Anderson Gardens......beautiful!!

Wednesday we went to Anderson Gardens in Rockford. It is a beautiful japanese garden. It was about a 25 minute drive for us. We were mesmerized by the beauty of the garden and the friendliness of the people there. If you get the chance you should go. I would love to go every weekend, but then I am very partial to gardens.

Anderson Gardens is a little over a mile long. We had no problem with walking that far being avid walkers LOL! But it seemed as if the tour was over in five minutes but it was actually 2 and a half hours!! The children enjoyed feeding the koi fish in the various ponds. You can buy the koi fish food for $1 at admissions. It's good sized bag too, not like those chintzy handfuls you get at petting zoos. There was enough food in the bag for the 4 girls to feed the fish in all 3 ponds and then they went back to the beginning pond to use the last of it. When we finished enjoying the garden we went into the gift shop for souveneirs. We even got the older girls something.

I didn't take any pictures of the gift shop. But it was equally beautiful. There is also a resturant there, but we opted to go to burger king in Roscoe on the way to the library story hour. No pictures of that either;-)

Here are some pictures......enjoy!!!

Random pictures

Kings and Queens

Well here it is a lovely August day! We are eating breakfast right now. So far this week we have learned a little bit about Queens and Kings and parliament, and so on. We did the grocery shopping yesterday. My four little helpers right along side! Olivia and Abby had to each push a cart. Olivia only ran me over once. That little excursion took almost two hours, but fortunately I stopped at the McDonalds drive through on the way to Woodman's. We came home and put our stuff away. That is actually the hard part!
Today, we will have some school to learn more about kings and queens. Oh by the way the girls made crowns with jewels in them and septers. They look like proper queens now! LOL! We will continue this theme the rest of the week. Today we will be hearing about the queens coronation and the girls will have to draw a picture of it as I describe it. We will end the day with a tea party complete with queen cakes (white cake baked in a mini muffin pan) maybe with some delicious strawberries.
The pictures above are of Emily with her new pug Milo. And then Savannah sitting on Grandma and Grandpa's deck on the 4th of July.

Until another time!

oooops

I forgot to post the pictures of the finished solar system. See post below.

lots of learning

Hello everyone!

It's been a good week so far! A little bit hot out there right now!!! Monday was moms birthday. So we went over to give her a few cards and a present. We headed home at about 3 pm. The next few days were spent at home doing some learning projects. Thurs. evening we got together at mom and dad's house for pizza and cake and ice cream to celebrate chris and mom's birthdays, which were on the 28th and 30th. Happy Birthday guys!!!! Today was spent in the sandbox, and playing in the playhouse. I moved a table from the little house to the dining room in the big house, a very nice workout. Now the children are watching a wishbone video while I blog.

Here are a few pictures of our unit on planets and stars.

Anna