The older boys have friends which they are enjoying SO MUCH. Playdates, birthday parties, swimming, scouting and NERF WARS are great parts of their life right now. This is our mid-Conference Nerf War.(Won't Alena drool someday when I show her this picture)And family since I know you'll all feel badly for her know that I played in the sand with her the whole time and fed her vegan cookies that were positively AMAZING. Eli has been working on this and many other projects. Things he thinks up in his head and designs-birds, planes, you name it. I've finally gotten into the more fun parts of schooling that have been way too overwhelming over the past 2 yrs-that's ridiculous but c'est la vie. A little planning ahead and a bit of money and Fridays we make things like this Chinese vase by Eli.We all made them but out of Alena, Luke, Samuel, Eli, AND MYSELF. Eli and Samuel took great honors. Luke's is terrific too but he had to go at it a second time. Eli and Samuel just whipped them right out. Actually Samuel's was done in a matter of minutes, smoothed and decorated while we all worked and tried in vain. We have done some cool Astronomy projects like a baloon solar system to scale, melting chocolate with magnifying glasses, burning leaves with magnifying glasses, and a pinhole sun viewing box which was too short and didn't work. Oh and the kids loved pretending to be in the industrial age making assembly line cookies. Of course they only asked me ever 35 sec if they could sit down so I doubt they really want to work in a cookie factory but for the afternoon it was pretty fun.