A Taste of Korea

Our Homeschool group has a geography club that I created a few years ago. Each month we independently study a new country, this month was S. Korea. Falcon's Tae Kwon Do instructors family are Korean and they own a local Korean restaurant. I have never tried Korean food in my life and thought this would be a great experience for us to go eat there. I invited our homeschool group as well. On the first Thursday on January, 15 of us (children and adults) showed up eager to eat some Korean food. Two of the families had eaten Korean before and myself and 1 other family had not.


The outside woodworking of the small restaurant that sits in a strip mall. This entryway was amazing and really set if apart from everything near it.The Korean owner did all of the woodworking and painting himself. I was blown away.


I especially loved this, so cute!


Sign that says Korean Restaurant.


View of the inside of the restaurant. It was small only having a total of 8 tables but big in terms of Asian style and taste.


Here is a painting that sat over one of our tables, the owner did the artwork himself as well and all the indoor and outdoor woodworking. The owner is also a Grandmaster of Tae Kwon Do.

Here is my food, doesn't it look pretty? I could not tell you what I ordered because I just said okay to all the recommendations from our waiter and it was all FANTASIC. I now find myself craving Korean food and have been searching the Internet for Korean recipes. I will defiantly go back and eat there very soon, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.


Not sure what this is but I thought it was neat!

I am so glad that I was able to bring this country to life for my children and really get an authentic taste of traditional foods from S. Korea. I highly recommend this restaurant to all my friends and family. A beautifully designed restaurant, great service and mouth watering foods that has created a craving that will only be suppressed by eating at this restaurant in the very near future.

Avalanche at Mount Hubba Bubba

We Read:




Then we made our own snow capped mountain (pillows, stuffed animals, throw rugs, and blankets covered with mattress pads to create our snow)

This is Mount Hubba Bubba he first mountain we built. There were usually 2 or 3 kids behind the mountain ready to push the pile down to the other kids on the steps or bottom of the stairs.Many children fell tumbled down the mountain as well but no injuries ever occurred due to all the cushions.


The snow (pillows and such) cascading down the mountain (stairs)


Now placing animals and Ice pixies on the mountain to see what would happen when the avalanche occurred.


Things did not go well for the animals nor the Ice pixie. It took us awhile to dig them out.

This was a great activity to get out some energy. All my children were eager to run up and down the stairs to build, and then cause avalanches again and again. I even got a great workout doing this. Falcon said this was the most fun science class ever! It was really fun to create different types of avalanches to discover what would be the most destructive.

Geography skills were used while we looked for mountain ranges on the map and found the Alps and the Rockies which is where the most avalanches occur.

Homeschool Mother's Journal - A New Year

In my life this week…
Hopefully my Rats are eating the poison out of our 4 bait stations set up in my back yard, the squirrels sure like it.

I had a great run on New Years day at 8 am and am staying on track with my goals. I realized this week that I need to knock out each weeks goals early on so I don't have it hanging over my head all week long.

In our homeschool this week…
On Monday I was feeling quite lazy and wishing for another day of vacation. We had a light school day doing mostly S. Korean projects then when it finally started snowing I declared a snow day and we went outside to play.

Any idea what animal made these tracks?



On Tuesday the kids seemed to feel like I did on Monday and I had a hard time keeping them focused and on track.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
We went to an authentic Korean restaurant.The food was great and my kids tried almost everything. I will be doing a separate blog post about that sometime this week as well as a long post on our Korean projects we have worked on.

Questions/thoughts I have…
Do you ever wish you could freeze time and just live in the moment? Possibly live like the movie groundhog's day? I out the movie Shark Tale in today and it took me back 6 years when Falcon was just 5 and loved that movie and the PC game Shark Tale. I cannot believe how quickly time has gone by. As much as I want my kids to get older and do more I want them to stay frozen at this point in time forever because before I know it they will be grown with their own families.

Things I’m working on…
Staying focused on my New Years Goals.

I’m reading…


Well I read the whole thing in 3 days. So, now I am reading


I’m cooking…
Bee Bim Bop, and Pot Stickers

Homeschool Mothers Journal - Oh Rats!

In my Life this week...
According to a news paper article I recently read states that because of all the construction on the sewers and interstate near my house many hundreds of thousands of rats are running loose through my area of the city and are seeking shelters near or in homes. ( like ours). You can see them running around at night in back yards where children play. Our city is not doing much about it either. They have put hundreds of lbs of rat poison in the sewers but the rats are not found there they are in neighborhoods like mine.


A rat has now chewed a hole under my back door into the dining room crawl space. We STILL have rat problem!! My husband thought that all the Decon he put out killed them but he was WAY wrong. We now have hired an exterminator who set up 4 bait stations in our backyard for the rats to feed on, he will switch to a different poison each week for 4 weeks. We also have snap traps in our garage as well. The exterminator came out today to show me how to get my dead rats out and reset them.

One of the big problem we have in our yard is a HUGE oak tree, he said they attract rats because they love the acorns. He also mentioned that they love to eat dog poop. Yum! I am religious about cleaning up ours everyday but my neighbors do not clean their poop up, EVER and they have 3 dogs! You can see all the rats digging tunnels under our fence to feed over there.

Would it be un ethical to place some dead rats in their driveway so they can SEE there is a problem, maybe then they would start cleaning up poop!

In our homeschool week..
Well we are on vacation this week so I have been busy planning next months lessons. We are going to be studying Asia.

A quote to share...
We were just heading outside to play and Duck says to me "its freezing outside it's 30:10, and that's a lot of money!" lol I think we need to work on time, measurement, and money a bit more, he seems confused ......lol!

5 Simple Goals for 2012

Another year has come and gone it was a year full of many memories and mistakes made.

Here is a list of my goals for next year, I set them a bit smaller than I would have liked. I am an over achiever by heart, but I wanted to make sure my goals were attainable so I would have no problem hitting them, and hopefully surpassing each one. I plan to re post my goals the first week of each month so I can stay on track all year. (I would hate to compose a post about how I was unable to achieve any or all goals that month)

1. Write at least 1000 words a week for my novel in hopes of completing it by August 2012.


2. Make a kids created monthly scrapbook. I had a scrap book bought for me 5 years or so ago and I still have not done anything with it. Every year I say I am going to have the kids each pick their favorite pictures of that month and do a page but, I never do. This year I am going to make it a school art project for the kids. They can either draw pictures save school stuff print pictures anything they want. This will be done the first school day of every month for the previous month so the first project will be done on Wednesday February 3.



3.Do yoga at least 2 nights a week. Before my last 3 children were born I did yoga daily and loved the stress release it gave me. I have let my yoga practice slip through the years. My plan is to set up my yoga space before the kids are in bed so as soon as they are in bed I will be ready to go.


4.Jog outside, kids free! I plan to get a neighborhood sitter to watch my kids for an hour once a week to have a stress free jogging experience.


5. A year long study of 12 famous artists. Each month we will focus on one 1 artist and create an art project replica of a famous painting.
A few that I have selected already are:

Vincent Van Gogh
Marry Casset
Claude Oscar Monet
Joan Miro
Leanardo Da Vinci

I am hoping to fill in the rest as we go selecting artists that we read about through our other studies.


So that's it, just 5 simple easily obtained goals to promote a stress reducing, fitness enhanced, and creativity inspired year!

What are your goals? I would love to hear them!

Spider Feeding, Brass Quintet, and Santa in Space

In my life this week…
I forced my lovely husband to help wrap gifts this year (he has NEVER helped in the last 13 years.) He finds an empty box (It's a gluten free bread box) and puts Falcons gift inside then slaps a label on it without wrapping it. I say to him,"what are you doing are you going to wrap that?" He replies "it is wrapped. Can you see what is inside it?" I say "NO!" He replies okay then it's wrapped, isn't the whole point of wrapping a gift just to cover it up so you do not see what is inside? You can't see what is inside, so its wrapped!"

He is putting it under the tree from Santa, falcon knows there is no Santa so my dear husband did it as a joke so Falcon thinks he got a box of Gluten free bread mix for Christmas! It is a bit funny!

This is what will be sitting under the tree with Falcons name on it from Santa!

In our homeschool this week…
Slow going but we are working on our S. Korean war project, Cats, Winter Solstice, Germs, and a few other things.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
Robin and I went to see "How the Alien Stole Christmas" at out local planetarium. They just had a huge remodel with a brand new SciDome XD 3-dimensional computerized space simulator. It was AMAZING. Last month Falcon and I saw "A Journey Into a Black Hole", it was just as cool.

The movie was cute, the Alien took Santa to all the planets in the Solar system, then talked about the climate and why the Aliens who live there that need a Santa too! In the end Santa creates a special Santa suited for each planet's environment to deliver presents to all the alien children in the solar system.

It was a great addition to our Astronomy unit with a little bit of Christmas fun mixed in!

We also went to the zoo to sketch more animals today we sketched the Goldren Orb Weaver Spider then watched as the zoo keepers hand fed this big spiders eewwww!


We also saw the Symphany's Brass Quintet play at the library.

Owl working on a coloring page of a trumpet while listening to the music. Children were encouraged to get up and dance and really FEEL the music. This was a nice tie in to last weeks Book Lentil.

Questions/thoughts I have…
Does your Librarian know you by name? How many books do you have checked out at a time? We usually have around 80 at any given time. I love books and we have an awesome library that we use quite often instead of buying expensive texts. Anyone else a library fanatic?

I’m cooking…
Cookies, Mini cheesecakes, Lemon and white chocolate chex mix and my famous butter and white wine turkey with all the fix in's!

A photo to share..

Robin. Duck, and Owl having a blast playing in the empty baby pool in 30 degree weather! So Funny!

Bear Hibernation -creative playtime

Today we read and talked all about the Winter Solstice and read:


WE sang a Rhyme sung to the tune of Farmer in the Dell

Its time to hibernate, It time to hibernate
When its cold and wintery,its time to hibernate

A door mouse curls up tight
A door mouse curls up tight
When its cold and wintery, its time to hibernate
Its time to hibernate, It time to hibernate
When its cold and wintery, its time to hibernate


Bears go sleep in thier caves
Bears go sleep in thier caves
When its cold and wintery, its time to hibernate
Its time to hibernate, It time to hibernate
When its cold and wintery, its time to hibernate


A groundhog goes in its den
A groundhog goes in its den
When its cold and wintery, its time to hibernate
Its time to hibernate, It time to hibernate
When its cold and wintery, its time to hibernate


Some frogs sleep in the mud
Some frogs sleep in the mud
When its cold and wintery, its time to hibernate
Its time to hibernate, It time to hibernate
When its cold and wintery, its time to hibernate

We found a nice cave (box) for our bear Otis, then added items for his wintertime cave. We added silk flowers, twigs, playfood that would be naturally found in nature (except for a felt peanut butter sandwhich Robin insisted on adding because the bear found it out side where a little girl must have dropped it.) We gave Otis a big hug then sealed up the box. Our bear will stay there until Springtime (I am sure my kids will insist on peeking at him from time to time)

loaded up cave!


Decorating the Cave (box) we wrote things on it like Do not Disturb! Shhhh! Beware of sleeping bear!


I found this toy to today while Duck was shopping for a gift for Owl.

Kido A to Z Magnatab

It has little magnets that fit into the little bubbles to push down with your fingers tracing them or use back of pen, then use the magnet side of the pen to pop the little balls back up. An ingenous way to teach letter. Duck bought the number one for Owl hoping to recieve the others from Grandma for Christmas!