Smith Mountain Lake

Towards the end of July, we went to Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia to visit our oldest son who moved close to the area. Friends of his graciously let us use their lake house for the week: a long, glorious, relaxing week! It was fun to vacation as a family and bond again. With our oldest moving away, it has been hard on the younger boys who miss him a lot. As for me, each month seems to get a bit easier. Skype helps a lot! I don’t think a mom ever stops missing her son but we realize moving out is good and healthy for them and creates maturity.

The ride down was absolutely gorgeous!



Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park

 The mountains were so beautiful and everything was so green and lush.

My photos don’t do justice to the beauty.

Some fun things we did around Smith Mountain Lake…

We swam,

relaxed,

fished






and watched the sun set.

On the lake, they have an ‘ice cream boat’ rather then an ice cream truck.

It had the same music and sold the same items as the truck. We were very surprised and amused! The boys have never had ice cream from a truck but it was too good to pass on ‘ice cream delivered to us on a lake.’ The man just comes close to the inlets and if you wave your hand he will drive over to you, tie his boat to your dock and give you the goodies.

Down the road there is an area where you can feed hundreds of carp pieces of bread or popcorn.

Our youngest was determined to catch one with his bare hands.

He came pretty close. A local told us that there was another area, farther down the road, where you could buy a cup of peanut butter, put it on your toes, stick your toes in the water and the carp will suck the peanut butter off your toes!   We passed on that.   We went fishing on the little pier. We all caught tiny fish and then released them. My middle son caught his very first fish!


 My youngest was very brave and learned how to put a worm on a hook.

Eww!

Since we were there for a whole week, we played the game Risk!

Risk is about a two or three day game in our house so it was perfect to play together in the evening over The Best Ice Cream Ever: locally made at The Homestead Creamery!! YUM!!!

We saw hummingbirds, a blue heron, hawks, a bazillion butterflies, chipmunks, fish, groundhogs and deer!

The cool thing is that the movie, “What About Bob?” was filmed in the area and on and around the lake! We checked out some spots where the movie scenes were shot. We may or may not have visited Dr. Marvin’s home.

We had a wonderful visit with our oldest son! He loves his new job and has made some fantastic friends! He is a little homesick at times but we try to make up with phones calls and photos to keep him up to date!

Example: this afternoon my youngest waited to pull his tooth out so he could do it over Skype with his big brother! Cute and gross at the same time! It is hard at times to be far away from such a great guy but I know this is where God wants my son to be and that gives me the deepest peace.

And next week I will be announcing some big news!

Come back and check it out!

Link Love #2 ~ Scratch!

Our top favorite site is Scratch!

“Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.
As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.”

It is Free to download and associated with MIT Media Lab. You can check out their website here! I like the fact that there are no bugs or pop-up windows on their site.

Within the first hour of playing around with Scratch, my then six and eight-year-olds were making their own animations. Brilliant! My boys are lucky because they have friends and cousins who are older than them and have shown them a lot of helpful hints and such. But even with out that, your kids (and you too) can figure it out by trial and error. They even have tutorials on the site as well. There is also a page set up specifically for educators!

It is really fun! I have played around with it and made my own little animations as well.

My kids don’t upload their creations to the site yet, as I think they are a bit young for that.  But they do build and create their own games and stories and could spend hours on them; if I let them.

My nine-year-old is now making his own games with Scratch. And they are fun and hard to win. When I play one of his latest games he has updated or tweaked, he is so sweet and changes the level to “easy” so I can play it.

The best way I can describe Scratch is that it is a super fun way of learning programming language but in an easy way using bricks to build it!

Check it out and tell me what you think!

Link Love #1 ~ LEGO® fun

Having three boys stretches me. It stretches me to grow beyond my circle of interests and I love it. I often peruse the internet to find videos or websites that take them to the next step in the things they are interested in. They love what I find and share with them. It inspires them (and me) to think out of the box, to build something or it merely starts turning another gear in the back of their growing brains and it shows up in a completely different way than I expected. They are sponges and soak up everything at this age and I try to take full advantage of it!

Over the next week or two I’ll share some links that the boys and I really like. So check back and if you see something you like, pass it on to a friend. I think the more collaborative parents can be the better it is for all of us! 

We Loooove LEGO®!!!

The boys often check the LEGO® website to play games and check for new products.

Some other cool things on the LEGO® website are:

~ You can download any LEGO® building directions for free here! This has come in handy many times as we have picked up a box or two of LEGO® at yard sales and didn't have the directions to go with them.

~ If your LEGO® set is missing some pieces you can order the pieces here!

~ You can sign the kids up for the LEGO® Club where they receive a free magazine every other month.

If you have a reluctant reader who loves LEGO® I would encourage you to check out some LEGO® beginner reader books at your local library. If they don’t have them, ask the librarian if they could order them.

Also, my boys look forward to getting the LEGO® magazine and read the entire magazine from front to back. They get stuck on some words but their desire to read the whole magazine has really helped their reading skills.

We bought a couple Power Functions motors and the kids love them. We plan on buying more as their ideas keep expanding on what they can build next. These are great for budding engineers.

There are also LEGO® leagues for kids to join where the missions is

“…to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.”

You can even start your very own LEGO® club!

We love LEGO® contraptions and really like this video:



and this LEGO® loom machine is cool too



Also, we have had our share of LEGO® themed birthday parties. Here are two links that have inspired me in one way or another!

LEGO® Party #1


LEGO® Party #2

I hope you enjoyed these links!


Have fun!!

inexpensive water play idea

I have a small blow-up pool that I set up over the summer. It’s just big enough for the boys to splash around in and for friends and cousins to join in too! Last year I threw in some water toys and a craft pom-pom. They made up a zillion games with that pom-pom floating around and being tossed about. The game they came up with and played the most was “Don’t Let It Touch You!” They would squeal and giggle if it got close and dive away to attempt an escape.

This year I thought I would expand on that game. I pulled out some colored foam circles that I got from a dollar store. I used a permanent marker and wrote some words on them: “Float, Swim, Hop and Stop.” The game: If a circle touches you, you have to do what it says! The boys loved it and wrote some of their own too! They are inexpensive, colorful, easy to collect and store for the next day. Just make sure the kids are past the oral stage.

You can make it more challenging for older kids or keep it simple.

As my dad loved to say……”Necessity is the mother of invention”

my three boys

the party

My son’s five-year-old birthday party went well.

It was packed with family, friends and Star Wars madness.

We served Yoda Soda, Carbonite Jello,

Galactic Space planets and the Hoth themed birthday cake.

We played pin the lightsaber on Yoda, decorated prince and princess hats and enjoyed an action packed skit with Count Dooku fighting Darth Vader. The birthday boy told us later on that he thought it was really Darth Vader until he looked down and saw my oldest son’s brown crocs peeking out under the black cape! **I love it**

To my surprise, a thrown together idea was the hit of the party. We had the children fold their own paper airplanes with directions I printed out before hand. The mission was to fly the 'spacecrafts' through the galactic lasers (orange yarn crisscrossed between two poles in the basement) and safely land onto the landing dock of the Death Star (our pool table). Who knew?

His favorite gift was from his Aunt Alice, a Charlie Chaplin cane. When he unwrapped the cane, his eyes lit up and he started dancing with it around the room. My husband put on ‘Puttin' on the Ritz’ and all the children started dancing with him!

I found this Death Star cantaloupe idea on the internet but ran out of time to carve it! Maybe next year!

Through my five-year-olds’ eyes, I really was Princess Leia. He was very pleased as Daddy dressed up as Count Dooku and I did my best to whip up a Princess Leia outfit!

Also, a friend posted a link of this video on their website and my husband and the kids enjoyed it! The video has 11,482,905 hits so far! Pretty creative!

My mother and the birthday boy!

"19_ _?"

Hmmmm… is this cover dated or what? My boys love this game. I remember my sister and I pretending to be phone operators with our blue and red grids and tiny red and white game pieces. “Mrs. Smith wants to talk to Mrs. Jones? Alright, hold on. Let me connect you with ‘B9.’ Have a good day!”