It can't be time already!

My baby has her first loose tooth! Ellie, who won't even be four until the beginning of November, was complaining the other day that her tooth was hurting while she was eating. I said to her somewhat jokingly, "Maybe it's loose. Let me see." She has been pretending to have loose teeth for about a year now, so I thought maybe this was just another instance of make-believe. She came over to me, I checked the tooth in question, and, sure enough, it was loose! And not just a bit loose, barely noticeable. It was quite loose along with the tooth next to it! Now, my other kids lost their first teeth at around 4 1/2 years of age and all three of them started getting teeth early, so I expected Ellie to start losing teeth early. But not this early! Wow! I don't know who is more anxious about the whole first lost tooth thing - me or her. I'll update when the tooth is out...

How many cookies??!!

by Madeline

One day we decided to make a few cookies, something like this. (We used a gingerbread cookie recipe, though.) Mom and Ellie made the dough, but it made a lot more cookies than we expected. When Mom, Madeline, and Ellie cut out and baked all of the cookies we found out that there were 117 cookies!! That meant there were a lot of cookies to frost! We frosted most of them before we ran out of frosting. We made leaves, gingerbread people, apples, acorns, ghosts, and pumpkins - the perfect cookie shapes for autumn!

Here are some pictures of us making, cutting out, and frosting the cookies.

Choosing the perfect pumpkins...

By Madeline

This past Sunday, we went to the Chesterfield Berry Farm, and we went on a hayride to choose pumpkins. There were so many pumpkins we didn't know which ones to choose! There were green pumpkins and orange pumpkins, big ones and small ones and ones in between. Finally each of the kids chose a pumpkin.

Here we are with our chosen pumpkins!







Also, while we were there, the kids swam in the giant pit o' corn! It was really crowded in there, but we had lots of fun!







We also had delicious pumpkin milkshakes and the kids played in the moon bounce. We wanted to go in the corn maze shaped like a race car but it was humongous and it would have taken about an hour and a half to go through! Maybe some other time...

It was really great and we hope we can go there next year!

Our home

I thought I'd share a few pictures of our home here so you can have a glimpse (for those of you who haven't been able to visit in person) of our lives here at home. Keep in mind that it is a work in progress... and one likely to be in progress for quite a bit longer!

Here is our home from the outside:



This is our family room. The kids and I spend much of our time here during the days since this is where we keep most of our books and homeschooling supplies. Our learning is really done all over the house, though.







And a picture of our kitchen, sadly outdated, but quite functional and busy just the same...



And one of our favorite rooms especially in the spring and fall...the sunroom...






So, just a little peek into our home for those of you who haven't been able to visit. We hope you enjoyed the tour!

Getting started...

I'm going to try to write a simple post here just to see if I can figure out how to load pictures onto the blog.

These are fairly recent pictures of all the kids... Ben who is 9, Madeline who just turned 7, and Ellie who will be 4 in November. You should be able to click on pics to see them up close.


Ben


Madeline


Ellie


I hope to update now and then with new pictures, descriptions of our busy homeschooling days (and the not so busy ones), updates about places we've been and activities we've done, and other exciting news as it comes along. I hope we can give you a glimpse into our lives, keep you updated on what we're up to, and maybe even let you hear directly from the kids now and then.

We hope you enjoy!