Braille, Art, William Tell

The other week our read-aloud was a short biography of Louis Braille. It was really interesting and at the perfect level for L. This week we're reading a story about William Tell and I think it is introducing too many political concepts, she's having trouble following, but I think it's still somewhat interesting for her.

Last week's art was a paper collage, and L is going to make a picture of a wolf for an art contest that Bella's girl scout troop is having. The 12 winners will get their pictures on a calendar for wolf haven and get a free copy of the calendar. Her first wolf pic was super cute, but then she wrote on it. I only got a blurry picture of it, unfortunately.

As for me, I've been learning how to carry baby J in a woven wrap better. I just bought a size 4 didymos seagreen wrap and have to figure out some carries for a size 4...

My houses/trees/clouds collage:

Lydia's mermaid paper collage:

Me looking crazy, because things are crazy:

H helping me try out my new wrap:

At the park:

Homeschool Co-op

At the beginning of the year we joined a homeschool co-op. It meets once a week for three hours and is pretty laid back. They do a brief opening exercise, then an hour of art, a 30 minute snack/recess, and an hour of some other topic. L's class is doing fairy tales. H is in preschool, and P and J are both in nursery, where I am the "teacher". They also do a field trip once a month. So far we like it. Most of the families are LDS and all of them seem pretty nice. So far the field trips have been a trip to the Puyallup fish hatchery in January, and this week we went to the Boom Shaka Olympia trampoline place, where the kids had a lot of fun. I was a little wary since a former ward member very recently broke his neck at a trampoline place and is now quadriplegic. :( It's very sad. I don't love spending a couple hundred more on homeschool, but I do love that my kids get to be around other kids their ages, since I'm so introverted I am very bad at arranging playdates and whatnot.

We also recently went up to the ski hill for a free snowboarding clinic for kids. H is a natural but he was very wary and stopped his lesson early. L was eating a lot of snow but had a lot of fun. Taking 4 kids skiing is exhausting!

New addition

 Well, the news is good, but the blog is, surprise surprise, largely ignored. We welcomed a new addition to our family! Baby John joined us on January 22nd, after giving us a false alarm on his dad's birthday the day before.

 Lydia and Peter always want to hold him (Peter is adorable... he lays down next to him and holds his hand and asks to hold him by saying, "Hold it him! Baby John!" But his "John" sound a little like "Don" and when we first brought him home he thought it was his cousin Vinnie. :)

 Here's Lydia trying out her new easel and the painting she got at Christmas.

One of our recent art lessons was on portraits. I wanted to try to paint lydia but this was the most normal picture she would give me, You can see the result...

 Lydia made up a game and wrote down the rules... oldest child much?