Posted by Cindy on September 17, 2007
Why is it that you usually feel dirtier after showering at a hotel than you did before you showered? Why is it that once the baby finally falls asleep in his carseat, somebody else in the car decides they have to use the bathroom and can’t possibly hold it – thus waking up the baby with all the commotion of stopping. Why is it that a seven hour trip seems like a 15 hour trip with a baby?
Thank the Lord, and my husband, that we decided not to go to Jamestown this year. That would have been a 10-12 hour trip. I can’t imagine Eli on such a long trip. I was only partially grumpy from the seven hour trip. I’m sure I would’ve been fully grumpy if we had traveled any longer. 
In spite of a grumpy baby and momma, we had a lovely time in Saugatuck, Michigan! Our hotel was nestled in between Lake Michigan and the Kalamazoo River. The views were spectacular! We practically had the beach to ourselves! And we found plenty of kid-friendly things to keep us busy when the temperatures kept us off the beach.
Wednesday turned into our Dutch education day when we traveled a few miles up the road to Holland. Yep, that’s the same place that sends you a tulip bulb catalog. We stopped in a bulb outlet – oh, the variety of tulip bulbs was amazing! We enjoyed a Delft pottery factory, a wooden shoe factory, and a wonderful farmers market. The highlight of our day was a Dutch village complete with an authentic, working windmill from the Netherlands.
Some other highlights of our time in Michigan included dinner and fresh pies at an apple orchard, a hike up Mt. Baldhead (a sand dune), and a dune buggy historical tour of the dunes that have buried Singapore (a booming lumber town 100+ years ago.) The pictures below are proof that I walked straight uphill 282 steps to the top of Mt. Baldhead and lived to tell about it (that’s 17 flights of stairs!!), and the dune buggy that toured the other sand dunes.
On our way home through Indiana, we stopped in Napanee, an Amish community. There, we visited Amish Acres for a tour and films about Amish life, plus lots of shopping. There was supposedly a wonderful restaurant there, too, but we decided to head on down the road – much to my husband’s dismay. The kids hadn’t gotten to swim much in Michigan, so we promised to find a hotel with an indoor pool for the night. They wouldn’t let him forget that it was time to find a pool. 
The final day, we stopped in Peru, Indiana at the Grissom Air Museum. It was, surprisingly, a fun stop – especially for the kids. Caleb said he was “famous” because he touched every war plane on the field. Steve is a history buff, so he had fun telling stories about each plane and how it was used.
Like the title says, though – it’s good to be home. Traveling with a baby, keeping him off the dirty floors, watching for safety hazards, messing with his eating and napping schedules, etc – doesn’t make for a relaxing vacation for momma. But, the memories we created are worth all the hassles!
Posted by Cindy on September 9, 2007
I love Discovering Great Artists! I’ve used it in our home and in a co-op art class. This lesson came from the book.
Albrecht Durer did paintings, watercolors, drawing and woodcuts. We tried our hand at woodblock printing, which was one of Durer’s specialties. You take wood blocks and hammer metal objects into the wood to make impressions. Then you use brayers to roll ink over the blocks to make prints. One of Durer’s famous pieces of art using this technique is called “Rhinoscerous”. Our works of wood printing aren’t quite to Durer’s level yet!
For the rest of the month, a printing center will be out in the schoolroom. I’ve included a book with a bio about Durer, sponges, rubber stamps, foam for creating their own stamps, various other objects to print with – cars, leaves, forks, tooth brushes – and paint.
Posted by Cindy on
My Daddy is turning 60. Twenty-four years ago on my Mom’s 30th birthday, my Dad surprised her with a party full of friends and family. It took her quite a long time to repay the favor, but she successfully pulled off a surprise birthday party for him this year!
We had such a good time! Sorry, there are no pictures from the party. My digital camera decided to stop working on this important night! There are plenty of pictures on my Mom’s camera, though!
My sister put together a Power Point presentation of all sorts of pictures my Mom dug up from the past 60 years of my Dad’s life. She put it to ”oldies” music. It turned out beautifully!
My Dad doesn’t need a thing materially, so I struggled for quite some time with what to give him for such a momentous birthday. My friend, Jody, told me of an idea she did for her dad that turned out to be a hit, so I grabbed the idea and ran. I wrote my Dad a letter with 60 memories I have of him. I printed it on pretty scrapbook paper and put it in a leather scrapbook journal. It’s a gift I hope he’ll treasure for years to come!
Happy Birthday Daddy!!
Posted by Cindy on September 7, 2007
Studying Ancient Greece has been so much fun! We could’ve spent many more days lingering in the Greek hillsides, but it’s time to move on to Ancient Rome. Here are some highlights from our week.
On top of the regular reading about Ancient Greece, map work, timelines and such, we did lots of hands-on activities, too. My kids gain so much more from the “exciting stuff”.
The philosopher Aristotle is known as the father of the scientific method. Thanks to JoAnn, we had a really fun and simple activity that taught the scientific method.
The Story of the World, Activity Book 1 had a really fun sticker making project. We colored Greek symbols, then made our own sticker solution to paint on the back of the symbols. After it dried, all we had to do was lick and stick!
The kids made happy and sad drama masks and created their own play.
Math one day was spent finding patterns for square numbers, triangular numbers, oblong numbers, and gnomon. My worksheets came from a Ancient Greece Thematic Unit
by Teacher Created Materials. You can probably do a quick search on the web for some free worksheets. I bought my book for a quarter at a homeschool sale. I wouldn’t recommend buying it unless you can find it as cheap as I did. Almost all the activities seemed to center around the gods and goddesses of Ancient Greece. That’s not something I wanted our family to focus on. But, I did find a few things worth adding to the unit, so my quarter wasn’t wasted!
And we made Baklava. Yummy!
Posted by Cindy on
We are SO pleased with the first edition of the Westward Gazette! I bought a $20 software program from WalMart called Perfect Pro Office that made our computer work simple. (Word Perfect is the only office-type program that came on my computer and it stinks for projects.)
The newsletter includes a story or journal entry from each child that they wrote in August, a Bible verse we’ve been memorizing, an August weather wrap-up, a brief review of our unit study and some fun experiments we did, plus a book review written by Mahayla. (I’ll admit that I did most of the typing this time around. We were getting used to the new software and I was trying to teach them how to add clipart and pictures, so I didn’t want to overwhelm them with the typing. Next month, they’ll take over more of the work.)
We’ve all decided that a monthly newsletter is a fun idea. I hope all the relatives who get bombarded with them think it’s a good idea, too!
