School Daze and Beignets

If I thought August was a blur, I was wrong. 

September. 

Did September happen?!

So glad I have pics to prove it remember it. 

Lest you forget, this was the month that we were counting down the days to the big flight to see Daddy and move over here to this land that was once foreign to us---and is now our home-away-from-home.

To begin the rewind of this month, I will remind you (or tell you if you missed it) that we started homeschool for the first time ever during the very last week of August. We worked together on getting our homeschooling groove going the best we could before shaking up our lives even more with the big move.

All that said, here are a few pics of those early homeschooling days. 

 (I say that like I'm a veteran homeschool mom now. I'm not. Every day is a new day. Thankful that His mercies are new every morning!)

One of his first papers written for his Institute for Excellence in Writing homeschool writing class.
I love the Aesop Fable he selected to write about and the moral of it.

My uncle who is also a science teacher helped him dissect owl pellets one evening! Yucko! But they had a wonderful time and found lots of bony treasures!
And in case you didn't know---owl pellets are the vomit of owls, not the poop.
Yes, I know. Makes you want to barf.
Just had to share so you would be as enlightened as I was.

Their bony treasures. Skeleton parts of tiny animals the owl ate. Guess owls are not vegetarians.

Okay, so now that you are good and grossed out, I just have to throw in a sweet mommy/daughter toes pic. :) 

My sister painted Baby Girl's toenails. Not an easy job!

One day Big Brother and I made an unplanned, impromptu visit to his daddy's college alma mater. I attended there as well for my first couple of years of college, then switched to the local nursing school to complete my bachelor's degree in nursing. My husband, however, was able to complete his full degree at the same school and graduated when our son was just a few months old. :)

 

This was the building (in left picture) where my husband completed most of his upper-level coursework as well as where he worked a student-worker job.
He was a Kinesiology major. He is now a Strength & Conditioning Coach.
We owe a lot to the great education we both got at this school. Great place!
Look at us now!
(Hubby's the 3rd from the right. Has his hands in his pockets.)
Worldwide travelers, thanks to his career.
I've traveled a bit with mine as well and could have traveled farther with it but chose not to so that I could be the kiddos mommy full-time. :)

Back to science! This kiddo loves science! I love that he loves science! Anything we can do to foster that love and learning, we will.

Soooo, at his request and at the suggestion of my uncle, my son and I did the "Gatorade DNA extraction lab." Google it. (This is the one we used, but there are several options out there.) 

Very easy and pretty cool. We didn't have Gatorade, so we did the alternative version with salt water. (He needed to gargle salt water anyway for a mouth ulcer he had.) He wants to use real Gatorade next time, though. ;)

 

 

You may not be able to see it, but the little white speck and stringy looking things are tiny strands of his DNA from inside his mouth. Cool! Gross! Eeew! I mean, COOL!

And now that you're grossed out again---or intrigued, whatever---here are some more cute Baby Girl pics. (Do you like how I help you out that way?)

In the first ones, she is doing what we call flossing her teeth. She loves to pull that string through them. :) Guess maybe she was trying to extract her DNA, too. lol! (Sorry for the blurry ones. Have to move fast to catch her cuteness.)

So, we have covered the School Daze. 

Now, on to the Beignets!

During our last full weekend in America, we went on another road trip!

We just had to visit our beloved NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana) one last time. No, really, we just had to visit some sweet relatives one last time. My in-laws, myself, and the two kiddos loaded up and headed south, even stopping to put one last load in our storage in South Louisiana along the way.

We spent the weekend with my husband's brother and his sweet family.

While we were there, the ladies and the kiddos took one last trip to City Park and visited Morning Call for one last order of yummy beignets!!! :)

My boy is a photo-bomber!

Trying to get a massive selfie with lots of kiddos is not easy! :)

One last attempt at that group kiddo shot :)

And now, I will leave you with some precious pics my mother-in-law took of Baby Girl in a dress that my mother-in-law wore as a baby. If I'm not mistaken, I believe it was specially handmade for her. :)

And, of course, she just had to get really comfortable for one last shot.

The rewind has been fun! Hope you enjoyed it as well! 

The next post you see, and many more to come, will be of our new life in the deserts of Doha! (Qatar, that is.) Oh, and not sure if you remember, but I mentioned I have been working on a big surprize for you. I'll have to share that in the next post as well. 

See you soon---from the Middle East!

Until next time...