Our new little friend

We got a hummingbird feeder to go right outside our bedroom window. It hung there for 2 months and we had never seen any. Well finally we saw our new little friend. (Actually we've seen two!)

A message from Kaylee

The other day I had written a little note to everyone on our wipe off board that said "good morning family". So this morning Kaylee took it upon herself to write her own message that looked like this:



Which in case you couldn't tell it says "good morning frevert family". I have been telling her to spell out things the way they sound so if you read it the way it looks she did a pretty good job! I thought it was too cute not to save!

Blackberry picking

Today was our blackberry picking day. The kids were so excited. We had to drive up into the forest on a small dirt road. We passed it the first few times andended up calling our friend to ask where they were. (we had never seen a blackberry bush) Little did we know the berries are underneath so unless you were looking under you wouldn't see them. The kids had a great time having a picnic and just running around exploring. It is so nice to have school outside some days explorong our world! We finally found the bushes and there weren't many berries left. They kids had a great time looking for them (except our diva Avery). They weren't afraid of the prickers and thorns. All in all we only got about a cup full but the kids enjoyed that with some ice cream. It was such a great day!



This was the road we drove down.


Such pretty trees!


Zack and Kaylee went right to work.


Here we are with our stash!

Kaylee and Kayla hard at work.


Finding some treasure.

Here are all the kids.

Our littlest Soccer Girl!

My baby is a soccer player! Avery was so excited! She has been waiting for this day for a long time. After years of watching her brother and sister play sports, she finally gets her turn. She is the only girl on the team and yet the boys were picking flowers and didn't want to play. She practiced the whole time. I am so proud of our little girl!

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Okay this is the one thing I didn't know before we moved to Arizona. It is full of tarantulas! They are everywhere! When you don't like spiders, it's hard to like a big hairy 5 inch tarantula! Keith is getting very good at catching them to drive them far away and let them go. The day I see one in my house is the day I move back to Missouri where the spiders are normal size and most of the bugs are not poisonous!

A haircut and back to school

So Zack got a haircut yesterday. He told the guy what he wanted. This is the before picture:



And this is the after:


I really don't see that much difference. He told the guy it was great. I though he needed to go shorter. Oh well. The funny thing is when he saw his before picture he said I miss my long hair. He is so funny! He wanted to cut it be cause he wants to be on the swim team. We will see if we can fit another activity on our schedule!

This is the most beautiful sunset I have seen. The sunsets here are amazing! God is good!

Here are some pictures of the kids back to school! They were glad to get started! I hope this continues all year. We will be doing some fun things. First we have to finish our desert animals lapbooks and then we will do one on the olympics. Avery thinks she is so big this year since she is in pre-school. I hope we have a great year!

Back to the Grind

Well it has been awhile since I have updated. We made it through our month long vacation. The kids had such a great time visiting with the families and seeing their new baby cousin Peyton! We missed seeing our other new cousin Norah as she was born 2 weeks after we left! Now that we are home it is time to get back to business. The kids new activities have already started. Zack and Avery have soccer. All the kids have Irish step dancing, Awanas, and gymnastics. Zack has boy scouts and I am getting ready to start a girl scout troop for the girls. We also have our homeschool group activities, field trips and the library. It will be another busy year! We will be starting school next Tuesday since I refuse to start school in August. I think the kids will be excited to have something to do. We have a lot of things to cover this year. We will be doing a lot on the human body, civil war, geography, animal studies, the election and many others. Along with our election study this fall the kids will be going with me to vote in the presidential election. I just registered to vote and I have never voted before. I am excited to teach about the government and elections. Well it will be quite a year and we are ready to get started!