Little Wins

1. This week I successfully made home-made yogurt. It is delicious, smooth, creamy and just thick enough.

2. I found a canning recipe for Bruschetta, made and canned several pints with produce from the garden. It won't be perfectly fresh but it will still be a taste of summer during the cold winter here.

3. Brought in a colander (or more) of produce from the garden daily, cukes, zuchhinis, tomatoes, green beans, basil, parsley, little handfuls of raspberries and a pumpkin.

4. Started school this week with the kids. Their ability to memorize the weeks work is dramatically improved from this time last year. They are just breathing it in.

5. Memorized another poem from IEW's "Language Aquisition Through Poetry," "Swinging Time" by Robert Louis Stevenson.

6. The small homeschool co-op we are in started last Friday. The kids loved it. The big wins were the Logos "Grammar of Poetry" and "Drawing Textbook" for the Jr. Highers (I'm teaching both-fun, fun, fun).

7. Learned more about blogging and joined TWTM blog ring.

8. Talked to both R and KB for long periods of time by phone. It will be great to have KB home in 2 weeks. R sounds challenged and is fighting a head cold. Whenever I talk with her I miss her (can I justify my lamness about actually calling her by this-as in, I don't call her cause then I'll miss her? - or do I have to admit that I'm just not a phone person; an accusation that first asserted itself when I was 8 years old and my g'ma complained to my mom about how I had nothing to say on the phone? - Gram IS the ultimate phone person and at 92 still talkative as ever- now that I think about it, she did work for GTE for forever!).

9. Our summer birthday season is officially over. Feche boy starts it and Viking Man finishes it off with KB and I in the middle. Both my sis's are in there too along with parental anniversaries. Feche boy had a good party with a small group of boys who played "Capture the Flag, H2O fights, Stratego, and Legos- they also chose to watch Disney's "Mulan" (I had to chuckle at that one- a group of 13-14 yo boys, but they all said it was a great flick!), KB was in TN. We sent her a "birthday in a box" FULL of stuff from the dollar store and the other girls at Above Rubies really celebrated with her. She got lots of emails, cards and gifts from others so I think it was a rock out 18th bday!

10. Wildlife spottings: On today's walk to the river with Viking Man and the kids we discovered that our local friendly beaver is daming up the water just past the bridge, complete with mud, grass and trees. It's pretty cool. We saw a skunk coming home last night just past the RR tracks and Viking Man has been having deer run in front of the car this past couple of weeks driving home on Mitchell, he also saw an otter in the small pond at the end of our road. The Canadian geese are gathering and we've seen blue heron and hawks. I saw a small owl last week coming home from Mitchell and Cub saw a bald eagle several days ago.

11. I made dill pickles from our cukes. They are wonderful and tart and full of vinegar!

12. Living with the fam. The kids are so FULL of things to share. Cub entertained us for a full 15 min at dinner tonight with a dramatic recitation of an animated commercial he had seen (keep in mind, he hasn't even seen the actual movie!) Still- it was too funny. Flower drew a beautful picture of Columbus' three ships, complete with horizon line! Feche boy came in the kitchen this morning and thanked me for all the canning I'd been doing- how cool is that? My family rocks.