked like they came out of a Italian, Greek movie.. They had a large bowl that they were gathering grapes from Hannah's mom's vineyard (yes, they grow grapes that have an absolutely beautiful arch that hangs over the grapes..... How authentic.. I wish I had a picture of them gathering the grapes.. It was toooooooo movie like..

Josh during the seder.. He enjoyed dressing up like a Hebrew..

Zack at the Seder, of course he had no plate..And I had to sneak away during my role to get him a plate.. Poor Zack.. He always is content and has such a good attitude, never complains or tells us he doesn't have it.. Oy... Who knew?

Nick at the Seder...He was just too cute and too itchy.. I made the costumes with cheap burlap, like John the Baptist, Right? Errrh.. He itched the whole time.. I made him make it through atleast the passover meal, and quickly stripped it off him...

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians !!!

Finally a new post, it's been over a month....

Here are my three little Indians....

It started out a simple little kindergarten project for Nick.. I gave him the craft book that had feathers.. Then his big brothers saw how cool he looked and next thing you know we're constructing weapons, making new headresses, and using face paint for their chests and warpaint.. You never know with kids what a project can turn into....
" How" Indian.. Peace brothers...

Zack of course got a bad picture taken, the camera was dying, I literally had to lick the batteries for the last bit of juice I could squeeze, and yes that works to get the last bit of life..

Of course, if you look the part, we act the part... Josh and his fearsome look.. We call him

Whines alot... Sorry Josh, we love you....