Henrietta Creek Apple Orchard

We went to the Apple Orchard today where they went over cotton spinning, pollination, how beehives work (with a inside look at a beehive behind plexiglass), how apples grow (weather conditions, good and bad insects), they had a pizza garden, a butterfly garden, an organic pond with fish and frogs and dragonflies, and a whole assortment of animals to look at. It was a great time.
The only funny thing was that since we are in Texas, (who can forget?) we had a very mild winter last year, resulting in no apples! There were apples all right, but straight from Washington! They had to purchase apples for the kids to eat! It was pretty funny. But they said next fall they will get a bumper crop (double). It was a great teaching opportunity and we really enjoyed it! The best thing was the hot fried apple pies they made but we didn't get a picture because we were too busy cramming our mouths! Wouldn't you?






Sweet Avery relaxing on the porch after a day at the Apple Orchard.

In the Butterfly Garden. We are going to make a lapbook of each area of the Orchard, there was so much!! The Butterfly garden has plants specific to what attracts butterflies.
Johnny Appleseed. The apple orchard actually has some trees that are certified as being grafted from original trees planted by John Chapman. Very cool.
The vine tepee. This beautiful vine is made from loofah gourds. That's right-when they die they become loofah sponges. They had seeds you could buy to plant your own!
A moth perched on my arm. They were EVERYWHERE!! They are what pollinates the apple blossoms and are vital to the Orchard's success.
Trace and Avery enjoying a Washington apple. But with Henrietta creek honey on top!!

My beautiful daughter in the Pizza garden.
There was oregano, parsley, garlic and peppers.
Yum! It smelled awesome!

A demonstration of how cotton is spun into thread. They had a cotton garden with red, green and white cotton!

Trace found a crabapple he thought looked like a green brain. Boys.

Me and Tracer with the scarecrow!

40th Carnival of Homeschooling

I love this one, it's retro, 40's baby! Take a look, great links.

We got Booed!

We got booed today! Our neighborhood is so cute! I haven't heard of this, but our neighbors said this is a tradition in our new neighborhood. Someone comes and leaves you a treat with a poem and a copy of a ghost. When someone boos you, you hang the ghost up so you don't get booed twice, and you make copies of the poem and ghost and deliver secretly two more treats to neighbors. Here's ours, it's really cute! If you want to do this in your neighborhood, I found a cute link here.

Fall Reading Challenge!

Okay, so Katrina at Callapidder Days has began a Fall reading challenge. Since reading is only below God and my family, I'm in! Besides, like most devout readers, I am in the middle of 10 different books right now and would love to prioritize and organize my reads. Here goes:



List of books to finish Lord willing:

• Sacred Influence: What a Man Needs from His Wife to Be the Husband She Wants by Gary L. Thomas (A great book for wives! It's so convicting I have to take breaks from reading it.)
• One Year Off: Leaving It All Behind for a Round-the-World Journey with Our Children by David Elliot Cohen (This guy is crazy. He sells all his worldy possessions and takes his family including three young children and travels around the world for a year. His ambitions are inspiring and his mistakes and day to day family antics are humorous.)
• Making Children Mind without Losing Yours by Dr. Kevin Leman (By the author of the Birth Order Book. This book is amazing and is changing my point of view on some discipline techniques.)
• Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller (My cousin Kate loves this guy. He is really funny and insightful.)
• Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller
• Nature Study the Easy Way by Cindy Rushton
• Language Arts the Easy Way by Cindy Rushton
• The Princess Bride by William Goldman (Kate gave me this one too. If you have seen the movie, let me pretense the book with this: the movie pales in comparison to the laughs you will have from this book.)

Reading with the kiddos:

• Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
• Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
• Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (I discovered these and am in love with them. They are collections of Fairy Tales from all cultures, and there are many Fairy books, all different colors, Crimson, Yellow, Red, etc.)
• Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for Children (we also read Shakespeare Can Be Fun and need to to do the next one in that series!!)

Books I just want to read:

• Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter
• Lineage of Grace Series (5 Novellas) by Francine Rivers-Includes Unashamed, Unafraid, Unspoken, Unshaken and Unveiled (about Tamar, which I have read.) The books are about 5 great women of the Bible. She is the best author, I LOVE her books.
• Sons of Encouragement Series (4 Novellas) by Francine Rivers-Includes The Prince (which I've read about Jonathan) The Warrior, The Priest, and The Prophet.
• The Best of Lewis Carroll (I absolutely love him.)
• For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay (a home education philosophy.)
• Material World: A Global Family Portrait by Peter Menzel (This looks like such a good book. He also has one called Hungry Planet about what different people and cultures eat. It has amazing photographs.)

I think I better wrap it up there. I can't wait to browse the other lists so I can needlessly add more books to my list! :) But books are an addiction, so let the reading begin!

Back in Action!

Well, I haven't blogged in three months. But it was summertime for pete's sake. And we were very busy! We went on vacation to Rockport Texas, went to the Science Museum countless times, hung out with friends, saw Katy twice!! met the newest additon to our family: Tyler! and drum roll please!! moved!!! to Grapevine!! Yeah!!! I am thrilled.

Our house is a little bit of a fixer upper and like my blogging record, I am not exactly quick with our upgrades. But I do have some pictures....not enough yet, but a few! This is the living room Jason gutted and then the living room while still moving in-sorry it's dark-but you can see our beautiful floors and the walls my mom, Sarah and I painstakingly painted! From pink-I won't even say it (What were they thinking???) to a khaki color.

Oh, and let us not forget the kitchen, that I ripped all the wallpaper off of to venetian plaster. Well, you guessed it. I have not finished that project yet. But I wanted to see how all my stuff looked so I hung a few things. Jason came home and said, "It's so sad. Now she is decorating the dry wall." He just shook his head and left. Whatever!! I had to know where stuff would go!! And let me add, we currently have three microwaves and two refridgerators in this kitchen. Pathetic, I know. One is the old broken over the range microwave. One is the new not yet installed over the range microwave. And one is the microwave I hauled in from the gargage and plugged in to reheat leftovers in! And one fridge is broken awaiting the repairman, and one fridge is the gargae fridge hanging out in the CENTER of our kitchen. **Sigh*** We do have a cute kitchen nook for a table in the kitchen and then the "grand room" is so big it has room for the formal dining and the living room. There is a really cute bay window in the formal dining the pic doesn't show.

Anoter picture is of my half-hawked cutie Trace in Avery's room. The purpose of the picture though is to show you Avery's sad maroon room. Not to worry, it will be painted!! And that border-ewwwww! But it is a work in progress!! Trace's room however, did get painted. He just still doesn't have his bed up. See how excited he is? He is so funny.
I will post more pictures soon, of the outside of the house, too. I must warn you though, maroon is a THEME in this house. But I truly love it and fixing it is so much fun. God has blessed us beyond measure and I am so happy with our new location which is just minutes from church!! All our friends live so close and Jody and my new future sister in law and her daughter (whom I ADORE!!) live only four houses down. Well, I will have to put up more pictures eventually so you can see our awesome master bedroom-it's gigantic! with a little office nook-and our cute front yard with our amazing crete myrtles. Love to all!