Take a Bite My Little Pretty

James and I have been doing weight watchers on line.
Oh sure, it works. I've lost 11 lbs and he's lost 9.
But that means you can't eat anything. Not anything good.
So my solution is to just not eat. I have to feed the kids, but I sure can't eat much of the food I make them. It's easier to just go hungry.
But James is a food genius. He makes good food that is low in points. And we can eat lots of it.
This is one of the many reasons we've been married for so long. He feeds me.
Here's his latest delicious and low calorie creation.
He even makes it look good on the plate.
Oh yea. James and I just celebrated our 35th anniversary. Others have said sweet things.
Me....I'm about the food.

Look Mom!!

My friend Adela's mom hasn't been feeling good and so Adela has gone to spend some time with her. Her son, who had many pressing social engagements, stayed with us....you know, pre-school halloween party and trick or treating....things too good to miss.
Tonight right before he brushed his teeth, I convinced him to let me pull his very very loose tooth.
He wanted his mom to see how cute he looked.
So here he is Adela.
And thanks for letting us enjoy him this week!!

Saying Goodbye

This year we outwitted all the hundreds of deer that freely roam our backyard and had 3 huge, productive tomato plants.
The taste of that first of the season home-grown delicious tomato - red and juicy - sliced, still slightly warm from the sun...incredible. Every day this summer we picked some..they came a few at a time. I had them every morning for breakfast, sliced on the homemade bread James makes. Every lunch they made my turkey sandwich perfect, and they laid beautifuly on top of our dinner salads each evening. Every bit of summer was captured in each succulent bite.
A few days ago we had a frost warning.
We picked all the tomatos, both red and green.
Here's the last one.
I promise not to take a single bite of the disgusting bland faux tomatos they sell in the store.
Till next summer - goodbye sweet thing. I loved you.

Pumpkin Stuff

Our homeschool group went to the coolest pumpkin farm yesterday in the horse country of Northern Virginia. (read ...only really rich people live there)
It had it all, animals, hayrides, slides, apple cider, petal tractors and pumpkins.
But our kids loved the giant jump on thing best of all.
A chilly day in fall with friends and kids and pumpkins....who needs Christmas?

History Right Before Your Eyes

Our family is using Sonlight in homeschool this year and we're doing Eastern Hemisphere Explorer, (which FiFi is going to be using too when they start back to homeschooling. Yea!)
We really really love it. Although my girls don't love to read, they've enjoyed all the great books we're tearing through.
We're reading "Commodore Perry and the Land of the Shogun" now and the girls are way into Japan. We read about the steamboats going from America to land in Japan and the girls weren't very familiar with them. Just so happens that James Rumsey, the inventor of the steamboat, made his first trial run, right here in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
So you know that means.......field trip!
We were given the key to the museum because it was closed on Monday and we had it all to ourselves. We visited the place on the Potomac where he launched his boat and hiked all over town.








To reward ourselves for learning so much, we had lunch at an authentic Japanese restaurant with the girls promising me they would try something "real Japanessy". Miso soup all around!

Driving home we passed the High School and I was thinking how much nicer it is to learn history the way we were, rather than reading a few paragraphs in a text book.

Homeschooling is the bomb!

Hop In

We have a 12 passanger van - all white. We call it "white boy". As in play that funky music..
We also have a Jeep Wrangler.

I spend a large portion of my life inside the van. It's great. You can take anyone who wants to go with you and it has a huge way back for tons of stuff. But it uses lots of gas and well, you can't be all about your image when you drive it.

Rarely I drive the Jeep. It's too small. Why is it when the mom wants to go somewhere, all the kids scramble for their shoes? My husband can go out ten times in a day and the kids don't even notice. I quietly take the keys out of the box and they're all lined up ready to go.

Yesterday I took Grace and Anna to their swim clinic. Just the three of us, so we took the Jeep.
We ran into Walmart to get a few things. It wasn't until I was rolling the full cart out that I remebered the Jeep has ZERO room in the back for groceries. No problem, we'll pile the groceries in the back seat with one of the girls. My cell phone rings...it's Kelly, she needs picked up from school. No problem, we'll just put bags on everyone's lap. The phone rings again. David's car has broke down and he needs a ride back from the car shop. Now we have 5 people in a 4 person car with 8 bags of Walmart junk.

White Boy looks good on me.

Cousins

Layla gets to stay with us until her mom and dad and new sister come home from the hospital. She doesn't mind staying here and told her mom that she needed to come to Grandma Kate's house, because "Grandma Kate misses me." She's right.
And Kara came up for the weekend to visit with her two kids.
Layla and Scarlett had a wonderful time just being cousins.
And I'm on a grandma high! Lots of kids equal lots of grand kids....sweet!