Museum Comes to Life!

We look forward to this event every September.  Our local historical museum staffs the displays with people in period costume and have people demonstrating knitting, weaving, rug making and more inside the museum.  Outside there is traditional dancing, gold panning, musket ball firing, roping, and old timey game playing.  There is something for everyone and the entire event is free.  It is a lovely event even if it is pretty crowded.

The kids love to have their names written in calligraphy.

My kids are the cool kids of hula hooping.

We also had to try a target practice game and a game called hoops and graces.  Don't we all look graceful?

 Everyone needs to know how to properly rope a cow.

There was also the Oscar Meyer weinermobile.  Why wouldn't there be a giant hot dog among all the vintage cars and teepees?  It made perfect sense.  The greatest joy came when they gave us all a whistle for singing the Oscar Meyer weiner song.  Words fail to express the sheer bliss of being followed around by four kids blowing into shrill plastic whistles.  Words fail.

Inside the museum Sam found a new reason for living.  My little guy who can't stay still for anything spent forever gazing at the model trains.  This was shortly before we lost him.  I thought Michael had him.

I was under the impression the boys were all off looking at clocks while the girls and I were talking to some lovely women who were knitting.  Then I heard the P.A. announcement that every parent dreads.  "We have a little boy named Sam at the front desk who is wearing a Bronco's jersey."  I looked at the woman I was talking to and yelped, "I thought his dad had him!" threw Grace up on my hip and started running up front.  I got up there to find a teary little boy and pretty understanding volunteers.  I hugged Sam and we started to walk off when a little girl who was volunteering ran up to us.  She was bringing the sad, lost, little boy a bag of cookies.  She was very sweet and Sam suddenly didn't think getting lost was that bad.  I'm almost afraid that he is going to try it again to see if he can score some more cookies.

He did share his prize with Grace and they rode off into the sunset. No quilts were injured or smeared with cookie crumbs in the taking of this picture.

We then continued our journey.

One of our last stops, and a perennial favorite is the printing press.  We left a bit more educated, a lot more tired, and with many copies of the same page of newsprint.  Hopefully next year we can manage not to lose anyone.  I don't think my heart could handle it again.

September in Review

There were some beautiful days to spend at the park.

There were piles of leaves to rake.  If you look carefully you can just see my face in the leaves.  The kids loved burying everyone in the leaves.  They are sad we don't have more leaves.  I am not. 

We even spent some time wading in the river.

Everyone but this guy.  He had to get a mole removed on his foot.  Then he had to go back in and get it cut at again.  It had a few questionable cells and we needed to make sure we got them all.  The first time he had six stitches and the second time he ended up with twenty four.  Stitches across the top of a persons foot are no fun at all.  There was no wading in the river for him.

September also saw Michael and I at the Sun Valley Inn.  He had to record a conference all weekend.  Meanwhile I sat around in a beautifully quiet hotel room.  It was completely quiet and everything stayed just where I put it.  It was amazing.

And last but not least our favorite visitor came for awhile.  This is O.L.F. (our little friend) and he likes to visit our mailbox during the summer and fall.  He has visited us every year since we moved in.  It may be a different frog each year but we choose to believe it is the same frog year after year.

That about wraps up September.  Now I need to catch up October.  Halloween has already come and gone.

Things Are Slipping

The school year has officially started.  We are busy doing writing, math, science and such every day.  We attend our homeschool co-op where I teach a class on Colonial America to the 8- and 9-year olds.  We are also adding a 4-H and orchestra co-op on Fridays.  Hopefully this craziness will only last until mid-November.  Then we will have to choose one co-op to attend.  I don't have the energy for two co-ops, plus we need to have time to do some actual schoolwork. Life is busy, as it always is.

I then decided I would go back to school with all my free time.  It wasn't something I was consciously planning but I was presented with an opportunity to get my bachelors degree from BYU-Idaho while doing 95% of my course work online, all for an incredible price.  So now I am back in school.  I am taking two classes and it seems to be about all I can manage. 

For those people who keep asking me how I get it all done I invite you to drop in anytime.  You can feel superior when you see all the weeds crowding out the flowers out front.  When you enter my house and find the three year old running around naked (I'm hoping he will grow out of this at some point and not grow up to be the neighborhood flasher), the clutter everywhere and the piles of clean and dirty laundry all over the in the bathroom you will realize how I am getting everything done. I'm just not.  Even my poor blog which I have been faithful to for seven years now is feeling neglected.

We are all getting educated over here but not much else is happening.  I wonder if we will ever have clean underwear again?  I can almost guarantee the socks will never again be mated.

End of Summer

Summer has been lovely but I am ready to move into fall.  Cool air, crunchy leaves and pumpkins.  I love me some pumpkins!

We celebrated the end of summer with a Scout activity, a beautiful sunset

and snow cones!

The kids and Michael equate summer with cups of ice covered with flavored sugar water.

We couldn't let summer end without one last snow cone...

Even if it was past dark when we finally pedaled away.

8 Years old

The plan was to go to the park and have a birthday party with family.  The park had other plans that involved some sort of craft fair and lots of people.  So we all ended up at my sister's house.

But the cake was still yummy, the presents still wonderful, and Libby still turned eight (even if she was awfully disappointed that we couldn't go play in the fountains at the park).

She decorated her very own princess cake.  Each wand makes it more magical.

The next day we met Michael's family at the park by our house.  Libby hardly knew what to do with herself - she was having such a great time and enjoying the presents she was opening.

She told us after getting this doll she didn't think she wanted one, but now that she has one, she loves it.

Eight is great!