What We've Been Up To This Week - school, play, snow and meat processin

 This past week sure has gone by fast.  I've been gone from the house quite a bit though, and that always makes me feel like I'm behind the eight ball.  This week the eight year old made a couple new headbands. We're studying ancient Egypt this year and he's really gotten into it. 

 I personally don't really care for ancient history ... or at least I didn't until this year.  We're using Tapestry of Grace for our main curriculum, and it's wonderful.  It does such a great job of linking the Bible with historical facts, and makes great connections that help us understand everything in context better.  I'm really enjoying studying ancient Egypt, which is something I never thought I would say.

 The eight year old has really taken an interest in entertaining the baby.  He is always wanting to be the one to carry him to the car or into the church or whatever.  Sort of a Duggar buddy system thing, only self-appointed :)

 The three year old was listening to music here - we have a little baby toy that plays classical music, and it's actually very pretty.  The kids (mine and the daycare kids) all know the tunes and can hum along to them very accurately.

 The baby loves playing with his brother.  He was grabbing wedgits out of the box and throwing them at his brother.  It was pretty cute ... and fairly dangerous.  He has a good arm :)

 He likes building things too ... and crashing them down.

 The baby likes to feed people - and stuffed animals.  Oh, and notice the three year old in all these pictures :)

 I just love this picture - especially the three year old.  He was hanging upside down over the side of my chair.  Can't have the baby get all the attention, you know.  Lately these two have been a little jealous of one another. If I hold one, the other comes running.  If I'm reading to one, the other runs over with a book of his own...   I don't mind.  I love being covered with little boys :)  One day all too soon, they won't be interested in hangin' out with mom anymore.

 The three year old has been sleeping overnight in the living room lately on one of the nap cots.  The baby wakes up and then the three year old would scream at him "NO! GO TO SLEEP!" which of course only made the baby cry louder.  It was getting really bad, so we started telling the three year old to move in the middle of the night instead of yelling at his brother.  Now he just prefers to sleep there, so he starts out there.  He sleeps really well too - when the daycare kids start arriving just before 7 am, he sleeps on, even though he's right in the middle of the action.  He slept until 9 am this morning!

I love the turban effect the way he's wrapped up in his blanket.  He had a fit last night when I brought him the green blanket.  He thought it was the baby's and wouldn't take it.  (All the kids use all the blankets, other than one or two that are special, so there was no reason to think he couldn't use this one.)  I finally got the blue one off his other bed and brought it to him.  Then he decided it was okay to use both of them. *sigh*
  

 I've been working a lot more with the kids on handwriting and letter and number skills.  They all love it.

 The three year old was counting acorns here.

 This morning we woke up to snow.  It's been getting cold lately and has snowed in the mountains, but this is the first we've had in town.

 Only an inch or two, and it melted pretty fast.  The three year old looked outside this morning, and said, "Holy moley of the snow! The snow's on the picnic table!"  Pretty funny.  Not sure where holy moley came from...

It wasn't nearly cold enough for a full snowsuit, but the eight year old is taking advantage of it while he can.  He's on the ski team and our local ski hill will be open again this year (they were closed last year) so he's been praying for snow.  He doesn't understand that once it's here it will stay until June.  I'm not too anxious to have it!  The only good thing about having it here this early is that it will drive the elk down from the higher places in the mountains, so maybe my husband will have a shot at one.  He jumped a herd of them last Saturday but the wind was behind him and they knew he was coming.

 Speaking of elk, that's what's else I've been up to this week.  One of the relatives gave my in-laws an elk, so I've been helping my mother-in-law process it.  She's done the majority of it, but I've enjoyed helping here when I could.  It's a lot of fun to visit.  I get a lot of town and family history that way. :) We split the meat and now my freezer is looking pretty good.

We finished up last night with the final hindquarter, and making all the burger.  We ended up with over 60 pounds of burger alone, and probably close to that amount of steak as well.  It's a lot of work to process an elk, but definitely worth the effort.  And this elk is SO good - not gamey at all and very tender.  Definitely a real blessing :)  And it takes the pressure off my husband needing to get one.  (But I still hope he does).