Thanksgiving 2015

Our first holiday since mom has been at the nursing home. It was not easy at all. I tried to bring a complete meal to heat up there but it was so hard bring all the food from NH to MA and then heating it all up in just two microwaves. It really didn't work well at all, couldn't get everything hot at the same time. I tried to take pictures at the table, on almost all of them someone or other is ducking out of the picture or being silly or both! It was a fairly nice weather day, anyway. The milder than usual weather continues. We enjoyed some time outdoors after dinner. The kids found a tree that seemed to challenge them to climb while the adults tried to plan Christmas.

Colin decides to sit back and let the others do the climbing.

November happenings

For some reason winter hasn't arrived on schedule here in NH. Very glad to have the extended gardening season and time outdoors. I've managed to teach myself hot water canning and have canned many quarts of apples in various ways and smaller jars of apple sauce. It's messy to do but worth it in the end. Fresh, organic produce from our own gardens and trees. One thing I'm not sure if I'll bother about again is shelling walnuts straight from the tree. We got some from a person with black walnut trees, what a messy job it was to get them out of their outer coverings and dry them. Our turkey friends are frequent visitors, enjoying our woods and seeming not to mind the cats and dogs to much. Hayley and Stormy did some leave raking and stormy played in the leaves.

I may be an old ferret but I have new tricks

Choco the ferret has been very, very naughty! He destroyed one of my mom's two plants that we are taking care of while she's in the nursing home. I tried to replant and revive the poor plant but it succumbed to its injuries and insults.

Then Choco went on to try and destroy Felix's cat bed and finally my laptop! Choco is old but not out of it, that's for sure.

Lily the hamster

With my mother in the hospital and then nursing home we've taken on her very spoiled hamster named Lily. Lily is about 1 1/2 years old and she is very hyper. We give her lots of treats and produce from the garden and remove her spinning wheel at night since she will run and run and that wheel is load! Lily is an escape artist and has a propensity to somehow get stuck in various types of hamster furniture. We're taking lots of pictures of Lily for mom (Grammy). We promised to take good care of her and hopefully we will live up to Lily and Mom's expectation.

Harvest time

Regularly harvesting all sorts of organic vegetable goodies which I grew myself. Gardening is not a passion for me as it is for some but it';s growing on me (haha) and harvest time is very rewarding. Some of my best crops this year were heirloom colorful carrots, probably got close to 10 pounds total, potatoes-grew almost 100 pounds of them, spaghetti squash, grew about 14, 2 of which were HUGE and of course beans and peas which are always prolific.

Carrots

Carrots

My humble sweet potato harvest, 3.5 pounds.

One of the large spaghetti squash

Some of the winter squash.

carrots, onions and greens.

worm bin, they give us good compost!

Corn crop

I didn't do so well with my corn crop, although what did grow was tasty. 

The BLACK BELT test!

All of my children have tried Tae Kwon Do and my husband has participated at times too. Hayley found TKD was not for her and left the sport after a few months. Trevor stuck it out until an injury took him out of the sport. He made it to the rank of blue belt. Tristan and Colin started as very little boys and took a break of several years after Trevor's injury. At that time we needed to focus on other things. Eventually a new, great for our schedule, homeschool class was formed at our old TKD studio and the boys and then later hubby signed up. These black belts were hard won and many years in the making. On September 12th 2015 Bobby, Colin and Tristan succeeded and passed the 2 day black belt test along with several others who were going for either their first black belt tank or a later rank up to 5th dan. Just a few of the photos from the test. Hope to load more when I get them off my old computer.

First day of homeschool 2015-2016

Two down, two to go. Homeschool students that is. Both Hayley and Trevor have graduated from homeschool now and are exploring their options for the future. Colin and Tristan remain with Colin being in 12th grade and Tristan 10th. After this year I'll have only one homeschooler left as Colin will graduate. As it is only Tristan is in our first day photo this year. Colin is mature and ready to make more of his own decisions and well...he just didn't want to be in the picture!

This year Colin will tie up any loose ends (math) and start looking into what he would like his next step to be. He is a smart, strong, hard working young man I'm sure there will be many possible paths he can take.

Tristan will be using the following materials, resources and classes this year: Math U See Algebra, Jump In writing curriculum, Spelling U See, Combination of Diana Waring's History Alive and Story of the World for ancient history/world history (depending on how far we get). Biology self designed labs and study, Zoology through lapbooking at co-op (with me as the teacher, have 18 students signed up for that class!!), Drama classes at co-op, this year there focusing on Shakespeare and Tae Kwon Do classes. He will also have a robotics set to work on just for fun and has expressed an interest in photography so we'll see if we can come up with any classes or resources for that interest.

Tristan first day of 10th grade.

Tristan and his cat Rufus, first day of homeschool year 2015-2016.

Today's garden harvest

I decided to dig up the potatoes in just one of the large tubs today. About 3 pounds of red potatoes had grown.

Continuing to harvest lots and lots of beans each week and sometimes each day!

One of these things...

Is not like the other. Or the family that eats together stays together. Choco the ferret thinks he's one of the cats.