Sweet Fifteen

Melanie made her own cake. Lemon. So good!

We celebrated her birthday a bit low key, but we had some family pop in for the day. Which was pretty special.

The cake. At least I could get a good shot of the cake. It wasn't constantly moving away when my camera came into view.

Happy birthday Melanie!

We went for a beautiful fall walk.

(partial success)

We enjoyed a walk with company. Such perfect weather for it too.

We are thankful for fifteen years with Melanie. She is a sweet and thoughtful teenager, if a bit elusive when the camera is around. :p

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.

End of September, more school and stuff around the house

The floor in the bathroom on our main floor gets pretty wet when the girls shower. And the ceiling gets mildew. So, time to put up a shower curtain, at least that can keep the floor from getting so wet

Daniel found a painting tutorial he liked.

Evelyn's quilt coming along.

We had some campfires outside, usually on a Sunday evening.

More kite flying.

The top secret quilt's design coming together.

Sandbox weather.

The pool. Is always green. So frustrating. I'm about done with scrubbing and shocking it for the year.

Evelyn is really pleased with how her quilt is coming.

Matthew managed to find some free time to work on technic.

He told me about how it worked and what improvements he'd made to it.

The pool is shut for the year. Good! I'm very happy about that.

The shower curtain is up. If you shut the curtain you can't even see the iron stains everywhere. Bonus!

Philip is still working from home every day. Which works great for us. Any math or physics students that need help can usually find him when he comes down for a coffee and get the help they need to get past whatever they are stuck on.

I can still manage to help Evelyn with all of her math still.

Nathan came down with a math test for me to mark. I just look at the answer key and see if things match...that's all he needs. If he wants help, he has to ask his Dad later.

Daniel comes down to the kitchen more often now, to work on his math. He wants to be able to concentrate more, I'm not sure how much this helps, but maybe between distractions he can focus better overall?

Evelyn loves having painting as an activity.

Jennifer, not so much. But she still does some nice paintings. But gravitates to the easy-to-do ones.

Melanie comes to do her piano...it's a nice morning break from her math, usually.

See my painting, Mom?

Matthew does his reading in his room. He is usually laying or sitting on the floor in a very awkward pose. But he gets his work done, even if it's halfway upside down.