a little creativity

Caleb's landform project
Maci busy at work on Christmas presents (in the style of Eric Carle, cut by Mom, glued by Maci)

fall photos of these precious ones

Sunday our kids woke up excited to check on their new frog habitat & the girls traipsed out in their jammies. Such wonder & pure joy at a little amphibian made me run for the camera.
I'm adding a couple photos from yesterday after school too. While Caleb ran with the girls, chasing a ball or two, Stephen sat on the steps & looked like a 13-year-old. He makes me feel ancient. & Caleb's eyes shining in the sunshine grabbed my momma's heart.

tricks for "30days"

This September we baked a lot of bread. This was a busy day, obviously, but you can see seven loaves of Dave's oatmeal bread & three chocolate zucchini loaves. We have really enjoyed having the freezer almost constantly full of homemade bread & I have been spending a little time each week cooking something from scratch to save time & add nutrition to our diets. Some things I have tried: cooking dried beans, making cream of mushroom soup (with pureed mushrooms for the pickier children), cooking with what we have (oh look! oatmeal apple crisp for breakfast!), & making double dinners in order to freeze one meal.
It has really challenged us to be grateful for what we have & to not make the assumption that we need to buy an extreme variety of foods.
On a similar topic, I ran out of napkins sometime during the month & I decided to see how long I can make it without them. We have 8 smaller ones that I have made (I need to make at least that many more) out of fabric scraps, & in the "flood" I found about 15 huge white ones from a yardsale "odd linens" box. So far so good!

some of the september harvest

"mommy, I feel bad for 'dis one"
(Maci)