October 19, 2015

A visit to the pumpkin patch!

(click here for today's pictures)

• The boys were up right at 7, walking downstairs in our chilly house only wearing their underwear.  They sat right down at the kitchen table and started working on their few school boxes for the day.  After Graham finished 2 of his 3, he looked at me and said that he was going back to bed.  I said that was fine and he only had about 20 minutes until I woke him back up again.
• After a bit of time, I did have to go back upstairs and wake him up along with the girls. When I reminded the girls what we were going to do today, everyone was up and getting ready quickly.  We had breakfast and the kids did some school work and a bit of our chores before we loaded up and headed off.
• Since the pumpkin patch outing would take us right near Beebee's place, we popped in on her early in the morning.  The kids were much better behaved this week than last week and I guess that I was too-last week, I was the one getting into trouble! Beebee called my momma and told her that I was being to hard on those kids specifically Anderson and Campbell.  In my defense, my children were acting a fool last week and needed more than a good talking to (which is what they got)-they needed to go out back and pick their switch!  But this week, visiting Beebee when much smoother!
• As soon as we left there, we drove right the Mary's Place for our pumpkin patch.  We arrived early because I didn't want to have to worry about parking and maybe because we were early or maybe because I was driving my big van but we got a great parking spot.  The kids quickly found the petting area, the swings and the hay mound but the highlight for my big kids was the manual mechanical bull.  
• We rode on the hay ride and my Whitman and Keaton took the gun shooting all in stride.  They had a treehouse and wooden maze that the kids went on.  And then back to pick out our pumpkins.  Last year we all had little pumpkins but this year, the kids picked out giant ones.  They are nicer but I am not sure I can cook them up to make Anderson his pumpkin bread.  
• After leaving, we picked up lunch at McDonalds and ate on the way home.  So when we came in, we immediately finished our chores and school work.  The big chore today was going through my boxes of shoes to check and see if there were any winter shoes in there.  The goal was to find Campbell black shoes and Whitman church shoes we did that plus some.  
• Then Whitman went to bed and the rest of us did our together work-I know I always talk about our together work but here is what we did today: recited our verses (we have daily, every other day, day of the week and once a month verses), read a few pages of a short story book, read some of the sequel to Homer Price, read a chapter of a book about the climbers of Mt. Everest, recited the planets, sang the bones of the body, read a pumpkin book and sang the states and the capitals.  We were going to recite some of our catechisms but Graham conveniently spilled them so he had to spend some time putting them back in order.  Needless to say, this together work usually takes almost an hour and today we didn't even do our history or science reading.  I keep those in another spot and forget to pull them out today.
• After all of this, the kids were tired so I told everyone that we were going to quiet and lay down for 30 minutes.  I made it clear that they could read so they all did while I snoozed.  They got a little noisy towards the end of the 30 minutes and I told them that we would try again tomorrow.  I enjoyed my little nap!
• Then to the treadmill for me and the xbox for the boys and movies for the girls.  Soon Robby was home and supper was ready.  We had jambalaya and cornbread for supper along with ice cream which all ended up being a mess on the floor.  The kids then had showers as we all picked up. The evening was fairly uneventful and then before we knew it, it was bedtime!