Week ending 9-19-21 A normal week, stacking wood, playing, working

 

Homemade bread Sundays! Alexis love to make bread on Sunday afternoons. She made extra to give to our neighbor who helped us put up the swings and sharpen my chainsaw.

Monday: Playing blocks in the library while Tom, Kait, and Kenna are rehearsing for The Wizard of Oz across the street.

When we got home Alexis had folded all the laundry which is usually Tilly's job. (Her "favewit job" as she calls it.) I love seeing piles of laundry. It means I have a big family. I'm sad they're growing up and leaving home but grateful to still have lots of piles of little clothes.

Wednesday: Kaitlyn could spend all day in this chair reading. She's read about 5x as many books as anyone else this school year. I think she's read about 20 and everyone else has read about 4 in the 4 weeks we've had school.

I took this as I was driving away. Wanted a picture for my family who I told the story of my "safety inspection" to. This is John's place where he hands out stickers.

Alexis took Thomas to rehearsal and went to YW and did all my errands while in town. She looked like Kylie coming in with her purse and groceries. Can't believe she's 16. Seems like Kylie was just barely 16 and doing the grocery shopping for me. I wish time would slow down. Now Kylie just turned 21!

Thursday: I love watching 7 kids goof off and bond while stacking all the wood I cut this week. Family work times are the best. I cherish these memories. If Alexis is at college next fall I'll be crying to only have 6 kids at our work parties.

Hard to see Talea in the swing, but it looked fun going so high. Snapped this as I was walking by to go work and taking in the beautiful scene of children happily playing, especially a 14 year-old pushing his 4 year-old sister.

Lexi wanted me to take this of Talea on her leg during scripture reading.

Friday: Hiking in our front woods on the way home from a trip to the mailbox. Love the detour instead of taking the road. It's so quiet and I don't have to worry about running into anyone because it's my property so nobody else will be on it. It's fun to run into a fox, turkey, or deer though.

The girls playing dragons in costumes Kaitlyn made for them.

Grilled cheese sandwiches outside before doing some yard work.

August was so humid we ignored our garden. This wasn't our garden year but hopefully we'll be more into it and do better next year. I'm embarrassed to even post a picture but next year I can be proud of myself for not letting it look this bad again. :)

Thomas and Alexis watched a movie in the living room so I read "The Middle Moffat" to these 4 upstairs on my bed. Andy combed my hair, Sam combed Makenna's, and Makenna combed Kaitlyn's.

Bored on a rainy Saturday where we couldn't do yard work so they had an impromptu tea party. First it started out with Talea trying on a fancy dress a neighbor gave us and then one by one the others went to dress up and joined in.

I took the kids to a singles activity at a little cabin on the river.

Only about 7 older ladies came and we roasted hot dogs and talked.

The cabin used to be a tobacco barn and they added on a nice pavilion with projector.

Week ending 9-12-21 School projects, trail creation, bonfire

 We had a normal week of lots of school. No big trips, no family visiting, just home every day doing school or work or play. We've loved the fall weather and hope it continues.

Monday: After our history lesson we went outside and built a wigwam village all the way until lunch. I love taking as much time as we want for a project and really getting in to it.

Hard to see from the picture, but I love our dogwood already turning red.

I also love seeing strange caterpillars on things like this watering can. So many neat critters here.

Tuesday: Kaitlyn made Talea a lightfury costume.

Thursday: Samuel, Anderson, and I spent 2 hours in the woods together making a walking/biking trail. We've been meaning to all summer but it was so humid and rainy and we had lots of other projects too. So nice to have a dry week with highs in the 70's for lots of outside time.

Samuel would hold the vines and I'd cut them as we made our way through.

I took this to show our old neighborhood what I bought with their gift cards. We love having a named cubby for each of us with extra paper/stickers/dictionary storage on the bottom.

I also bought this.

So nice to have since we have no hall closets, coat closets, or linen closets. Lexi's bedroom is on the right so she was always tripping over the shoes.

Friday: Doing science outside.

The kids drawing the new mums we got. It'll be fun to watch them bloom.

After school we all went out to work on the trail.

It's hard to see but the girls are putting a stick through an old wire fence and pulling up to get it to come out of the ground. It was a lot of work but we finally got it all pulled up.

Exploring our back woods. Our front yard has woods with one creek. Our backyard goes downhill to one creek, then up another hill and down it to a 2nd creek. All of our creeks are fed by springs. It's so cool to see water coming out of the earth. The second hill and creek is very lush with lots of ferns, grasses, wild berries, 

They all knelt down to play with the rocks at the same time.

Back in the woods close to our house and walking on the new trail.

They love the place I cut a hole in the fallen tree to allow our trail to go through.

Burning branches in the front yard completes our perfect Friday.

While the fire was going I showed Alexis some things on the property. 

After Hurricane Ida blew leaves off the apple trees they think it's spring and are growing new ones.

This huge tree would make a great tree house some day.

And it would have this view or even better once you climb up into it.

Fire has died down so it's time for marshmallows! 

Alexis made brownies for President Nelson's birthday and used one in place of chocolate on her s'more.

After going in for scriptures and tucking Tilly in, I took Kait, Kenna, Sam, and Andy back outside to read "The Middle Moffat" to them around the campfire. We love our read aloud books in the evenings and reading it by the fire was even better. 

Saturday: I didn't take very many pictures but everywhere I walked around kids were working and I loved it. These boys were washing out the recycling can.

Thomas was taking cut grape vines to a burn pile. 

Makenna refilled all oats containers from the huge bulk containers we have in the pantry. Kaitlyn cleaned off the porch and blew it. Alexis swept all the wood floors downstairs. We raced and got it done quickly then had play time.

When Thomas and Alexis wanted to watch a movie by themselves these 3 had a reading party in my room.