Sunday, August 31, 2014

August 21 - Gabe's Guppies

Several months ago Lexi gave Gabe a couple of guppies. She has a few that had bred and had quite a few babies, and she needed to get rid of some. Well today while we were getting ready to clean them Kacy looked in the guppy jar and saw a couple of babies. Gabe's fish had finally had some babies!!! He was thrilled!!! 
I know these aren't great pictures of them, but see if you can see them.


As you can see the parents are a good bit bigger than their offspring. 
So now Gabe has two quart jars of Guppies on his desk.

August 17 - Day three of GRACE Family Camp

It has been a wonderful weekend at Fort Lone Tree, the Pogues want to say a huge thank you to the staff of Fort Lone Tree for taking care of us while we were there. And to the GRACE Board for putting this all together and working so hard at GRACE. And to the Gilliland family for taking care of all the games and organizing the activities. 



August 16 - Day Two of GRACE Family Camp

This morning Kacy and Garrett got up really early to watch the sun rise and took a walk around the camp.
A beautiful view of the mountains before the sun came up.

Later Kacy and Elena went to collect some wild flowers that were all over the place. We ended up with quite a variety...all of which I couldn't tell you the name of. 



These caterpillars were all over the place and proved to be a wonderful play thing for our boys in-particular. 

This one was in the process of shedding its skin. The whole time we were there I only saw one doing this.

The beautiful bouquet we ended up with.
One of the all time favorite games was the carpet ball game. It was busy from sun rise to sun set and later the entire weekend.


A picture of the camp from our cabin.
Inside the gym was a game room with all sorts of games in it that were being played with almost all the time. A pool table (that had only one stick and no chalk, great lesson on sharing there), a little hockey game (of which Shea wants to build, I let you know when he does), a couple of fooze ball tables, and a ping-pong table.





 Whenever possible most of the older kids played soccer in the gym, it was a lot of fun to watch the too big teams try to play...and most of them didn't know the rules.
 After an 8:00 breakfast everyone went down to a clearing below the camp for games.
The adults "favorite" game, the Human Ring Toss.....
...okay so maybe it was the kids favorite game. Rules: 6 adult wear helmets of some sort while the kids did there best to get the hula-hoop over their heads. The adult can't leave their chairs, but they can do whatever possible to get the ring over their heads. The further the adults are away from the kids the higher the points the team gets.
Blue team: the Pogues (8), the Dowells (5), the Boyses (4), and the Adams (2) 
The object of this game is to really like the people that are your size.
You have to hold the beach ball between two people that are the same size and walk it a certain distance without touching it with your hands....

...And drop it into a 5 gallon bucket while being timed on the teams speed.
The cup relay: The entire team has to run a cup of water on their head over to another bucket and fill it up one cup at a time...

...The next person cannot start until the person before them dumps his/her cup and comes back...

...oh yea and the cup all have holes in them, so you are running with water running all over you head and down you neck. Good thing we are from Texas where that is a regular thing that happens when you are hot.

The Hula-Hoop ring has been one game that has been done quite often in GRACE events, only this year there was a new flavor to it...
...everyone had to where at least one of the costumes in the box....
...Everyone join hands and move the Hula-Hoop around the circle three times without breaking the circle. 
The favorites of our boys were the masks...don't you think they look great...Shea and Zach that is.

What's wrong with this Picture?
 Later that afternoon after lunch all the families went to go do all the camp activities. There is only four hours to do them in and every activity last an hour. Our family did the 500 ft. zip line, the Ropes Course, the Obstacle Course, and the Rifle Range. Other options were RC Cars, Water Slide, Archery, Rock Wall, Repelling, Giant Swing, Horse Back riding, 300 ft. zip line, and I probably missed some, but I can't think of them right now.
We did the 500 foot zip line with the Gillilands and the Whitworths, even though we only got to do it once each, it was a BLAST!!!


Molly and Aubrie going like pros. By the way during activities I got lots of beautiful pictures of the New Mexico sky. We ended up with a beautiful sprinkle toward the end of the day.


That doesn't look that high right? Well when you are up there and you know you have to jump with only a rope and a cable to keep you from falling...yep its high (and that's coming from someone who has been on heights her entire life.)

Janessa getting ready to jump.
Janessa and Ryan (going spiderman style)


This was Shea's face when he was going over me.



As you can see from this picture, a storm is on its way it. I hadn't even noticed the sky until I was up here and it took my breath away.


At the top of the tower getting ready to jump.



Gabe did it too. It took him a while to jump, but once he did this was his favorite event of the weekend. A big thank you to Mr. Joe for helping him go!!!!



Our next activity was the Ropes Course. It was not nearly as much fun as the zip line, but lots of fun none the less.
Zach getting his harness on. He told the man in charge of the ropes course that he wanted to go on the hardest and highest course....
....This is what he ended up doing.


Gabe did really well on the ropes course. He looked like he does it every day.




The giant swing is so much fun, but you have to have a really strong stomach to ride it. Zach and Kacy did it last year. It was so much fun!!!!!


After the Ropes Course we went on over to the obstacle course. We were told that it was best for younger kids so we decided to do that  because we were doing mostly older kid activities, we thought we were being so generous to Gabe to let him have an easy one... boy were we wrong. It was a rather difficult course...and I think Gabe did better than anyone, but dad. Dad had the shortest time of the day, 58 seconds.
The lady in charge timed us.


We had to run through some tires...


...up a rope ladder....


...across a balancing beam...


...climb a rope up a wall...

...Down a slide...

...across a tight rope...


....over a bridge....

...under a bridge...



...and ring the bell!


We got done with the obstacle course early so we went up to our next activity, the rifle range. On the way we stopped to watch some of out friends on the repelling wall.
Here comes Molly!!!
She made it.

Mr. Billy brought his daughter Sadie down with him. She did really good.

She was very proud of herself, but not as much as her daddy was.


Nathan is shooting for his first time, and he did really good.
Oh dear! What are they planning?!



When I had finished with my turn I went to see what everyone else was doing. The water slide was a huge hit and has been every year.


That evening was a team talent show. Each team makes up a skit about what its like as a Homeschool Family. All the skits did a great job of showing each aspect of homeschooling. Everyone did a wonderful job.





The Duflio family made an excellent video of the camp. Click here to watch the video. (When I click on the link it tells me that it won't work in Safety mode, if you have safety mode turned on for YouTube. )