Jamie’s Observational Skills

Jamie was honing her observational skills today when she noticed the new version of the ten-dollar bill. She got out a magnifying glass and...

Gloria BDay Beach Party

While Gloria traded her birthday party in for part of her ipad funding, she did get to invite some friends to Deephaven Beach for an informa...

Father’s Day Field Trip

The main thing I wanted to do for Jim to celebrate Father’s Day was cook some of his favorite foods. So we had Eggs Benedict for brunch and ...

Just a Little Birdie

When we were heading out for our Father’s Day field trip, I FINALLY remembered to bring along the new camera lens I had gotten for Christmas...

Sunday Cereal

Some time ago, I wanted to cut down on the amount of “colored” food we buy – particularly overly sweetened, artificially colored cereal. We ...

Gloria’s Birthday Dinner

For her 12th birthday dinner, Gloria wanted to have French Silk Pie and an Asian buffet. Because she’s a totally awesome kid AND loves to co...

Backwards Dinner at the Beach

I announced to the kids that we were having backwards dinner at the beach tonight. Backwards dinner is an idea I read about on a blog – dess...

Hidden Falls

Continuing on our tour of the Mississippi River Recreation Area and Refuge, today we attempted Hidden Falls and Crobsy Farm. When we got dow...

Edina Model Yacht Club Slow

It’s rather amazing to me how some of the things I have fondly remembered and often wished to be able to do again have been coming back to m...

How To Train Your Dragon 2

We got a very special chance to go to the movies today. Sarah Landt let us know about some free screening tickets to How to Train Your Drag...

Observing

There has been a huge growth in the number of caterpillars, inchworms and other critters in our yard this week. The girls have been collecti...

Orchestra Audition

Lauren had her first-ever orchestra audition outside of school today. She tried out for Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies. With the help...

Innovation

I had to take a picture of this to record it because I think it’s really clever. This is the end piece of a TV tray rack that I moved out in...

National Doughnut Day

Somewhere out in our travels, we picked up the idea that today was National Doughnut Day. It was also our last “official” day of school for ...

Mike the Muskie

Since the water was so clean, clear and cold this spring, we got a few up close and personal encounters with the infamous MIKE the MUSKIE. H...

Burning it Up

We got a really big box of candles for free at a garage sale and they have ended up being a great source of backyard activities. It has been...

Miller Park

Today seemed like a fun day to go try out the fountains/splash pad we had seen at Round Lake Park since it was quite warm. There were severa...

More Sprouts from the Garden

Everyone is going out to the garden every day to see the progress. It’s really miraculous and interesting! I continue to be so thankful that...

Minnehaha Creek

With Lake Minnetonka at a record high this week, we had to see the result of the creek by going to Minnehaha Falls Park first. We started ou...

Deephaven Daredevils

We had a couple unusual opportunities to use Lake Minnetonka in a different way: After visiting Minnehaha Creek, we popped over to the beach...

Diligence and Learning Hard Things

John Holt wrote the following in "How Children Fail." I found this quoted in "Homeschooling with Gentleness" and have se...