School Days Summary - 9/3-7/12

I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!

 I'm a whole week behind with blogging about school.... but I have a good reason! We were on vacation or rather, a field trip. Earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to work for a vendor during a conference that was held at our local convention center. It was physically very demanding but I got paid pretty well. We were able to use those funds to take a trip to....

The Creation Museum in Kentucky!

Looking at the calendar and our MFW schedule, our trip to the museum fit perfectly during the week of Labor Day. (And Bass was able to use one less vacation day for work.)

We traveled out on Monday and then spent 2 great days visiting the Museum.

The gardens were absolutely beautiful. They had all sorts of quiet walkways and fun bridges and Scripture plaques placed throughout the gardens.

The kids loved the petting zoo, too. We met Gomer the camel and Suzy, one of the wallabys. Soprano loved the Zorse (zebra and horse mix) even when it sneezed on her.

The museum was incredible. If you're familiar with any of the materials from Answers in Genesis  or Ken Ham, then you have a good idea of the information that the museum presents. But in person... it was incredible. The exhibits were all excellently done and jam-packed with Scripture and scientific information. The movies were fantastic too.

Of course we had to make the trip worth every mile so on our way home on Thursday, we stopped at 2 attractions in Cincinnati, Ohio: The William Howard Taft Museum and Krohn Conservatory. Both stops were worth the visit even if they didn't tie into our studies as well as the Creation Museum did.

Bass had taken off on Friday too so we had a day to unpack, do laundry, regroup, and get ready for our Rosh Hashanah meal. (Tenor decided to work on "excavating" a dinosaur from an egg --- his souvenir from the museum.)

Making shofars using this tutorial.

Making a crown to add to our dinner table centerpiece. (Pattern found here.)

Trying out the shofar.

Our Rosh Hashanah table with globe and crown centerpiece and white votive candles.

 We're not really fish eaters so I made fish sticks for our entree along with mac-n-cheese.

We also had a challah substitute (from the grocery store which did not have round challah available that day) with our ladder (made by Tenor.) He used 2 plastic drinking straws and brown fuzzy pipe cleaners to make it. Our full menu:
fish sticks
mac n cheese
carrots
challah
apple slices and honey
watermelon (for our 'first fruit')
and grape juice
To finish we had honey cake. I wasn't too thrilled with the challah recipe from the book so I didn't use their honey cake recipe either. I actually wanted to just buy some at the store but after asking in the bakery, having the meat dept. manager ask the grocery guy and frozen food guys, and looking in the Kosher section, that didn't happen. Our store didn't get the honey cakes that were in the weekly sale flyer.
So.... I made a yummy honey bun cake instead.
{Here's the recipe if you're interested:
Ingredients:
1 box yellow cake mix
2/3 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
1 (8 oz.) container of sour cream
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped pecans (I usually skip the pecans, and it still tastes great.)
2 tsp ground cinnamon
Icing Ingredients:  
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1 Tablespoon milk
1 tsp vanilla

Heat oven to 350 degrees for shiny metal or glass pan (or 325 degrees for dark or nonstick pan). Spray bottom only of 13x9" pan with baking spray with flour.
In large bowl, beat cake mix, oil, eggs, and sour cream with electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds; beat on medium speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Spread half of the batter in the pan.
In a small bowl, stir together brown sugar, pecans and cinnamon; sprinkle over batter in pan. Carefully spread remaining batter evenly over pecan mixture.
Bake 44-48 minutes or until golden brown.

In a small bowl, stir icing ingredients until thin enough to spread. Prick surface of warm cake several times with fork. Spread icing over cake. Cool completely (appx. 1 hour). Store covered at room temp.}

It was another nice evening. We blew the shofars, lit the candles, blessed the "wine" cup and bread, and enjoyed our meal as we read about the significance of the different foods.
That Sunday afternoon, we went to a local park that has a good sized stream running in it to do the Tashlich. We took rocks with us and walked down to a private place by the water. We sang "Down By the Riverside" and then read the Scriptures from the 'Celebrating Biblical Feasts' book. We all tossed our rocks in and shook out our pockets. It was interesting to see how as we each threw our rocks (sins) in the water, the ripples went out and hit each other's ripples. A picture of how sin doesn't just affect ourselves....

When we were done, we headed back to a picnic area and enjoyed a snack of apple slices and more honey bun cake.

It was a great week of travel (even though our alternator bit the dust while we were in KY). We loved the Creation Museum and loved coming home and having time to celebrate the Feast of Trumpets before getting back into the regular school routine.

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