Ryan David Roundy - Happy 30th!!!

Seriously handsome.

Making sure my kids grow up 'cool'. Also just had to include the Land Rover.

A big kid himself

Who else would help make a zillion spider cupcakes

A big shot movie guy.

My mom had her kids close together. That means that my big brother Ryan is almost exactly a year older than me. Dustin, the next brother, is about 18 months younger. Growing up this close in age means that we had some great memories. So here they are....30 sibling memories in commemoration of 30 great years (or 29 in my case....or 28 in Dustin's case ;-)

1. Drawing on the walls as kids and then signing his name so he would get into trouble. I don't actually remember this but it is a family favorite story. Also, eating the worm to show him how not to be scared of them. Also possibly a family myth but a good story nonetheless.
   
2. Ryan having to take care of the humongous garden by the side of my grandmother's house. I remember he was out watering it when the infamous mud fight happened.
   
3. Ryan taking the bark off the tree to make a canoe. I think he killed the tree.
   
4. Ryan and mom discussing Santa Claus one Christmas. I was not listening and he turned to me and said, 'you know by now, right?' I didn't want to look naive so I answered, 'yeeahhh...' and then proceeded to find out that there was no Santa Claus. He figured it out later and made me feel better.
   
5. Sneaking around Grandma's house after we were suppose to be in bed. Trying to get past the gap that led into the living room on our hands and knees and giggling a lot.
   
6. Playing castle blocks when it rained.
7. Teaching me how to play pool. I think others tried but I didn't get it until he showed me.
8. Riding our bikes down to Grandpa's office and then going to the 7Eleven for a drink.
9. My first car was a Camaro. I hated the interior - a baby blue color. Ryan totally redid it in black leather. I then loved that car.
   
10. When the Camaro started making funny noises and I told him that it was the big round thing and when you took that off and moved the flappy thing the funny noise stopped. I got a full lesson on the part names of a car.
11. In California Dustin remembers Ryan taking him everywhere even though Ryan didn't always want to. Once, Ryan had to take Dustin with him to a playground to meet a friend there. Dustin called the friend's mom a butthead. The mom took both of them home. Dustin says sorry.
12. Both Dustin and I remember helping Ryan wrap rubber bands around the newspapers Ryan had on his paper route...or was he a sub for a friend on a paper route. Anyhow, we use to shoot the rubber bands at each other.
    
13. When I went to college with Ryan I got a 3.9 We had all the same classes and use to study together. The word Scope reminds me of the Scope mouthwash commercial with the song that goes....'uh, uh, uh, uuuhhhh, uh uh' and that sort of sounds like Tarzan and that reminds me of a monkey which reminds me of evolution. And so the John Scopes trial was about evolution. See....I still remember it!
    
14. When we were in Junior High Ryan got chosen as student of the month. When they asked him who his best friend was he said it was his sister. Pretty brave for a junior high kid but I always remembered it. He always made me feel beautiful and special.
    
15. Dustin remembers calling Ryan and saying that Jeff Brown needed help. Ryan headed out immediately to go past Salt Lake (from Pleasant Grove) in traffic in order to fix the car immediately. There are TONS of stories like this about Ryan.
16. On another car story, Dustin said his key wouldn't turn and Ryan came out and turned it and the car started immediately. Ryan has a knack with cars.
    
17. Dustin came upstairs once at 3 am and saw Ryan walking in the door. Ryan asked what Dustin was doing and he said he had woken up to get a drink so Ryan threw him an RC Cola. They don't sell RC Cola in Utah so Dustin asked where he had gotten it. Ryan had decided to go for a drive and ended up in Idaho where he bought it and then came home. Ryan likes drives.
    
18. When I was dating Ben we went up the canyon to play capture the flag. Ryan came with and when Ben got the flag Ryan simply picked him up and moved him.
    
19. In a similar incident.....my friend Andrea once said she was a Lakers fan and so Ryan picked her up and set her outside the door, then locked it.
    
20. I visited Ryan while he was on his mission and I was on my honeymoon. We purposely went to England to see him because I was so bummed that he had missed the wedding. We got in trouble for that one. Sorry.
    
21. Ryan once had a car fall on him. The bruise was unbelievable. He told us it was a shark bite. We called him stubby for awhile. Not sure if he knew we called him that....
22. I remember that he came to visit me in Austin and mom made him bring a really big pink horse called sweetie pie for my girls. Big guy driving a big truck with a big pink horse in the back. Sorry again.
    
23. Ryan loves for us to be together. He insisted on flying me out with my kids for two weeks the Thanksgiving before our younger brother Nathan died. Nate died in February. If I hadn't have flown out to Utah in November then it would have been over a year and half since the last time I saw him. I can never repay Ryan for that.
    
24. We were playing a card game called Maow (I don't really know how to spell it) with Ben's family who are insanely competitive and Ryan came up with crazy rules like switching your hand with the person next to you. I think Ryan might still be a favorite person for Craig to play. And forget I told you that Ryan came up with a rule because we aren't suppose to talk about the rules.
    
25. We use to play war in the backyard in California and I would climb up in the tree or on the swingset and throw dirt clods at the boys. Ryan's weapon of choice was a push broom handle. Dustin favored the croquet mallet. We use to play a lot on top of the Flying Tigers trailer too....what were you thinking mom? :-)
26. Dustin and Ryan were trying to see who was the better shot at the bow and arrow and Dustin's arrow went over the fence and hit Aunt Lara's car. Oops. Ryan did teach us how to play so it isn't really Dustin's fault.
27. Our Uncle Mark use to play really fun games with us like 'run me over'. Another game was playing darts. We would wrap screws with paper and blow them out of pipes. Ryan was the best at it.
    
28. Ryan was also the best at paper airplanes. He use to check out books from the library and somehow his super long jet like planes went farther than our regular ones.
    
29. We use to play spaceship in the old blue van. Ryan was the pilot and we were the co-pilots. He also came up with building sand volcanoes and then sticking the hose up through the bottom to set it off.
    
30. Ryan once shot Uncle Mark in the butt with a paint ball gun while they were packing the trailer for our move to Utah. That would be one of Dustin's favorite memories.

And......one extra for good luck (although I have a few written down I missed....these are kind of fun to think about once you get going). Dustin says you guys invented Christmas songs while painting Grandpa's fence. His friends still ask him to sing one every now and again.

Okay, I could keep going but this could get really long. If you can't tell Ryan has always been my hero. He is the one who made me feel worthwhile growing up and I pretty much credit him with my self-esteem. He never gossips, is always willing to help out, actually cleans, loves getting people nice presents, and has always been a huge example. We love you!!

Homeschool Review....weeks 3, 4, and 5...

What a crazy couple of weeks! With Hurricane Ike came a bit of rescheduling which means we did some stuff we hadn't planned and are a little behind with a few things. Life lessons are sometimes the best ones though so I am not too worried. We heard that Hurricane Ike was coming so the week before it hit we skipped out on our science (the planets) and started looking up hurricane information instead. The girls checked out some books from the library and we followed the hurricane path on the internet. The night of the hurricane we took them outside to feel the winds start to pick up and woke them up that night so they could hear the storm outside. They got to help in our yard and the neighbors with clean up and then take thank you baskets to the firemen last Sunday.
We missed a week of school after the hurricane and only did minimal stuff for a few days the week of the 22nd but finally got back to a full schedule on the 25th. Eliora read her first book start to finish in the last couple weeks plus is still working every day on her Sing, Spell, Read, and Write Lessons which include spelling, dictation, and writing. Audrey is earlier on in the lessons and mostly doing sound reviews for the alphabet. We covered pronouns in Language Arts and I have had them circling words like me, mine, and I in the comics (Eliora loves the comics).
Just started multiplication tables with Eliora in mathematics while still doing addition and subtraction every day. Audrey does easier addition and groupings, patterns, shapes etc. I love our math blocks that Krestin gave me. I did figure out this last week that I really need to start teaching them money and time.
Eliora started piano lessons and we finished our history review of last year and did a big scroll/timeline with some of last year's work plus pictures I had taken. It is so funny the things they remember and the stuff they don't. They like the Magic Tree House series and whenever we did a project that had a coinciding book I would get it and read it to them. Out of the lessons they tend to remember the ones that were reinforced with Jack and Annie.
On the 25th we did a paper mache sun to start our solar system and I learned a very valuable lesson....just because there are mosquitoes outside don't move your big, messy, floury project to the kitchen floor. Husbands get a little upset when you do that. I did take some pics but haven't gotten around to downloading them yet. Will try and do that this week.

Just for Fun

Sadie is a little unsure about this foot
Perfect angels....Eliora, Audrey, and Sadie
Time for mischief....Eliora, Sadie, and Audrey
One beautiful kid
Smiles
Mom and Sadie

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Homeschool...week 2

We started the week off by going to Brazos Bend State Park. Very cool. We have been there before and I always want to take visitors. This is one of the spiders at the park. There was a debate as to whether it is a Golden Orb Spider of a Golden Silk Spider and so we looked it up later for homeschool. Turns out they are the same spider. Very impressive webs.
I pulled this photo off the internet. We did not see any this large this time but we have in the past. This time was cool because my mother-in-law Terry found a baby and then they just kept getting bigger from there. I love that his tail is on the trail. Yep, you are that close.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday was more of Sing, Spell, Read, and Write. The girls learned their new address and we also reviewed nouns. We start pronouns next. Did you know that the definition is now a person, place, thing, or idea? When I was in school it was just a person, place, or thing. The kids are having a hard time with the idea one. I keep trying to tell them it means something you can feel but not see and they keep naming either the Holy Ghost (a person?) or things like air...which is a noun but not an idea. We also are moving right along with math, still doing addition and subtraction. We were suppose to start our history this last week but Audrey's birthday party was on Friday and we just didn't do it. Still off to a slow start but at least we are doing it!

The afterparty.....

Sometimes there is just too much of a good thing. (The party favors were in the bag....it's not what you think ;)

Audrey's Birthday Party

The cupcakes were delicious
Cousin Emma and Audrey eating a coconut

Audrey's Hula Party....5 years old!

Sadie is in the background and her cousin Storie is on the bike.
Eliora
Audrey's cousin Tucker playing happy birthday on the sax.
Aunt Tiffany and cousin Rush
Audrey opening presents with mom and Abby in the background

Week 1 Homeschool Review

These posts might end up being long so feel free to skip if you want to but it is a good way for me to keep up records of what we are doing and share different websites and curriculum with those interested. In the future these posting will probably have pictures of whatever activity the kids are working on at the moment. Last year we planted seeds in gelatin to see the roots, built a volcano, put on a play... you get the idea. This first week however has been mostly a review of where we left off last year. We started the Sing, Spell, Read, and Write with the alphabet review at the end of last month and so started in on the raceway lessons. I really like the program better than the "Learn to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" that we did with Eliora. It costs a lot more but instead of one black and white book with letters that don't look the way they normally do we now have songs, books, games, rewards, etc. If you are going to homeschool then why not have it be fun? Eliora is higher up on the lessons and helping me 'teach' Audrey the lower ones. They then play the games together. Eliora also does her sight words on top of that. Audrey will be starting those soon. We also reviewed our first half of the Language Lessons book by Susan Wise Bauer. They now have memorized quite a few poems and can usually pick out a proper and common noun out of sentences. They practice reading comprehension and writing. For math we are using the Singapore books. Math is my both of their favorite subjects which they must get from their Dad. We reviewed our number recognition and how to do addition and subtraction with number sentences, word stories, number lines etc. I picked Singapore because of the way they introduce so many ways of doing the concepts and Eliora can now do most addition problems in her head. I did realize that last year I taught them what the numbers looked like written down but not written out. (8 v. eight) We had a field trip at the end of the week to the Wallisville Lock and Dam which was hot but very cool. It is part of their ecosystem Wilderness Passport series. This one was for the Trinity Bottomlands. They learned that the lock is shaped like two giant pie pieces that each weigh about 20 tons. They open and close to let boats in and out of the Gulf and keep the salt water from going up stream. This lets the people in the area use the river and lake for drinking water. Ben did a geology lesson on how to identify rocks that have been in a stream verse the ocean and they got to see two alligators. We will start our full blown science, history, and art this week and Eliora starts piano next week. In the meantime my laundry is getting really behind....