End of September

Such pleasant days we have been having!! House work has been getting some good catching-up, including some tasks previously mostly-ignored. We are on "School Day" #14, doing well at getting accomplished the tasks most every day which we have required of ourselves 'educationally'. My plan about us working into our schedule a few more 'schoolish' tasks every couple weeks seems to be a success. N's new 'assignment' is handwriting, which has beem all-but ignored for the past six or eight months. [Remember that in AZ we did more 'school' in the summer months?? So ... do the math. Normally March was the month we would have started bearing down on more school stuff, but (a-hem) ... that was the month we started packing. Now that we're back in the 'real world', weather-wise, it's kind-of like the children had a super-extended summer break!!!! (eye roll) LOL] Her first day back at handwriting, N was saying how difficult it felt to her, so we agreed that we won't ever go that long again without having her do handwriting practice. She actually CRIED in sadness when comparing the work she had just finished with her work on the facing page, from months ago. (sigh) But, you know what, these are good lessons 1.) WHY COMPARE THINGS THAT AREN'T COMPARABLE? We can't compare our work right now after no practice, to our work then after lots of practice! 2.) If you don't want to slide backward in proficiency in an area, don't take long breaks! 3.) By Day Two she was judging that her skills were back up to par. ??! lol

Speaking of sliding backward in proficiency, piano practice. [Let's see, I basically took EIGHTEEN YEARS off!! lol] There is music for the ears around here!! I'm anxious for Mom and Dad to get here (just a couple weeks now!) and enjoy the fruit of our labors! :)

We have been privileged to be able to do some 'field trip'-y things, and are becoming more aquainted all the time with the library. Mmmmmm.... Additionally, with the weather cooling down, we are doing some fall types of yard work (MY FAVE!!!!!!!!!). The children bring in a bowl of vine-ripened tomatoes nearly every day! :) But still not enough to can. (sigh) argh!! :) Six of the plants I bought were evidently mis-labeled "Big Beef" tomatoes; they are cherry tomato plants. Don't understand me too quickly: We rrrrreally like cherry tomatoes. We eat them like candy. Which is good because I am NOT going to can cherry tomatoes. :) But I would not have planted six plants of cherry tomatoes.

Here are three pictures I took while juggling my responsibility as "light master" during a play N & J did a couple weeks ago. This play had four scenes and required that many costume changes. First, a beast came and hurt a girl. In this picture, a brave young man came to help the girl.



In this picture the brave young man is trying to kill the beast. [Can you see how hard N & J were laughing during this sword fight???! LOL]



Then the brave young man got to rescue the girl.



The flowers are fading, and the leaves still in the trees are starting to change color. The leaves on the ground are crunching under the children's feet, much to my delight and theirs; fall, we missed. The chilren are back to spending hours at a time outside playing imaginary space ship (or whatever else) on the deck, riding bikes, or workin' the Moon Sand.

I finally cleaned the van's interior on Saturday. OHMYGOODNESS, no wonder people's vans get so dirty!! Vans are a P-A-I-N to clean! True, I knew it would be, which is why I postponed it through the hottest weather. But, BOY, I had terrrrrrrrribly sore muscles that evening. I could.not. even sleep that night until post-Ibuprofin!! :*( However, thanks to that essential oils "Sore Muscle Massage", by Sunday morning there was barely a hint of a reminder of how badly I'd been hurting the night before. YAY!!!!! Lesson learned: Do 15 minutes a day, DUH. That would have been a MUCH better solution. I mean, what was the big deadline anyway???!! Nada. Ridiculous. And then that evening was a Date Night!!! We had a Chili's gift card some church friends had given us for our anniversary (SO THOUGHTFUL), so we saw the matinee of Fireproof, then ate supper, and then had plenty of evening time to wrap up the week painlessly. Matinees are the BEST ... for many reasons. Check it out: on the way home from supper, Jeremy and I agreed that already we were ready to watch Fireproof again. Now, THAT's a first!

Here are pictures from a week ago when we went to the Science Center for a couple hours one afternoon [appreciatin' that pass!!!!!]. Like many 'museum'-type places, most of their stuff stays basically the same, but seasonally they bring in a new 'hot topic', so to speak. This summer's seasonal exhibit was dinosaurs (Humongous Among Us); this fall's is robots, based off the movie from a few years ago and 'science-ized'!! ;) We happen to be very difficult to please when it comes to museums' dinosaur exhibits (think that has anything to do with living for years so close to the Museum of the Rockies?????!), so we are so far more impressed with the Robots exhibit. :)

I know I don't have to spell out which of the famous "movie robots" in the following picture was our children's favorite. I probably do , however, have to explain why, "Thank you, 'C-3PO'," has become a common phrase in our house: Natasha has this knack for stating way too many obvious, unrequested, and unnecessary statements of fact or other such input. (sigh)



This thing was DIFFICULT to operate!! With practice, I'm sure it would become easy, but it was a good challenge for the girl! Too bad that even though we were there on a 'slow' day, there was always at least one child waiting for his/her turn at each of the two stations; it wasn't like a kid could just sit there for very long and get good at it.



This might have been our favorite aspect of this exhibit. They had four stations of a bunch of different kinds of parts that attach, and each station had a power source so the end result actually 'worked'!!!! The instruction was to build a robot dish washer. :)






The two pictures below are of robots N & J built from a building set (not Lego's, but a similar idea).