Trying!

To blog more often, that is.  :-)

Here are a few photos from the other weekend.  We went camping at RB Winter State Park near Mifflinburg, PA.  It rained overnight Friday so Saturday we went to Penn's Cave...a place that I've wanted to go to ever since I was a little girl.  We also found the cabin that Randy went to when he was a child.  And...we bought apples!  We found this cute little orchard (13 or 18 acres I think the guy said) up in the mountains.  And I really have no idea why I neglected to take photos of it!  I made some of the apples into applesauce and the rest are still in my refrigerator.  I'm planning to make apple pie filling with them...if they don't get eaten before I get around to doing so!

Autumn

 

Mark

Trying to get a group photo...

Micah

Look at that cute crew (in front of the cabin that Randy went to when he was a boy).

Us

Zach - love this photo of the playful side of Zach.

Randy

Autumn, Micah, Josiah, Janae

going down into the cave

On the boat

light show in the cave

 

Sunday was a gorgeous day!

Janae

Josiah

Reading, reading, reading...

I go through periods of time when I read mass amounts of material...and then it goes awhile again.  With Josiah going to a co-op for an hour once a week, it's the perfect time for me & Micah to go to the local library...which is rather bad in a way because then I spend much more time reading books.  :-)

So, what have I been reading?

• "Parenting from the Inside Out" and "No-Drama Discipline".  Once I stumbled upon a few books that gave me insight into parenting a child from places of trauma, now I just keep reading more and more.  The results - I now know a lot of information.  Translating that into the actual parenting process is the challenge!
• From Fear to Love.  This is a small book that breaks down much of what I've learned into bite size, easy to understand pieces/concepts.  It's the perfect "introductory" book!
• The Grave Robber.  This book explores the miracles of Jesus as found in the book of John as well as miracles today.  I bought it because Kim of the blog (now fb page) "His Hands His Feet Today" is mentioned in it.  I enjoyed the book and thought the author provided a good balance of "God still does miracles" and "We don't get to decide when God does miracles".
• And less you think that I only read serious books...I've also been reading for fun.
• Working through my set of Agatha Christie books (as well as the ones the library has)
• Dee Henderson's books 4, 5, & 6 of the O'Malley Series
• Christmas at Barncastle Inn (and another similar 4 lame romance novels in one book)...sometimes it's nice to read "fluff"...provided that you don't think to hard about how this would actually play out in real life.  :-)
• Story of the World:  volume 4.  I found this in the homeschool section of our library.  I love how these volumes weave the history of the entire world together.  So instead of learning about a specific section of the world to the exclusion of the rest, you learn about what's happening all over the world in any given time period.

The other week I introduced my kids to the show "Master Chef Jr." (season 1) which we could watch on the internet.  Those kids blew me away with their cooking skills!  We all really enjoyed watching the show together.  (Although it provided me lots of opportunities to discuss the fact that in our family there are certain very common phrases that we don't choose to say.)

Earlier this month we got pumpkins and painted them.  Last week we had a lot of rain which washed most of the paint off...but it was fun while it lasted.  :-)

Hmm...

...I see that I blogged all of 2 times in September.  Perhaps I should consider whether I want to continue blogging or let it go.  Has it served it's time?  Or is blogging just kind of dormant right now?  I don't know....

Anyway.  The last time I blogged about Randy & Josiah riding the BR2RB bike ride.  While they were doing that.  The other kids and I went to Cape Henlopen State Park (DE).

Top of the WWII Lookout Tower

She blinked again!

Look at that cute little boy's smile.  :-)

Fun trees to climb.

Exploring Fort Miles

From Fort Miles

Cape Henlopen Beach - It was a chilly, cloudy day...

My lovely daughter...and a bit of Janae shivering because she was SO cold.

We stuck our feet in the foam.  The surf was pretty high...it was kind of nice it was to cold for the kids, because I would've worried about them.

Zach

I love the ocean...

 

Me and my girls!

Micah & Mark