More Canning!

On Wednesday, we did some more canning! We got 54 more quarts of applesauce and 43 quarts of grape juice. Yes, the kitchen was a wreck!! Anyhow, we picked some of our grapes, and got some (as well as two coolers full of apples) from some friends of ours. Grandpa came up around 9 AM to help us, and stayed until mid-afternoon. There was a lot to do!

Josh: "Ooh, grapes!"

You can tell that the grapes were damaged by a hail storm we had a couple months ago. There were still a lot of good ones, but they weren't good enough to be picked by the grape picker and made into juice.

Don't you wish these pictures were scratch-n-sniff?!

Horse Riding Lessons

Annetta, Lydia, Hosanna, and Joanna have been taking horse riding lessons for a little over a year. They carefully saved their pennies and paid for most of it themselves. I went along on their last lesson and got some photos.

Here are Lydia, Annetta, and Hosanna, with their instructor, Carrie.

This is the instructor doing some one-on-one stuff with Annetta.

Here she is with Lydia and Hosanna.

This is Joanna. I had to laugh when I saw the expression on little Joanna's face--pure determination!


Before and after thir lesson, the girls tacked and untacked their horses. Hosanna and Joanna are untacking Sam.

Applesauce!

I made 22 quarts of applesauce. Hosanna, Joanna, and Lydia helped me as well. I just hope we can manage to save some for winter! Some people only put maple syrup on their pancakes, but we love applesauce on ours.

Much as I hate to say it...

...fall is here. And with it are asters.


And pretty yellow flowers with random, nectar-eating insects.

This goldenrod is for Grandpa Bob...don't you miss it??!

Oh, yes, we have, in the words of Napolean from Aristocats, "a lil ole cricket-bug."




With the threat of cold winter, we have been bringing in wood for heating our house. The "two boys" worked on it together a couple days ago.

School...

So yes, I have officially started school. I am doing 11th grade Abeka American history, where I am learning for the 11th time how Christopher Columbus went east by going west and landed on the shores of a New World while sailing in his three ships, the Nina, Pinta, and Pina Colada*. I very obviously haven't gotten to the part on run-ons in my ACE English, which incidentally is the best English curriculm I've found. Math...well, I'm trying Abeka Algebra 1 this year...we'll se how that goes...so far, it's better than Christian Light (no offence to those who wrote/use it, but I am scared of your brains) and I refuse to do Saxon...so far so good...elipses are what to use when you're not sure what to use...you know...
ACE chemistry. It's already up to my elbows, and that was just the introduction. Thankfully, the video guy has a sense of humor (or the script writer does), and since when have you heard of schoolwork being funny?!
I will probably also do a half-credit elective in public speaking (from ACE).

So that's what I'm doing. Why don't you leave me a comment and tell me what curiculum you are using, and, more importantly, if you would recommend it? I would recommend everything that I'm doing, so far.

* I am hereby offering 10 worthless points to the first person who can tell me the correct name of the third ship, without looking it up! Leave me a comment and tell me about it!

A not-quite-midsummer's evening...

I think it's getting to be fall soon. The leaves are starting to turn--when they do, I'll be sure to put up some pictures of our lovely trees. We're starting school tomorrow, or I should say, they are. I'm not quite ready. The schools in the area don't start until Monday. Anyhow, here are some rather random pictures of us this evening.

This is Josh and Katrina, in a rare moment of sitting still and cooperating with a camera.

I believe this is Annetta and Lydia, riding their bikes around. They went in shortly, because we have some cranky honey bees flying around with a chip on their wings. Their owner came and took their hives, so they are lost and hungry.


Katrina in the barn... I thought the green was so pretty!



Some poor, drying-up black eyed susans. Black eyed susans have got to be one of my favorite flowers :)

September...

Labor Day Weekend

Saturday evening, most of my family and I went to a nearby village and watched the parade. We sat with some of our relatives who live right there.

These are some of our veterans.

I love the Scottish marching bands!

And of course the tractors...some old, some new.

Time with friends...

Friday night was Game Night. This is the part of the show where a lot of homeschooled teens in the area get together and, well, socialize, in a good way. Last night we had a water fight to end all water fights. Naturally, it was guys against girls, and even though we had more girls, I think it was still fair because they were almost all taller than us, most of them significantly taller. (Well, not to mention that almost all the girls were taller than me, too...) And height is kind of a big deal in a water fight, because being taller means you can hit from above. We had rules about that, though, since it wasn't fair to do that, because the girls were disadvantaged on that point. As Aaron pointed out, it was rather a G-rated water fight. Which was fine with me. Did I mention the water was ice cold, and the air was a little on the cool side to begin with? (It's gonna be fall soon...noooooo!!)

We had had supper before the water fight, so after we had changed out of our wet clothes, we played Sardines. For those of you who may not know what Sardines is, it is like backwards hide and seek, where one person hides and everyone else has to find them. Hence the name, because you do feel squished if one hides under a truck or some other "limited space" area. Anyhow, here are some lovely pictures of us standing around, waiting to eat.

Blackberries!

This year has been a great year for blackberries! A couple days ago (okay, several, I've just been too lazy to post anything...) we went picking out back.

Talking about it

We rode out to the picking spot on the tractor/brush hog. That was interesting :)



Actually picking. If you look close, you can see Katrina hiding down in front of a blackberry bush, eating her heart out...

The fruit of our labor!

Republican Picnic

Last Wednesday, my family and I attended our county's annual Republican pinic. There was about 70 attendees, including several elected officials. Our state senator was there too, which was very cool. Jessica and a friend had made four pies to bring, and we arrived early enough to help set up. My sisters and I also provided some entertainment by singing, which they loved. Here are some pictures of that evening.

(This is Jess with State Sen. Cathy Young)

SkyFest 2008

Well, last weekend (or the 1, 2, and 3 of August), I was gone. I was miles and miles away from home. I was miles away from the internet, or a good telephone. A functional bathroom (that means a mirror, running hot and cold water, and flush toilet, in that order) was only accessible for about three hours out of 24. I can hear the questions flying, the sympathetic looks being sent my way, the reporters clamoring for my story, so I shall tell you all that occured.
One word: SkyFest. But wait, there's more. That was just the tantalizer--the one-word attention-getter. What follows is one cadet's experience at SkyFest 2008, and it is a doozie of a story!

Friday: I got to "our" airport around 10:30 AM, and unloaded my gear (that sounds better than junk, or worthless snivel gear, doesn't it?), and then hopped into the CAP van to ride to where the SkyFest festivities were to occur, on the other side of the airport. About the driving...Captain M. never learned the finer arts of, say, curving non-jerkily, and stopping slowly and cautiously. Therefore, since we almost always had the upwards of 4 or 5 cadets sitting on the floor in the back, it led to very interesting rides. (Uh, yeah, to my law enforcement friends...you didn't read that, did you...) Especially when you are the one wedged up against the back door--and your fellow cadets can see outside, through the crack in the door. Back on topic, though. So we got to the tarmac where our food booth was, and started getting set up. Even though the gates for the public didn't open until late afternoon, there were still other vendors who would buy food. We also helped with odd jobs that the SkyFest organizers asked us to do.

Once the gates opened, we were on parking. There were several of other parking volunteers, so sometimes (think: not very often) cadets were not needed out in parking, but when we weren't we were usually walking around throughout the area, just being available. Being on parking gave me empathy for any other parking people I should ever encounter. Parking was one of my more favored jobs. Since it rained several times during SkyFest, it was a game of how to park people where they wouldn't get stuck. We utilized our radios while parking, and people drove around in four wheelers, supplying us with water. We made sure to stay hydrated. My record was on Saturday, when I drank, I believe, seven bottles of water. I also made sure to keep sunscreen on.
Anyhow, besides parking, the cadets (there were about 11 in all) were supposed to help out in the food booth, along with the seniors. However, because we were all 18 or younger, about the most we could do was fish drinks out of the ice in the coolers, and look cool. (Relax, food inspectors and child labor people, relax...) So "food booth duty" was also translated as "break time" or "sit in the shade time" or "eating time."

So basically, that's what my Friday, Saturday, and Sunday looked like: parking, food booth, parking, odd jobs, parking, walking around, parking, and taking photographs. Add in extreme heat, two *very* bad storms, unique people, noise, crowds, a minimum of food, and a minimum of sleep, and you have it. By the time we finally went back to our camping site at day's end, I was so tired I could have slept through a storm. Oh, wait, I did... The first night, a tornado touched down in the city we were in, and so it was pretty stormy. We had to evacuate our tents and go to the quansit hut that was right there. The second night, I believe that it also rained (but I slept like a little log, so I don't know), and so we didn't even bother with tents. We all crashed in the quansit hut. Guys and girls were seperate, thank you very much (because I saw those shocked, horrified, kids-these-days looks)! Side note about tents: Why in the world do they vacuum pack those things, and then not sell vacuum-sealers with them?

We packed up our stuff Sunday afternoon/evening, and I got home around 7:00 PM. Here are some photos I took while there.



Parking...both above and below.





These two are of the stunt plane and wing walker that buzzed around a couple of times. The pictures don't show how loud it was. The noise level got very irritating.





Above is the black Corsair, and below is the C-130H that was there the whole time. The Corsair did some stunts and flying, and we saw the C-130H leave Sunday afternoon. Oh, yes, you can see the Air Force trailor parked near the C-130. The recruiter was there almost the whole time with an engine on display.