First Snowfall

The first snowfall is magical, isn't it? Children in pajamas, watching out the windows from their darkened bedrooms in anticipation of the morning. Snow lightly falling, making the ground white with each flake. Some remember winters past and their's is excitement. Others, the babies, watch in wonderment. What is this quietly falling from the sky? So soft, so still.

Then morning comes. Slowly. Quietly.

And then the children play.

Jardine Juniper - Revisited

This last Friday we went back to the Jardine Juniper trail that we visited this spring. It was very different in it's autumness. And still, very beautiful.

Flowers have been replaced by berries. Tall grass hides the sagebrush. Instead of green, browns and gold. Late autumn splendor.

Standards

Today for school we made standards and talked about what it means to be a standard-bearer.

I got the idea from our new history book, The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer. Because we finished our first year with the fall of Rome, we began with Volume 2: The Middle Ages. We haven't been doing Bauer's history for very long, but I'm already loving it. It was a good change for us. She has several fun activities suggested for each chapter and making standards was a suggestion for chapter one in which we've been reviewing the fall of the Roman Empire.

The kids really enjoyed making these standards. It was so fun, I wanted to share the process with you.

We began by poking a stick through a wrapping paper tube and added a couple dots of hot glue for good measure.

We learned that the Romans decorated their standards with metal disks. A week ago we made our own metal disks. I cut out about 20 circles from cereal boxes then we covered them with tin foil. This was a very easy task that even two-year-old Libby could do.

The Roman's metal disks were carved with figures of animals, the emperor, or such things. We used a ball point pen to "engrave" our disks. The kids drew many different things. For example, Hudson did the first letter of his name, a baby (he loves his baby doll), a mountain, and sharp teeth. You can see Maria's disks in the picture.

While the kids were working I talked about standards, or signum, and what they meant and what it meant to carry one. It was a great honor to carry the standard, and it was a dangerous job.

You can see the standards now, at this point, with all the disks hot glued on. A couple days ago I cut the first letter of each kids' name out of a cereal box and they painted them. We put those on our standards as well.

At this point I told them the great story of an important standard-bearer from the Book of Mormon: Captain Moroni. I told them how he made the Title of Liberty, what it stood for, and how it inspired others to action.

Here are the pictures of standard-bearers we looked at. All the pictures except Captain Moroni (which comes from the Gospel Art Picture Kit) I got from a Google image search.

Because Moroni had written of God on his standard, we put a picture of Jesus Christ on our standards. Then we made our own flags.

Here is Hudson's flag. It's made from an old t-shirt I'd saved long ago to become a rag.

When they were done with their flags we tied them onto their standards.

Maria's flag has family on it because Captain Moroni wrote of family on his.

Here's Maria's finished standard.

And everyone together.

They had a lot of fun and really enjoyed making standards. I feel blessed to be able to teach my kids at home and talk to them about how they can be standard-bearers in their lives.

Refrigerator Art

Right now our fridge looks like this:

Pumpkin Walk 2011

We just love this time of year!

The joy of painting pumpkins:

The thrill of jumping through the fallen leaves:

It's been a beautiful fall.

And with fall comes the annual Pumpkin Walk in North Logan:

I apologize for such a picture-heavy post, but there were so many great scenes! And I'm only showing you a small portion. This year's theme was "My Favorite Things." Let's see if any of your favorite things were represented.

Anyone a fan of Angry Birds?

My kids love Busytown.

Libby absolutely loved the Pumpkin Walk. She had to inspect every carved pumpkin along the way. She also tried to sneak into a few of her favorite scenes.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

I took several pictures of the Despicable Me scene because I know there are many fans out there.

Hee hee. Minions.

I love that they thought to include the "box of shame".

Candyland!

Perry the Platypus from the show Fineas and Ferb. My kids love that show, and I must admit that I love it too.

Calvin and Hobbes. I'm so happy they did a snowman scene. Calvin's snowmen are hilarious.

Whoo-hoo-hoo-hooooo! And Tigger, too!

Winnie the Pooh and friends.

Remember the time Pooh Bear got stuck in the hole to Rabbit's home because he ate too much when he was there?

Libby.

Maria.

All of my kids. Believe me, this was a hard picture to get.

Hudson.

This is a dog. This whole scene was about dogs, but this dog was my favorite.

Pumpkin waterfall.

The kids were very excited to see Tangled, especially Maria.

I think this Bambi one was pretty cute.

A Christmas Story. I love this movie!

Haha! Aren't these great? They make me laugh.

We certainly found a few of our favorite things. What about you?