Recycle Center Field Trip

Our Homeschool Share Group recently went on a very fun and educational field trip! 

We headed over to the Denton Recycle Center!!

The Denton Recycle Center offers tours at no cost to community members and school groups. A few of our Share Group families have learned about recycling and so it was a very interesting trip for our kids. We learned about the landfill, the energy that the landfill can generate and how our city of Denton separates and uses recyclable material.

One of the most fun thing was for all of our families to stand on the truck scale and measure our weight. We were literally A TON of homeschoolers on a field trip!! 

We were able to look at the machines and conveyor belts that separate the recycling. It is so nice to live in a place that does this...we just put all of our recycling in one basket and they take it to their center and separate it there. 

Each year Denton hosts a Recycled Clothing Fashion Show. This is one of the winners from the show!

So many cans!

The kids also got a chance to wear hard hats and vests like the workers at the center. They read through picture books about trash and recycling, and they played with recycled toys.

Field trips are always more fun with friends!

Our guide taught the boys how to get the trucks to honk - so after our tour, they watched for the trucks and tried to get them to honk for them. This was a favorite part for most of the bigger boys. 

This was a quick and FREE field trip!! We learned a lot and had a lot of fun doing it! 

11 Months a Serna

It is so hard to believe that Faith has been in our arms for 11 months now!!

11 months of kisses...

11 months of Faithy snuggles....

11 months of giggles and smiles.......

11 months of fun!! 

Faith's favorites are milk and animal crackers, Elmo, Mommy's lap, swinging, and anything sweet. She is so, so silly!! There is not a day that goes by where we are not laughing at her antics. She loves her brothers and sisters, her grandparents and her Georgie (her favorite friend). 

She also loves babies. A friend of mine sent a picture of her precious newborn baby and Faith loves to carry the picture around with her. A few days ago she told me that he is her baby and she is going to China to get him! (Because, you know, all babies are from China!)

And we can't imagine life without this little one.  

Daddy's Big Day

October 1st was also Byron's birthday!! 

We got stuck in traffic on the way home from the zoo, so he actually beat us home, but when we finally got home we ate grilled fajitas outside, opened gifts and had home-made peach cobbler to celebrate!

Byron's big gift was tickets to the Baylor vs. UT football game December 5th. He and our brother-in-law will go and root for opposite teams! HA!! My parents got him a Baylor hat and I got him a shirt to wear to the big game, too.

He's such a handsome guy!! I am one lucky girl!

I am thankful everyday for this sweet guy. Besides being handsome, he is caring, faithful, compassionate, hardworking, wise and most of all,  loves the Lord. We are so blessed by him!! 

Homeschool Day at the Zoo

October 1st was Home School Day at The Fort Worth Zoo!! We made it a group field trip and met up with most of our Home School Sharing Group! We made quite the crowd!!

The weather was gorgeous and the animals were out!

Faith had much more fun at this zoo than she did at the one in Guangzhou, China. She was sick with a horrible cold virus in China and still so scared of the world. Now she was climbing, running, and happy to be with her siblings and friends!

How many homeschoolers can you fit in a photo booth? 

It was a great field trip and so fun to do it with a group!! We are hoping to go again next year!

Mig is 5!!

How can it be that this cutie is already 5?!? I have seriously been in denial that my little man is turning FIVE. Seriously. In fact, though we have been planning his birthday party for awhile, I just realized this past Sunday that his party was THIS WEEK!! Yikes! Then when I went to buy candles I almost bought a number 4 instead of a number 5. I have begged and pleaded with him to just stay 4 forever, but he refuses. So, I guess I will just have to cry a little on the inside that he is growing up way too much and way too fast! 

Both of my boys are big time Star Wars fans, so we had to do a Star Wars theme photo shoot for his birthday. He especially loves the villains. Here he is channeling his best Anakin Skywalker - and doing a pretty awesome job at it!

I also made him take some non-Star Wars portraits, too, though. He is such a handsome kid!

Mig is still a big Momma's Boy. He tells Byron that I am his girlfriend and sneaks hugs and cuddles whenever he can. He is a rough and tumble boy in all other aspects, though. He loves to play rough, is loud and can be quite rambunctious. He takes his job as pesky little brother (or as Selah likes to say, "little bother") to heart. He is also still our class clown and has some of the funkiest dance moves you will ever see! 

God has blessed us with this little guy! Happy 5th (sigh) Birthday, Little Man! We love you!! 

10 Months a Serna

Yesterday marked 10 months since Faith has been home!! 

She now weighs 29 pounds and is 34 inches tall. She LOVES Elmo, kittens and playing with play dough. She is talking sentences and cracking us up constantly. 

Health wise, we just had an appointment with her GI doctor and are going to be scheduling an endoscopy to find out why she has such frequent and loose bowel movements. That will be happening in January. Her feet and legs are getting stronger each day as she continues sleeping in her bar at night and doing PT exercizes 3 times each day.  

She is a little ball of energy and brings joy to all that she sees! Praise God for this little blessing!

Homeschool Spirit Week

For the last 4 years we have participated in International Homeschool Spirit Week as a family!! It is a fun way to celebrate the blessing of being able to homeschool.

Monday was Crazy Hair Day:

Tuesday was International Day. 

Wednesday was Wacky Tack Day.

Thursday was Retro Day. Faith was representing the 90's, Selah was 50's, Mig was 70's and Gabe was 60's. 

Friday was Giving Day. We went to the Samaritan's Purse Gift Catalog and the kids used their "Give" money to buy some chicks, baby formula, and Bibles. It was a great opportunity for the kids to see how many people in the world are not even getting their basic needs met each day and how blessed we are.  

We are so thankful to be homeschoolers!! What a FUN week!!

Pine Cove Couple's Retreat

A few weekends ago, Byron and I had the extreme pleasure of heading out east to Tyler, TX to spend the weekend with our Bible Fellowship Class at Pine Cove Camp. 

It was beautiful and relaxing!

There were a few seminars to attend, but most of the time was just spent enjoying nature (the weather was awesome), enjoying each other, and enjoying a little break from life. 

Isn't he handsome? 

Here is our big group - we love the fellowship we have with them each Sunday and it was such a treat to be at Pine Cove with them!

And a BIG special thanks to my mom and Dad G. who came up to keep the kids so that we could go!