Thru the Eyes of a Friend

This week we attended the Dallas Jewish Community Center for the performance of Thru the Eyes of a Friend. It was a portrait of friendship and survival brought to life through the eyes of Anne Frank's best friend. Anne’s story is retold from the viewpoint of a composite character using actual historical images and photographs.

.It was an unbelievably sad production, but it allowed kids and parents to empathize with the pain, loss and hope of families during the Holocaust. It is horrifying to think people could be so cruel.

Mary Kay Manufacturing Tour

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You never know where those home school field trip will take us. We’ve toured everything from the ACME brick plant, Mrs. Baird’s Bread even the U.S. Treasury! Today’s tour was, drum roll please, the Mary Kay Manufacturing Plant. Very cool, we were permitted to see where products are measure, mixed, texted, and packaged. Our tour guide was one of their many scientists who answered multiple questions for the children. We had a large enough group of kids that we were able to tour in two separate groups. Believe it or not the boy’s tour ended almost a half hour before the girls!

Texas Hall of State

Our homeschool friends toured the Texas Hall of State, it is a beautiful home to Texas history. It was built in 1936 for the Centennial of the Republic of Texas and opened at the World’s Fair. It is a wonderful representation of art deco architecture in Texas. It is filled with art, artifacts and a wonderful library all dedicated to fascinating times in Texas history.

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The Great Hall is similar to a cathedral, we were told that when Elizabeth II, the Queen of England, visited the Hall of State in May 1991. In a speech, she recalled the old story of a West Texas rancher giving his son advice. "Son," said the man, "Never ask a man where he is from. If he is from Texas, he will tell you. If he's not, it isn't polite to embarrass him by asking."
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The Hall of State is the Hall of Heroes, which features six bronze statues of James Fannin, Mirabeau B. Lamar, Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston, Thomas Jefferson Rusk and William B. Travis.
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If you live in the Dallas area, be sure to visit the Texas Hall of State!

Glorious Flakes

Lots of beautiful flakes! To the delight of the kids, we enjoyed lovely flakes! The kids were able to build a snow man, complete with coal eyes from the fire pit earlier this week. Usually in the afternoons we ride bikes for 3 miles, needless to say, we won't be breaking out the bikes today!

Family Time

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For Christmas this year, my Mom gave Jon this great fire pit. The other night I came home to find the Jon and the kiddos reading in the back yard around the fire.

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Every night Jon reads to the children for an hour or so, they are currently working on the Return of the King. It was cute, Jon had a flash light and they were having a great time.

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Later I broke out the marshmallows to their delight! Thanks Mom, we love it!

Happy New Year from Museum of Nature and Science

New Years Eve we stayed up playing boards games and ringing in the new year together. With the weather being too rough to head to Tulsa, we had to make other plans for today. There aren't many days that Jon is home with us for field trips so it is always a great treat to have him along. We visited the Museum of Nature and Science for their Dinosaurs Unearthed exhibit. They have re-created life like animatronic dinosaurs. It was a good exhibit, however it was filled with evolution world views.

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The museums general exhibit it fantastic. They have wonderful exhibits including the human body, Understanding DNA and a thermal recognition exhibit. The museum is located in Fair Park and is just one of the great museums in that area.