Making Paper

We finished our China study. It was fun and I think we both learned quite a bit which hopefully will come back this year as we take a field trip. One of the last things we did was make paper.

First, the job was to tear the paper into small pieces and put it in a bucket of water.



Then we mixed it in the blender.

Then we strained it. That was the hard part figuring out how to get rid of the water. 

We put the paper on wax paper and let it dry. That took about 2 days and included putting it in the sun. Then we had paper.
We had about 4 pieces of it and now when we want to put it in the lapbook we can't find it.

We enjoyed our China study and hopefully it prepared us for our summer activities. Now we are back to our other studies -- back in Athens and Persia.

Resurrection Sunday

I should be the one hiding my face since I have not yet posted pictures from Resurrection Sunday. So here are a few.

Brother and sister.

We don't have any just us, waiting for the photographer.

We then had an egg hunt. She is off running looking for eggs.



Look what he found!

Okay, now I am over the embarrassment of taking so long to get the pictures posted. What else has been happening in our lives? I will have to think about that and get back with some more later.

Book Review - Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Christian Encounters Series

By John Perry

I selected this book to give myself some understanding of Winston Churchill. I did not feel that I really knew much about him. It is a small book with just 192 pages. I found the book easy to read at the beginning but then it seemed to drag. It seemed that there were details of his life missing and places that you had to try to fill in what was happening. I do feel that I have a bit more of an understanding of who Winston Churchill was but with only 192 pages and a man such as Churchill there is so much that is missing.

The author did a good job to condense Churchill’s life and at the same time give you some of his character. You see the things that helped to make him the leader that he was. He is driven and that is seen in how he worked and worked to improve his speech. He educated himself through reading.

One other characteristic that stuck with me after reading this book was his extravagance. While everyone else is on rations he was continuing to live life the same. It even told of how towards the end of his life he spent more in 2 days on cigars then his private nurse made in a week.

This book is part of the series from Thomas Nelson called Christian Encounters, which causes one to think that these are Christians. The book at various times spoke of Winston’s religious beliefs but it does not appear that he truly was a Christian so marketing this book as part of Christian Encounters seems wrong. Overall, I would say this was a good book and I would be tempted to read some of the other books in the series.

This book was provided by Thomas Nelson for review.

Resurrection Cookies

This is for my friend who asked if I made the cookies with my children. I am trying to remember if I made them with her children? Hudson, Grant, Stuart, Emily -- did I make these with you? I remember making them with Emilee when she was 3.

The instructions are easy to find online.

First, you beat the pecans. My Nana used to make these cookies at Christmas with chocolate chips and she would make them red or green. I loved those cookies. I don't think anyone makes them the way Nana did and there are a few things that Nana made that no one else could make -- rice and mushrooms, crumb cake. Back to our cookies. They beat the pecans and had fun doing it. That is to remind them that Christ was beat for us.

Then we did everything else and mixed the ingredients.

He actually got tired of holding it and let me hold it for a bit.

Then we put them in the tomb - I mean oven and they stayed overnight.

I did give them cookies for breakfast.

Dying Eggs

It has been for the past few years that this is an event at Grandpa and Grandma's with all the cousins.



Miss K just kept decorating one egg.



J is ready to decorate.

He put crosses on most of his eggs because he said it was the day Jesus died on the cross.

Keeping up with Miss K

Some days I think it might be easier to keep up with the Jones but around here we try to keep up with Miss K and keep her out of trouble.

K, don't eat the butter.

She loves butter. She eats toast just to get the butter and licks the butter off. She likes noodles with butter. She was caught the other day after she reached up grabbed the butter dish and started to eat.

We found hair next to the scissors on her desk.

Hey, she used regular scissors which is good, right.

She gave her baby a bath - sorry no picture of the soaking wet doll. The good thing was she did take off the doll's dress before giving her a bath. Now the doll is drying out in the sun.

We took a week off of school for spring break and soccer camp but we are still trying to keep up with Miss K. She keeps us laughing and enjoying life.

I served cupcakes for dinner

not for dessert but for the main course.

I called the family to dinner and they had egg in a hole.

I don't think that really fooled them but they did enjoy the fact that they could eat that first. Then they had a cupcake. A few minutes into the egg in a hole J figured out that wasn't icing. He remembered that I bought mashed potatoes at the store. He did tell me "mama, that was good." referring to the fact that I was able to fool them.

Happy April Fool's.

Enjoy your cake. This recipe and idea was on Family Fun's website.