Christmas

 Home school concert. Grace wrote a play and Annie acted in it. She loved it! She played the bad girl...always more fun in my opinion!

 Toby is ever fearless to play in front of everyone!

 Jesse designed a sword.

 We got a REAL tree this year from the local nursery! We were the first to buy one!

She actually needed Tim's boost this year to get the star on!

Newsela App Review

For one of my graduate classes, I was given the assignment to review some apps. This was a fun assignment and helpful to our family. I have needed a good way to teach current events to my kids. We have tried using different websites for kids with news stories, but mostly they were boring or hard to find relevant topics. The adult sites were just a little too much.

The history curriculum I am using made a great argument for why teaching current events was so important. So once again this year, I endeavored to find a way. We live in a foreign country, so getting a newspaper isn’t even an option. When I taught in public school ages ago, we had a little Scholastic paper that came every week that we read as a class. Those were so fun, but again, not an option for me in this season of life.

I started looking for apps that could really benefit my kids and be easy for them to use and not something I would have to filter all the time. I need things that are less about me figuring it all out and more about the kids taking charge of their learning and enjoying it.

We tried several apps and were not really happy with any of them. Most of them would only work for a month and then start charging you a lot of money per month to have access. The kids really could have cared less about current events. They are pretty compliant and happy to check off their list that they read something, so we managed to kind of keep up with current events.

Then we found Newsela! We love this app! This has totally changed all of our outlooks. The kids are all engaged now. They are required to look up a current event, read it, and give me an oral summary of the article three times a week! However, they love to look at this app every day and read the articles. If they are using it during our school day, I often have to ask them to stop reading articles and come work on another subject. At lunch or dinner we have been known to have lively conversations about an article they read that day. They are now able to add intelligent insight and facts. They don’t even realize they are learning. 

Screen shot of Newsela App

The articles have opened up all sorts of new avenues of interest for them. They look forward to this part of their day! It is really easy for them to use. The home page has a large picture for each article and it’s headline. They can scroll through and find an article that interests them or they can use a filter to decide if they want to only look at sports or politics or several other options. They can use two fingers to swipe up or down to change the reading level of each article. You can also change most of the articles to Spanish.

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The boys love reading the app together

Seriously, this is an incredible app. We have had trouble with the quizzes at the end of each article. We haven’t tried very hard to fix this problem, because I don’t see a need for them to take a quiz. They are already enjoying it and applying it to their lives. They have completely taken charge of this part of their school day. I am really proud of them and excited to be having such real conversations with them. We live in Iraq and so their worldview is already pretty expanded, but this is exponentially increasing it.

Here's a video of the boys.

Korek Mountain: Team Retreat

 It's been awhile since we did a team retreat and we have never done a retreat with the Jaffes, so it was about time! Our first stop was Bekhal Falls. It's an amazing spring that comes out of the rock and pours down the rock. It's millions of gallons of water all day, every day, coming out of the rock! It amazes me every time I see it.

 I woke up early the first morning, in time to catch the sun peeking over the mountains!

 It's Ramadan right now, so we had the entire resort to ourselves. We got a great package deal that included our meals too!

 The grounds are really beautiful and they had lots of fun activities. It wasn't hot because the elevation was up higher. 

 The scenery was spectacular.

 There were a lot of cheesy souvenirs down by the waterfall, so we bought matching tattoos. We call it "team bonding."

 Impromptu worship together on the balcony, overlooking the mountains and drinking coffee. This should be required!

 This little dark-eyed beauty will be a world changer!

 Especially when she stays safe in her Daddy's arms!

 Time for some FUN!

 This zip line of sorts dragged them back several hundred feet up the mountain and then released them!

 I volunteered to hold the baby and take pictures! We won't say I am too old for those rides just yet!

 These cool cracks went down 20-30 feet in some places. Gnarly!

Toby and I ended the time with a hike up as high as we could get! It always helps to get a clearer perspective!

The lodge was beautiful.

 The villas were lovely too.

 We finished off our time by going down the Shinglebana (the alpine slide) at another resort nearby!

Thankful for this little break in time and space to enjoy each other and enjoy the beauty around us.

Annual Camping Trip

 After driving on tiny roads and a few dead ends and some really close calls with the cars...we found this PERFECT spot! We asked the Lord to show us and he really answered our prayers!

 The Rays are so much fun to be with!

We got the car almost stuck several times and one time got it stuck for an hour! It was a little terrifying at times. 

 With the Rays, we each have a friend to pair off with. Jesse and Jonathan are two peas in a pod!

 Toby and Andrew are an awesome pair!

 Peter and Annie still have a lot of fun even though they are both teenagers now! I am thankful for friendships that will last through the years.

 Tim and Billy make a good pair to lead us all well.

 Dawn, easy to be with, fun and full of joy.

 We  found a mountain spring piped and hooked up to play in and wash in. 

 The campsite was sheltered by trees and flat and soft.

 We even had shade.

 On the edge of the mountain it was SO windy!

 We had super yummy food.

 The sunrise was spectacular.

 This is what 3 hours of sleep and allergies the night before looks like. Puffy face...also sunburned.

 Breakfast never tasted so good.

 We had yummy jellies that Tim brought back from Russia...they were more like fruit syrup, so they were perfect on the pancakes.

 The coffee was so good.

 Kurdish people are amazing for so many reasons but one of the best is that they ALWAYS have time for people. They are always ready to be helpful and they never act like they are being inconvenienced. This farmer showed us the way down to the snow run-off. He was on his way to plant tomato seedlings in his garden with this back drop. Who wouldn't want a garden here?

Did I mention the narrow roads? What you can't see is the drop off on the other side, the ruts, the steep climbs and downhills. The rocks cropping in close to the car! But we made it!!

 The guys kept a fire going the entire time.

 The kids explored for hours.

 The place was covered in these hideous cricket things. 

 This year we had 4 tents instead of 2!

 We only slept a few hours and we were all up by 4:30 am, but the view was worth it!

 We drove down some crazy roads and came onto the snow run-off. This looks like a little stream, but on a scale with these massive mountains, you can't tell that it was actually quite huge and powerful. I can't imagine it when it's full.

 This little patch of snow was HUGE!

 A few from the group hiked up to the snow! It looked like it was right there, but they were gone for 3 hours!

 I love this fierce, bold beauty!

This peak in the distance had an M on it...

The camping trip was amazing! We ate great camp food: hot dogs, grilled chicken, s'mores, pancakes and coffee. The scenery was unbelievable. The fellowship was so sweet. The adventures were exciting. We laid up on a big concrete well and watched the stars at night. We saw several shooting stars. We had a fox or coyote circle around our campsite howling a few times. We hardly slept, but it was all part of the adventure.