October, first half

School work was our focus for October. Matthew doing math in the kitchen.

Daniel doing math in the kitchen.

Evelyn doing math in the kitchen.

Jennifer going math in the school room.

For something different to do we went to a friend's and helped her pick and can peaches.

Lots of delicious peaches getting ready for canning.

Jennifer has been plugging away at her painting. It's been over a year now!

Evelyn playing while everyone else is working on school.

Typical view of my midweek mess. Piles of books and things on the counters, and the table in the school room.

 I don't think Melanie is doing any work here...but she did get her math moved to an online program, so she's more often spending time on the laptop working on her math.

Jennifer finished her painting! She needed some encouragement to keep plugging away at it, but how it is done. It turned out really well!

Our friend with the pear trees also has lots of apple trees. So we helped pick apples and got lots of apples to take home too. So we made some pies.

Another Sunday evening campfire.

The boys got to help me put mulch around my plants. Here I have some super tiny seedlings that I hope will last the winter. Cover up those roots! It'll need all the help it can get...if the cold cold winter doesn't get it the gypsy moth caterpillars will.

I enlisted the kids to harvest the potatoes down in my "potato" garden. They came up with about a half a basket full. Not bad, considering how lousy the soil is down there.

Jennifer obliged me by sitting on the corn stalks so they wouldn't fall out. I dumped them on a compost heap. Not one head of corn did the raccoons leave for us. Pigs.

We took some time off to go for a walk. It was a gorgeous day!

So lovely in the trees!

Even Dad and Nathan went with us...just for a break.

More harvesting. This year I actually had enough carrots that there were extras for later. For about a month long we ate fresh carrots...I just stored them in a bin in water and changed the water twice a week. They stayed fresh and crunchy all month.

Typing time for Evelyn. She found some games she likes to play. I'm not sure how much faster she is getting at it, but at least she isn't getting mad and running off to her room because it's too hard. Hopefully this is an improvement.

Matthew putting all his brains to work.

Melanie doing her math. For real this time.

Jennifer working hard.