Wordless Wednesday - Not a Wallflower, but a Wallbird

France gets caught talking to the wall.
What's up with this bird?

Our German Experience

Guten Tag! Let me tell you about our two weeks in Germany.

We read about the Black Forest and castles. That leads us to Grimm's Fairy Tales, which I learned were kind of like folk tales passed down from generation to generation until the Grimm brothers wrote them down. Remember, most of them have an enchanted forest and a castle as the backdrop. Disney made movies out of most of them - The Frog and the Princess, The Sleeping Beauty, etc.
We read other good books based on real life.
Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot (about the Berlin airlift that dropped food, supplies, and even candy for the kids) was one of them.

There are alot of countries in Europe. We continue to play GeoSafari to learn them all.

Our read aloud was George Muller, The Guardian of Bristol's Orphans. Amazing how he trusted God for everything, lived debt free, and never asked for money. He prayed and God provided.

Five orphan houses werer built in Bristol, England and the number of orphans was mind boggling, but they were well cared for and visited by many famous people including the queen.

George, himself, lived in one of the houses in his last years as resident grandfather.

For science, we studied trees. We even charted the width and estimate height of trees in our yard.

Last weekend, we watched the movie, Heidi.

This weekend, I remembered two items that my grandmother had brought back from Germany years ago. One was the little wooden girl that moves when you push up on the bottom. The other is an egg, just a paper one that probably had chocolate in it. We set them out in front of this "little log cabin in the Swiss Alps". At least that is what it looks like to us.

If you could look close up at the inside of the egg, you can see that it says, "Made in Western Germany."

I also attempted a semi-German meal with bratwurst (turkey sausage), sauerkraut, and potatoes.

Then to reward those who ate their yummy meal (that only adults like), we served pastries, made just like the french chefs (although from frozen).

Ya, dat's delicious!

Ice Skating

Reminiscent of Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, Hannah ventured onto the ice herself. At first she was like this. . . .




but after a few times around with Liliana's help, she was able to do this!

I was glad that she got out there and tried. The more I watched the more I wished I could get out there. On husband's advice, and because of neck issues it was best for me to stay where I was less likely to fall.
Praise God, no one was hurt badly today although there were some falls. And thanks to one of Hannah's friends for inviting her.
Here they are getting ready for cake.

Sarah is seven. Blow out the candles!

Playtime for Pups

We enjoyed watching Chloe and Lady play. She went home today with her family and she was happy to see them, but I think she had a great time with her sister.

Hope you get a chuckle out of these videos or even a squeal (like Josiah at the beginning of one of the clips.

2 Dog Weekend

Hey, we've got Chloe with us again! She is Little Lady's sister (same parents, different litter). When her family goes on a trip, we get her and they keep Lady for us when we go away. It's a great arrangement. We enjoy having two dogs for a while without the extra vet bills of owning two.

Chloe loves to be held, and Josiah and Hannah both love to oblige her.

Have a fun weekend yourself! I know we will.

Fun Friday - Prints in the Snow

Here in our little part of Georgia, we had some snow that stayed and the kids had a bit of fun with it.

Follow the tracks and you might find a track of another sort. The owner of this one has a cold hand.

Dog on the alert, always looking for danger! Ruff! Ruff!

Boy enjoying making prints, wearing pants that are too short and coat that won't stay zipped.

The artist at work, or the miniature snowplow?

Have a nice weekend!

Wordless Wednesday - Pattern Block Crabs

Made by Josiah

Bluebird watching

At first I saw the variety of birds bathing in our "bird bath". Then I saw . . .

. . . two birds sunning. Aren't they cute! I got alot of good pictures. I couldn't decide which one was best.

Maybe we will have babies in the spring!

Happy New Year, ECC, Paris and France

For our traditional New Year's Day meal, we had black-eyed peas and cornbread. I love legumes!

We tried to do some school this week with mimimal success. We still have about half a weeks worth of work to finish our study of France, but we have enjoyed baguettes, books, and videos. And on our car trip last week, we listened to Snow Treasure (which takes place in Norway). It was an intriguing story of how the Norwegian children helped smuggled gold out of the country to keep it out of the hands of the Germans.

One reason regular school work did not get done, is that Hannah had gotten in her head that she wanted a bird. She had saved up some money and was acting quite responsible with her chores, so I told her that she needed to do some research first, and then we would talk to Daddy about it. She weighed out the pros and cons of different kinds of feathered pets and decided that a parakeet is what she would like to have.

I helped her do more research to find out what she would need, although she had the basics down. We checked on prices and availability. After we shared with Dad and got approval, things went pretty fast!

Theron got on Craigslist and found a cage in Lilburn for $10, and a pair of 2 year old tame parakeets for $20 in Austell/Smyrna area. In case you didn't know, one will cost $21 at the pet store. We picked up the cage, came home and cleaned it and set it up. Set back out to buy supplies and pick up the birds. Hannah had all the money she needed. The birds looked healthy and happy. When they took them out of the cage to sit on Hannah's finger, we were convinced they were indeed tame.
By 8:30, we had them home and in their new cage, which they went right into with no problem.

The birds ate, and when it was time to go to bed, Hannah covered them and dimmed her lights. This morning everyone wanted to see them and Hannah graciously obligued. Here are Paris and France.

They are both boys. Paris is younger than France and he is a beautiful blue and white.

France is a green and yellow. His original name was Neco, but Hannah wanted to change it.

We had initially thought that Hannah would just be getting one bird, but these two are such good buddies, we could not seperate them. And since they were already tamed, she got a really good deal.