Birthday Experience: Frontier City

This year for everyone's birthdays, we got to choose an "experience" to do together instead of getting gifts. Zoe and Gideon both initially chose to go to Incredible Pizza, but there was so much sickness around their birthdays and even into early April that we didn't want to take them to a place like that (crawling with all of those germs). So we had the brilliant idea to see if we could trade and go to Frontier City instead, which they readily agreed to. Thankfully, this week was homeschool week and the tickets were super cheap. So, Rod's family joined us and we made a big family day of it.

Baby Jocie love. 

Toby braved the rocking pirate ship. He said "I won!" 

He was so excited to go, but changed his mind once 

the ship started rocking. By then it was too late, so 

I had to keep him in his seat and we made it through.

It's even fun while you wait for other people to ride rides.

Rod's parents rode the pirate ship as well as Riley, Jon, and Rachel.

The crazy game areas with morbid hanging stuffed animals

provided laughs for all.

We were happy to hang out in the shade while these

insane people rode this ride that flipped them upside down

and held them there for much longer than necessary.

We all enjoyed riding the spinning tornado ride. 

Really, really we did.

Toby and Jocie were stroller buddies.

Lots of enjoyment with the spinning tornado ride.

One of the favorite rides of the day, Frontier City's

version of Lost River. We love getting soaking wet!

The brave rode the log ride.

Lunch break!

Zoe and Gideon enjoyed some fun kiddie rides before we 

finished off with our favorite rides of the day.

 Enjoyed seeing the Lifechurch.tv Edmond campus' cross 

as we headed to Pops after a fun day at Frontier City.

Pops stop before we hightailed it back to Tulsa trying to

stay ahead of the vicious, tornado storms. 

Toby chose Swamp Juice for his special Pops drink.

The rest of us enjoyed our special Pops drinks and some

yummy food including fried whole okra.

 A yummy end to

a very full day. 

A Day of Rest

After our day of massive errands, we were in great need of a day of rest. Spent much of the morning relaxing together playing games and goofing off. Important life skill: the need for rest. In the afternoon and evening, we did a little bit of housework in prep for tomorrow. Then we enjoyed a night with Rod's siblings and watching Twilight Zone, Anne of Green Gables, and playing video games together.

Boys playing Castle Crashers.

Girls watching Anne of Green Gables.

Errand Day

We took Rod to work then came home for a breakfast of toast and tea for me/milk for the kids. Continued our reading in John 2 about Jesus overthrowing the temple tables and started working on memorizing the first part of Romans 8:38-39 NLT.

I make every effort to only have one or two days that we are out of the house running errands. I much prefer to have full days at home (or at least in our neighborhood with walks to the park or library) than having errands to run every day. Today was one of those mass errand days. We set off in our minivan of awesome blaring Air1 Radio.

Our first stop was at Agape Hair & Nails in Broken Arrow for haircuts for the kids. We took some before shots on our way inside. The boys enjoyed the toys available while Zoe was the first in the chair.

Zoe's during and after shots:

Gideon's during and after shots:

Tobyn's during and after shots:

Everyone loved their haircuts. 

We took off to the mall to find swimwear and summer-wear at The Children's Place. 

Since we were close by, we took a quick trip over to Wal-Mart for a few of our grocery/household shopping needs. This picture captures the craziness of said trip.

The kids sang the Hallelujah Chorus when we pulled into a parking spot at Chick-fil-a for an in-restaurant lunch and playground break. Their cob salad has become one of my favorite treats so I was pretty happy myself.

We have been doing the bulk of our shopping at this gem of a store. Our diet is becoming more vegetable/fruit heavy with minimal amounts of animal protein. This store has made that switch not kill my food budget. My only quibble with the store: the small aisles are incredibly difficult to navigate with children in every sector of personal space. A small price to pay, though, and they are learning how to contain their energy when appropriate. Win win.

We are slowly weaning ourselves off of dairy, but still needed milk and butter from our dairy supplier: Braum's. Because the kids had really been so good (even with energetic outbursts), we all got an ice cream cone to go. Tobyn fell asleep before I could catch a picture of him. The blue mustache says it all.

After all of that time away from home, we were ready to relax for the evening. Minecraft for the boys, Zoe playing with her friend Lexis, and blogging for me.

Zoe and Lexis (under Rod's watchful eye) went to our neighbor down the street to retrieve a rabbit that had gotten loose a few days ago before we had raised the hutch off of the ground and made some adjustments. When they were returning with the rabbit, Zoe saw our neighbor's (who lives across the street) dog jump their fence. She called Thunder over to our yard. While Lexis kept Thunder happy, Zoe got Rod's phone and called our neighbors. Loved hearing her grown up conversation "This is Zoe. We saw your dog jump over your fence. I don't think she'll stay if we put her back in your yard. So, what do you suggest I do?" She made sure they knew we were happy to help by keeping Thunder until they return home. 

After all of the excitement of the day, it was refreshing to eat a yummy, healthy dinner of pepper flower eggs and pan-fried sweet potatoes while watching Brain Games on the National Geographic Channel. It's been a good day!

Let's Get It Re-Started In Here

I am beginning to blog again. Renewed in my purpose to make every day a learning experience and record it for our benefit.

Today's goal: have fun! With that in mind, we started off with a fun breakfast.

After eating up our yummy breakfast, we continued our reading progress in the book of John. We read Chapter 2 about Jesus turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana. That morphed into a science lesson about how wine is made, making it a miracle, along with discussing how God can do what seems impossible to us. He isn't bound by natural scientific laws like we are. That led into a lesson on what a natural scientific law is. I used the law of gravity to explain the idea. The kids had fun with it.

Then we headed outside to clean up the backyard and scrape paint off of the house. Toby joined us and played outside until he let the dog out who went crazy over our rabbits (safe in their hutch). 

Finally got Dude calmed down and safe on the deck and we were back to work. The boys picked up broken toys and any trash they could find.

Zoe was not so excited about her farm girl chore of shoveling rabbit poop to clear the walkway since we've moved the rabbit hutch.

We made a huge dent in the clean up. We'll be back for more tomorrow morning! Here's to afternoon rest time. :)

We enjoyed our sandwich & carrots lunch while watching an episode of "How It's Made". It featured the making of paper umbrellas, coal, airplane seats, and cremation urns. Gideon thought the making of the paper umbrellas was so impressive that we should try it ourselves.

After resting for the afternoon, we did some more paint scraping with Rod when he got home from work. Also, I was excited to be announced as the Church Online Captain for the 11pm CST Thursday experience. One of my most favorite things I get to do every week.

We finished off the evening with menu planning,  

bunny cuddles,

Castle Crashers and Minecraft with Rod,

and stir-fry dinner with a side of TED Talks Education.