While Daddy Works, We Play in Memphis

Matt has had to travel to Memphis a few times over the last couple of months for work. Since we have a flexible schedule with homeschooling this year, we decided to take advantage of flexibility, and join him for a few days. We left Wednesday morning right after Elisabeth's dance, and made it to Memphis that evening in time to join him for dinner. 

The kids were so excited about staying in a hotel. Hotels are magical for kids. They couldn't wait to go downstairs to eat breakfast on Thursday morning. 

We brought our school along with us to do in the hotel in the mornings. The kids worked hard and finished everything by lunch. 

The girls played family and bedtime in the hotel after Elisabeth finished her school work. 

We ate a quick lunch in the hotel and then were ready to get out of that room and have some fun!

On Thursday afternoon we went to the Memphis Children's Museum. It was a great museum! So much fun! Daddy was even able to join us for most of our time at the museum which was a pleasant surprise. 

The kids had a blast shopping for groceries and checking out using a real cash register which printed a real receipt. 

They also had sock skating and snowball fights. 

They played games at a Ninja Turtles exhibit, 

Climbed through a giant play structure, 

made Christmas crafts and so much more!

They played on a firetruck, sang and danced on a stage with a real green screen, played at a dentist office, were car mechanics, built with giant foam blocks, played chess, sent notes to each other through vacuum tubes, and played outside on a fun playground with a zip line and a super fun basketball court. 

We stayed at the museum for four hours and had to drag the kids away. They were not ready to leave! It was such a great children's museum.

Friday morning we followed a similar routine- breakfast and school in the morning and a fun adventure in the afternoon. Nathan asked to do his schoolwork at the breakfast area downstairs. 

 Friday afternoon we headed to the Memphis zoo. Unfortunately Daddy actually did have to work on Friday afternoon, so it was just the kids and I for this adventure. The weather was beautiful and we had an awesome day. Memphis has a great zoo. We were all impressed with the size and variety of animals.

Everyone's favorite exhibit were the pandas!

We even caught the panda eating and read about how they have to eat bamboo practically constantly because it has such a low nutritional value. 

We laughed at him because he would randomly stop eating and just collapse like he was exhausted from eating. Then he'd wake up and continue eating. 

Katherine was especially fond of the baby panda statue she found, ha!

She asked to pose for photos constantly during our trip. 

We spent the afternoon walking around seeing all the animals. 

Some of our favorites included- orangutans, hippos, a whole building with komodo dragons, zebras, seals, cheetahs, and a penguin feeding. They also had a building with black lighting filled with nocturnal animals that was really cool. We got to see a sloth actually moving and bats and other animals too. 

We ended the afternoon playing on the playground before it was time to go. 

We had such a fun afternoon! I almost didn't go to the zoo because of the cost of admission (after an expensive day at the museum the day before), but when I realized we got half price admission because of our Tulsa zoo membership, I decided to do it, and I'm so glad we did because we all had such a wonderful time. It would have been worth paying full price.

Elisabeth had a little too much fun, ha!

Saturday morning the kids decided to go ahead and do a little school so they could take a day off from school the following week since we didn't have anything to do that morning anyway. 

We grabbed some lunch and then drove to downtown Memphis to visit the Bass Pro Shop pyramid. Daddy was at work again that day, so it was just the five of us. 

They conned me into buying tickets to ride the elevator to the scenic lookout. 

We browsed around the store for a while and them drove back to the hotel. We ordered pizza for dinner and the kids watched a movie. Matt ended up having to work pretty late that night, which was a bummer, but the kids enjoyed their pizza/movie night. 

We drove home Sunday morning and hit some snowy weather on the drive. I was thankful to make it home safely, and the kids immediately ran outside to play in the snow. 

They built snowmen, had snowball fights and made snow ice cream. 

The snow was a fun welcome home present. We had a wonderful time in Memphis. I had been hesitant to go, knowing that Matt would have to work long days and worried I'd go crazy with all the kids in a hotel room by myself, but we ended up having so much fun! The kids were well behaved and are at fun ages for adventuring together. I'm thankful for a spontaneous vacation that contained so many special memories!

December Fun, Part 1

December is always full of fun, festive activities. We've been having fun with all the Christmas performances, crafts, and celebrations. 

As soon as Thanksgiving was over, it was time for Christmas dresses! It's one of my favorite things about December. 

At the beginning of December Katherine had a parent observation for her gymnastics. She did a great job. She looks forward to her gymnastics class every week. 

This girl is always asking to pose for photos. 

Katherine isn't the only one who looks forward to gymnastics every week. Elisabeth does too! She has a couple of good friends that she plays with every week while the younger siblings are in their class. 

Elisabeth and Samuel are working hard in their gymnastics classes too. They're improving on their skills every week.

Homeschool is still going well. I feel like we've hit our groove and have gotten into a good routine. There are still hiccups and struggles, but we've been having fun and I've enjoyed seeing their progress. 

We've done a couple of fun science projects this month. We dyed milk and investigated how taco sauce cleans pennies. 

Elisabeth has made huge improvements in her reading. I'm so proud of her!

Nathan took a GT class this semester all about inventions. He had to come up with his own invention and advertise it on Shark Tank. He made a cool Lego movie to advertise his Shoe Extender to help kids be tall enough to ride roller coasters (a problem we ran into with Elisabeth at Silver Dollar City).

We went to the Broken Arrow Christmas parade with friends. 

Katherine was happy with all the candy she accumulated. 

And more Christmas dresses for church!

Cold, dark nights mean less walks around our neighborhood pond and instead mean hot chocolate and family game nights. One of my favorite things about the kids getting older is getting to play "real" games with them! We're training them to love board games as much as we do. 

The kids have been playing with kinetic sand a lot lately. They've been getting creative with their creations. That's another unexpected benefit I've noticed about homeschooling- more free time equals more creativity. 

Of course December means a trip to Rhema to look at the Christmas lights. The kids' favorite part is always playing in the "circles." They pretend they are their houses and they move to new houses and visit each other. Sometimes I don't know why we even look at the other lights. They always just want to play in the circles. 

Elisabeth had her winter dance performance and requested a new hat and scarf to be extra festive. She's in a daytime homeschool class this year and has lots of friends in her class. She loves her teacher and the small class size. She's always coming home showing me her new dance moves. I'm happy she's having such a great dance year. 

Some of her best friends are in her class which makes it extra fun!