Easter, Europe and Bicycles

Noah's Eiffel Tower. (Abby's is in the background).

Easter morning.

European Food Day - Lunch

Hanging out outside.

Riding her bike!

Today is Easter. It's such a beautiful day. We're having a short lull in the action here at home, Daddy is napping with the baby upstairs, Noah and Abby are playing Wii downstairs, Jasmine and I are watching a little tv and I thought I'd update the blog. I put Abby's hair in curlers last night. I do that about once every 2 years!! It's cute though! We got the kids small little baskets with a few things. We didn't do baskets at all last year. I don't know, it just doesn't seem like baskets and bunnies have anything to do with Jesus. But we decided to give them just a couple of little gifts so it makes the day seem like a celebration as it should be. After that, we went to church and it was packed!! They had to bring in extra chairs to set up in the sanctuary. People just kept streaming in. It's kind of cool to be packed in like that celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. We're going to Steve's family soon, and then to my family's later. It should be a great time.

Yesterday we had "European Food Day". At least that's what I call it! We've been doing a world geography intensive study this past year or so and right now we're doing Europe. Ask the kids to point out The Bahamas, Cuba, Bolivia, Guyana, Argentina, France, Hungary, Ireland or Ukraine and I bet they can do it!! Our curriculum includes this special Geography Game and basically it's just blank maps that have numbers on each country and you take turns calling out a country and whomever's turn it is gets to try to guess where the country is. It really works!! After about 4 or 5 times of doing the game, they've had nearly each continent memorized. They also know the 50 states. We thought it was important to get a really good geography study done before we start a big world history study so we all know exactly what part of the world we're talking about.

Sooo, anyway, to help learn about the different areas, we do things like crafts and games that are native to the area and we love to cook food from the countries. I just decided to do one big day to celebrate most of Europe all together. We did have an Irish dinner on St. Patrick's Day. So, we had a mix of French, Swiss, Norwegian, German and Italian this time. We went to Jungle Jim's last week to stock up on authentic foods (that was a fun field trip!!). For lunch we had a sampling of imported cheeses, french bread with french butter, pepperoni, lots of fresh fruit and Norwegian rice porridge. For dinner we had sausages and sauerkraut, pretzels, spaetzle, and two German desserts - chocolate and butter cookies. The lunch was kind of fancy so I lit candles and we all drank apple juice out of wine glasses. I played Mozart music while we ate it too. That was a nice touch! The dinner was mostly German, so we drank out of "beer steins" (plastic Disney mugs!!), and played Polka music!! We even stopped what we were doing to do the chicken dance!! Everyone had to try all that was served and most of it was liked. It was lots of fun.

A few quick updates: Joshua has two teeth now and is getting really close to sitting on his own!! Abby can ride a two wheel bicycle now (finally!!). Noah is doing so well in spelling that we're going to skip a level this next year. The homeschool convention starts this Thursday. My favorite speaker is doing an extra talk on Wednesday night at a church. It's free and I've already signed up!! I can't wait!! So I'll get Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday and Saturday all in convention mode. I love it so much.

Well that's it for now. Enjoy this blessed day that the Lord made just for each of us!