First Day of School!

Wow. How fast the summer did go by. Today is the first day of school for all in Idaho, so I figured we had better get on the ball too!

Above is Christopher, our pre-schooler. He missed the cut-off date for Kindergarten by 3 days. But to be honest, he isn't ready anyway, which is normal for boys. So we will get a lot of pre-school work done and be really ready for Kindergarten NEXT fall! And in thinking in the long term, now he won't be leaving for college at age 17! As you can see, he has his corner in our new school room! In July we rearranged, put the boys together in a new set of bunk beds, the girls together in a horse room, and turned Christopher's old green jungle room into out new school room!

Here is a better view of the room!

The ants in the ant farm are thriving, but the Venus flytraps are dying. :-(

Here is our new THIRD grader! She is adding on lots of new subjects this year, including LATIN! And she is very excited about it!

And our FIFTH grader! Yikes. So hard to believe.

And how is it that I am entering my SIXTH year of homeschooling? Never even imagined I will still be doing this this far along.

We are all excited and pumped up about the new school year. Having the new classroom has already made a HUGE difference; a spot they can work in peace where the little ones can't mess up their stuff! Plus I like writing on the white board! :-)

The Hikers Return!

When Sam gets a few free minutes I have asked him to sit down and write about their week. Each picture can be clicked on and then it shows up really big and beautiful, so click away!

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THE JUNGLE BOOK!

I wrote earlier about the Missoula Children's Theater. WOW! Another impressive year! The musical was OVER an hour long and all the children (about 50 from ages 5-17) did a great job and all looked like they were having a FANTASTIC time!

In the auditions Monday morning, the directors didn't even know the kids names yet, so out of the 50 kids, it was kind of funny that my 2 ended up as Nag and Nagiana, husband and wife cobras. I was REALLY surprised at how well they did. I expected Collin to be MUCH more reserved, and his volume and expression STUNNED me! Kaitlynn, she did fantastic, I knew she could, but I was surprised by her sinister laughing!

Here are NAG and NAGIANA!!!!!

The after dress rehearsal makeup touch up.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSScary!

The Jungle Book Cast!

You will probably recognize AnnaBrooke, who played young Mogli and the little girl whom Nagiana threatened to attack. And Alice, the HYSTERICAL stampeding elephant! The other young lady on the bottom left is Jackie Orcutt. She was Ricki Ticki Tavi, the mongoose. She has been on Collins basketball team in the past and her mom is involved in the PWOC as well.

During the musical numbers, there was a pianist, and then the cobras, the mongoose and a bird who kept rhythm on the drums.

Is she enjoying this TOO much!?!?! :-)

A long, busy, but successful day. All week long they practiced from 10:00 until 2:30, bringing their lunches. I let them ride their bikes to the community center, and Collin took care of his own checking and programming. I keep telling them that if they remain trustworthy, then they get privileges like this!

A FUNNY side note!! Collin said last night that after rehearsal, the director said they would be getting their costumes in the morning. (This morning was the first time they even SAW their costumes). And that the costumes would be hot and they would be in them for about 7 hours, so wearing deodorant would be a good idea. Now, I know the day is coming SOON where that will be a normal part of their day, but it isn't here yet. They were SO EXCITED about wearing deodorant! Collin could BARELY get it on because he laughed so hard because it tickled! I am laughing because he is laughing and Kaebrie is laughing because we are all laughing. A lot of laughter in my extra small bathroom this morning!

Collin and Leigha are standing here waiting for me to finish so they can put different pictures on their blog, so be sure to check there as well and leave more comments, they LOVE getting comments!

( www.collinandleigha.blogspot.com )

That's all for now! Guess the next blog will be early in the week when the crew returns from the Wyoming Mountains! Good night to all!

Here is the first scene with them both,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,just LOVE KK's laugh!

Here is Collin, as NAG the Cobra................

Nagiana

Here is Kaitlynn's broadway moment.................

And..they're off!!!!!!!

Here they are......the 4 Musketeers! Sam asked his 3 best friends last Christmas to fly in during the month of August to go backpacking in the Wild Wild West! They all jumped at the chance, and here are those southern boys! Well, men. :-)

Greg is from Prattville, Alabama. Chris is from Montgomery, Alabama. Brannon is from Savannah, Georgia. ( All VERY sea-level places).

They are as excited as little boys on Christmas morning. They have packed and repacked and repacked. My house is LITTERED with things deemed unnecessary and duplicate items. The clothes and supplies and food items left behind.......... the kids are having a heyday! They ate Chris's mac and cheese packs for lunch and snacked on Greg's twizzlers. I made Brannon hide his fishing pole he decided not to take in the back of the garage so they wouldn't mess with that!

They all got on the scale here and all their packs weight between 43 and 48 pounds. Food was the big thing. Everyone had different ideas of what was portable and lightweight. COMBOS crackers was the big surprise. 1800 calories for ONE SMALL BAG!!!!

They woke up at 5:30 this morning, and by 6:30 they drove off, a 5 -6 hour drive to the start of the trail in Wyoming. They will be out of call phone reach until sometime Tuesday. The three southern boys leave on their plane EARLY Wednesday morning.

I am looking forward to seeing their pictures and hearing their stories. I hope they are all still speaking to each other by then! :-)

NEW BLOG!

Attention family: Collin and his great friend Leigha have decided to publish their OWN blog!

Go to: www.collinandleigha.blogspot.com

for their updates! Be sure to leave them comments!

Priase The Lord Music Video!

Here is the video described from the post below! It was so large I had a hard time getting it loaded!

PRAISE THE LORD!

Tonight was parents night! The kids got up and performed a few of the songs and motions they learned this week. We tried Kaebrie the first night, she was a few weeks shy of the 3 year old cutoff (but when Daddy is in charge you can bend the rules just a little bit), but it didn't work. She freaked out every time she saw me. So she spent the rest of the week in the nursery. Tonight, she REFUSED to sit with me and got up and well, copied movements and did her own thing! You grandparents know how much she LOVES an audience and she took full advantage of this one. Christopher, who did well all week long, refused to leave my side tonight, so he isn't in the video. Kaitlynn is pretty animated and easy to spot, look close, Collin is right behind her.

WHEW! It really was a great week. Families and kids were blessed, we met a lot of new people, and a lot of families who were at VBS came to chapel today for the first time as well. We had over 150 in service this morning!

This next week promises to be busy. The Missoula Children's Theater is here again. For those of you who remember Kaitlynn being a rat in the PIED PIPER last year, this year they are doing the JUNGLE BOOK and Collin is also participating; resisting, but he WILL be participating! :-)

They have auditions on Monday morning, practice Monday afternoon through Friday afternoon, have a dress rehersal Saturday morning, then do 2 performances on Saturday afternoon and evening. The whole production takes less then a week! They bring all the props, set and costumes. I was VERY impressed last year! They travel the globe every year doing this and normally the cost is $200 per child, but for the military they don't charge a thing.

Look for pictures next weekend from the play!

Attack of the Dominoes!

Here is the first still photography movie written, directed, produced and filmed by

Collin Andrew Smith!

I hope the sound works! The music he picked is great!

Future Movie Director?

Alrighty. What IS this? you ask. Well, Collin has decided to become a creator of movies! Sam taught him how to take still photographs, move things ever so slightly, then program those pictures into Microsoft Movie Maker software and create movies! He and his friends are having a BALL doing this! The toy fight is his favorite and I am going to see if I can get the FIRST one with the dominoes loaded as well.

Thanks to DD, I can now upload the videos just as easy as pictures! ONE CLICK!! Instead of doing the 15 steps through YouTube. SO much simpler!

And who knows! Maybe one day you can say , "I knew him when........." :-)

Three Island Crossing

Today we drove back to Glenns Ferry, Idaho to attend the historic Three Island Crossing Reenactment. The first known pioneer crossing was in 1843. From 1843-1866, more than 350,000 pioneers would travel along the Oregon Trail and over 50,000 would navigate the Snake River at the Three Island Crossing.

Once a year, for 22 years in a row now, they gather up the horses, covered wagons, and down the mountain they come to cross the river for all to watch.

You can barely see them here, but they are just getting into the Snake River. All public school 4th graders in Idaho have to take a year long Idaho history class, which I think is ridiculous, especially for military families, but we are going to take advantage and learn some high points while we are here. We are going to do a unit on the Oregon Trail and today was the start! We are going to venture to Baker City, Oregon, follow the trail, see the museums, etc.
A few years ago, after the drowning of a horse, the organizers of this event got together with the Idaho power company and they lower the water level on this day for a "safer" crossing. The kids thought this was cheating since the real pioneers had the cross the real thing!
Truly, though the history is interesting and stories captivating, this was a real disappointment. Because of all the fires in Idaho, over half of the crossing team, horses, Indians and wagons were not able to make it. So all we got for all that driving, the admission fee, the heat, and the time, was 10 minutes of what you see in these pictures. All the kids were like, "THAT"S IT???!!"



We still learned a lot, and had a good time with friends. Here is Kaitlynn with Alice.

Collin and KitKat with Morgan Conrow, our next door neighbor.
If there are horses to be found, Kaitlynn will find a way to be there! This was the lead horse with the wagon-master.
Gotta love this one!
After it was over, we went to the main shin-dig for lunch, a look at the few crafts and then sat and enjoyed the live entertainment; Country music, fiddle players and the all time favorite, CLOGGERS!
After the cloggers were done, we couldn't find the girls. They were all in the covered wagon clogging for all they were worth!
It was still a beautiful day to be out, a COOL 97 with a breeze, big blue sky, music, horses and cloggers. A perfect Saturday morning! :-)
I almost forgot one of the best parts....Huckleberry ice cream!!!!!!!