Thankful for the Ancestral Walk

As our thoughts turn to thanks giving I'm reflecting upon the Ancestral Walk that I participated in with my father, brother, and in-laws this summer.  It was an experience organized by my father to remember my great-grandfather Hyrum Hatton. We followed in his footsteps in a hike from Alpine, Utah to Draper, Utah.  Hyrum Hatton would walk to the quarry every Monday and then walk back for church each Sunday for 5 years in the 1880's.  Walking in his footsteps as closely as possible with all the construction that has happened in the last 130 years we experienced a little of what he did as we honored his service to the building of the Salt Lake Latter-Day Saint Temple.

Though I walked only a portion of the whole trip I made it 11.69 miles, 24197 steps and 108 flights of stairs (all tracked by my FitBit).

To my father who made it 24 miles and my in-laws who made it 35ish miles (the whole distance) I am awed at your dedication and thankful to you for the bonding opportunity and the inspiration of completing the task to honor both my great-grandfather and my father.  I love you guys!

Hyrum Hatton

Memorization and Math-U-See

One of the things I picked up from all my homeschooling philosophy books was the idea of memorization.  After thinking about it for a while I decided that the first set of passages I should have CJ master are the Articles of Faith.  We belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the Articles of Faith are 13 passages that outline our beliefs.  Today CJ passed off his first memorization: "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost."  I was impressed that EMan (just days from being 3 years old) has also memorized it right along with his brother. 

 On Mondays we have more time to work on specific lessons together since we don't generally have anything scheduled that we need to get to.  Today was the first day that we were able to work in our Math-U-See Primer book.  A good friend of ours got it for CJ for his birthday and through our conversations realized that it couldn't wait until January of 2014 so she gave it to him early.  He cruised through the first 3 lessons all about recognizing the sets and numerals 0-9.  Math-U-See has a DVD portion (generally just a few minutes long) that you watch at the beginning of each lesson.  Then there is a workbook that you practice activities in.  They also sell special Math-U-See blocks.  We don't own any of the blocks but do have a huge tub of unifix cubes that may become our math blocks stand in.