The Colorado Adventure

BTW, I hope everyone got their free Rockie taco yesterday. Thank you taco bell (and I guess thank you Lugo for stealing the base so I could get 6 free tacos.)

Today we went to the Rockies rally.

I think they should have had a parade; after all they did win the pennant.

But, I guess all we could give them was a rally with balloons, spirit towels and about 200 or so fans.

Joel was really disappointed that they didn’t stick around to sign autographs. I know, I know, they are celebrities; but they are also just guys who like to play ball and I think it would have been nice if they stayed (only a handful of players were there too, not the whole team.) So, we saw them and they saw us.



We had a big banner that said ‘Thank U Rockies’, I hope they saw it. A photographer and news reporter were tracking me down afterwards to get a name of one of my kids, any guesses as to who??? Yes, it was Grace, again.

She had her picture with the robot dude (and I have to admit it was a cute pic) and then when the mayor signed her towel she ran off yelling, ‘he signed my towel!’ (The Rockies had already left and we were basically left with the option of getting the mayor to sign something or having no signature at all, so we let him sign some stuff.)


We got some posters, spirit towels and signs for free at the beginning of the rally.

I guess it was pretty neat to see the players and say ‘thanks’ for a job well done. (And I guess it was neat to see the mayor and have him sign a baseball and mitt!) We also got to sit in the baseball car, neat huh?

We somehow missed every single shirt that got thrown to the audience, and Bethany was really jumping for them. But, we didn’t walk away empty-handed and we had fun.

Now on to other things. I am going o state here why we don’t do halloween because I am so tired of saying it every year. This IS NOT a judgment to people who do halloween; this is just why WE don’t do it.
People ask me:

Q: Why won’t you let you kids dress up today?
A: They can dress up 364 other days of the year, but not today. The reason why is that I don’t want to be wishy-washy and say that they can dress up and participate in something I don’t believe in.

Q: But aren’t they getting candy?
A: No, not today. They will get candy tomorrow (and they aren’t begging for it.) Also they get candy 364 other days of the year too.

Q: But they have Rockies logos on their faces today, isn’t that dressing up for halloween?
A: No, it was specifically for a rally that the Mayor decided to have today. I can’t help it that he picked halloween to have the rally on.

Q: But, really why don’t you just let the kids have some fun and dress up and get candy?
A: Because of this verse:
Romans 12:2
2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Remember I am already a non-conformist. I have home-birthed, I home school and I hate the Red sox (ok I just threw that on in!) I don’t have a problem being a non-conformist in this point. If everybody else is having a party and trick-or-treating that’s ok, but we’re not gonna do it.

Q: Why, do you think you’re better than me?
A: No, I am a sinner and most lowly worm.
Romans 12:3
3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.
I just want the right to not celebrate this holiday.

Q: So, what do you think the origin of Halloween is?
A: The origin of Halloween dates back 2000 years ago to the Celtic celebration of the dead. A Celtic festival was held on November 1 honoring the Samhain, the Lord of the Dead. Celtic ritual believed that the souls of the dead returned on the evening before November 1. The celebration included burning sacrifices and costumes. These early events began as both a celebration of the harvest and an honoring of dead ancestors.
The first lighted fruit was really carved out of gourds and turnips. European custom also included carving scary faces into the gourds and placing embers inside to light them. This was believed to ward of evil spirits, especially spirits who roamed the streets and countryside during All Hallows Eve.

(I don’t honor the lord of the dead, so I don’t do Halloween. People may say that it’s just all fun and that’s fine. But, we don’t do it, end of story. Also it’s not just a harvest festival or you wouldn’t have people going around as witches and such. There are better ways to honor your dead.)

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Today after Joel’s science we had a field trip to the Littleton farm.
Psalm 65:9-11
9 You care for the land and water it; you enrich it abundantly. The streams of God are filled with water to provide the people with grain, for so you have ordained it.
10 You drench its furrows and level its ridges; you soften it with showers and bless its crops.
11 You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance.


Hannah says to say we saw, ‘goat poo’ (although technically it was sheep poo.)

We saw the chickens and peacocks, sheep and ram, donkeys and cows.

I’m not sure where the pigs were. Here is Grace and her friend in the garden; all that’s left is a few watermelons and squishy pumpkins.

We wandered around to the schoolhouse where the kids had a lesson. They wrote on slates and recited a story about their drawing.




Then we went to the other side of the farm and watched the blacksmith.

Joel asked him a few questions about technical stuff (he has blacksmithed before.) I asked why they don’t have classes there. Turns out they did once, but Littleton thought it made them too liable, so they stopped. That reminds me I need to call Delaney farm and try to set up a smithing class there. We ran around some more and then went inside to play. There are a few things coming up there soon that look fun: wool dyeing, apple cider and corn day, fire making day, candy and taffy pull, and hunting/cooking your food in the open. Maybe we’ll make it to some of those things.

Here is what I have for Hannah tomorrow. The bowls are filled with pom-pom balls. She will move them from bowl to bowl with the tongs. I still need to find a light plastic pair (and smaller) of tongs for her to use. Then she has a new circle fraction puzzle and a new thread the block toy. Also her discovery bottles are in the basket. I am working on 26 small alphabet bottles, which will be neat for her to play with.


Now we’re back home and Joel just finished literature, the girls are watching veggietales and Hannah is asleep. Only 6 more hours till bed time, yeah!

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Yesterday was a blur.

We did school and Hannah spent the entire time “painting” on the water pad. You’re supposed to use the water marker, but I lost it. However, a glass of water and paintbrush works just as well. She covered the whole pad and then waited for it to dry. That might keep her occupied for days! Joel had a math elluminate session. Mr. Tomko was very funny and engaging. He was asking the kids to write equations (not solve them) and when Joel got it right he said, ‘great job, Joel’ when Joel got it almost right he asked Joel to think about the problem and write it again. Later in the session Joel did a problem and Mr. Tomko asked, “is it that easy?’ Joel thought maybe he had it wrong, but Joel typed back, ‘yes, it’s that easy!’ and he was right. I think the positive interaction with someone besides me is helpful (I’m not always the nicest person when you get a math problem wrong and I think you should get it right.) Joel has a science lesson online tomorrow, but I think he wants to do another math; good for him.

The afternoon went like this: Dance, dance, doctor (for Grace were trying to head off a full blown RAD attack), wal-greens, library, home, dinner, CAP, wal-mart, pick up Joel from CAP, home. It was very nice to go to bed.

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Here are some Hannah words (and the translation in parentheses.)

Winnie Poo-poo bear (Winnie the pooh.) – and if you repeat that back to her, “Is that Winnie the poo-poo bear?” She’ll say, “Yeah, nasty poo-poo bear.)
Nikey now (Mickey Mouse.)
Nilky (milk.)
Hannay juice (Gatorade.)
Go-go (Diego.)
Doreee (Dora.)
Go Rockeee (go Rockies.)
Bees socks sucks (Boston Sox sucks.)
Hum (could be ham, candy, juice, coke, anything you have in your hand at that moment that she wants, but doesn’t quite know what it is.)
Tomjerreeee (Tom and Jerry.)
Mine (not yours.)
Piggieee (Punkin the guinea pig)
Where (insert person here i.e. Joel, sissy) is? (Where is (person)?)
Dare (There. As in “Dare Joel is.”)
Xu mai! (xu mai!)
No (Not a chance, no, don’t even think about it.)

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I’m doing the happy dance! I found a dim sum place. That serves dim sum from a cart and they have more than one cart and they gave me my xu mai and it was good!! I can’t wait to go back (it’s King’s land seafood on 2200 Alameda before Federal.)

Hanna was sick last night, but I guess it was the Mcd’s food ‘cuz she’s better today. So, after lunch we went to the Capitol for the dome tour. If you haven’t been, go before next June. They are working on the balcony right now so you can’t go out there, but after June 2008 they will close the whole dome down for 18 months. Then when it re-opens you will be able to go out on the balcony again.

Here is the outside; they are flying the Rockies flag…..go Rockies.

Here is a statue to honor Civil war veterans.

There are 99 steps to get to the top of the dome, but after you’ve climbed 350 at Cabrini, it’s a piece of cake! Here is the place called Mr. Brown’s attic where you can look at the infrastructure of the building through windows, see plans for the building, see old pictures of the Capitol being built and see a model of the building made out of food cans (not sure why.)





In the dome there is a spiral staircase that leads up to a small room.

From here (no public access) you can climb a ladder to the top of the dome and another ladder to get to the light at the very top. (I don’t know why they won’t let us climb?!) Here is the inside top of the dome with the star.

Here is a floor below.

Here are the views from the top, you can see 360 degrees.




Here is why they are working on the dome (an inside window frame.)

Here are the kids in front of the stairs, and all of us.


Here is me leaning through the bars looking down (they didn’t say you couldn’t do that.)

It was very fun and educational to see all the old pictures and plans. The reason we haven’t gone before now is because it just reopened in Feb. 2007 and I hadn’t gotten around to it!

Now I’m on my way to a Mom’s night out while Joel baby-sits. Bye!

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Another co-op class that went…okay. It’s hard to hold the attention of kids ranging in age from 2 to 15.

We talked about bones today; how they hold our shape and protect our organs. How bones are stronger than steel and harder than almost anything in our body (except our teeth enamel.) We saw x-rays of the skull, rib, and arm bones.

We saw a chicken bone that had no collagen left (and broke easily), and one that had no calcium. (The kid’s thought that one was great they kept shaking it back it forth amazed at how rubbery it was.)


We talked about what happens when you break a bone and how many bones are in our body (14 in your face, 206 in an adult body, 3 in your arms and legs.) We played a game where my helper M called out a body part and the kids had to step on the right number (once he called out underwear and everyone was looking for 0!)

We saw bone marrow in a microscope and saw a cow bone.

It grossed me out but the kids were touching the marrow and getting bloody glove prints, pulling at the periosteum and whacking the compact bone to see if they could make a dent in it.

We passed around some prairie dog bones and a bone from a deer that had calcified; we looked at these with a magnifying glass and saw all the little holes in the bone marrow. The last project was to make a model of a bone. We had white pvc pipe cut into 8-inch lengths, a yellow sponge, pipe cleaners and plastic wrap.

Grace’s bone is a little colorful in the vein department.

I should have cut the sponges longer, some kids shoved it all the way in the pipe and then we couldn’t see it (but they knew it was there and what it represented, so that’s all that matters.) I had bingo boards and bone fact cards for them to take home. Oh, and we measured almost everyone’s height and they took home a chart to put that on. Hannah also interrupted the class by needing a trip to the bathroom to change her diaper. She was very interested in looking at the bones through the magnifying glass, “Bone? Bone!” was her chant after that.

We are garbed up in purple tonight for the Rockies game 2.


We were going to watch it at the park, but everyone voted to stay home. Hannah can say, “Go Rockeeee!” it’s so cute.

Tomorrow it’s presentation club and a dome tour at the capitol. Looks like we’ll have another sunny day for that trip.

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Today we went to some new parks that we haven’t seen yet. This is Chessman park. Here is Joel doing the ‘flying trapeze’ on the swings. Here is Hannah swinging. (video corrupt, I’ll have to try and re-load later.)
Here is a squirrel.

Here is me!

The trees are almost done for the season; this oak is hanging onto some nice yellow leaves.

Here is Bethany playing with the sand digger.

Not too great in the playground department, but, a nice open field to fly a kite.

Here’s Grace holding the kite for Joel.

When it was Hannah’s turn Joel said run and she never looked back.

We were yelling, ‘stop!’, but she just kept running with that kite. It didn’t have a very long string so once it got up you had to keep backing up.



After chasing the kite for a while we got in the car and headed to the Hungarian freedom park. It’s mostly this fountain and a grassy space.

We passed by the Sunken gardens park, which I thought might have a garden, but it was just a playground and a basketball court. I think once upon a time it was a garden. Then we headed down Colfax and met an interesting fellow at the gas station. He asked for some money to buy groceries with (because that would go farther than a Wendy’s hamburger.) We talked about the Rockies, his surgery and his new job. I gave him some money because, well, this time I had money (usually I don’t.) But here’s the weird part- as we drove off he was in the middle of the street and we waved to him, he waved back and then as we passed him, he was gone! He couldn’t have turned left because there was a lot of traffic headed his way. He didn’t turn right because we would have seen him. I think he was an angel sent to see if I would give someone food (or money for food.) The kids think so too, Joel was looking out the back window like, “Where did he go?” Bethany said he didn’t look much like an angel (and they are supposed to look like what?) Sometimes things aren’t what they seem. It started a great discussion on how we should treat people and how God wants us to help others.

Anyway, next we went by the $1 store and then to Wal-mart. We got back home just in time for the first pitch of the Rockies/Red Sox game. Now to all those fans, I hope you watched the whole game. Yes, we lost, but I watched the whole game. I think that if they don’t put Beckett in tomorrow we can win and tie it up. Remember though the Red Sox came back to get into the world series, so it’s not a stretch to say that we could win even if it goes up to 3-0. Tomorrow we’ll be watching the game from Skyline park just off the mall. We can’t get tickets, but we can get pretty close to Coors field to watch all of the Series games! Wanna join us?

1-13
game 1 goes to the Red Sox

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What a day! It’s days like today where I’m glad I’m a HS’er. (Not because of free candy and tea.) We get a chance to put book learning into a real world situation. I do it all the time anyway, but today I see that (among other things) we saw the concept of 1,000 lbs of sugar and thought about what that would be in grams and kg. We saw art from Tajikistan and not just art, but actual wood engraved by an artisan from another continent and rugs woven by someone from far away. We tried dishes from other cultures and tea from around the world. We saw ancient pottery and thought about who the people were who made it and how they lived. We measured out a 40ft. cord and got to imagine the sight of a dinosaur with a wingspan of that length flying towards us. We read books about bats and dinosaurs, pirates (that was in the car) and listened to Jewish reggae/rap on the way to Boulder (yes, there is such a thing, imagine!) We got to practice being in front of people and performing, with juggling balls and song. We did all this and never sat down in front of a schoolbook, now that’s education!

First we went to Hammond’s candy and took the tour. Did you know they start every day with 1,000 pounds of sugar and 1,000 pounds of corn syrup? We saw them making ribbon candy on one side of the factory. They hand pull it, cut it into a small strip and then it gets ‘crimped’ through the ribbon machine (a relic from the 50’s.) On the other side a guy was making peppermint pillows (the small fat candies that look like a wanna be candy stick.) First they mix the inside of the candy (that part is always white) adding flavor to it when it’s hot.

Then they put on the ‘jacket’, in this case a red and white striped one.

Then the candy goes to the stretcher and then the cutter where it got cut into small bit size pieces. Hammond’s candy hand makes most of the candy.

They use the ribbon machine and cutters for certain candies (but even the ribbon candy was being cut into strips by a guy with scissors.) They were also making Martha Stewart’s candy canes for Macy’s (and you thought she made them herself!) Bethany decided that she wants to work here when she gets older, the lady on the tour asked her how old she was and told her to come back in 10 years.

The factory room is hot, it’s kept at a sultry 85 degrees, I don’t think I’d want to be in there (they can’t keep it any cooler than that or the candy would get too cold and not be pliable.) Next we saw the packing department where boxes of candy were being carefully placed into a box and then covered with a kind of foam that melts into place, thus securing the candy for its (hopefully) unbreakable journey.
Here’s the biggest candy cane they make, a 40 pounder.

They tried to make it bigger, but it was hard to shape it correctly. Here’s what the machine that makes that cane looks like.

We got to sample some candy, of course, and then we bought a bag of broken candy (it’s cheap.)



Then we were back on the road to Boulder for Celestial seasonings tea factory.

We arrived at the tea factory with minutes to spare until the tour.

Unfortunately no children under 5 are allowed, so Hannah and I sat in the shop and sampled every tea they had to offer. Gingerbread spice is definitely a winner! Here’s the dress and accessories made out of tea bag paper and boxes.

After the tour we went to the gift shop and got 6 boxes of tea for $2.00; strawberry, a calming one and a green tea. There is an advantage to buying from the shop, you can get stuff cheap because it’s going out of style or discontinued. Joel said that the factory smelled so good. Each little room had it’s own smell because of the tea leaves in it. They liked the peppermint and wintergreen room the best.


After sampling a few more teas we went to Pearl St. mall to have lunch.

Pearl St. has nothing on the 16th st. mall in Denver. It was smaller and the hot dogs were overpriced, but the kids liked playing on the boulders.

Joel even juggled his clubs for a few minutes and got a few compliments and a dollar (he would have done it longer, but I think he was embarrassed by the compliments.)

Grace sang her favorite song (for right now) ‘Light of the world’ for passersby. We went into a bookstore on the mall and walked around for a bit. Then we hit the tea house.

Why so much tea? Well I wanted to visit this tea house because it looked like an interesting place. The Boulder Dunshanbe tea house was assembled from 200 crates full of carved wood, art, wall hangings and furniture sent to Boulder from its sister city Dushanbe, Tajikistan.


It opened in 1998 and it’s a neat piece of art inside and out. We had some tea and some appetizers – you’d be impressed the kids tried some:
SOUTH AMERICAN AREPA: Griddle corn cake, pulled chicken, asadero cheese, red chile, and creme fraiche
MIDDLE EASTERN HUMMUS PLATE : Housemade hummus drizzled with olive oil and served with cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, pickled onions and pita.

Here is the ceiling.

Here is one of the hand carved seats.

All the kids deemed the chicken too spicy, Hannah ate the hummus and at least everyone tried something.

After the tea house we went by the CU museum. Wouldn’t you know it; they changed the exhibit I wanted to see. It’s now a temporary exhibit for day of the dead. But we did see dinosaur bones and we did a discovery pack on pterodactyls.

Then we went downstairs and saw the pottery and played in the discovery den.



Here is the outside of the building.

I thought I’d have trouble finding it, but we walked right to the front door of the museum no problem.

I was going to do a field trip here, now I know that if we do we need to do a hands on part to the tour (like weaving) because otherwise the museum is really small and the kids would get bored quickly.

After that we headed home, but took the scenic route. I was tempted to stop at a few places (like white ranch open space) just to check it out, but the kids wanted to get home (more specifically Joel wanted to get to Wal-mart to buy a game.) So, now we’re here and waiting for James to call and tell us that he had an exciting day in Houston

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We did school this morning and Joel had a math test. I finally got the turning the repeating decimal into a fraction (I didn’t get it the other day.)
It’s like this: 0.36 (with a line over it indicating it repeats.) Say n = .36, so n = .363636.
100n – n = 36.36 – .3636
99n = 36.00
divide each side by 99
n = 36/99
n = 4/11
I think it’s easier to not try to change the decimal in the first place!

Bethany was reading about the Greeks, so she wrote a myth/fable about Turtle guy. I’ll post that later under Bethany’s page. Grace is having trouble writing 2’s and 5’s. I suspect more practice and whining will follow.

Today was observation day at worship dance. Here is Bethany stretching in her class.



Click here to see her dance.
Here is Grace in her class.




Click here to see her dance.
Here to see her skip.
Here to see her pirouette.
(As my uncle pointed out the video is crappy. That’s because it’s taken with a camera that’s so old now they don’t sell that low of a mega-pixel anymore. Just think of it as an old 16 mm movie with no sound, now it looks great huh?!) Aren’t they cute? Bethany said her class is a lot harder this year, more stretching and a harder dance to remember. I’m impressed that she is keeping both dances she has to learn separate (although he Nutcracker one is definitely easier than this one.) These girls that teach are awesome. They have such a hunger for God and it spills out into their dancing. I don’t know how they keep the choreographing of all the dances separate (Bethany’s teacher teaches 3 levels and has 2 of her own classes to take, each have different dances.) It’s going to be an awesome recital December 10th.

After a quick trip to the library we went home and got Joel for CAP. We ate at Mcd’s and then dropped off Joel. Then I went back to Mcd’s to let the girls play. Then back to pick up Joel. Next week is 5th Monday so it’s goof off day. They don’t have to suit up and they will be watching the game (Rockies) and playing video games. Tonight they had drill and a speaker (a cop) who talked about winter river safety. Now Joel doesn’t want to go to Georgetown or Evergreen lake because the guy told them about drowned people he pulled out of the river when they fell through the ice. ‘But this ice is really thick’, I say. ‘Ok Mom, this was a professional and he said you could die if you fall through the ice.’ So, I think winter ice-skating on Evergreen lake is out. I’m sure the guy was talking about thin ice on a lake you don’t know, but, oh well. In 2 weeks Joel will take the written Curry exam and try to get his patch for airman basic. Also his name patch should be in next week, so he won’t be cadet nobody anymore. He said that at drill tonight the leader tried to trip them up by saying, “Present arms, order…….pizza!” and he walked around with a cardboard mask with a silly face on it and taunted the cadets, “You know you want to laugh, go ahead, laugh!” Joel can’t wait to try to yell at the cadets and trick them.

I’m printing out directions for tomorrow. We’re going to Hammond’s candy, Celestial seasonings tea factory, Pearl st. mall and CU. Busy, busy.

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Hannah throwing snow.

Grace pulling Hannah.

Joel throwing snow.

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get the heart pumping. We went outside and played, threw snowballs and threw shovel loads of snow.

My yard is the one with grassy patches showing through now. Oh well, we had fun.


The boys lightsaber fighting.

My fall snowman.

The trees.

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James is in Houston now, missing this…………

Yeah, I parked the car outside on purpose.


About 2 1/2 – 3 inches depending on where you measure, and more coming.

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Well, well, well…….the weatherman was right. It was going to snow today. As a 2 ½ yr. native of Denver, I have taken the ‘let’s wait and see’ approach to the news people when it comes to weather. That’s because Denver is a bowl and sits next to the Rocky mts., which can make predicting weather hard. They say it will snow, but it doesn’t, they say the high will be in the 50’s and it’s in the 30’s. So I just wait. I know that snow is coming. It came.

This morning I woke up to rain when I drove James to the bus to go to the airport. Humph! Rain, I thought, see they were wrong again. At the bus stop 15 minutes later it was a rain/snow mix and then on the way home, snow, glorious snow. I like driving in the snow, but it’s distracting. On the one hand you have your car hurtling towards the snow at 60 mph. As the snow whips past you and slams into your headlights, it’s like you’re in a video game. You are the space ship zooming through space as stars stream past you. On the other hand if you look at the snow in the streetlamps, the flakes hover and then gently swirl to the ground like dandelion seeds in the sun. At night when it snows, sometimes we sit out on the porch and watch the swirling clouds of flakes meander down in the glow of the lights. It’s fun try it sometime.


Anyway I came back and went to bed and now it’s 9am, I think they predicted 1-2inches (again I don’t believe that, remember the 6 inches that was 3 feet?) and we already have one inch as of 8:45am. I asked Hannah if she wanted to go sledding, “unh-huh!” was her reply. Now the flakes are bigger (so there’s more moisture in the air and the flakes are grabbing onto it) they are now small cotton candy puffs melting on the sidewalk, but gathering on the grass and trees.

It will all be gone by tomorrow, but for today, we celebrate!
Click here to see it snowing!

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Yep, that’s right, 13 years ago in an apartment in Katy, TX – Joel Foster Carberry – 6lbs 7 oz 19 1/4 in. came into the world. His dad, who counts that as the greatest moment of his life, helped him into this world. Reaching down and pulling out a son! I went into labor on a Tuesday and Joel came Thursday morning at 5:46am, that’s a long labor. (But it was a labor of love.)

Now Joel is 13. He is about to make the rank of airman basic in CAP, he likes fencing, bowling and video games. He likes math, but hates writing. He can now take the bus to the mall, ride his bike to town center and walk to King Soopers (that’s called responsibility.) He can baby-sit for us (which is sooooo nice), mow the lawn and he has graduated from emptying the dishwasher (it’s Bethany’s job now.) He wants to fly an airplane in the future and his goal is to get into the USAF academy. I’m looking into an apprenticeship at the Centennial airport for him soon.

For his birthday he invited some friends to go to Casa Bonita. It’s this place that is a replica of (a governors mansion I think) a building in Mexico. Inside it’s huge. Here is a cave eating area, magician stage area, 30 ft waterfall, 2 arcades, more dining and a gift shop.

We took up a whole section behind the mariachi players (we did have 18 people!) I made Joel a baseball cake, you can’t see the symbol at the bottom, it’s CR for the Rockies.

We ate and played and had cake and played and explored. It was packed in there, I used to think of it as a tourist place, but I think people go there as a family once a month or more. So, Joel and his friends had fun and then we went home. Two of his friend got permission to sleepover, but James had to come down and tell them to be quiet at 2:30am. All in all I think he had a great time. Now he’s officially a ‘young adult’ (not a teenager!)

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We did school this morning and then I got stuff ready for GS. We were having an investiture/rededication ceremony. Two new girls were investing and one was bridging. The rest were just rededicating. Renee’s husband made the nice candleholders you see and we picked up the bridge from the GS unit (I don’t think you can see that in my pic.)

First we ate our potluck dinner, so many good recipes (and food that my kids ate) that I have some new food to try on them soon. The girls had their fans that they had decorated earlier so they could say the GS motto and law. We had our investees and bridger do their thing and then started on the candle lighting.

The girls each picked a line from the GS law to say, Grace had ‘honest and fair’ and Bethany had ‘friendly and helpful’.


They said the law and then lit the candle for that part.

Here’s ‘future Daisy’ Hannah.

After the lighting of the candles it was time to share a song or poem. Bethany said her Psalm poem and Grace sang ‘Light of the world’. Then they played around while we cleaned up. It was the best ceremony yet!

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