Homeschool Field Trip to Dino Space Adventure

We are blessed to be a part of a wonderful homeschool group in our area. We have had field trips to the local bank, post office, L B uniform factory, and other places this last school year. To end the year, we went over to Camdenton and visited the Orion Center/Dino Space Adventure. It is a Biblically based science museum. The kids really enjoyed their day there. They especially enjoyed all the outside activities. They had huge sling shots so the kids could shoot water balloons at "dinosaurs" out in a field. There was also water rockets and zip-lining. Well, you just take a look. You'll see that they had a great time....

Updating Our Blog...

It's been approximately a year and a half since I've updated our blog. I thought I would try it again! We'll see. Just check in from time to time and see. I'm not going to try to go back and cover the last 18 months, but here are some highlights....

This is a picture of the girls when we went fishing one day at a local lake.

 Back in April, I walk/jogged my first 5K. I finished the 3.1 miles in 42 minutes. I won a 3rd place medal in my age division! I hope to do it again!

 Here the girls are on Easter Sunday!

We have 5 kids from our church that qualified to go to the World Quiz in Indianapolis this summer. We are really proud of all of them!

 Lexie donated 10 inches of her hair to Locks of Love recently. We are proud of her!

 Here's a family picture that we managed to get on Memorial Day!

Keep checking back! Now that it is summer break for us, I may have a few more minutes in the day to post pictures of what's happening in the McClain Home!!! We hope you are all doing well!

Strawberry Jam

  I've been wanting to make fresh strawberry jam for many years now. I finally made the trip out to Amish Country this week and this particular family had 2 flats left. I bought one of the flats and was able to make approximately 30 half-pints of jam. Some of it will be sold to help our Iberia Bible Quizzers earn money to go to the World Quiz.
 I'm looking forward to more canning this summer! I'm hoping to make some salsa next week!

Day 5 of "Stay-Cation" Fall '11

I've tried uploading some more pics and they are still kind of distorted. I have so many more that I would like to share, oh well.

Friday morning we left Columbia, Missouri and drove to Olathe, Kansas to see my brother Harold at MNU. We had a great time with him and we went to Bass Pro. Shops. The girls love to go there.

#86 is Harold. This was their first game and he was still in the process of getting his eligibility. In future posts I will share pics of him on the field playing! We're really proud of him1

Everywhere we went during our vacation, this little cat went along with Mary Ellen. She didn't want it to miss out on anything! As you can tell!

This is our dream purchase... a Bass Buggy Bass Tracker Pontoon! Maybe one of these days...

And that was day 5 and day 6 of our Fall Family "Stay-Cation." We returned home late Saturday night and attended church on Sunday!

Day 4 of "Stay-Cation" Fall '11

On Day 4 of our family "stay-cation" we drove an hour and a half to Columbia, Missouri in order to go to Stephens Lake Park. It's a very nice park within the city limits of Columbia and has a large man-made lake with park-like attractions around: playground, picnic areas, etc. Beside the beach area of the lake they had a really nice sprinkler system for kids to play in. It was a beautiful day and the temperature was perfect!

Here they are in the shallow beach area of the lake. It may not look like it from these pics, but the water "seemed" really clear and clean for lake water.

We stayed there most of the day and enjoyed the hot sun! Afterwards we drove to a nearby Missouri State Park and Greg took Lexie and Leah on a hike to a cave. Meanwhile, I stayed with Mary Ellen and Molly while they napped. If I remember right, after that, we went to Wendy's for supper and then on to our friend's house, Mark and Teresa West, to spend the night. We sure appreciated their hospitality.

I might add that this day too was very affordable. Stephens Lake Park and the State Park and our lodging were completely free. Praise the Lord for giving us wisdom to take such a vaction! However, we did have the cost of gas and food! Nonetheless, it was an awesome day spent with our family!

Where to next on Day 5? Hmmm..... stay tuned!

Day 3 of "Stay-Cation" Fall '11

On Day 3 of our family stay-cation, we stayed home and my friend Esther Jarrett, who has since passed on to heaven, helped me break and can about 30 quart jars of green beans.

That's it. That's what we did on Day 3. If you know anything about canning, then you completely understand why.

Fall '11 Vacation Day 2

You may remember that back in September we had a "stay-cation" for our family vacation. For 6 days we chose different places around our home to go and visit. On the first day we went to Ha Ha Tonka State Park. You can find that blog post in our archives. Since I've had the extra time over our Christmas break, I thought I would try to catch us up a bit. Here is Day 2 of that "stay-cation." Enjoy!

I have lots and lots of really neat pictures to share, but for some reason, blogger isn't downloading them properly. They come out with lots of distortions. However, it did this just fine.

On our 2nd Day we went to Missouri's State Capital in Jefferson City. And after touring the capital and some surrounding buildings, we had a picnic outside the capital, then went to the mall for some FREE playtime for the girls! This entire day was absolutely FREE, except for our picnic lunch and our gas to Jeff City! Praise the Lord for that!