It's Saturday...

and this is what's been going on around here so far:

-walking in the sunshine (sunshine again!)
-bowling
-shopping
-running around outside
-listening to story tapes
-making Halloween cards
-making trick-or-treat costumes
-reading a long-wished-for book
-going off to work
-killing animated chickens
-emailing new homeschoolers
-cleaning
-dressing up as rich people in yards of fancy fabric
-doctoring a hurt foot
-teaching Pompey to sew
-singing
-talking for four hours with a friend
-making costumes for stuffed friends 

Crime scene investigators

We hung out with some real police officers who do crime scene investigations. Then we got to play with their stuff. The boys both made casts of shoe imprints and dusted for fingerprints. They are pros now. Freddy had the best time. He got lucky: The activity was not for his age group but he was able to participate because he was there with his older siblings. Good thing he wore his detective pants!  

 

Pompey, the fancy, old scrag.

French people never do feed dogs hardly, and cats never. They are not nice to animals. He says he never saw a dog or cat properly covered with flesh the whole time he was there; they were all wretched scrags.
--From Lucie's bedtime book

 

Ta da!!!!!!!!!!!

The curtains are finally done. It only took three months or so. The first two (the bigger ones) were quick because I was able to reface the old ones. That was the original plan: to reface all six curtains. But the last four couldn't be refaced; I had to make them from scratch. I took some shortcuts with the sewing to save time. No one will ever notice. I couldn't take shortcuts with the rings though; I had to sew 140 of them on by hand, on the floor with people dancing about all around me.

The new curtains make a huge difference to me. The whole area (where I spend most of my waking hours) feels so much lighter and lovelier. Batik doesn't photograph well, so they are prettier in person. I also finished the top of Lucie's quilt. Now I must make a couple of cat costumes before the month is up.

Before...

and after.

 

Obstruction

Who do you think did this? Me? No, I am too busy cooking and cleaning and schooling for such silliness. Seb? Forget it. The girls? No, they are girls; they paint and draw and read and dress up and write stories and pretend.

That leaves those two wild boys. They built it with great glee and then rammed it down. Over and over and over again. Must be a boy thing. Lucie and I were a little annoyed that we had to walk outside to get to our sewing machines in the family room. I have been told that allowing this kind of rowdiness makes me a rather indulgent mother, but I say that it's better to ram down pillows and blankets now than buildings and boulders and vehicles later on.

 

Diet day

It's Thursday which is diet day around here. Our current numbers:

Dieter #1 is 23 lbs closer to her goal. Yay!!!
Dieter #2 has not reported yet. Where are you, #2?
Dieter #3 is 4 lbs closer to her goal. Yay!!!

And, speaking of losses...(drumroll)...Lucie is the one who lost six inches (if not more). 

Autumn trip

 

I think that, by now, ol' Poppy would have figured out that his sign gives everyone the giggles. It used to better advertise the bait that he has for sale, but I guess worms is worms and Amish baking brings in the tourists better.

Our drive through small midwestern towns was absolutely lovely. I have never driven through them at this time of year. I wanted to stop and move in. But I know by now that these small towns are not idyllic havens, so we'll stay put where we are.

Some other photos of our trip up north to visit Grammy:

The beautiful Mississippi River seen from the narrow, white-knuckle bridge.

 

Learning a new instrument.

 

Playing with Grammy's kaleidoscope collection.

 

Snow flurries.

 

Talent

This is Freddy's embroidery. He used an old sheet, a permanent marker, and a handwork hoop to make badges for all of us. I walked around all day Sunday with a badge pinned to my shirt. If you look closely you might be able to see his black eye (leftie) which is slowly fading away. He doesn't know how he got it, and our best guess right now is kitchen roller skating.

Freddy's hair is long, but I like it that way. Someone else around here had at least six inches of hair chopped off this morning. Who could it be? The thirty-seven yr old whose hair keeps falling in her face obstructing her work? Or the ten yr old who doesn't want to wash her hair? Or the eight yr old who hates to brush her hair? Or the thirty-eight yr old who has extremely long hair for a savvy businessman? Hmmm.

 

Anyone need a belly laugh??

Isabelle/Sebastien.

They went flying today. They took a hop to an airport in another town. Isabelle was the only girl there. We have big fights around here about who gets to go flying next. Freddy thinks that every turn should be his. I think that we need a five seater.

 

House

I didn't want to run the household. I wanted to live in it the way I once lived in my mother's house: lightly and with ease, sleeping on fresh sheets and eating good meals and not having to account for how those things came into existence. (From the book mentioned below.)

Time to grow up, I say. I want to sleep late and eat out everyday. I want my children to be clean and quiet. I want the girls to spend their days in beautifully sewn, ironed, cotton dresses wandering through the fields in their mary janes picking flowers. I want the boys to do something manly in their button down shirts with nary a bruise or a grass stain on their knees. I want a perfectly clean house, a really clean one, not just a neat one. I want to read books all afternoon. I think that we could accomplish all that with an army of servants. I think.

I may be rich

If marriage is like a bank account, filled not only with affection but also with a commitment to the other person's well-being as much as to one's own, I suppose my balance was high. I suppose that all the days I had made a home for my husband, and all the times I had ended my writing days early so that he could work late or come home to a hot dinner and not to a scene of domestic chaos--all of that, as much as the desire and intensity that originally brought us together, were stores in my account.

From To ---- with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife

by Caitlin Flanagan

What we can't have we must borrow #2:

Chubby baby #2, this one a girl. Mia and I at the scavenger hunt. Surely she was getting puckered up to give me a kiss. This was just before her scampy brothers were sneaking through my legs to reach the forbidden and dangerous end of the dock.

 

Nature Scavenger Hunt 2006

A beautiful October day.
Ten homeschooling familes.
Thirty children.
Forty acres.
Dozens of animals and plants and other natural things to search out.

 

Wild, crazy play on the inflated water slide. It's as much fun on land as it is on water.

 

Roasting marshmallows by the lake. We had a great, roaring fire going.

 

Diet day

Thursday is going to be diet day here. We have three dieters and their current numbers are going to be posted here on Thursdays. Cheer them on!

Dieter #1 is 15 lbs closer to her goal! Yay!
Dieter #2 has not reported yet.
Dieter #3 is 2 lbs closer to her goal! Yay! 

Roller derby

Monday evening roller skating lessons from a pro. He fell on the kitchen floor about a hundred times, making me gasp for every single one.

 

What a fast learner! He can already go up on his tippy-toes.

 

His final crash of the evening. We expected him to be covered with bruises this morning.