October Goodness

We certainly can't complain about the weather this fall! Though I'm looking forward to cooler weather, I'm also just trying to enjoy it while it lasts! As a lady at the store reminded me the other day, once it starts raining it won't stop for a long time!

In other news, though my garden mostly tanked, again, this year, we did have a bumper crop of yellow cherry tomatoes - I have so many out there right now, but they are mostly all split open, alas. Also, we grew one acorn squash plant from a leftover acorn squash and it has 13+ squash on it! The kids are really excited - I seem to have lucked out on that regard by getting a majority of children who love acorn squash! They don't last as long as other other squash I hear (on the internet, so it must be true!), so we might have to eat them at a pretty fast clip. We'll see if they all still like them after we have them all the time for a few weeks!

Michael's working his usual extra hours during the secondary busy season of the year these days, but he had time to take Ezra out for his birthday breakfast last Saturday, and returned from work in time to take part in Ezra's birthday party with friends that evening. We had about 10 boys over for a pizza, popcorn and a movie party - Captain America, The Winter Soldier being the show of choice. It was pretty loud.

Today the little kids and I attended the boys weekly Assembly at their school. That's a new thing this year and it was accompanied by the requirement that they wear their button down shirts every Friday. I admit I wasn't a fan, mostly because I now have to iron two more shirts every week. But now I have to say that it is actually worth it to iron two more shirts in order to see them all dressed up as they perform some of their memory work! I end up thinking, "my, what handsome boys I have," and that has to be a good thing, right? As usual, Ezra takes to dressing up like a duck to water - today he elected to wear his bow tie - and Judah is non-plussed. I wish I'd taken a picture today, but one from a couple weeks ago have do.

Paideia, the boys school, had a zoo field trip last week and Monica got to go! She was pretty excited to join her friends exploring the zoo and attending an interactive zoo class. All of the fun of school without the to and fro-ing, from my point of view! She's been doing well at learning how to read. Just yesterday she started to pick up speed in a very noticeable way. I was kind of shocked that it would happen so quickly, rather than being a more gradual transition. She's a bit of a perfectionist, so I'm thinking teaching her to write is going to be especially hard. But I guess it's a strength and a weakness, right?