COVID-19 and homeshooling part 2

When you want to stay away from grocery stores and people because of the virus, you end up getting lots of things on Amazon. That means you have lots of boxes laying around. Claire decided she wanted to make a "School room" and went to work talking through how she would create it with the boxes. We planned it out in the garage and then assembled it in the house.

 She made some shelves out of some of the box flaps, made files to store her papers to do and to store the papers she has completed, made a "shelf" to store her phone on (held up by a pineapple can!), and even made a pencil holder from the boxes! I loved watching her creativity come to life! She even got some of the photos from her room to decorate her "office"!

You can't study like this in the real classroom at school!

Once she has her schoolwork completed, it is time to have fun! So far she has finished everything except 30 minutes of reading within 2.5 hours so she has all afternoon to have free time. The pool was calling yesterday afternoon. Way too cold for Mom to get in but she had a blast and came up with some crazy games for me to judge her on! Loving this time to really get to disconnect and focus on this precious gift from God! 

COVID-19 and homeschooling!

Once we returned from our spring break vacation, we quickly realized that our lives would be very different for a while. The Coronavirus has made its way to the United States and the nation was quickly working its way toward quarantine procedures. The grocery stores were bare and people were being asked to stay in their homes and practice social distancing. With school not resuming due to the virus, we had to quickly come up with some ways to entertain and educate Claire. I am not happy the virus is affecting so many lives, but I can say that this change in lifestyle has allowed us to slow down and enjoy family time together. Since we don't have to run every single night to either swim or church, we have the evenings to enjoy dinner together, play games, and treasure the time we have at home. It truly has been a blessing to be able to slow down and enjoy the simple things in life!

Claire made some sun catchers with glue and food coloring...

 Jeff got an Atari so we introduced Claire to our favorite game growing up...Frogger...and she loves it!

 Claire said she wanted to make rainbow pasta for dinner. So I let her figure it out and she did a great job!

 A little science experiment with water, food coloring, oil, and salt. Similar to a homemade lava lamp.

 Of course, home ec is part of the daily school routine! This kid jumped right in and helped me clean the house Thursday! Sure goes much faster with two sets of hands working!

 Sneaking in reading time on her Kindle. It was a beautiful evening so we both headed outside to read. Thankful for this time to get to slow down and spend quality time together! God is good even in the tough challenging times!

Xavage Park, Mexico

Jeff, Claire, Owen, and I went to this park one of the days of our vacation and I think it was the highlight. It is a new park that has been open less than a year and there were hardly any people there. This made it super nice because we never had to wait in line to do anything! We got to do a huge ropes course, zip line laying on our belly, drive monster trucks through a VERY rough course, ride on a jet boat which made many 360 degree turns, and white water rafting. Rafting was the favorite activity and we were able to go twice on it!

 Conquering our fears on the ropes course. We did the easiest level and I am so glad we did! It was challenging enough and we were all exhausted by the time we finished!

 The monster trucks proved to be a rough ride with many challenging turns. Glad we did it but no one had the desire to do it a second time!

We have all ziplined before but never like this! You had to lay down on a mat and got to fly through the air like a plane! It was pretty fun!

 Everyone loved the white water rafting the most! Owen was being brave and taking this rapid in the very front of the raft! He managed to stay in the boat!

 We got to have the same guide for both trips and she let us be a little more daring the second time through! What a great day with many great memories! So glad we got to spend this time with Owen!

Xcaret Mexico

We spent one day of our vacation at Xcaret. We got to do many fun things including swimming in caves and learning how chocolate was made.

Riviera Maya Mexico Family Vacation

Over Spring Break, we went to Riviera Maya with my entire family. We had a blast! The weather was beautiful, the resort was amazing, and the company was pretty awesome too! We got to try many new foods, spent lots of time in the pools, and got to snorkel with the sea turtles!

 As always, Claire had so much fun with her cousins!

 We did family photos this year and they turned out pretty well despite the windy day

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Go Texan Sunday!

This past Sunday our church had Go Texan Sunday where we celebrated Texas. The church was decked out in fun western-themed photo booths so of course we had to get a few fun shots. In church Claire got to be part of the kid's choir and they sang a song called Wild Wild, West! Such a fun time!