Christmas season has officially begun

The Christmas season has begun. On Wednesday, we decorated the inside of the house. We have greenery and lights on the windows but the lights didn't turn out too well.

Here is our door to the screened in porch. This picture turned out better.

Grandma and Grandpa are here for a short visit. Today we made a gingerbread house that Grandma brought. The children helped to decorate it.

The children thought that it was the most beautiful gingerbread house in the world. This is a view of the front.

This is the back. The children had a great time decorating it. They look forward to eating it. Already it has lasted more than last year's gingerbread house (which was eaten the evening it was made!).

A Real Easter Egg

Our new Dominiques and Araucanas have started to lay eggs. Nathan and Stephen are happy because they can begin to sell the extra eggs. I'm happy since I will now have enough eggs for our family to eat.

The Araucanas lay colored eggs. Nathan has our first colored egg below.

It is hard to see what color it is from the picture because the digital camera has a lot of trouble focusing on the shell of an egg. The egg is a lovely pastel green.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We woke on Thanksgiving to about a 1/2" of snow on the ground. Just enough to make everything look pretty and white. The children were thrilled and went outside as soon as they could to play.

We had a Thanksgiving service at our church at 10 am. This was the first Thanksgiving service our church has had. Then we had Thanksgiving dinner at a church family's house. Nice spread, wasn't it?

Happy children before dinner starts.

I made the rolls and the pie. I made two pumpkin pies and a lemon meringue pie. Nathan helped me make the pie. It was so pretty I had to take a picture of it. And it was delicious.

Sedimentary Jello

I made sedimentary jello for the children last week. Needless to say, it was a huge hit. Nathan did point out that I had forgotten the "indigo" color but I was running out of space in my pan. Plus I couldn't figure out how to distinguish between the blue of the berry blue jello and the indigo of food coloring enhanced berry blue jello.

Success!

Hunting season is upon us. Opening day was Thursday. My dh and Stephen went out in the morning and saw a couple of deer but nothing worth taking. Today Nathan went out with his dad and about 10 am, they came back to the house looking tired. When I asked him how the hunting was, my dh said, "Not too good. Just a 5 point." They sure fooled us. By his face, I thought he hadn't gotten anything. He got a great deer. We went out in the woods to see it. My dh decided to let us track it just like Nathan and he did. So here he is showing us where the buck was standing when he shot it.

At first he didn't think that he had gotten it. The buck had bounded away once the shot went off. They decided to track it and saw that it was bleeding.

When Nathan saw some frothy blood, they began to hope that the shot might have been in the lungs.

They did find it close to the border of our property. It was a big 5 point buck, probably a 2 or 3 year old.

Here are the stats: my dh used a 30-30 at 60 yards. The shot hit the lungs and the heart and they still had to track it about 100 yards. My dh measured it's girth and according to the girth chart, this buck weighs 205 pounds!

The cookies are coming!

Don't get mad at me; I don't have all my Christmas cookies done! In fact I wouldn't have even started yet but I had a cookie exchange at church yesterday. So I made a double batch of my favorite cookies (Swedish Pepperkor) so that I would have enough for us and enough for the cookie exchange. They have to be frosted and then left for the frosting to dry hard. And of course, that makes for a great picture.

Besides exchanging cookies, we also made some cookies in a jar. We are giving them to some of the folks in church and to the local charity that maintains a food pantry and clothing closet. It was a lot of fun. We did get flour all over us. Those of us in black and red looked a little funny when we left the church!

Books and Talk

We had our second book discussion group for the children today. We discussed Beorn the Proud (an excellent book by the way). The children are enjoying the discussion and are beginning to understand how to talk about a book.

After our discussion group, we joined several other families from our former church and went on our monthly visit to an assisted living complex. The children bring things to show and tell or they recite verses or play instruments. Nathan is playing his recorder this time as the group listens.

Once the children are done performing, we usually sing songs like Jesus Loves Me or Amazing Grace. Today Deborah suggested Onward Christian Soldiers, which most of the residents knew by heart. And of course, we always do the favorite of both the children and the residents watching them, Father Abraham. In the picture below, we are at the verse where we swing our right arms.

We usually stay for about an hour. Nathan especially likes going because he likes to talk to everyone there. The residents really enjoy seeing the children, talking to them, and getting hugs from them.

Tea and Pie

This past Friday, my dh took the boys out to lunch and then on some errands. Deborah was a very sad girl. So I suggested eating lunch on her play dishes. Instant smile. So we had our own tea party together.

Our "tea".

And on an unrelated note to the tea party, we finished digging up the last of the carrots and the potatoes from the garden this Saturday. I made a chicken pot pie that we had on Sunday. I should have taken a picture of the full pie, but we were too hungry. Here is a picture of the leftover pie. It was as good as it looks.

Rocks, rocks, and more rocks

We studied rocks last week. We've got a number of experiments going now. We're trying to grow a stalactite on the string in the picture but it isn't working too well. The colored jars are growing rock candy. These jars represent igneous rock cooling slowly. We'll look at the structure under a microscope to compare it to some sugar syrup cooled quickly. The main point is that igneous rocks cooled quickly (cooled lava) have large crystals and those cooled slowly (rocks made in the magma) have smaller crystals.

This is our sedimentary rock better known as a 7 layer cookie. A very tasty experiment.

And last but not least, here is our metamorphic rock experiment. First we took 3 starbursts and made them into a layered "rock". Then by using heat (our hands) and pressure (squeezing), we made them into new and different "rocks".

Showing off our 'metamorphic rocks'. Again, a very tasty experiment.

Volcano Fun

This year in school we are studying Earth Science. Today we made our own volcano. Nathan and Stephen could remember when we did this four years ago and they were ready. This year we had more than just a couple Monopoly houses, we had lots of hotels and house. We made it bigger and better this year and as you can see, set it off in the garage. Nathan is putting in some baking soda into the "volcano".

Next goes the red vinegar.

Then the delight as the "lava" heads for one of Aaron's homes.

A close up of the consumed house (see it in the "lava"?). We made the volcano erupt time and time again until almost all the houses were covered or washed down the side. The red coloring didn't really work. The lava turned out to be pink rather than red.

By the way, I reached the pinnacle of homeschooling today. We got so involved in learning about earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and volcanoes that we missed the lunch hour. It was almost 1 pm before one of the children asked, "Mom, do you know that it is 1 pm and we haven't had lunch yet?"

And the two (flocks) shall be as one

This past Thursday, we combined the new flock with the old flock. These Dominiques must be pretty mellow birds because we hardly had any pecking at all and no blood drawn. They seemed to take to their new coop pretty well once we actually got them in it. This new flock hadn't been outside the coop yet and as such, did not want to leave their coop to enter in the old coop. But with much flapping and yelling, we got them where they were to go. And then they wouldn't leave their new coop through the chicken back door. It took a couple of days before some of them were brave enough to go out in the chicken yard. We still haven't seen them go into the woods part of their yard, but I imagine that it will be a matter of time.

So Saturday we cleaned out the south coop. Once again, the tractor proved most valuable.

Here is one of the Araconas that we have. She was brave enough to go outside. We're down to 4 Araconas due to one of them dying this past Friday. We also lost a Dominique. We're not quite sure what they died off. They just stopped eating and didn't want to do anything but stand and sleep. We're hoping that all the rest are healthy.