Precious Autumn Moments

It’s been the last week of our holidays and I am glad to report we are all ready to return to work.  I wasn’t sure my enthusiasm would return, it was taking so long to recover from the summer.  But just this week, I have begun to feel my customary excitement and I am really looking forward to next Monday.

I will be posting everyone’s schedules next week as I have received a couple of emails asking for them.  It took a long time this year to co-ordinate everyone’s interests, goals and schooling must-haves, but finally this week everything began to fall into place.

The only school we have done this week is one hour of maths and a one hour of nature walk daily.  Next week we will add in all the rest.

The chickens keep escaping so are in obvious need of a wing clip, which will be on our to do list over the weekend.  We had to retrieve them multiple times over the week, with one even escaping into our neighbour’s garden.  Good job she loves chickens!

The collage above shows L12 cooking some lovely spring vegetable soup, and A7 washing up all by herself.  This is one area I have been a bit lax on with the younger ones but this year I will be expecting much more from them.  The lower left photo shows a normal bath time at our house.  The littles soak in a bubble bath whilst Gary practices his songs for leading worship on Sunday!  The older girls have taken up street dancing and have been showing off their ‘skills’ at every opportunity – even on our nature walks in the middle of the meadow!  It is hard to get a photo of them doing it because they move quite quickly.

T’s sisters absolutely adore him, especially as he is much more easy-going now his adolescence is passing.  They only have one brother, so T gets a lot of attention.  When I saw them all hugging I knew I had to snap away.  The girls then asked T to give them both a hug at the same time:

Gotta love those lovely sibling relationships!

The younger girls have spent hours colouring free colouring in sheets.  The picture shows them making some princess crowns to wear.

Over the weekend we bought a couple of plants to go over George and Lucy’s grave.  They both flower at this time of year and their beauty will be a lovely reminder of the 18 happy years we had with our two moggies.

This is becoming a familiar sight in our house.  Gary tried teaching the three older ones guitar a few years ago, but although they were enthusiastic they found it hard and gave up fairly quickly.  It’s funny how powerful self motivation is, because T is now happily teaching himself and is really getting quite good.  His sisters all love listening to the latest song he has taught himself:

I have stripping my garden of all its flowers again.  I just love being surrounded by the beauty of so many blooms:

Aren’t they beautiful:

Some of these are a mixture of birthday flowers, flowers people have brought round when we have had them for dinner and some from the garden.

The rest I picked from my garden:

We had guests on Sunday again and this time I decorated the table using the table runner patchwork C12 made for my Christmas present last year.  It just makes me so happy looking at it:

I have also been enjoying some time in the kitchen baking scones (which were scrummy), cinnamon biscuits which are improving all the time (!) and a very chocolate-y chocolate cake:

Each day this week we have been out in the nearby countryside getting fresh air and lots of chat (mainly from C12 who talks like there is no tomorrow!):

It has been good to take a deep breath and relax over the past few weeks but next week we will be hard at work again, studying away.  And you know what?  We are quite looking forward to it!