Martha's 1st Birthday!

Martha reached the grand age of 1 year on wednesday 23rd April. We celebrated with family and friends on 24th. She enjoyed her birthday cake, although cake would be a bit of a misnomer - it was a caterpillar made out of 20 doughnuts and 40 chocolate fingers!

Grandma, Aunty Sam , Uncle Kris, Nathan& Lewis, Andrew, Nicola, Melissa, Jenny and Jamie Browne, and Sue Wyatt joined us for tea, and Martha also received phone calls, emails, cards and gifts from other friends and family in Grimsby, Bristol, Bournemouth and Utah. Thank you to everyone!

Normanby Hall

Last month me and Richard set up a yahoo email group for home-educators in Lincolnshire. We have around 35 members already and many are contributing to the group and a few meet-ups have already been organised. We were able to meet many of these lovely families on Tuesday at Normanby Hall Country Park. Last time I visited Normanby (probably 10 years ago) you paid a car park fee which allowed access to the grounds, and then you paid extra to go into the Hall. They now have one admission price which includes the Park grounds, the Hall, and farming museum. We paid for an annual family membership of £18 (less than the cost of 2 visits), so we can enjoy the park for the rest of the year with no more fees!!

Geography Lesson

Last week me and Emily completed our 600 piece world map jigsaw puzzle. Each country piece of the puzzle was shaped as the country which made it quite tricky to hold together. The ocean pieces locked together in the traditional jigsaw way - so we completed the oceans first and then put in the countries. Here we are putting together Asia. It was a really good way to get an understanding of the different sizes of the various countries and also about where they are located in conjunction with other countries. Europe was very tricky with some very tiny countries. The company that produces this puzzle also does one for each continent - I would like to do the "Europe" one next.

White Easter

We awoke Easter Sunday to a truly beautiful view - everything lay under 6 inches of snow! I let the girls out for a little play, and told them we would get the sledge out the next day - I really thought it would stick around for a couple of days! by 11am the sun was shining so brightly that it all started melting away and was all but gone by the time we started church (1.30pm) AS you can imagine, the girls are all annoyed that the snow was only here on a Sunday morning and they didn't get their sledge rides!

Passover

Last Monday (17th March) we decided to hold a Passover meal for Family Home Evening. We used the script and info from http://www.bookofmormondiscovery.com/History%20and%20Customs%20of%20Passover.pdf
We invited Grandma to join us. We all learned loads and thoroughly enjoyed it. The photo shows everyone removing drops of red grape juice - one drop for each of the 10 plagues. I was impressed with the girls who all ate a small piece of everything that they were asked to. Emily particularly is not keen on tasting new things, but the bitter herbs etc were reminders of the times when the hebrews were slaves, and after thinking about the bitterness of living in slavery, none of the girls minded trying a small bite of everything! They all asked if we would do it again next year - so I guess it can't have been to bad!

How well do you know the Internet?

I was just looking at Hedgens blog and noticed her quiz result - I wasn't expecting to pass this test if Hedgen had failed it - she knows more than me about the internet. Anyway I did fail - my result was 44%, and some of my answers were pure guesses!!

The Hinckley Challenge

2 weeks ago our beloved prophet, President Gordon B Hinckley passed away, aged 97. In our Relief Society lesson last Sunday about the importance of studying the scriptures it was mentioned that there has been a challenge set by a website owner in which to remember President Hinckley by reading the Book of Mormon in 97 days.

I decided that I would take on this challenge and Emily decided she would like to do this with me. We have been reading the Book of Mormon together reading a chapter each at a time. I have been really impressed with the questions that Emily has asked and her great understanding of the Book of Mormon even though this will be the first time that she has read every verse of every chapter of the book of mormon. She has read the Book of Mormon stories many times and has nearly completed her "Book of Mormon Discovery". These studies have given her a great basis of the stories and principles found in the Book of Mormon and I am really looking forward to the next 3 months of study of the book of Mormon study with her.