St. Mary's Glacier Hike!

     We wanted to go on a fun new hike, and we've been wanting to check out St. Mary's Glacier, but figured we should wait until it got warmer so it wasn't a slip-n-slide instead of a hike. The trail is about 3/4 of a mile... and it isn't just an easy walking trail. This is an uphill, rock filled trail. Half way up was all dirt with some snow along the sides of the trail... but then suddenly the whole trail was snow! We still made our way up... and the view was beautiful! We had a ton of fun going up... but once we got up there Wyatt was suddenly very cold, very tired, and his head was super hot! Nothing like a fever showing up in the middle of your fun. We ended up giving him a piggyback ride down the trail, and headed home to rest, and a few days later he was fine. Definitely a lot of fun while we were there though! We all even went down a "snow slide" that we found along the trail. 3 of us only went once... but Wade ended up going 6 or 7 times he was having so much fun. :-) Here are some pictures of course. The pictures at the beginning show the trail when we started and the snow slide. The last pictures show the buffalo that we saw on the way to the trail! We've been looking for those buffalo on that road for over a year now!

Library Days - 5/8, 5/15, 5/22

      I somehow managed to miss a week of library book pictures... but oh well I guess! It's been crazy busy since the boys' birthdays, so I'm trying to get all caught up. So, here are our library books from 4, 3 and 2 weeks ago. 

Here are the books from the week of 5/8. We read the book The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear for school, and it was a really cute story. The boys liked it and we had to read it again later that night. It's basically about a little mouse that the "reader" is tricking the mouse into sharing half his strawberry so the "bear" nearby doesn't eat it. Good stuff. Definitely worth a read if you have a kiddo. 

There are books from the week of 5/15. We had Wade's favorite book again this week, Press Here. I guess I'll just have to go ahead and buy him that one so we don't have to reserve it once a month! Lol! Otherwise nothing too interesting to report. We read another Magic Tree House book, which of course is always good. 

Finally, here are the books from the week of 5/22. For some reason we didn't get through quite as many books that week, and no real favorites to report. Pick A Pumpkin Miss Millie was one of our random shelf picks, and it turned out to be pretty good. Definitely check it and Five Little Monkeys Trick or Treat out at Halloween time! (Or if you're my kids... all...year...long... haha). More to come hopefully next week! 

Mother's Day Crafts!

For Mother's Day this year, we decided to make a fun new art project! I saw a few ideas online, and ended up going with making handprint potholders! I don't have a link for this one, but it's pretty self explanatory. I just got some potholders, put out some paint, and we got to work. They thought it was a ton of fun, and they did a great job making sure the handprints looked good! I wrote the words on it since the writing was in paint, but I'm thinking next year they'll be doing that part themselves too. They turned out super cute! 

Library Day - 4/17 & 4/24

Here are the books from 2 weeks ago. Yoko is Wyatt's favorite new book, so we had to get that again. :-) Other than that, there are some "choose a book from this shelf" choices that turned out pretty good; My Favorite Michael and the Nuts book are both good! Oh, and Wade has taken a liking to Berenstain Bears books, so you'll be seeing some of those now too. The Spooky Old Tree was a good one.

Here are this last weeks books. The boys decided they HAD to be part of the book picture this week, so I have some models this time. ;-)

There wasn't really any big favorites this week, but some pretty good ones to read either way. Hot Rod Hamster was pretty cute and Dotty and Romping, Stomping Monsters were random shelf picks. 

Rock Painting!

      Awhile back, Wyatt saw a book at the Library about painting on rocks, and he REALLY wanted to give it a try. So, we planned a hike at one of our favorite areas that has a river and a trail that runs along it that has a ton of the size rock we were looking for. I didn't manage to get any pictures of our actual rock collecting... mostly because I forgot my camera and my phone battery is evil... but I did get pictures of our painting and our beautiful rocks!

Here is the book we used. There are quite a few ideas in here, I went with the fish design and the bug design since they seemed somewhat simple, and the boys would like those. 

Here are some pictures of the painting in action!

Here are our results! The blue/red fish Wade did, and he called it a Night Salmon, the teal/yellow fish was by Wyatt and it's his Summer Trout! :-) The other one's are my demonstrations... lol!

The bugs turned out great too! The purple/green one is mine, the one with the purple/yellow/orange is Wade's and the light colored one on the right is Wyatt's. I drew on the eyes, mouths and antennae. 

Here are all their rocks! The last picture is all the rocks we collected on our hike! Lots of fun! 

Library Days - 4/3 & 4/10

Here are the books from 2 weeks ago. Quite a few from the "pick any book from this shelf" plan, like; Drum City, Two Left Feet and Josh's Halloween Pumpkin. They tend to pick A LOT Of Halloween/Fall themed books for some reason, but whatever works for them. Wade really wants me to get the "dot book" (Press Here by Tullet), but we're on the waiting list for it, so we got Mix It Up instead, which is by the same person, but about mixing paint colors. It's a good primary and secondary colors review for sure. 

This book was on a display at the Library a month or so ago, and Wyatt wanted to give it a try, so we checked it out. More on this one in another post!

They also really liked these books the most this week. I really liked the Tree House book this week, because it reminded the boys of a school lesson, and they remembered it! The book has four important scientist in it from history, two of which we learned about in school; Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell! They heard the names and knew who they were and even a few things they invented! My little homeschool mom heart skipped a beat! Haha! 

Here are last week's books. A lot of repeat books since they love to re-read the super hero and Scooby Doo books over and over, but a few they liked and one they asked for a second time. 

These were their favorite books this week. Spider Sandwiches we've gotten before, but they saw it on the shelf and Wyatt really wanted to read it again. It's silly and the boys always end up saying "Ewwwww" or "Groooooooooooss" about all the things the monster was eating, but they thought it was hilarious. Boys. Oy. Anyway, they also really liked Andrew's Loose Tooth. Partly because the name of the kid is Andrew, and partly because Wyatt lost a tooth recently. :-)

Library Days - 3/20 & 3/27

Here are the books we took back on 3/20. I know, I'm behind. But we were building pinatas and stuff. Lol! Anyway, We didn't get to any Tree House books that week, but the one book we read that they REALLY loved (especially Wyatt) was Yoko. It was about a cat that took sushi for lunch, and all the other kids made fun of her, until one of them tasted it and realized it was really good! Of course, my boys LOVE sushi. Like ridiculously. So now Wyatt already wants me to get this book again! :-)

Here are the books we took back last week. There are some good and interesting ones in there; some of which they picked from the shelf that we had to choose a book from this week. Don't Spill The Milk and Kindergarten Coundown were both from that, and were both good! No absolute favorites this week though. Now that I'm caught up, maybe I'll post this weeks before next Friday! :-)