Pumpkin Farm

We love this farm. There's lots of fun things to do, lots of animals, and lots of exotic pumpkins to choose from.  

Baby bottles in the back pocket. Hot.

Tim and Scarlet, both scared of heights.

They snuggled these bunnies.

Jacob and Scarlet together in one cart.

Thanksgivs

On our way to Edmonton for Thanksgivs we stopped in a little town named Nanton. It's an antique wonderland, as you can see below. Jane collects skeleton keys so she found one here to add to her collection.

 We even found this figurine of Jon Heder...

 This antique store happened to be a candy store too. An amazing candy store. It has the greatest baking supplies section- every cookie cutter shape you ever wanted and gorgeous cupcake wrappers.

 This is Sholeh Zard. It's Persian rice pudding. It's saffron that gives it the yellow color. My mom and dad made it just right.

 Aunt Jenny did Jane and Scarlet's hair. She spent a long time doing it just right for the pictures. I forgot how much little girls love to doll up. It made me realize I should do that with them more- we usually just let their curlies go wild.

 When Jane's was done, she bounced all over the house, flittering and fluttering to the next mirror to admire herself ;)

 We named Ezra after the right guy. He looks just like his Baba.

 Baba is always working on something in the garage. I'm still a little confused about Tim never doing that. I just thought that's what dad's do. The kids were his handy dandy flashlight holders.

 Ezra melts us all.

TEDxSF - Louie Schwartzberg - Gratitude

I watched this video with the kids this morning and we talked about gratitude. They looked up "thanks" in their scripture index and we did some reading. Then we discussed how recognizing all the blessings we have (like the beauty of nature we just watched in this video) will help us to be positive, not complain and lift those around us. There's a part in the video that said "each day is a gift." I taught them about the gift of agency. We decided together that today we can choose to be grateful and positive or ungrateful and negative. We can choose to count stars or to count mud puddles.

Here is what they came up with after our lesson. Jane's is on top, then Charlie, then Jacob's. Jane had some neat "ungrateful" things, like a thorn, wind blowing off her hat and dogs with their hair standing up on their backs. I liked how Jacob was grateful for colors.

Turkey Time

 I'm more of the "do one thing a year that scares you" type... but I did cook a turkey this month and it was scary. I feel like I have to admit that I bought a turkey breast roast which was all white meat, no bones and no guts or anything weird. Plus, it cooked in less than 2 hours. By the way, Pura Vida Farm will have good for you turkeys ready for Christmas (if you are local).

The kids were so into the candlelight idea.

Homemade ice cream. No sugar. So good. Homemade Raw apple crisp. SO GOOD. No sugar, or butter. Email me for the recipe. We loved it.

I will always do this at Thanksgiving time from now on. Its a "Thankful Tree".

Charlie and Jane gathered small sticks and branches from outside and we put them in a glass jar to make our tree. Then they cut out little paper leaves and strung them with embroidery thread. Then we set the tree out with the little leaves next to it so that we could write something we are thankful for throughout the day and it turns out we'll be doing it all month because its so much fun. Its so cute to see the kids writing and funny spelling on the little leaves. It makes my heart happy every time I pass by it.

I posted so many pictures of this little tree because I just like it so much!

Janey

Miss Jane also performed for recitation today. 

She shared a poem about kindness to animals, as she is an animal lover.

Little children, never give
Pain to things that feel and live;

Let the gentle robin come
For the crumbs you save at home;
As his meat you throw along
He’ll repay you with a song.

Never hurt the timid hare
Peeping from her green grass lair,
Let her come and sport and play
On the lawn at close of day.

The little lark goes soaring high
To the bright windows of the sky,
Singing as if t'were always spring,
And fluttering on an untired wing -
Oh! Let him sing his happy song,
Nor do these gentle creatures wrong.

Jane is enjoying her cute haircut- especially not having to brush though all that long hair.

Today Jane slaved away creating this autumn leaves garland for our Thanksgiving festivities. She worked hard from start to finish. Which led me to realize that she has incredible stamina for crafty projects, but not quite as much for her math... The best part about it is that she listened to Mozart's opera, The Magic Flute, while she hand stitched all the leaves. I think she has fallen in love with opera. She didn't even want  to come up for lunch because, quoting Jane, "Mom, I'm so into it!" Maybe its all the cello practicing she's been doing.