Goodbye October!

Last day of October ~ time is beginning to go at warp speed and seems to continue accelerating with each day.  Here's a brief photo journal of our day:

 A layer of frost on just about everything.  Had to scrape the windshield in

order take Thing One up to speech at the local public school.  Windows

had to be scrapped yesterday, too, for church, but Kevin did a bulk of that - on both

cars.  Thanks honey!!!

 We had a few extra Black Eyed Susan's grow, after the first round.

They're even pretty in the frost.

 Started taking pictures of the boys and Charlotte serious wanted her picture

taken.  She was a wee bit hyper through our legs and as soon as I said, "Okay,

Charlotte, I'll take your picture!", she sat down.  Go figure.

 Boys were happy to start their new math level today.  As Thing Two

pointed out, we've started to reuse some of the things we bought four years

ago.  When we switched to Math-U-See, Thing One was in third grade, now

Thing Two is in third and so we just need to buy the workbooks as we

have everything else.  Somewhere along the line, probably when they were in

1st and 4th, we got off track for finishing a book in one traditional school year.

This year, they are working hard to get caught up.

 Thing One volunteered at the Harvest Festival at

Burke Community Church.

 Mr. Ninja

A totally kid made costume out of things we already had.

Like that idea!

Is there a better game than eating Krispy Kreme

donut?  Ah, it smelled like the parking lot of Krispy Kreme, you

know the smell of sugar before you even get out of your car!

Only thing missing was the Hot Sign!

So, good night October, look forward to seeing you again next year.

Congrats are going out

to our youngest (well, yesterday anyway)!  The boys had swim and a certain almost 8 & 3/4 yo finally made it across the pool without a floating device, touching the bottom (good thing as they were in the deep end), a lane line, or a wall.  I've known for awhile that he could do it, he just finally figured it out and did it.

Christmas Count Down

While scrolling through Pinterest the last few weeks, I saw a Christmas Count Down board that was so simple ~ a clip board jazzed up for the season with "Days till Christmas" at the bottom.  You'd then clip on the days till Christmas number like a regular sheet of paper cut down some.  Very clever idea, worthy of recreating.  I thought it might be nice to add an activity to the back side of the number, so there would be something to do each day.  Not sure what all would go on this list, but here are some ideas:

1. daily Advent activities
2. make hot chocolate with candy cane stir stick (dip the non-hook end in melted chocolate or something fun like that)
3. make Christmas Cards
4. drive around neighborhood to look at lights
5. watch a Christmas themed movie (repeat as often as necessary to get to 25)
6. go into D.C. to look at National Tree and State Trees
7. bake cookies
8. make Christmas candy
9. read some Christmas books cuddled under blanket
10. invite friends over for Christmas sing along
11. deliver treats to neighbors
12. make wrapping paper
13. look up/research favorite Christmas songs or activities
14. see a live Nativity in your area (if available)
15. take some corny family Christmas photos
16. see how many things you can be thankful for from the past year
17. Christmas Party!

This may be a good enough start to a list!  Don't want to overwhelm ourselves during this holiday.  Now to keep my eye out for good bargain on clipboard andChristmas Paper.

When nature calls

Go for a walk and enjoy the weather!  Dropped Kevin off at the airport and made it home.  It really seemed to nice of a day to spend the remaining day light in the car or house so we took a hike through the woods.  Never seems to get old going out into the woods (it's still a value added to our home)!

Here's some of what it looked like:

 liked how the light was coming through the trees

 off and walking away!

 off paved path adventures (to see where a beaver dam used to be)

 What is on the other side of the log?

 Charlotte wants to know as well.

the creek of course!

Dreaming ~

That is what I would be doing if I could actually play the piano like David Nevue.   Here's a youtube video of one of my favorite songs, it's called "While The Trees Sleep".  I got hooked on this guy from reading Ann Voskamp's blog and am almost daily inspired to try to learn to play the piano.  Time is the hardest thing to find, for with out time, practicing becomes difficult.  Without practice, one doesn't get better at anything.  We've got to do things over and over again to make progress.

Anyone want to give me a time management class?

Welcome to October

and a rainy cool one at that.  Today, the 3rd, was no different.  Actually a nasty sort of Monday ~ cool/cold, rainy, and overcast just about the whole day.  Had really wanted to have a fire with this weather, but the schedule that I woke up with, just wasn't going to allow it.  Dropping a kid off for speech, picking him up from speech, have a meeting late morning, and a ball practice (or possibly make up game) in the afternoon.  Just no time to light a good fire and keep it going all day.  Ah, then the email came that baseball was canceled.  I knew this before the meeting and couldn't wait to get home!  Well over 6 hours later and it's still going strong!  Ye haw!

And out of shear delight, I took a video of it.  Yes, you can hear the logs popping!