Garden gratification

After the rain stopped today, I took a much needed trip to the compost bin to empty our overflowing bucket. As I made my way out towards the bin and adjacent garden there was a guilty looking rabbit scurrying away. Looking over his shoulder as he paused from his flee, he decided that yes, I definitely was staying in the garden and continued on his way. Upon examination of my garden, I noticed that either my radishes had pushed their way out or my intruder had been grazing on them. My guess is the latter. I was able to harvest quite a few of them and my mouth is watering as I type this in anticipation of slicing them up and sprinkling them with my Real Salt sea salt...my very favorite way to eat radishes, YUM!



Now, I know that readishes are an early crop, but this just gives me a wonderful anticpation of things to come!

Just 2 of the reasons that we homeschool...

One of the joys of homeschooling is being able to be together as a family throughout the day. Granted, this can take a toll on all of us and I often have people telling me that they think I am crazy for NOT sending my kids away for 8 hours everyday. However, even amid the ups and downs, the arguments, always having a kid underfoot and not having too much time for myself, it is moments like the the one below that make every second of it worth it!


On this particular day, C1 completed his work early. Instead of begging for computer time or causing arguments, he took it upon himself to get out one of our math manipulative boxes and call C2 out to the living room. He proceeded to work with C2 on patterns, simple additon and subtraction, and his counting skills. I cannot even express how wonderful it is to see this love in action...like I said before, this moment makes it worth it!

The day after this occurred, my love was beuilding a sundeck addition to our deck and took the two older boys out to help him. Not only did they get to put their math skills to the test, they were able to really help out!

C1 helping to stabilize a post.

C1 carrying a heavy post while L lets him...heck, if you don't need to exert yourself, why bother?!?

L learning how to use the level. What you don't see is that he then carried the level to mulitple places to make sure that EVERYTHING was level, it was quite funny to watch!

This project is a perfect examply of the "extracurriculars" that the boys are able to participate in on a regular basis...they had wonderful bonding time with their dad, and they learned some life skills along the way.