Well, the kids are home for 5 days now. They have Thur. – Mon. off. The teachers have training Thursday and Friday and then Monday is Columbus Day. It’s Thursday morning and they are already fighting…. I just assigned them some work to keep them busy. I guess we’ll have to find something creative to keep them entertained in the coming days. I think we’ll go on a little day trip somewhere tomorrow.

Our beans were harvested. I tried to take pictures, but they didn’t turn out. Both Ryan and Christian got to ride in the combine for a few rows. I asked if it was fun and they said it was high so they could see a long ways, but it was too long of a ride… Now Matt and Ryan have dreams of a g0-cart track. Matt and I are thinking we could run that in the non-farming months and still let them farm in the summer. The extra $$ from the farming enceavors is a nice perk. We ended up with 215 Bushels from our 4 acres.

We have had strange weather lately. Yesterday it was 80 degrees and sunny when I took Christian to school and 63, windy, raining and cold when I picked him up 3 hours later. I had put him in shorts and he was freezing when I picked him up. We have been having lots of wind and thunderstorms. The leaves are starting to change and fall as well.

Ryan had a good week at school. He was the “Star of the Day” on Monday and then on Wednesday it was his turn to bring dessert for the entire school. They have hot lunch at school every Wednesday and families take turns bringing the dessert. Ryan wanted me to make cookies, but if you bring cookies you are requested to bring 2 per child. That is 180 cookies! I wasn’t feeling that ambitious… so I finally convinced him that I would make our familiy cookies and he brought those popcycles with ice-cream in the middle. MUCH EASIER!

I decided the other day that next time I buy Ryan shoes I am buying 2 pairs. I am tired scrambling every morning trying to find his shoes before we run out the door for school. I have tried having him place them by the back door at night, but it still sometimes fails. So considering his current shoes are totally falling apart… I ordered two pairs of shoes and a pair of snow boots from L.L Bean this morning. We’ll see how they fit and last.

Dane had a good birthday. We didn’t do anything too major. It was Sunday, so we had church and then Matt had an afternoon meeting and then we had our family Bible Study at night. We had the cake with the Bible Study Group. White with Lemon Frosting and Carrot with Cream Cheese Frosting. YUM! I had to go to the neighbors to borrow eggs for the cakes because I had forgotten that Dane had decided that cracking eggs is a fun thing to do… so I was out and I didn’t want to run all the way into town just for that.

Here are the Birthday Pictures. He was terrified of the horse at first, but he’s warming up to it. Ryan and Christian think it’s great fun.

Well, I think that is it for now – or at least all I can think of as I have whiny, fighting, crazy, wonderful little boys yelling, crying, laughing and climbing all over me.

C-