DADDY's HOME!

After 32 days in Alabama, Chad flew home tonight. His flight arrived in Fort Wayne at 10:45 p.m. The boys spent the night at the Hoem house since it was so late.

Chad completed his Officer training for the Chaplain Candidate Program with both academic and physical fitness honors. On Monday he returns to classes at the seminary. He starts off this quarter three weeks behind and will have some work to do to caught up!

Thanks for all your prayers during this family separation!

Art Class....

There is hope for the children of an unartistic homeschooling mother. Tonight we were invited by some friends to go to their school where there was a special "art class" in the evening. The man teaching was teaching smart art or something along those lines. Anyway, he even gave us a website that has other drawing "lessons" done on video. Check it out at http://www.tagartkids.com/.

The boys had a great time drawing the animals and other things as we were instructed. I asked them each to pick out their favorite picture out of the 5 that they made. Here is what they gave me.

Seth chose the first drawing we did. I helped him with the basic drawing and he filled in the details.... The original basic drawing was taking the shape of a bird, but Seth decided a funny face was better.

Noah also chose our first picture. Noah struggled a little at the beginning because he felt like he couldn't do it... I helped him get started by giving him the basic picture. It was his idea to turn our bird drawing into a clown.

JJ's picture takes a turn from the animal genre. I am not sure how he started this one, it may have been between our jungle drawings and wolves when our instructor was sharing stories. In any case, JJ didn't stop drawing to listen to the stories... He kept on going with his own creations.

Zeke gave me the wolf as his choice. This was the last picture that we drew for the night. He really enjoyed the art opportunity. Mr. G, our instructor, showed how to take simple shapes and turn them into animals. Zeke has seen this on a PBS show and enjoyed the opportunity to be able to participate with it (the PBS show moves through the drawings a little too fast to be able to draw along).

Speed Bumps...

Tonight we came home from a trip to the YMCA and stopped at the Grocery store to buy a few things. As we were walking up to the store the boys noticed two speed bumps between the doors. Noah, in his highly inquisitive way lately, asked what they were for. I replied that they were speed bumps to make drivers slow down so they don't hit little boys walking across the road.

We did our shopping and on our way out of the store Zeke and Noah asked if we could drive over the speed bumps on our way out... I figured, sure "Why not?" As I backed out of my parking spot there was chaos in the back of the minivan because we hadn't gotten to the speed bumps yet. As we drove over the speed bumps there was unstoppable giggling in the back of the van. All the way home they asked if we could go over more speed bumps. When I replied that we were out of the parking lot, Noah asked if they were the only speed bumps in the whole world. I wasn't even sure how to respond to that. Apparantly speed bumps are highly entertaining!

Spending time with the Breeden Family

As part of our trip in Wisconsin we spent several days with Uncle Jim, Aunt Amy, Samuel, Isaak and baby Grace. We had a great time hanging out with the cousins and spent time at a park, the Building for kids (see below), and a gymnastics gym. On our last day there, we took a trip to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate Uncle Jim's birthday.

After a few days there we traveled to Wausau, where we spent some time with Grandma and Grandpa Breeden before returning home!

The Building for kids....

While we were staying with Uncle Jim and Aunt Amy we had a chance to take the kids to the a place in Appleton called, "The Building For Kids". It was the perfect place for two moms to take a group of 7 kids all ages 6 and under!

The activities included an airplane where a child could pretend to be a pilot, co-pilot, air traffic controller... or even a passenger.
One of the highlights of the trip was a fire engine where the kids could dress up like firefighters and then pretend to put out fires.
There was also this cool area where the kids would run around trying to get those ball pit balls into various openings. The balls were pushed through pipes into a holding area...And then a light would start flashing and the kids would run under just in time to have all the balls dump on their heads.

In addition there was an indoor treehouse to play in, a sports and recreation area, a water table and an art area. We had a great time with the Breeden boys and girl!