Bellingham Show

We got to go to a show yesterday in Bellingham, which wasn't too far from our house. We weren't sure what to expect, but we had a wonderful day!

We saw horses,

Sheep,

And geese, which were Riley Cates's favorite. i think she wanted to get in there with them!

We saw a bus that looked like Filmore from Cars! A VW van just like Big Wal used to have!

We found some delicious tea and cakes. Yum yum!

We watched a man carving something with a chainsaw. It was loud but very impressive!

We had a few dark clouds, but the rain held off!

I tried on some cool hats. Don't I look British now?

Not only did the show have lots of animals, but there were fun games and rides. Daddy and I shot water balloons at those boards back there.We got pretty close to the target!

Riley Cates and I rode on the tea cups. Yay for getting in one with Mickey and Minnie Mouse on the outside!

My favorite part of the day was the giant trampoline!

I got to jump super high! Mommy thought I would be scared, but I loved it! I kept asking to go higher and higher!

There was also a petting show. We got to pet this cute bunny rabbit! They brought out several other animals including a skunk, a hedgehog, and a racoon (which they don't have many of here).

Riley Cates and I loved the giant slide!

I was a great big brother and made sure we got to go down together!

Here is the near finished carving from the chainsaw man I mentioned earlier!

About lunch time they had a ceremony with bagpipes and drums. So cool!

We watched a motorcycle show through these poles. It had gotten pretty crowded by this time, so we didn't have a great seat, but we didn't mind!

Check out the motorcycle jumping over all of those people lying on the ground! Crazy!

We had such a great time! This is a yearly event, and I can't wait to go again next year!

G Week

At the end of each week, I hope to do like I did last week and give you some of the highlights of our homeschool week. So here are some adventures from this week...

We talked about the letter g this week. We turned our g into a garden to help us remember what sound it makes.

We read about creation in our Bible and made a book of all of the things God created.

We also explored some different seeds. Riley Cates really liked using the magnifying glass.

We sorted them into 2 groups: fruits/vegetables and flowers.

We talked about what a flower needs to grow. We played a game where we got to color in the stem of the flower if the card we drew was something that would help a flower grow. In case you were wondering, milk, paintbrushes, and candy do NOT help flowers grow.

We even acted out how flowers grow. Don't we make great seeds?

And then beautiful flowers!

We made our own flowers and labeled the different parts. Mommy thinks it's really funny that I keep calling the flower part nettles instead of petals. It's just that I have been stung by nettles a few times since we have lived here, so that word just sticks with me!

We let some of our seeds soak in water overnight, and it was pretty cool to see how much they grew and changed. We were able to open them up and examine the inside of the seeds.

We each had some matching to do. She had to match shapes on flowers and stems, and I had to match the numbers written on the flowers to the stem with the same amount of dots. Then I had to put them in order.

Isn't Riley Cates so cute when she is concentrating so hard?!

We always read lots of fun books. This one was about someone who planted a rainbow. We didn't know how that would work until we read and saw all of the beautiful colors in the garden! It really was a rainbow!

Of course we had to make our own rainbow gardens. We love painting!

And g week would not be complete without making gruffalo masks!

Here is our wall of work for the week!

Go Gamecocks!

Even though we are far away from Williams Brice Stadium, we are ready to cheer on the Gamecocks!

Hooray for football! Sadly the game doesn't start until 11:00 this evening here, so I don't think we'll get to watch it. :(  

(And just because some photo shoots are just too hard...)

In honor of the game tonight, Riley Cates got her first mani/pedi! She was so excited!

Even though she couldn't quite figure out how to show them off...

And then just for fun, here's a look back to the Opening Game 2012! My how we've changed! (Mommy said that looking at these pictures was making her cry. Silly Mommy!)

And here we all are later that fall!

This was the best I could come up with from last season. Fun times with Aunt Abby!

But what it all comes down to...

Happy Game Day!!!

BBQ in England

Over the weekend, we had some friends over for a BBQ! You never know what kind of weather you'll have, so you just hope for the best when you plan a BBQ.

While Daddy was cooking, it started to pour rain and even hail! There was so much water that it was coming through his umbrella! But he still made some tasty burgers and sausages!

Of course, this is what it looked like after we finished eating...

Meeting the Gruffalo!

If you have never read The Gruffalo, stop reading this and go read that book. It is a good one, trust me.

Riley Cates and I have loved reading this book and several others by Julia Donaldson, so when we heard that the gruffalo was going to be at Wallington Hall today, we knew we had to go! Apparently most of the children in northern England felt the same way! :) See that big brown guy with "terrible tusks and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws"? That's the gruffalo!

(Riley Cates, while she loves the books, was having none of meeting this guy!)

I, on the other hand, got close enough to touch him!

And to see the purple prickles all over his back!

There was a lady reading all of the gruffalo books, so we stopped in for story time. Riley Cates enjoyed this part much more!

I've written about Wallington Hall before on this blog. It's one of our favorite places. Mainly because of this cool train!

We need some tickets, please!

You have to really watch Riley Cates--she's a climber!

We stopped for a picnic on this fun boat! Not a bad place for lunch!

Then we headed to the playground with loads and loads of other people. I had to queue up (and learn what that even meant!) to ride on this amazing thing.

Are you sure it's going to hold me?

It did! I'm ready to ride again!