February Vacation... almost;)

The Friday before school vacation we took advantage of a 60+ degree ski day at Black Mountain, in February!  We haven't gotten much snow this winter and a lot of the terrain wasn't great, but the main trails were fine and it was such a beautiful day!  All of the kids are doing really well and are skiing all of the blue trails from the top of the mountain without difficulty.  Some faster than others, but still so much fun!

We spent a day at Norland's Living History Center last weekend.  It is still warm so there was a good amount of mud everywhere, but we were able to take a horse and sleigh ride anyway.  We got to write with quill pens, learn about President's Day, and help harvest/store the ice for next summer. 

We are also starting to experiment with more contemporary artists and creating drawings that are stretched and distorted beyond what normal perception would be.  Here they are tracing images on the windows. 

V-day & Gabe's Birthday

I think the kids are way more excited about Gabe's birthday than they are Valentine's Day, but they have never said no to the morning chocolate;)

Last weekend we had to say goodbye to the pigs. These pigs were certainly eager to chew, but they seemed to love us and loved to be rubbed everyday.  After our experience last year, we were not looking forward to getting them into the trailer.  We had had another warm stretch and didn't have as much snow as we would like, but we took some extra  precautions and, as it turned out, we didn't need to. The pigs walked right into the trailer together on the first try.  They didn't know what to do when we took down the fence and set them free, but they mostly followed my voice and walked right in.  We welcomed the ease and found ourselves back home with free time in the afternoon.  However, this did make it much harder to say goodbye to them at the slaughter house:(

In other happenings, Audrey has started going down "the Main" at Titcomb AND has started riding the T-bar on her own with Ben. This is really huge for me because it kills my back and legs to ride a t-bar with someone half my height;)  

100s Day... kind of;)

We celebrated 100s day a day early because of our schedule, but no one seemed to mind;)  I actually thought we might be able to skip 100s day this year, but everyone insisted, so we threw something together.  I actually don't even really need to plan anything anymore because they insist on doing the same activities every year... and obviously in Audrey's case an insistence on wearing only some pull-ups she found, but hasn't worn in over a year... I guess this is just one of the reasons we love to homeschool;)