Loving Life

Last Friday, the kids and I took a day off from school to have a field trip day to Bloomsbury Farms.  We had gone there last year and the kids kept begging to go back there again this year.  The day was a beautiful warm fall day (once the morning chill was gone).  We had a great time.  I took my camera, but got tired of lugging it around with me and dumped it in the van after a few pictures were taken here and there. We had fun playing in the giant rocking chair. This next picture does not at all do this thing justice.  It's part of a little maze you go through and you enter the end of this tunnel with a walkway through the middle of it.  The tube around the walkway is covered with lights and is spinning around so that when you enter, you feel as though you are about to fall over.  If you notice David leaning to the side and Ana hanging on for dear life to the railing, that is how you walk through the tunnel.  It's such a fun sensory overload and the kids and I thought it w

Life can sometimes get a little busy at times.  I just went through a longer spell of too much busyness (hence the lack of posting most recently).  It wasn't that I had any huge projects going on, but just a number of little things all piled up into one time period.  I could have forced the blogging in the midst of it, but I decided my own sanity was more important.  I won't give you the rundown of all I've done (and I didn't take many pictures at all these past two weeks, of course).  So here are a few things I have taken pictures of because they give me pleasure.  Picture #1 - Pear Butter.  Aaron's mom owns a lovely pear tree and every year I get pears from her tree.  One of the things I did with them this year was to make pear butter.  It pleased me greatly and we very much enjoy digging into it on freshly made bread.  Yum! Picture #2 - Fish!  We finally were all out of our summer tadpoles.  Many of them made it into froghood.  I cleaned out the aquarium and set

So it turns out that I am a great decorative gourd farmer.  All you need to grow your own decorative gourd is three old decorative gourds that were given to you last year and you didn't know what to do with them after having them sit on your kitchen counter for two months.  Just throw those into your compost pile in the middle of winter and forget about them.  In the spring when you see some squash plants growing in your compost pile, do not cover it up as you anticipate lovely useful squash like you've gotten in previous years of compost squash.  Allow the squash to grow up on the nearby lilac "bush" (though tree is more appropriate term).  The gourds look like Christmas tree ornaments as they dangle far above your head from the lilac tree.  Feel free to be disappointed that your compost squash are not useful because you are completely decorationally challenged and don't know the basic human skill of making things look pretty.  Pick an entire bushel of them.  Ask

We haven't seen Joey, our cat, for over three weeks now.  He got outside the first day that I was gone with the kids for our trip out to Indiana.  Since Aaron was not home very much that week, he was not around to see Joey to let him back in.  Apparently, Joey gave up hope of getting let back in the house and wandered away.  The kids have taken it surprisingly well, though they occasionally express some sadness about being cat-less.  I am pretty okay with it.  While I miss having a warm fuzzy body to sit on me when I'm reading, I don't miss cleaning up cat litter, cat hair, the occasional hairball, and dealing with Joey's nerosis.  He hated all cats.  If you own a different cat and smell like that cat, Joey would then hate you.  That hatred apparently applied to himself as well, as he could go through spells of licking himself until he was raw and bloody.  He was going through a particularly bad spell of that when he disappeared.  It was quite a disturbing thing to see

Each of my children offered me a glimpse of their personality today in some very random comments they made to me - all within 20 minutes of each other.  I thought I'd share them with you as well.  Enjoy! Abby:  If I had to live somewhere else and it was either at Grace or Simeon's house (her two best friends), I would choose Grace's house because she has play high heels I can wear. Ana:  (upon gazing up at the "skyscraper" next to the library) If I were to stay in that hotel, I would choose the top floor to stay in.  That way, if the building collapsed, there would be less stuff to fall on top of me and I might survive. David:  I'm not at all afraid of heights.  (slight pause) I'm just afraid of falling from them.

I love this time of year around here.  I love seeing the fields ripe for harvest and watching as they gather in the crops for the year.  We have a farmer friend and he invited David to ride along with him in his combine as he harvests.  I took David to where our friend was working, fully expecting to see him off and go home. But our friend invited me to ride along for a pass or two to see what it's like.  I loved it!  It's so fun to see it from that perspective and learn all the ins and outs of harvesting.  I ended up riding along for an hour and a half while the field was finished.  I don't know if David enjoyed it as much as I did.  I would happily go again.  The only downfall of it was squeezing two people into the "buddy" seat while we rode along.  David sat on my lap for some of the time, but he is definitely way bigger than he used to be.  I think soon I'll be the one who sits on his lap! Have you ever ridden in a combine? 

I found this miniature soft marshmallows the other day (half the size of regular mini-marshmallows).  I'm a sucker for cute, small food so I got them!  The kids love them in their weekly art day treat of hot chocolate. I planted one seed packet of carrots in my garden.  I dug them up this past week and was surprised at how many I got!  I have frozen some of them and given some away and have used some fresh.  I still have a pile left in my fridge to attend to at some point soon. In Ana's Friday class, they are reading the American Girl book series and talking about them and doing crafts from each time period.  Ana is here modeling her hat she made.  She also learned how to properly make, serve, and drink tea.  She came home and dried some of our mint and then constructed her own reusable tea bag and happily brewed herself a cup of tea.  I love her enthusiasm for projects!

Ana always wants to have long hair.  I am fine with that and would be happy for her to have long hair.  The problem lies in her bad habit of chewing on her hair.  It's not noticable for awhile, but as her hair grows out, I realize that only the back is growing out while the sides remain chin length (or the length it takes to reach your mouth).  After awhile, it starts to look not so nice.  So I have to whack it off, much to her displeasure.  Here she is pre-haircut - notice the length differences. This is mostly done here.  I had to even up a bit here and there, and then once we washed it, it looked even cuter than the picture shows. It's actually a pretty cute length on her and she's no longer making this sad, grumpy face about it when she looks in the mirror. Abby said she wants to have her hair cut short too.  I'm not sure if I'm ready for that yet.  I only trimmed the ends on her hair the night I cut Ana's hair.  The last time I trimmed her hair, she was ver