October Roundup

This is one of those weeks where I'm so overloaded with stories and pictures that I want to get on my blog that I feel completely incapable of blogging about any of them. Unfortunately all my thoughts are rendering themselves in the form of one long blog post that is going to be so random and extensive you may find yourself overloaded too! So, sorry, in advance!

First let me start off by saying that yesterday afternoon I was getting some quiet time, Henry was playing with Legos, Havalah was playing a game and it was just me, my water bottle and a magazine, when I heard a sound that I love to hear, my cell phone ringing with the "chip chirp" that is the ring assigned of our Realtor. After having our house on the market for as long as we have, hearing that ring is usually a good thing.

Hi, Kristen, it's Becky.

Hi, what's up?

Soooo...how soon can you be out of your house?

{{Gulp}} Adrenaline starts pumping. Um...an hour and a half?

Would it help if I came over to help you clean so that someone can be there in 40 minutes?

I was a blur for the next 40 minutes.

To make a long story short, the interested people came, were here for over an hour, and drove by again later on when the kids and I were outside riding bikes.

8:00 this morning: "chirp chirp"

Hi Becky! What's up?

Soooo...they want to come back and see your house again...how soon can you leave?

An hour later we were running out the door. This is good, right? We are praying these people are "the ones."

In other news, we have another milestone in our family! One week after Havah learned to ride her bike, Henry took off on his. I loaded a video of him riding, but for some reason, blogger would only load it on the bottom of the page. I just can't say enough about how good Jon is at teaching our kids to ride!

Unfortunately when I was helping him (stopping is the hard part for him right now) he ended up falling over and the handle bar scraped up his side. Poor kid.

We were over at Grandma and Grandpa's house for some trick or treating this year. Here we have Indiana Jones and Tink. Lovely.

I know I've said it before, but it really is so sad how shy they are.


For the last month or so we've been learning about the Vikings and their vast history. Last week we wrapped up our unit with a little enrichment. Including making some (non alcoholic, of course) Apple Mead.

Chopped apples, (apple leaves - we skipped this part), water and honey.

Quite tasty.

We also spend some time having fun Viking style - with archery.

We enjoyed making some authentic Viking flat bread, except for the part about cooking it over an open fire.

Topped with honey, of course.

We spent some time learning about the Viking alphabet and creating a Rune Stone, planning a Viking's day and mapping out their sailing routes when traveling to raid and ransack villages or look for land in which to settle - mostly in Iceland and Greenland. Havah's rune stone says: Have a Happy Halloween. : )

(So many of my very favorite homeschooling blogs are so quick to share resources, so I wanted to mention that in a couple days I will amend this post with the websites and books that we found useful in our study of the Vikings.)

On one of our nature walks the kids picked up so many pretty leaves that we ended up cutting some of them into smaller leaf shapes, cut out a brown tree trunk and put the whole thing together on contact paper. They turned out so pretty I wanted to share them here.

For my birthday Jon, Nadine (Jon's mom), the kids and I spent a morning painting pottery. Although I've taken other kids to do this, I've never actually done it myself. How fun! We haven't got our pieces back yet, but I'll be sure to share the finished results when we do.

Maxine the cat hung out with Havah, much to her great delight.

And last, I wanted to share a few things that are making me happy today. First is this vintage Color Form Holly Hobbie game. It is Holly Hobbie's Victorian house and if placed next to a lamp Holly's fire place, stove and all the lamps GLOW! My thoughtful Mother in Law found this for me online from this site. A treasure.

My new Glassy Baby, also a birthday gift. I can't admit in this space just how many of these I own, because it would be embarrassing, but they are in my top ten favorite things. Definitely a happy thing.

And our two happiest things of all. Don't you love how the rakes are flung aside for much more important matters? I do.