The French Family: April Outings

This is such a busy season for us right now. Outside of 4 kids, it's homeschool and our co-op, home group, baseball, dance, American Heritage Girls, 2:7 bible study, Trail Life, and I might be leaving something out. It's great and I love it, we are just busy. I'm sure you can tell with the lack of blogposts this past couple of months. So, these are most of our April outings, enjoy!

Last month I set-up a field trip for our homeschool co-op (Classical Conversations) at the Texas Electric Railway in Plano. It operated between 1917-1948. Here is a map of the tracks with some more info on it.

The back of the railcar was a mail station. Pretty neat.

All the kids got a chance to sit in the Conductor's Seat It was made uncomfortable on purpose; so he would stay awake and not fall asleep!

There was plenty of hands-on activities for the kids to do inside the museum.

It was during Happy Hour at Sonic, so I stopped and got the kids a slush on the way home. Maebry has caught on and gets her own drink! No fooling her.

She is a mess and she knows it!

Every Saturday this spring you'll find us at the ballpark. This season has been up and down with wins and losses, but Jase still has had a good season. We have 2 games left, so hopefully the boys can put the bat on the ball!

We attended a martial arts class in Lewisville last month that was pretty cool. It is a safe place to learn self-defense strengthened by Christian principles. This is pretty unique because most of the karate places have a lot of middle eastern religion, with bowing to the sensei, but this place is different. We opened and closed in prayer to Jesus, which is more our speed. The kids had a blast. Little Finn was a little hesitant at first, but he warmed up.

We met up with our Classical Conversations group for one last hurrah. They played and we had closing ceremonies. Ally was awarded with Memory Whiz and Enthusiastic Presenter. Jase was awarded with Excellence in History and Most Outgoing. We had a great school year and each week the kids had a fun science experiment, hands-on art (tin whistle, drawing, painting, classical music) and gave a presentation in front of their peers. They also learned a ton of facts from: History, Science, English grammar, Latin, Math and Geography. We will be changing to a different campus next year to better accommodate our schedule, but we are super excited to continue with Classical Conversations!

My mom came into town for a visit the last weekend in April. She treated the kids to a fun outing at Obstacle Warriors. If you follow American Ninja Warrior, then it is just like that, except kid-sized. It was fun seeing Finn be so adventurous and try new things. He was a champ on the balance beam! And Ally, she was challenged to get out of her comfort zone in a safe environment, which is good for her. Little Mae held her own with the big kids; she was fearless! And Jase owned dodge ball (one of my personal favorites in elementary) and got on some of the big kid obstacles.

On the way home I stopped by the Dude Perfect office. It was closed, but that didn't stop us for a photo op! The boys absolutely loved it!! Ally rode home with Daddy so she was bummed, but don't worry I took her by there the next week.

To finish out the month, we took some crazy boys out for Jase's birthday! We opted for a baseball game with friends instead of a party. He is getting older, so we will be transitioning from the big parties for him.

Six 8-9 year olds, 3 younger ones and 2 adults = Craziness! Ha! The boys had a blast watching the Frisco RoughRiders, eating ballpark food and playing together. (My mom was not feeling well at all, so she was not at the game with us after the 1st inning, hate that.)