Go West!

 Thursday morning we hit the road around 6:15 on a trip out west.

 Our first stop was the Sod House Museum in Aline.  This soddy was built in 1894 and is the only remaining sod house in Oklahoma that was built by an original homesteader.  The museum was actually built around the sod house.

 The kids at the back door of the sod house.

 After the family built a frame house, the sod house was still used for other things.  This picture shows the sod house and a pile of buffalo chips, which was what they used for fuel.

 The cellar that was built later.

 This picture shows a man cutting sod for a house.  Much of what was on the ground was broken sod that couldn't be used, and then when he unloaded it, more pieces would break, so this was a lot of work!

 Our next stop was Little Sahara State Park, near Waynoka.  There are sand dunes there and people bring their ATVs out to ride.

 They just built a new observation deck, so we went up to check that out.

 After that, we went to Alabaster Caverns State Park, near Freedom.

 There are tours every hour at the top of the hour, and we arrived at 1:05, so we had some time to kill!

 At the entrance of the cave--it was so nice and cool down there!

 This is not a limestone cave, so you can touch the rocks.

 It's about 3/4 of a mile through the cave.

 We spotted one little bat!

 At the end of the cave tour we got a ride back to the top.

 The ride was nice, because it was a little warm out there!

 We reached Woodward in the late afternoon and the kids cooled off in the pool.

 We went to dinner and then to the park to play.  I think the park (Crystal Beach Park) was the kids' favorite thing!

On our way back to the hotel, we spotted this sign!

More on our trip is coming soon!

Wrapping Up

 We're wrapping up a lot of the outside activities we've done over the year.  Last week was the last homeschool skate of the year.  This is the first year we've done this on a regular basis and both of the kids have really improved.  Alice doesn't use a skate mate anymore and Jack has mastered rollerblades.

 He has also mastered saving up tickets somewhere other than in my purse, and for that, I am thankful.

 I am also very thankful that today was Alice's last day of speech!  When she started last August, she tested at below 2 years of age for articulation, and in just nine months she has met all of her IEP goals and conquered every sound except R--and she's already making good progress on that.  I am so glad we have been able to do this at our local school because they were very nice and it saved us a ton of money and driving time!

 The kids' art class wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, but today they had their art show.

 I found these neat frames at Target (I can't find a link) that are hinged and have storage space for more art behind the picture that's showing.  We always need more storage for art!

 Alice liked showing everything off to her friends.

 After the art show we stopped by CherryBerry!

Then it was on to swimming, which hasn't wrapped up yet, but will soon.  They're not going to take lessons over the summer but will start back again in the fall.

Now all that's left is wrapping up school.  We're actually going to do school in the summer, but I need to take a break for a bit so I can get that all set up!

Celebrate!

 Last Friday Jay and I went to OKC for our anniversary.  Our hotel room looked out on the ballpark and unlike the last time we stayed there, there was actually a game.  Baseball games don't take as long as I thought they did (or dinner took longer than I realized) so we saw the fireworks show on the way back.

 Here's the view the next morning!  I really like staying in Bricktown because you can just walk to dinner or whatever you're going to.  I hate driving around downtown areas!

 We spent some time shopping Saturday afternoon and then headed back to town.  We spent our actual anniversary eating frozen pizza and watching Tarzan with the kids.

 I don't cook on Mother's Day, so I took the kids to McDonald's for breakfast Sunday morning.

 I tried to get a decent picture with the kids, but I was laughing too hard.

 One of Alice's gifts was a book about Indians she made for me.

Jack got me the first season of Elementary and Jay got me the final season of The Practice.  (A bit of Jen Trivia for you:  Our wedding vows were taken directly from an episode of The Practice called Life Sentence.)

It was a great weekend!

Well...All Right

It's all right when people say

That those foolish kids can't be ready

For the love that comes their way.

Happy 20th Anniversary!

Jellybean Day

 April 22 was Jellybean Day!  We've been so busy that we kind of extended it over a few days, though.  We used the activities in the Jelly Bean Fun Printable Pack from Homeschool Share!

 Alice loves the number wheels.  She will line up all the clothespins in number order before she starts.

 

 Working on it...

 Done!  There is also a simple word search, handwriting, letter recognition, and counting practice (what she's doing in the first picture).

 I had never heard of this series before, but they came up when I searched for jellybeans in the library catalog, so we checked them all out.

They are really cute and Alice loved them!

Cinco de Mayo

 Cinco de Mayo isn't until Monday, but we went to a Cinco de Mayo festival downtown today.

 We ate at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants and Alice got to wear the dress she got in San Antonio last month.  Several people commented on it, which she liked.

 They had a mariachi band playing!

 We walked around and looked at some of the shops and stopped for some chocolate.

 We also found a book at the book store, so Jack sat and read while we waited for the chihuahua contest to start.

 Every half hour they had a contest for a different category.

 This dog won best costume!

The signs said they were going to have some kids' activities, but the person who was in charge of that didn't come.  When Jack asked about them, though, the lady at Your Design was nice enough to set up some art things for them inside!

We had a great time and left before it got too hot, so it was a win!

Alice's Musical Festival

 Last year the Norman Music Festival made a big impression on my kids.  They were excited to go back this year, but due to the combination of the OCHEC convention and possible bad weather, we didn't go.  Since we missed out then, Alice decided she was going to host her own musical festival at home tonight!

 She was ready for people to sign in!

 We had dinner outside--brats and hot dogs and Doritos.  Not the healthiest meal, but after almost two weeks of constant going it did my heart good to relax outside and just enjoy.

 Jack was in charge of the games.

 He brought down some of the games he and Jay made at Lowe's and even made little prize cards.

 Making music--Jack said their band should be called No Direction.

 We also had some art...

 ...and general goofiness.

 We wrapped the evening up with some baseball.

When Alice starts to run the bases she always gets to the shed (first base) and then starts squealing and running around wildly.  It cracks me up every time.

We had a great evening and I'm pretty sure she's going to start planning lots more festivals for us!