We take an early nature walk near another HS familiy’s house. They have a lovely greenbelt behind their house we enjoy. Today though, we went to another part of their neighborhood to a creek. What an amazing spot!

All the kids were again and again overjoyed with their many discoveries – rock shelters, tons of Daddy Longlegs, fossils, dinosaur bones, animal bones, and so much more.

It was a beautiful place to spend the morning and I enjoyed watching the kids spread out and explore. We kept to our tradition of having the children sit for a few minutes and draw some things from our adventure that day before we leave. It is always neat to see what they choose to draw.

This particular week is going to be very busy, my hands are full of balls that I am trying to keep in the air. It feels like the kind of week I will squeeze through.

But at 10am, at the start of this crazy week, I was filled with peace. I felt safe under the trees and drank in one of my favorite sights – sunlight through trees. The leaves backlit with bright light. The dark tree branches stretching out, over and up finding their way to the sun. It fills me with hope and optimism.

It was a great morning. I really love starting our week this way.

It takes some hustle and bustle in the morning, but this is so worth it!	The big decision – where to start?
Tyler was so excited when he saw this!	Checking out the falls!
Under the shelter which happened to be home to hundreds of Daddy Longlegs!	One of Tyler’s finds!
The Daddy Longlegs – they were hard to shoot!	Time for your close-up…hey where are you going?
The water was lovely!	I loved the stacked rocks and tree roots creeping over..almost like the roots are holding it all together.
Quinn found this cool bone!	Zen!
Dunagan found this awesome jaw bone with teeth!	Another cool fossil Tyler found in this rock!
“Mama, I was talking to that older boy, Kirven, the one in the blue shirt.”
Tyler drew a deer we saw and the pond area	Quinn drew a bird and a deer.

Most of the time, we bake bread, but today it was a Zucchini cake. A pretty healthy version of said cake too. It had wheat germ, honey as the sweetener. It was supposed to have raisins and raisin water (water used to plump up the raisins) for moisture, but that is where we ran into a snag.

Both kids are anti-raisin right now. I lobbied for the raisin. I compromised and said well, what about half. And then it hit me – well, if they don’t want raisins, off with the raisins then. I had some apple juice in the fridge and used that in place of the raisin water and the cake survived.

I was proud of myself. There are times in my day where I find myself saying “no” to something…and once I mull it around in my head, I hear myself ask, well, “why not?”. As was the case with the raisins.

The icing was cream cheese with honey and apple juice. The kids did a stellar job icing it too. And since the cake was ready, we were hungry and I hadn’t started dinner – we had backwards day and had dessert for dinner. That one was pretty easy to lobby for! :-p

Another element of our curriculum is watercolor painting. The wet-on-wet technique is used with younger children so that it is pretty much impossible to make a form. This allows the children to sink deeper into the color experience.

Tuesday was our first time trying this. We did it right after rest time, so I had everything ready and waiting for the kids. They had done this painting once a week at Starbright school, so knew the drill. I think that I probably gave them a bit less diluted paint for more vibrant color that they were used to.

It was cool to watch them. It was definitely a different experience than when we get out our watercolor sets and paint. I could see them enjoy painting the colors onto the paper, watching the “color dancers” as one paint bled into another. I also think painting at the table near the big window made a difference. The paints really picked up the light.

If there is one thing I am loving about homeschooling it is getting to observe my children and learn so much about them and who they are.

I gave them 3 primary colors this time and will vary that. Sometimes it may be 2 or even just one to change up their experience a bit. We will be doing this once a week. I was really pleased and am excited to build this into our week!

Oh and my method to wet the paper was to run it through a dishtub of water a few times, lay it on their painting boards and then wipe it off with a rag. That worked just fine.

Our paint set-up	The kids dove in

The last part that we visited with the Natural History wing. Wow and wow. They had a huge Waco Indian grass house built which was so cool. They had a section on caves, the forests, the Waco Mammoth site, fossils found at different periods in the area. They had these great interactive games that Tyler could do. You got a letter when you finished each one. You then figured out the word and you got a pencil at the gift shop when you gave them the word. The kids liked that.

I didn’t get as many photos because it was much darker in this section and I had to read the games to the kids. They also have this very cool Cabinet of Curiosities room that had many interesting and random artifacts.

The gift shop had cool books. And we didn’t even get to the historic village outside because it was being renovated.

We will return to this museum. It was really cool and the kids had a great time!

..and of course, a few hours after we got home, the lego building ensued. Tyler built a castle with the Duplo legos. I really, really love the Duplo legos. Yes, Tyler builds tons of things with the regular-sized ones, but with the Duplos, he and Quinn build beautifully together. They are plain and simple. The kids create so easily with them and have created everything under the sun. It is hard to explain this love affair of mine – maybe there is just always harmony and great creativity when they are involved and what Mom doesn’t love that?

Also, I had bought some string to add to our art shelf for the kids to have. I am so glad I did because just a day later it came in quite handy with their castle building and horse and cart building. Oh, and the room at the bottom of the castle Tyler built is the dungeon. And the two blue blocks on string were treasure grabbers I believe.

This castle lived on the table until Daddy got home a few days later. Then was destroyed a day after with foam swords when Tyler had a playdate! Boys will be boys…

So this was probably my favorite part of the entire museum. There was a long hallway, it was called a “Musical Soundscape”. I had no idea what that meant. But then we start walking down this hallway and realize that our movements are controlling what is played. They had a screen that illustrated what areas were being triggered by your movements.

Well, everyone there that day seemed to be in the lego exhibit or the discovery rooms. We had this hallway all to ourselves. Since we did, we started running up, down and zig-zagging side to side. We had such a blast. Then I stopped to take pictures of the kids.

I adore this series of pictures. It almost makes me tear up. The epitome of my children. Running up, down and side to side to make music in this musical hallway.

It’s difficult to capture an energetic child in a way that reflects the beauty of that energy, that passion, that zest. I see it all here. Grand motion, grand energy, grand joy, grand beauty.

These are my two awesome kids. And while that energy can drive me crazy some days, it is also so very wonderful and so very amazing. They are such bright lights and I am so lucky that I get to spend so much time with them.

What am amazing adventure! I found out about this museum and its Lego exhibit 3 days before we went. Chris was out of town all Labor Day and the kids and I needed things to do. Another homeschool Mom mentioned this awesome museum and that its lego exhibit would be gone after this weekend. “I think you just planned my Saturday!” I said.

What a cool museum. A traveling exhibit, 16 discovery rooms, a natural history wing and so much more. We were there for 4 hours and had the best time. It would recommend this as an awesome day trip for any family.

They are finishing up some of the discovery rooms, so sometimes explanations and information about the exhibits were lacking, but a person who worked there said they are working on that. Some of the rooms were put in just recently.

Also, scattered about the hallways around all these rooms are climbing and other interactive toys for small children. So if you had a 5 year old and under 3 year old – this place would work great.

I took so many pictures that I have to do this in parts!! The first part covers the Medieval lego exhibit and the Discovery Rooms.

The lego exhibit was so cool because it was using legos as a way to give kids a taste of castles and Medieval times and also an opportunity to be creative. They had tons of building areas, a computer castle designer, make-you-own fairy tale, a game where you built a wall and then launched a catapult to see if it was strong enough, a jousting area, and real knight artifacts. It was so very cool!

OK, now we are moving onto the Discovery Rooms which covered a wide range of topics – the human body, the water and bubbles room, the weather room, the energy room, the pioneer room, the simple machine room, the tea room, people of the world room, the communication room. Some rooms were better than others, but I am sure that every kid would find a few rooms they would love.

So I have been pushing on Chris for over a year to take guitar lessons. He needs to have a bit more fun with his life. Finally, thanks to a comment from a friend that he should get a new guitar, did it happen. Why? Because to my surprise – it was an electric guitar he wanted and we didn’t have one of those.

Isn’t it amazing how you can spend so many years with someone and still not know every detail there is to know?

So we did. Tyler also got drumsticks and a practice pad as we hope to put him in drum lessons when he turns 6 in a few months.

Daddy is loving his lessons and is loving practicing at night when he wants his mind on something else besides work.

And me – I am just happy…and starting to brush up on my piano skills. Though last I heard – I am the singer of our little family group because Quinn called dibs on the piano. Mmmmm….we are in trouble then. I could play the tambourine…..