David has a serious fascination with fall and Halloween. I’d say he probably likes Halloween more than Christmas. He loves dressing up in costumes. He loves candy, and he loves crunching in the leaves.

Already he’s noticed the Halloween stuff in the stores and started asking me to make jack-o-lantern sandwiches (which are just english muffins with a slice of cheese cut to look like a jack-o-lantern).

He’s also started thinking about fall crafts.We made this cute little scarecrow face after seeing a similar craft package here. We had all the supplies necessary in our overflowing craft box, but if you’ve got a group of kids or would like to make a whole batch, the price for enough stuff for a dozen of these can’t be beat.

We did place an order for a bunch of other neat crafts for autumn and Halloween, though. We bought this pack of six fleece silly monster tied pillow craft kits as a Halloween craft. I plan on taking most of them out with me when I visit family so David and his cousins can all do their own pillow monster together, but I opened one to see if David was able to do the craft on his own. I’m happy to say that the tying is easy (though he got some of the pieces mixed up, fudging it after the fact didn’t make the pillow look bad at all).

I almost decided on the witch pillow craft kit, but thought the monsters were a little more generic, and could stay on the bed all year long.

And, a sucker for a bargain, I also grabbed a pack of 12 wooden hockey game craft kits for four bucks, only to wonder, now that they’ve arrived, what the heck I’m going to do with a dozen of the darn things. Maybe his Beaver group will be able to use them.

David loves the new bookcase, since a lot of his favorite books and workbooks are on the bottom shelves.

I am sore, very sore, but happy tonight. After what seemed like an eternity of storing books under my desk, under the bed, behind chairs and hidden beneath and above just about every piece of furniture in the house that was capable of hiding my overflow, we’ve finally started building and staining my new bookcases.

Here’s a picture of the first eight-foot solid-oak giant…

Tomorrow I have to do a second coat, attach the back panel, then start on the second bookcase.

I can’t wait to get both of them finished. With any luck, there’ll be an empty shelf or half a shelf so I can reward myself with a visit to the bookstore.

I didn’t say anything when their youngest son (about 6 or 7) sat at the bottom of the slide at the playground and started throwing sand. The playground wasn’t full, so I just took my son to a different area to play for a while.

I didn’t say anything a while later when we saw the same family at the Dairy Queen, where their kids were standing on the tables. Yes, standing on the surface where other people expect to eat.

I held my tongue when the oldest boy told his father to shut up. And the father just accepted it.

I cringed when the mother approached my son and asked him what school he was going to go to this fall, but I let him answer for himself.

But when she turned to me, after hearing  that he was being homeschooled and said,

“Aren’t you worried that he’ll grow up unable to interact properly with other people?”

all I could say was “You have GOT to be kidding!”

Now, I’m not paranoid about school safety, and potential violence in public schools is a reason way, way down my list of reasons to homeschool, if its even in the list at all.

But the fact that there’s even a market for this makes me wonder…

What could be more fun that flying a kite? What about flying one that you built yourself, with ordinary materials that you’ve almost certainly got around your home.

We made a simple kite today out of one 8.5X11″ piece of paper, some tape, a plastic straw, and a small plastic shopping bag. Also needed was a string. We used a kite string from a free kite that was given to us on Canada day. That kite was never able to stay off the ground for more than 3 seconds, and when it did get up momentarily, it immediately dive bombed the person flying it. So, it was no big loss to cut the string for our paper kite experiment.

Here are the directions and a pattern, if you want to try it yourself.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mr and Mrs American Goldfinch seem to have moved in to the maple tree in front of our house and plan to start a family.  They’re very pretty, and we’re glad to have them.

 Unfortunately, Mr Goldfinch is being macho and when he sees his reflection in my office window, he’s convinced it’s his competiton. Ever since I got back from vacation yesterday afternoon, Mr Goldfinch has been fighting with my windows. I’m rather concerned about him. Or, at least about the state of his beak.

He was making such a fuss, that I didn’t even notice his lady until this afternoon, when I spotted her in the tree. She was watching the commotion with a bemused look.

After doing a bit of research to see if there’s anything I can do to help Mr Goldfinch save his beak, I’ve discovered that I’d need to cover the windows from the outside (difficult since they’re on the second floor), and it might not even help, as the stubborn guy would probably spend enough time searching for the missing competition that he’d find one or more of the other windows on our house, or our neighbor’s.

So, for now, I’ve settled for recruiting David’s help to wave our arms near the window  whenever he starts his attacks, which seems to send him away for a while.

While the weather is warm and there’s lots to do outside, my blogging has suffered a bit. But we’ve done some pretty fun stuff so far this spring.

We went to a horse eventing show (we actually volunteered to work it, and were assigned the task of being the timers at the finish line for the cross-country event).

We helped trailer a rescue horse to it’s first lesson off its regular farm with a trainer. This horse was the product of the creation of Premarin, a hormone replacement drug that is often prescribed to menopausal women. The drug is made from the urine of pregnant mares. And pregnant mares produce foals. Most of the foals are killed, but a few are spared if they look particularly good or healthy. This very nervous  and timid fellow was one of those foals.  Cute as a button but spooked very easily.

We also joined a fly fishing club that has three private well-stocked lakes, a lodge and other amenities, so David and I have been learning to proficiently cast a fly rod.

We started some seeds indoors for planting this weekend, we’ve bought some plants for the large pots outside as well. We’ve been nurturing our herb garden too.

We’ve started rock and fossil hunting once again, and this time we’re armed with a bushel of field guides to help us identify what we’ve found.

Add to that frequent trips to the park, garden centers and tackle shops, we have kept ourselves pretty busy.

I hope everyone out there had a great Easter weekend.

I had great fun watching David collect Easter eggs from “Easter Bunny Daddy” and “Easter Bunny Mommy” (we don’t actually try to delude him into believing in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus).

I also became a Great Aunt (for the second time) as my nephew and his wife got a nine and a half pound, happy, healthy son.

Just when you think it’s safe to put away the snowpants.

This is the view from the window of my home office this morning. It looks more like the upcoming holiday should be Christmas instead of Easter.

Speaking of which, today is Maundy Thursday, as we used to call it. The day of the last supper, the garden of Gethsemane and other preliminaries to Mel Gibson’s favorite part of the season.

I was thinking about introducing David to the Christian meanings behind the holidays this year, but I just don’t know how to deal with Easter.

“Do you remember the little baby that we talked about whose birthday was celebrated on Christmas? This is when they killed him.”

I think not.

So… I’m pulling out the plastic eggs and the Peanuts Easter special, and leave it at that for another year.