She also found this skull, with a nose still attached.  Not sure what it is. Any guesses?My son looked like quite the little warrior with his staff.I just love how curious they are.

I really don’t know why I don’t pull them out more often, because the kids were so excited about it.  It kept them busy for at least an hour.

I bought this particular collection a number of years ago, when we were studying earth science with my oldest daughter.  It has 75 different rocks, which are numbered with a key.

I am always in fear that one of the kids will peel the stickers off and then I’m out of luck.  We had a smaller collection, which was pasted on a piece of cardstock, but one of the kids peeled them all off.  Now they are loose in a box.  I think I’m going to have the kids try to identify them.My youngest daughter’s favorite rock was this obsidian.

The picture to the right is of another small collection that was given to us. It’s nice to have enough to pass around.  Then no one is left out.

We also have this great magnifying glass – perfect for inspecting the rocks.I {of course} had the kids do some notebooking pages while we had the rocks out.We have a couple of boxes of loose rocks also – some that the kids have collected on our travels, and others that were bought.  I’m thinking that it would be a great project for them to try to identify them all.

Do you have a rock collection?  Do your kids collect something different?

We usually study China at least once a year in our history studies and my little kids like drawing the different animals of the Chinese Zodiac.4

Click the picture below to download a PDF file of the notebooking page.

This time, I wasn’t actually running, but taking pictures.

El Paso doesn’t naturally have very good mud.  Mud requires water, which we don’t have much of – and requires good dirt, which we don’t have either.

The mud seemed watery to me.  It didn’t stick on the runners like it does in some mud runs.  It makes for not as exciting, not as dramatic pictures.

Despite the lack of muddy mud, there were a lot of great obstacles along the way.

These “hurdles” seemed to never end.  I was so happy that I was walking alongside them instead of going over every single one. The hills and mud pits looked pretty fun.Here is another one of the obstacles.And a couple more.  The one on the left was the trenches.  I didn’t get very good pictures of it, because they were climbing under a tunnel in the dark.  The walls on the right are HIGH.  I couldn’t have made it over them.Muddy shoes at the end of the race.The finish line is always nice to see!!

A friend and I headed to the carnival with a tripod – and no kids.  No one was begging for rides and cotton candy.  We were able to take our time and get some great shots.

I haven’t done much night photography before, but this has me hooked!  It was so much fun.

And here are a couple of pictures to compare what the rides looked like standing still and then moving:

Have you ever done night photography before?  What did you take pictures of?

I was surprised at how small the rink was.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it.  There weren’t any bleachers and we were a few rows back, so I wasn’t able to get very many great shots.

It was still fun to watch though.  I can’t imagine skating well enough to stay up while I’m being pushed and shoved.  Of course, there were a lot of ladies on the floor, but they’d get right back up.  Except for the one that left in the ambulance.  Yes, it’s a rough sport.

Have you ever watched roller derby before?