Yesterday was such a beautiful fall day! I cut down the sunflower stalks and weeded that area a bit. We pulled weeds in the front yard - and it was actually enjoyable! I sprayed for asps while the dc pulled these little white flower weeds and then I pulled some also. Then we pulled out the plants on the trellis (green beans, canteloupe) and took it apart for storage. That's where I'll plant my garlic - hopefully tomorrow. We also pulled up the watermelon plants but then we realized that there were asps right above there and left the rest for now (I use the word 'we' loosely because the olders did most of the work!).

School - History

The olders are almost finished with their early 1800's lapbooks. I chose the Time Travelers unit from Homeschool in the Woods entitled The Early 19th Century. I really liked using it and they have enjoyed it. It's a good balance of info, projects, and lapbooking. It's a CD with all you need to print, along with directions and information pages to read. Here is the link:

http://www.homeschoolinthewoods.com/HTTA/TTS/Early19thCentury.htm

I just noticed that they have a Civil War one also. I imagine that it is just as good. For the Civil War we'll be using the one from homeschoolshare.com as our main source.


What's Cookin'?

- Peanuts and almonds are in the dehydrator. First 1/2 batch of cereal is in the oven. I'll crumble it and put it in the dehydrator instead of the oven since I already have it out.

- I have 3 granny smith apples and one tray left on the dehydrator so I may slice those up and dehydrate as well. Those are usually hard to do because I generally eat about 1/2 of them while I'm slicing! [Note: they never made it to the dehydrator - yum!]


- We made some tortillas and had tortillas with ground beef, cheese, and sour cream for dinner. We have 4 cherry tomatoes from the Children's Community Garden that I got yesterday so I'll throw those in as well.

What I learned this weekend:

- Don't try to do 2 batches of bread in the breadmaker on dough cycle. I almost burned up my breadmaker. Fortunately I stopped it in time.

- I shouldn't be allowed to touch our steam vac for the carpets. In fact, I think I am now officially banned from using it! Let's just say that the hall will need to be re-shampooed next weekend...

- Apparently asps don't have a discriminating diet like I thought and are now in the various trees in the back yard as well as the bushes in the front. [They are freaking me out!] I think maybe I need to have Benadryl on hand (??) in case we get stung. What timing - Dh has to fix the faucet right by the bushes, yikes. I need to research remedies for asp stings.

- Don't expect to win checkers (or chess) against a 7 yr old!