I took a photo of Stella with a fluffy little toy alpaca she found in her shoe this morning, and realized that I have a bunch of photos in my phone that I needed to transfer over to the computer. Here are just a few, to give a glimpse of what we've been up to recently.
The weekend before Thanksgiving, we had dinner with three other families we are friends with, all of whom live in Maryland. Two of us are homeschooling the kids, and two of us send the kids to a Catholic classical school. Needless to say, our children have all been made to memorize poetry. So it was the most heartwarming and encouraging moment for me when, after we had finished eating, the children voluntarily took turns going up to recite poems for the whole group! At one point, there was even a little scuffle as several of them began shoving each other, wanting to have the stage. With the exception of that little episode, though, the whole experience so completely fit my ideal of the type of education I'm trying to give my kids. A wonderful time.
Sweet sleeping baby shot.
While driving from Maryland to the Philly area to stay with the in-laws, we stopped at a tiny middle-of-nowhere diner that was a total throwback to the 50s. They still had a functioning jukebox that played 45rpm records for a nickel a song! The kids were fascinated by it, and loved watching the automatic arm put down the record and start to play.
My brother-in-law and my husband dressed super fashionably (they were in vacation mode, I guess) a couple days before Thanksgiving. And yes, they did go out in public like this!
My quilting group meets on Monday nights, which is trash night around here. Several times on my way home, I have pulled over to save some treasure from someone's trash. One of my recent finds was this cute little children's rocking chair. The wood wasn't in the best shape, so I didn't want to spend time refinishing it with stain. Here it is primed and ready for painting. Stay tuned for a future post to see what color it became!
The big kids put some reindeer antlers on Flora. She is not crawling yet, but seems so so close.
Babies with anything on their heads are just the cutest. Maybe I'll have her wear these when we visit "Santa" this year.
Someone posted this on Facebook, and I liked it. I feel like I should have this posted up somewhere in the house, as a reminder to myself.
I'm very slowly starting the decorating process around here, trying to keep the spirit of Advent, and not go "full Christmas" too soon. I pulled out some of my special paper snowflakes I made in college, and hung them up around the bottom floor. The kids thought they were so neat, and wanted to make some of their own. It turns out that Sly is currently the only one with enough hand strength and control to cut through all the layers of paper....which means the younger two were alternately crying in frustration/whining at me for help, and....it just wasn't that fun for anyone. Maybe in a few years we will try again!
Linus fell asleep for a late afternoon nap, and our cat was willing to go the closest she's ever gone to him!
