Our Week in Pictures

Kids filling out their "passport applications"

Caleb studying his old passport

Hannah making an orange globe

no wonder map makers have such a hard time making a flat map of the world!

Lydia found a cricket in our Backyard Habitat

Caleb collected most of the worms in our science experiment

Funny bumper sticker we saw at the zoo

Momma Tiger and her triplets

The new baby Patas Monkey and the momma

the Pre-Hensile Skink

I am taking a break from my daily writing about our train trip to post pics from our week of school. This year we are using My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures and I think that we have done more fun stuff this week in school than we have in most months in previous years. We are really enjoying it! I decided I would take a picture or two every day to show what we did, both to share with Glenn as well as to post here for us to remember later. To finish off the week we decided to take a trip to the zoo to hopefully see the baby tigers. So many of the animals were out and active today! We were greeted upon arrival by the siamang monkeys out in the outside exhibit vocalizing very loudly which was really fun to see and hear. The penguins were full of energy, the momma and triplet baby tigers were out and active (so fun to watch!!), one of the red pandas was actually out, the spectacle bears were doing their loop, a lynx was walking around, one of the otters was swimming at the fish, the baby Patas monkey at not quite a month old is already starting to think that he should be independent of his mama. We love the zoo. We need to go there more often (oh, and I actually figured out how to get there today!! The zoo is in a strange part of town and I can never figure out how to get there but I discovered a great route today so I no longer have the "I'm not sure how to get there" excuse - yay!)

I'm thankful for a great first full week of school. I am so grateful for the chance to homeschool.

A visit to the zoo

Warning: Guest post by Glenn again.

Here are some captioned pictures from our trip to the zoo on this beautiful spring-like day.

She's only looking @ me because she think(s) I look tasty

My dad says my head is hard enough to compete with these guys.

I would go swimming if I had remembered my tuxedo

Do I qualify as a small Mammal?

4 brave monkeys riding the tiger

My Beautiful Bride

Zoo... Laser Show... Corn Maize

This has been a busy week with school. We are learning lots and having fun. The highlight to Caleb's week for school was playing addition war - a game of war that I made up using addition flash cards. Hannah is loving learning how to read new words.

We are loving our Seneca Park Zoo membership and went to the Zoo three times this week. We are getting to know the animals better and learning some of their names from zoo keepers and docents that are around. Cool things from this week include the male cougar jumping on the head of Glenn and the kids when they were in the peaking house, the brother and sister tiger getting into a spat, the arctic wolves howling, getting to see a big frog up close, and getting caught in the rain right by the sea lions so we got to watch Puff and Flounder for a long time. We always go to the zoo on Wednesday before AWANA so we don't have to drive through rush hour traffic on the way to church. We were up north yesterday and stopped by on our way home and we decided to stop in quick after church today. It is so fun to live near a zoo!

On Friday night we went to a Laser light show and fireworks downtown at High Falls. Russ stopped by after dropping Camy off at work and went with us. We can remember going to it once as kids during a Gideon convention. It was fun to stand on the bridge and see the show and all the cool things they could do with the lasers.

Yesterday we wore the kids out. In the morning we went to the Public Market to get some produce and ran into Russ and Camy. Then after a quick stop at the bank to get cash (our ATM card isn't working so we are thankful for shared CU branching!) we were invited to Brian and Christina's house for pancakes. We hung out there until about noon with Brian and Brad and Melissa, another couple from our community group. After leaving Brian's we drove out to Hilton to Zarpentine Farms for their corn maze. They were having a special day for people with Time Warner Community Rewards cards where you could do the maze, get 3 shots with the corn cannon and a cup of cider and a donut all for $1. It would have normally cost over $30 for all of that for us as a family but instead we got it all for $5 for all of us. We don't even have Road Runner anymore but we still have our card that hasn't expired yet. Yeah! Anyway, it was fun but it tired us out. After the Maize (Noah's Ark theme - check out the photo of it from the air) we headed to wander the zoo then got groceries and headed home for a late supper exhausted. Once again, we are so thankful that God has brought us here. We have had a lot of fun since moving to Rochester and are looking forward to another fun week!