Back to School!

Long car rides are not our favorite!

(Even short for that matter! Do you have your seat belts on?

A belt around your forehead does NOT count!)

Batting practice with coach dad.

Today is a sad and happy day after a long vacation like Christmas vacation was this year. Sad because all the happy laughter and rambunctious Nerf gun wars are over and happy because I have so many things to get caught up on and today is the day to begin.

We have spent a lot of time helping with science fair projects over Christmas break. Eli, Nathaniel, and Zach all "GET" to do one this year. Eli chose a civil engineering topic again, although, he loves civil engineering, it's really hard for him to come up with a really good idea, and normally ends up with a trebuchet or bridge or this year what material stops water the best... It's definitely not the best he could do, but I'm not good at helping brainstorm ideas, either! Nathaniel is doing a chicken project with eggs, and with about 24 eggs a day, it's turning out to have a huge number of data points, which is always good! And Zach is doing a baseball project, which most of the boys and Ryon spent 12 collective hours working on on Saturday. So, with 600 data points Zach's looks like it will be pretty good, also. I'm always torn on how much I should help with a project. I've been to the school and seen a class where all but one set of parents helped, and it's obvious what a child can do alone is a totally different project than the one they can do with a little bit of help.

The boys had played a lot of baseball this Christmas, they are getting excited for the up-coming season when Ryon will coach for the first time. Since, he didn't really play baseball as a kid, it's been a hard decision for him to volunteer to coach. But now with 8 seasons under his belt, he's feeling confident enough to give it a try.

Savanah has been taking lots of photos, all of the ones in this post she took. I'm grateful for the help in recording our family history!

I better get to work...but first, I wanted you to know I pulled a perfect 10" carrot from my garden this morning!!! I'm so excited that my soil is soft enough for a carrot to grow 10" in my compacting clay soil...who says horse manuer and bermuda grass clippings are bad for my garden... :)