Week 5 MFW-CTG

Well the last week has been wonderful the kids have really enjoyed ancient Egypt.

We found some great ideas on Pinterest.

Here are the highlights.

This is a salt dough map of Ancient Egypt.  The kids all were involved in this project. It was so much fun and really helped the kids learn the area. 

You can google any salt dough recipe online. We used a flat card board and painted the water first with blue acrylic paint. After that dried, we added the dessert, pyramids, sphinx, obelisk, and boat to the map with the salt dough. Then painted it with acrylic paint after it dried for a day. You can also add houses and go more in depth. We kept it simple.

Each of the kids made their names in a cartouche with hieroglyphs. 

  

We read a lot of great books from the Library. One was called,

"You Wouldn't Want to be an Egyptian Mummy!: Disgusting Things You'd Rather Not Know Book by David Stewart".

This was informative and funny.

We decided to mummify a Barbie.

The kids can now tell you all the cool steps of being mummified!

The best part of the week was the National Geographic pyramid we bought from Amazon.

This was so worth the $19 we spent.

The pyramid is surrounded on 4 sides with hieroglyphs.

The kids had to decipher them and figure out which side was the correct one to break in to.

Once figured out, they uses tools to find the unlocking mechanism by pounding  with tools.

Once inside, it was covered with a semi hard sand. The kids took turns breaking the sand up to discover what was in the pyramid.

* side note- be careful how hard they hammer. 

We broke our sarcophagus and had to super glue it back together.

Inside was a sarcophagus with mummy and 4 canopic jars.

Our whole family loved it. We saved the sand and the kids have played with it all week.

Until next time ;)

Weeks 3 & 4 of MFW-CTG

I have decided to combine weeks 3&4 because of Jewish Feast, there wasn't as much planned.

I love being able to teach both kids these subjects. We can dig deep with Jellybean or just skim the surface with superman.

Our highlights from the past two weeks.

The kids used Legos to build the Tower of Babel. 

We made cuneiform sugar cookies

Jellybean with her pyramids made from magnets 

Superman with his pyramids.

Superman as King Menes with combined  crowns from upper and lower Egypt.

This next week more pyramids and mummies!

Week 2 of MFW CTG

I can't believe we made it through another week. 

We love My Fathers World! The kids are learning a Biblical Based history where the picture of the gospel is presented everyday.

We have had some amazing conversations this week.

Some highlights of this week were ...

The kids science projects where they learned about light.

Above is a homemade kaleidoscope.

 

Jellybean  was able to join her cousin at a Bible based mini golf. She did Creation through Jonah.  Above is the kids on Mt Ararat.

So far this is our time line. We watched a very informative Answers in Genesis movie about the ark also.

Hopefully there will be a future trip to the Creation Museum.

School is back in session!

           This past week, we started school back full time.  I know it's way to early!  We have a lot going on and the kids will be taking a two week break while we go to Italy. So we had to. It's been a easy week though.

I didn't have time to take a lot of pictures but I will give you a overview.

Jellybean

Superman

This week in history and Bible we went over the first week of creation.

             In Science we learned all about light. We read a ton of living books but I forgot to take pictures of the experiments. I'll put them in next weeks post.

Superman's reading program, All About Reading is amazing! He was making ice creams with rhyming words.

        This is Jellybean and Superman working on a art lesson about frustration. We all had to draw a butterfly by just using our mouth. 

Superman ended up using his hands a little but this was a great lesson on not letting obstacles cause you to give up.  

          We are also going through biblical feast. This week, we did Shabbat. Our family really enjoyed participating and learning the history behind it.  It was a great way to end our first week.

       

           The Challah cover we made. We just took a 16x20 cotton material, traced the outline of picture in Elmer's glue. 

Let that completely dry overnight. They painted it the next day using acrylic paint and water.

            Our first Shabbat Dinner!  

We paid cash for Italy. Part 3

Hello,

 I'm back again talking about where to stay on your vacation.  It's kind of tricky thinking about where to stay.  Some things to ask yourself .  

1. Do you want to be in all the touristy areas?

2. If your not driving is it easy to get to and from your place by public transportation?

3.What are the neighborhoods like ?

4. Do you want laundry facilities or a kitchen?

5. Do you need extras like room service ,pool, breakfast?

These are some things to think about. When we booked, we decided we wanted a kitchen or it least breakfast included like a B&B.  I figured we could cook our own breakfast, pack a lunch, and splurge on dinner.

Also since we aren't driving that limited us a little from villas and farms.

We started looking around for all our options. You can rent everything from a whole Villa to someone's couch. 

Here are some websites

Venere- B&B's, Hotels, Apartments, Houses, and Resorts

House Trip -Houses
Airbnb- Vacation Rentals of all types
Home Away -
Couch Surfing- Couches
Agriturismo - Farms


We used Venere and House Trip.  They were both so far very easy to get a hold of by phone and email.  I guess it just depends the homes you go through.

Our homes have washer and dryers, full kitchen, nice bathrooms, and the owners live in the city. So they will be easy to get a hold of if we need anything.  Our houses are about 20 minutes outside the city. Transportation is close by to our house. We wanted to be out of the touristy areas and its also extremely discounted for all that's included in the homes.

Always call 1 month and 1 to 2 weeks before arrival to make sure everything is still correct.  Our owners are picking us up from the metro station at no cost. You can always ask if they will do that. This way we aren't all disoriented when we first arrive.

Most will not allow you to check in early so you may want to consider either arriving with check in time or if you arrive early check your bags at a metro station and tour the area while waiting.

I will write a blog on our trip when we return with full reviews to let you know how it goes.
The next blog post will be about packing and what books/websites we are using to plan.

 

We paid cash for Italy part 2

              Today's installment is all about the planning and saving.  If you have a envelope get it out now or go to your bank and open a vacation account.  Then start sucking up and doing favors for everyone you would trust to watch your kids.  If you are going on a big vacation with your hubby. You can't go without those awesome family members who are willing to watch your kids.   We have been so blessed that my sister and sister in law has offered to help watch our kids for us.


               Now the fun part start looking into where you want to go.  Some things to pay attention to.
1. Safety ( We really wanted to do Egypt but yeah that's not happening)
2. Will it be over seas?
3. What's the exchange rate?  (Italy sucks for that, you lose money instantly)
4. How long do you want to go?
5. What season ( Always go in off or shoulder if you can. Its cheap and less crowded)
6.  Holidays ( Italy has a couple every month, things are closed check it out first)
7. Transportation (Are you brave enough to drive or would it be easier to just take metro, trains bus.)
8.  Where are you staying big fancy hotels, apartments, condos, house, hostel, someones couch (Yes, there is a website for it, but that's another post)
and finally the big one.

AIRFARE !!



This was a big one. Okay so you see all these awesome sights like Travelocity , Travelzoo, Great Value Vacations, and Hotwire that offer these amazing deals.
Sometimes they are even really good deals, but you want the best deal!

If you want your trip done and planned out for you then you may want to look into these.  I don't like a place telling me how long I'm going to spend in one area, or that I have to stay in this hotel that's not that great and 1 hour way from the city.   Also those great fares from New York are awesome, but they will charge you a hefty price to get there from your city.

Example:  Today on Travelzoo , which is a site that gets you the best deals online. I love it!  Through them there is a trip to Ireland.  You can go for 9 nights with air and car for the low price of $1250 per person.  That's not bad at all. Here is the thing, you need some extras.  You will need trip insurance that will run you around $250 through this website, Car insurance $300, GPS with car, don't trust your cell phone in remote areas $100.  Your trip has already increased by $650.   Now if you don't live remotely close, to New York, your going to have to get there somehow.  They will charge you anywhere from $200 to $400 + per person to fly from another state.  So this awesome trip that started out at $1250 per person is now  $2000 per person.  If you think that's a good deal then take it, but you know, you could probably do better.

           We booked our trip on our own.  We are flying into Rome with 1 stop from the states, and flying out of Venice with 2 stops in the states. Also all flights are with the same carrier.  We booked 9 months out and our tickets were $1000 per person with insurance.  I was able to pick our seats also on each leg.  If your not sure what seats are good on a plane. There is a great website Seat Guru. They will show you your plane, where the bathrooms are, and which seats have more or less room.  When your going to be on a plane for 9+ hours , its pretty important to check this stuff out.
So on the same day I booked my flight I went back to those other websites and they wanted $1400+ per person for our flight.
If you want to get a good fare look around see what the lowest cost is , pay attention to lay overs and stops also. In a week period our flights fluctuated by $800 per seat.   I was a flight Nazi for a week!
I went through Kayak to do ours.  I checked today and its around $150 more per person.  So not s huge difference but we checked a couple weeks ago and it $600 per person. It pays to check.

          Also when you book pay attention to when you arrive. Depending where you are going you might not get there till the next day with time change. Pay attention to your layover time too. We would of missed our international flight had I not checked. A month the airlines changed our first flight out. It gave us a 30 minute transfer time to our international flight. We would of missed it!        
They will give you the option of non refundable flights which is the cheapest.. take it from me splurge and pay a little for the refundable.  
Its only by the grace of God that we are going on this trip. Our tickets are non-refundable and non transferable.  So much has happened in the 9 months of us booking. its been scary. 
Or you can make sure you go and just do the non- refundable. Cause trust me , the thought of losing $2000 dollars will make you withstand a lot!

Okay I know that was a lot to take in but I know people who would just pick the first flight they saw that was outrageous and decide they couldn't afford it.  Don't miss out on awesome trips because you didn't do your homework.   

At this point my trip to Italy has cost $2050 with Insurance.  ( You need it but watch that fine print)

Tomorrow we will talk about where to crash while your on vacation!

We paid cash for Italy! Part 1

So if you know me even just a little, you know I'm pretty frugal. Do I do crazy coupon stuff ? No, but ya never know. I may get into it one day. 

So a couple years ago my family was introduced to Dave Ramsey! 

If you do not know who this man is, go to google now. I could so a whole blog post on his Financial Peace University.  That will be later .

  He is training people to live debt free. That's right no debt!

Crazy in our society that this is such a hard fact to accept. We love it!

So we got rid of all credit cards and started using cash.  Are we debt free yet? Nope, but we are getting close.

On our 8 year Wedding Anniversary we decided we wanted to go somewhere for the big 10! In a world filled with divorce and separation; we wanted to celebrate that we made it.

So we started saving and saving. This year was our ten years!

 We are going to Italy!!! Without kids! Paid cash! Can you tell I'm excited.

Some pics I googled on my phone of the places we are going.

Okay a lot friends have asked what we did. Well we did it by a lot of hard work, planning, and advice from friends and family who have already went. 

Some may already know how to plan awesomely cheap vacations, but if you don't these next couple post are for you.

Tomorrow I will explain some of the things we have done to make this happen.

So tune in!