Ramey Ranch Review: May 2010

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

A Normal Day

Just a glimpse of life at our house on an average day (minus all the accidents, interruptions, adventures, and school!)

Great Grandma Betty sent Juliana this minuature fan--She adores it! We are starting to collect a few things for dress up.

First fresh greens from my greenhouse. The tomatoes are about 3 feet tall and blooming! Hopefully we get some tomatoes before it gets so hot in there they die.

We made some fresh batches of playdough today. Thank you, Lord, for playdough to help keep my cranky children happy for many hours! We created some amazing colors this time.

Is It Seaworthy?

Our final project for our study of ships was to make a large boat out of cardboard boxes. We just happened to have some big ones around!

Before

After
It is supposed to be a tugboat! After the basic construction, the boys got creative finding things around the ranch to use for decoration.

Steering wheel (old stroller tire)

Propeller (some old part of the engine of a leaf blower!)

Bon Voyage!

We just wrapped up a study on ships, flotation, etc. A couple of weeks ago, we took a quick fieldtrip to San Fransisco to visit the maritime museum there. Unfortunately, we had time contraints and couldn't stay nearly as long as we would have liked. Some time I want to go back and stay for hours and really explore the ships

Aboard the sailing ship Star of Alaska

The Ferry S.S. Eureka. They had some old Model T erra cars and trucks on board. Peter especially loved the cars!

The boy's favorite--the big tugboat Hercules

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Gigantic Blanket Project!

By now, most of you know we were heavily involved in sending hundreds of blankets to Haiti for the children there. Some went to the hospital in Port-a-Prince where Josh worked, and some went to be distributed by the churches. These pictures might give you an idea of the enormity of this project.

Juliana was my faithful helper for the entire project. She loved playing in the blanket pile and handed me blankets to package in the boxes.

This was the pile before we started boxing the blankets! There is a large couch under there somewhere! Also, the huge box in the back contained 150-200 blankets! We ended up shipping 450 blankets (175 went to the hospital). It took me nearly a week (working several hours each day) to get all these blankets packaged up. Thanks to my mom for helping me out one day!

Nathan was a big helper in taking the boxes out to the pickup platform for UPS.

This was the pile of boxes all ready to go. We shipped a total of 52 boxes, which weighed 780 lbs. Several people and organizations helped donate the funds to ship these blankets to Florida. From there, they will be transported to Haiti for distribution! We are still amazed at the way God worked out all the details for this project and provided just the amount that was needed to ship them.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Waiting for Spring!

Originally when I took these pictures, it was still April, and I thought snow was unusual then. Well, today is May 10, and we have snow falling tonight! I am very ready for spring and so are the children!

I guess this is what boys do when they have had enough snow for one year!

A friend from church gave Juliana a little play house for the yard. She adores it! The boys happily entertained themselves for an entire morning one day making her a "garden". They used bricks they found lying around and then transplanted all sorts of plants (weeds) into it. Guess relocating the house will have to wait until the garden dies!

One evening while I prepared dinner, I caught Juliana happily washing dishes. She was so cute! Now how can I retain this love for dishes in 10 years???

Peter's Costume Party

A couple of weeks ago, Peter anounced at lunch he would like to have a costume party with his uncles and cousin. I decided to throw all reservations to the wind and be spontaneous! The kids had all sorts of food in mind, but we settled on icecream cones because we didn't have time to prepare anything else.