Weeks Nine & Ten Wrapped Up

So, I typed up a long post last Saturday, describing the week prior. But, I had so many pictures to add to it and I ran out of time. Here we are at Saturday again and I never did add those pictures or publish that post.

Oops.

I guess I'll go ahead and add a few from this week and publish it as two weeks. But, from here on out, I'm not sure about the weekly wrap ups. I may just post specific events we take part in or maybe try to do a monthly wrap up. We'll see. What I do know is that we are about to be full swing into the holiday season and things will certainly get a little harder to keep up with. Don't get me wrong. This is my favorite time of year. But, generally there is so much living that there is not as much time for the recording. 

Alrighty then. Here is the post from last week ... so, here's what we did the last week of October.

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Okay, so this is a post I should have been doing all across the week, breaking it up into three or four posts. This was the week of pictures. Between the fall family fun on Sunday (baking pumpkin muffins, going to pick out pumpkins and carving the pumpkins) and the field trip to the corn maze/pumpkin patch and Halloween, I have a lot of pictures. I think this may just be a week in pictures! Let me give you the highlights of our week.

Making a fairy

We started the week by playing Horse-opoly. We started Saturday night, played for a few more hours on Sunday, played some more Monday night after dinner, more on Tuesday night after dinner and somewhere along the way, the Hippie and I finally lost. Daddy and the Princess are still set up ... in the middle of our kitchen table. But, they haven't finished their game yet. This was the girls' first encounter with Monopoly (Horse-opoly is played the same way), but they did excellent. And, what great math practice this game is! Constant multiplication and money counting and making change. Good stuff. And, loads of fun, too!

Sunday was our annual pumpkin day. We started the morning with a Family Morning Tea Time outside (God was nice enough to give us a coolish morning). Then, we came inside and baked pumpkin muffins (yum-O) and then headed over to a local church to pick out pumpkins. The girls each picked out the one they wanted to carve and then we headed home. Now, we've been doing this every year since they were babies. Even as babies, we'd let them draw (scribble) faces on the pumpkins with a sharpie and then Daddy would carefully carve out exactly what they drew. Over time, the pumpkins began to actually look like faces, but in the beginning Daddy was carving out all kinds of craziness! What a wonderful tradition. Anyway, this year we decided that the girls were old enough to carve their own pumpkins. So, they drew their faces and Daddy cut out the tops. The girls each dug out their own seeds (with lovely disgusted faces) and then carved their own pumpkins ... for the first time. All of this was while watching football (of course) and was followed by three hours of Horse-opoly. Momma made chili and Daddy and the girls played football in the front yard. Truly, a wonderful day!

Daddy ... making pumpkin muffins

Momma ... making chili

Princess Sweet Pea

Time for football ...

Drawing their pumpkins' faces

Ready for carving

Love the face!

Love this face, too!

All done

The Princess's pumpkin

The Hippie's pumpkin

We did a bit of "school" on Monday, but keep in mind that we are in our "summer" break. This time of year is our light time and we will start our "new year" in full force in January. Anyway, we listened to A Feather on the Breath of God, wrote in our Gratitude Journals, read Proverbs 28, prayed and sang Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (without the help of music ... we've got this down!). We followed that up by singing O Come All Ye Faithful ... we're ready for Christmas. :) We read another chapter of Narnia (have you read these books? If not, *read them*! I do love how closely they resemble the story of the Bible) and the Princess looked up "brandished" in the dictionary as we didn't know what it meant. The girls each practiced their cursive while Momma worked on her book study and then we headed out to get our bikes. We rode to the beach and took a beach walk. There was a lot of life out there! The Hippie found a huge horseshoe crab ... that turned out to still be alive! There were also a *lot* of really large moon jellyfish washed up on shore ... and a few in the shallow water. When we got home, each of the girls read a chapter in their respective Vikings books and narrated to me. The Hippie and I did three chapters of Life of Fred math and the Princess and I did one chapter. The Hippie also practiced her math facts using Xtramath. The Princess listened to Geography Songs while drawing and sewing a pillow during her quiet time and the Hippie listened (for the millionth time) to some Your Story Hour cds about American History while sewing a doll. We finished out the afternoon with my reading aloud Finn MacCoul and His Fearless Wife by Robert Byrd ... and more Horse-opoly in the evening. :=)

We took it pretty easy on Tuesday. The girls each did some reading ... the Princess is still working on Charlotte's Web and she also read Finn MacCoul. The Hippie read Finn MacCoul, The First Starry Night and finished reading Thimble Summer. They both did some writing ... started writing their Christmas lists. The Princess worked some more on sewing her pillow and drawing horses and we had our afternoon Tea Time ... with Narnia this time. The Hippie did a sample lesson of Teaching Textbooks math online. And, of course ... more Horse-opoly.

Wednesday was our annual field trip to the corn maze/pumpkin patch. We've been every year since 2010 and the girls love it. Before we left, they each did some reading ~ the Princess still working on Charlotte's Web and the Hippie started The Story of the Treasure Seekers. As far as the field trip ~ there was jumping on the corn popper, playing on the playgrounds, taking the hay ride, visiting all of the farm animals (including some tiny piglets ... ADORABLE!) and of course, the corn maze itself. By the time we got home, the girls were plum worn out! The Princess had to veg out to some Moody Science videos. Works for me. :)

Hay ride

The cutest piglets ever ... if they didn't grow up to look like their Momma, I'd have wanted one. :)

My lovely sunflowers

Completely worn out from the day ... time for some Moody Science videos.

Thursday, of course, was Halloween. Daddy was off, so we did something we never do. We purposely went and payed money for sugar. LOL If you know my family, you know we're not the ones to eat like that often. But, it was a special occasion. So, we headed over and got some hot, fresh pumpkin donuts. YUM. Then, we stopped off for some last minute face paint and headed home. We spent the day wrapping and braiding the Hippie's hair so that she could be a pirate and then dressed up the girls and headed out trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. When we came home at 9:00, we had collected pounds-upon-pounds of candy. Ridiculous, really. We separated out the chocolate and left all of the other yuckiness out for the Sugar Plum Fairy (she comes each year and takes all of that candy to supply the fairies with electricity ... and, she always leaves a small gift in place of the candy ... the guys that Daddy works with *love* the Sugar Plum Fairy ... they tend to have all of that candy gone by the end of the day ... crazy!).

Pumpkin doughnuts

The whole family worked together ... Momma and the Princess braided; Daddy wrapped one section with embroidery floss.

The most beautiful pirate ever

Such  a goofball!

Arrrrggghhhh

And the cutest puppy ever

"Show me your belly."

The loot ...

More loot ...

Still more loot ... most of which went with the Sugar Plum Fairy

Friday ... I'm sure you guessed ... was pretty relaxing. We wrote in our gratitude journals (decided to start the November Joy Dare) and the Princess and I played some word games with one of the gifts the Sugar Plum Fairy left. The rest of the day was spent generally playing and cleaning and crafting. We played a long game of hide-and-seek ... Momma's idea. They were so happy and thankful that *Momma* came to them and said, "Hey, let's play hide and seek." Other than that, we were pretty relaxed. The Princess and I looked at all of the pictures on the deck of cards Nanu sent us from Germany. She picked out her favorites and then we goolge-mapped them to see where they were all located. The Hippie broke out her guitar and started trying to play a few notes and chords. That's about it.

Still working around that dang Horse-opoly board

Gifts from the Sugar Plum Fairy

Today, it's off to Whole Foods for our monthly stock-up and Joanne's for some more craft supplies. There's a Halloween party on our street this evening and football tomorrow. Next week we'll be meeting my grandparents in St. Augustine at Fort Matanzas National Monument one day, spending time with Daddy another day and heading to a Big Cat Rescue another day. Busy busy ... and, we need to start thinking about gift making.

Although this is our "time off", I'd still like to read some of our favorite Thanksgiving books this month, keep up with Bible Time and Narnia, keep up with math and writing and have the girls keep up with reading their books. If we can just slow down enough to do it all. We shall see.

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And, now for what we did the first week of November ...

This was a fairly light week. We are settling into our holiday break. This week was filled with things like a family movie night, going to the Catty Shack Ranch, meeting my grandparents in Saint Augustine for lunch and a tour of Fort Matanzas, a day off for Daddy and the usual cooking, playing and cleaning. Here are a few highlights:

The Princess and Daddy finally finished the marathon game of Horse-opoly! Woo-hoo ... we can have our kitchen table back! :)

We've continued to write in our gratitude journals and the girls are each currently reading a couple of books. They are still working on their Viking books here and there (honestly, I wish we'd finished those before the holiday season!) and the Princess is still working on Charlotte's Web. The Hippie started reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and loves that!

Momma's getting pretty good at our "daily bread"!

We've continued to read Narnia and the girls both did some art and writing this week by making cards for a family member. We also read aloud Pilgrim Cat (an excellent living book that initiated some discussion about religious freedom and the history of Thanksgiving).


We only enjoyed one morning walk, but hey, one is better than zero. :)

We took a little trip to St. Augustine on Tuesday. We met my grandparents for lunch (Did I mention they are about to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary? Such an inspiration, these two!) and then we headed over to Fort Matanzas for a quick ferry ride and a tour.

Eighty years old and still picking up children.

We went to the Catty Shack Ranch with our Home School Group on Thursday. We've been there before, but the girls love it. They are a very special local rescue for big cats. They take in tigers, lions, leopards and other wild animals that need a home.

"Kittens" on their kitty hammock

 
We also hit up the library this week. I broke out all of the books that we own on Thanksgiving and/or the Pilgrims and then I grabbed a couple more from the library to set up a book basket for November.

 
The girls and I played Hopscotch together yesterday. Let me tell you, that is not as easy when you are old, lol. I'm actually kind of sore today. Is that possible? Goodness, I must be out of shape.

Let's see, what else. Oh, the girls have brought their paper dolls back out and started making more. The Hippie made a baby for her couple and the Princess made a wife for her man. And, they've both made some more clothes for them, including some full zip-up pajamas for the man. Very cute!

Oh yeah. Call me crazy, but I started listening to Celtic Christmas music this week. I'm ready to get my head and heart in the right place and music and yummy candles help to do the trick. I told the girls no Christmas music with words until the day after Thanksgiving (I don't want to be tired of it by Christmas), but the instrumental hymns are nice!

I think that's about it.

Until next time, 
~ Irie Momma