Family skate and such

Good times this weekend… Family roller skate at Stan's Skateland in nearby Montross. Monkey and Roo have come a long way in their two sessions over the past month. The progress Saturday was helped by "lessons" by the rink's own Miss Shelley. She's a 70-something whipper snapper who was a champion skater in her time - the best. She even had them work on the limbo during their lesson.

Also HF is working hard on the Hallway Expansion Project… Exciting!

And the (hall) walls come tumbling down...

MLK day project: widening the hallway. We're breaking through the wall between the den and the hallway - adding a door, opening space, installing (at the end) floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Monkey, Roo, and I assisted HF with the demo for the first couple hours and found some fun "treasures" hidden in the walls.

HF and Roo find a crushed beer can and money in the walls during demo

Before, during, and after

Some fun stuff in November

Nana popped in for a fun 48-hr visit!

Some good old fashioned arts & crafts...

"Working together, we get the job done" (trim work around the fireplace)

This kid learned to start a fire with a flint and steel with his cub scout crew this fall:

Fall "learning events"

Last month we took a field trip to Jamestown Settlement with the homeschool hybrid class of the eldest two (plus parents and siblings). Gorgeous day - fun time… Despite the fact that Goose had sprained her ankle the evening before and was in a stroller and otherwise hobbling the entire time. (Never a dull moment).

Ten days ago HF got his first deer in a decade in our back field. Our friend Ricky from church is a professional butcher and came over within two hours of the kill to butcher it for us in our backyard. Homeschool biology class for Monkey and Roo!

Monday we went to Luray Caverns, again with the homeschool crew from Monkey and Roo's "school." Amazing sights there! Well enjoyed.

(Though I must say… I'm glad to now have 8 total hours of solo field-trip-driving with 4 kids in the car behind me! All in a 3-week time period, to boot. Whew.)

Patch time

Family day Monday (Columbus Day) complete with Home Depot run, stop-in at children's museum, and pumpkin patch quick visit.

Odds and ends in October

Fall weather is finally here! Mouse and I took Jack for a walk in the back fields… Light is gorgeous.

Rainy Saturday caused us to opt out of the fall festival parade. Instead we stayed home and HF made donuts for the first time - delicious apple-cider flavored. Monkey was his main helper this time:

Baby lambs born this week! And we didn't even realize that our ewe was pregnant. Came home to find them born and well… and they're adorable - Roo named them Davery and Luke (after Skywalker). Our total sheep count is now at 9.

Second to last game for Monkey's soccer team (still undefeated). Here he is playing goalie, which he's really been enjoying.

Falling back into the groove

It's been a full month with lots of activities, new and old. But it's also been a pretty nice month because for the first time in four years, we are doing a true "back-to-…" routine. Except for Mouse (who started up new this year at preschool), everyone's in the same place they were last year. And routine and structure are so.very.nice.  Added bonus: we have been in VA long enough to now have some actual friends to connect with more regularly, with less effort on our part. Love! I even joined an evening Bible study with two friends I really like.

Thanksgiving week with family

The fam visited for Thanksgiving week! Gang in the rain at G Washington birthplace

Annual shooting competition: Nona's arrow was closest to the pumpkin! Caleb runner-up.

14 for Thanksgiving dinner! (15th, Mouse, was napping). Nona did the turkey!

The girls made bead creations; here Grandpa proudly sports his rapper-style necklace

Post-turkey property walk. Uncle Rob, HF, and backpacked-Mouse survey the woods

Cousins Ruth and Naomi did the girls' nails! Treat.

New pizza oven went up! First pizza meal, day-after-Thanksgiving. Success.

Notes from November

Thanksgiving is coming! And with it, turkey crafts. A preschool creation demoed by the goose:

Giving. This year the kids and I made up a few Christmas boxes for poor kids in developing nations through Operation Christmas Child (Samaritan's Purse). The oldest three contributed money from their "give" bins to the items we purchased, which worked out great. AWANA gave us the opportunity to participate, and I was glad to take it. We need to do much more of this kind of thing as a family (by which I mean service and engagement in global poverty), and this proved to be a simple and doable start.

Lights, camera, action…! OK, just the lights, part -- but that's the only part we were after anyway. Overhead lights in the living room, den, and stairway -- hooray! We also have curtains and artwork going up, so things are moving along in the interior design way. Love it

Sad day... Monkey's closest friend since we moved to Virginia is Seth, a classmate of his from first grade at King George Elementary last spring. This weekend Seth and his family are moving to the United Arab Emirates… Sad day for us. This wrestling photo was taken on Sunday, when the two boys spent most of the day playing and soaking in time together. (He was also one of the two boys at Monkey's sleepover birthday party.) We'll foster a pen pal relationship between the two boys - we've been fortunate enough to do that with several friends from CA. But in the meantime, farewells are always hard.

Weekend update

Fall is glorious. Peak colors hit around Halloween in these parts but are still bright and lovely. I adore this shot of Roo doing a cartwheel outside our church after bi-weekly homeschool co-op on Friday:

Will wonders never cease? Yesterday I touched the sewing machine for the time since 7th grade. With the help, of course, of my very talented better half. I made curtain tie-backs for the six second-floor windows… They came out fairly hideous, but since the stitching is virtually completely hidden by the curtain, it's a passable job. And things can only improve from here…!

And speaking of progress and efforts on the home front… Onward, pizza oven! This one is going to be a chest-level oven, I learned, unlike the waist-level ovens we've had for versions 1, 2, and 3. Looks like it's going to be quick a masterpiece. Uncle Tim spend the day with us yesterday and worked on the bottom 'level' of the oven for the better part of the day with HF. Good progress!:

Helpers in the back of Uncle Tim's truck:

Birthday party time central this weekend. "School" friend Brandon's yesterday, and church friend Laurels' today. A cute craft that our resident 6-year-old artist made there today:

Finished. This week we got the blinds and curtains up in Monkey's room and the guest room. Felt so good to get them up and have those rooms both fully 'working' again...

 Chickens. One of the hens turned out to be a rooster. His name is Zane - so named after the "ninja of ice" in Lego Ninjago... By the monkey, of course.  Names for white things tend to be feminine - snowball, marshmallow, etc - but clearly we didn't fall into that trap.

 And for their part, the hens are beginning to lay, which is good news for our crew...

School went well this week over all; more on that before long.

The monkey had his first sleepover last night, an 8th birthday party for his cubscout friend Bryce. Success!