The Jungle, Ocean Life and Puppies

Avonlea and our diagram of the jungle (we studied letter "J" last week in homeschool). She learned about the four parts and we printed and glued pictures on it, cooresponding the correct animals for each layer of the jungle (or rain forest). Lincoln enjoyed getting in on the action of coloring our trees and gluing on animals. He still goes up to them everyday and points to the animals and makes their sound. This week however, we've had so many doctor's appointments that letter "K" has taken a back seat. We have some things to catch up on for this week's school lessons over the weekend. The neat part about catching up over the weekend is that Avy is only 3 and doesn't know what a "school day" or "weekend" (we call them 'Daddy Days') is and she's always excited to learn.
***The doctor's appointments have also consisted of a trip to the ER for Avonlea and me Monday evening due to her asthma. The pollen counts here are insane right now and both kids are having a hard time breathing. It happends every year, so no surprises here. Poor kiddos.


Ms. Sue teaching us about ocean animals. We took a trip to a local science center today to learn about ocean life. They had a 45 minute preschool program going and it was donations only, so we took advantage of the great deal and had fun.


Avonlea and her friends exploring the touch tank today.


Meet "Country Boy", the Golden Retriever AKA... Riley's boyfriend. He's staying with us for 4 days, so that in time, we may have some Golden Retriever puppies (63 days from now). The two are inseperable and it's only been 1 day of having him around, but he's going to be hard to say goodbye to. The kids are in love with him. I even saw Avonlea curled up on the floor reading the two of them "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" earlier today. What's funny is that it appeared that they were listening! He's a sweet dog and VERY well tempermented. He's lighter than Riley, so that should give us a great color for the puppies. Why are we doing this you may ask? Well, Riley is 5 years old this month and we've always wanted to carry on her line. She's such an amazingly good dog and won't be around forever, so we'd like to keep one of her puppies. The experience for Avonlea and Lincoln will be really cool and we don't have to do any work for the puppies (Riley does it ALL!) until the last two weeks where they can crawl out of the kiddie pool (which is what we keep them in from the moment they're born). Yes, we've done this once before and she had 3 pups. It was neat. Our only concern is that she's due to have the puppies (assuming this works!) in April and that puts us right before our own baby is born to get rid of all of them (but one)!!! So, it may be a little nutty around here, but the good news is that they're not children and can fend for themselves all day in the backyard. Should be a fun experience. We'll keep you posted.