Finally it's Fall!

I love Fall! I love everything about it, the crisp weather, the colorful leaves, and harvest time (especially apples and pumpkins). I love decorating for Fall and baking all the autumn produce. I'm a Fall nut! Cooking, which once was a summer drudgery, becomes a hobby to embrace every chance I get. So in homage to Fall, (which yes, I know, is unfortunately not here yet, but it's so close, and so cool outside!) I've been making my very special Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins. So, as blog writers so often do, I thought I'd share.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 2/3 C Flour
1 C Sugar
1 T. Pumpkin Pie Spice
1 t. baking soda
1/4 t. baking powder
dash of salt
2 eggs
1 C plain pumpkin
1/2 C butter, melted
1 C chocolate chips

Mix all the dry ingredients together.

Mix all the wet ingredients together...

Fold together the wet and dry ingredients, add the chocolate chips!

Bake at 350 for 20 min., and you have some fabulous muffins!
Now, just to let you know, I obliterate the recipe. I add whole wheat flour instead of white, I DON'T add nearly that much sugar. A lot of times I use Turbinado sugar if I have it. I substitute applesauce for most of the butter and I add some milk to make the dough a little lighter. Just some tweaking, right? :)

But the end result are some nutritious muffins that sneak in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, to some very happy kids.
Enjoy!

Here's lookin' at you, kid...

If there was any doubt before, Lilia is proving to be my "ham," my "performer." But of course, only around people that she knows. :)

Saturday's Snacks

I don't know how it goes around your house's, but here, once Saturday rolls around we get a little low on snacks. So we have to dig into the pantry and make some from "scratch." Lilia is my "dumper" of ingredients, Sofie is my "mixer", and John, well he's my "eater". This week it was pound cake! Yum!

Freezing Freezy Pops!

It doesn't matter to my brood that it is in the low 60's today. Everyone still wanted freezy pops on the stoop this afternoon for their snack...

School days!

I've had some questions about how school is coming so far and what are school room is looking like this year. So I took some pictures during school this morning.

Notice everyone in long sleeves! Literally, the clock struck 12 midnight on August 31st and the warm weather was gone. We haven't even reached 70's this week. I think yesterday's high was 68. The kids were excited to break out there new winter clothes though. If only the realized how long they are going to be in them.


Here is Sofie copying part of our poem for the week. This week we are focusing on "Daybreak" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. We also have a Bible verse for the week, which is written on the chalkboard in the background. Notice Sofie's hair, She really wants to do her own hair and there's so many pretty barrettes, it's hard to choose just one...
We were given this dry erase book that has the upper and lower case letters to trace. It also has the strokes numbered so the child knows which line to write first. John LOVES this book.
Lilia is my Playdoh queen. If only she were strong enough to PUSH the Playdoh through the extruder's... She's also my marker queen. As you can see by her skin, she had just gotten done with those.
This is our school room, it had been Mike's office, so we have his diploma's etc. still hung up on the wall. Which I actually think is quite fitting. The rocker is an all important part. That way pregnant Momma can be comfortable while we do our read-alouds.
This is the piece-de-resistance of our school days. The table. We are not to love in-animate object, but I come pretty close with this beauty. It was a gracious and generous gift from Mike's parents. And I love it. It has taken my discombobulated school day and turned it into a well-oiled machine. (Ok I might be taking it a little too far :) ) No more Lilia wanting to be in the middle of everything, because now she can be! And I can give everyone equal attention without scooching (sp?) around the room and stabbing myself with a pencil in my toe... I am enamored with all 6ft+ length of table glory.
The Library. No this isn't ALL homeschooling books. (We're only in 1st grade!) Only the far right bookcase has the school supplies, books, and general manipulative's. We still have more books throughout the house though, and will be purchasing another bookcase shortly...

Lounging Labor Day

For Labor day this year we went camping with Mike's cousin. They own a cabin north of here on a surprisingly large lake. We had lots of fun hanging out, going to the beach, etc. The kids had a blast with their cousins.

Sofie meticulously built these stick walls in the sand. The sticks were arranged longest to shortest. Who says John has the corner on the "detailed" market...


The kids roasted A LOT of marshmallows. The 1st night they ate a whole bag between the 4 kids!Sofie had her 1st experience with a mini-motor bike. The sight hearkened me back to my own mini-motor bike days. Aaah - to ride around aimlessly without a care in the world. Actually, Sofie did have "a care," she didn't quite get the hang of it while we were there.
Lilia LOVED playing catch with her cousin. But she wanted to do it her way. He was to gently place the ball into the mitt. No throwing... And what a patient guy, he did.
The dad's got a stellar idea to nail together a bunch of palettes one morning and build the kids a play house. They played in there for HOURS!
You never quite know what sharp little pokey things are hiding in the sand,

School year kick-off!

This morning we went to our Homeschool Co-op's fall kickoff picnic.

It's raining here today. But that didn't deter us! We found 3 umbrella's and trudged off to a soggy picnic. Sofie had been looking forward to this picnic so I just didn't have the heart to cancel it on her. And we weren't the only ones! There actually ended up being quite the turn-out.

The time started off with some wonderful prayer, the pledge of allegiance, and then a time for the kids to get up and share their favorite parts of the summer. They started with the older kids. Some of them had quite the elaborate displays! One little girl even had a book that she had written over the summer, had submitted it into a local contest, and had won some nice prizes!

They slowly made it down the grades to finally 1st grade. Sofie was up there in a flash. My girl, she didn't even look back at me to see if it was O.K. or talk about what she was going to say. She just jumped up there. Once she got up there and saw how many faces there were she got shy, her face even turned red, but she said her name clearly and said her favorite part about the summer was swimming.

It was another moment for me. She didn't need me to give her courage or help in any way. She just needed me to cheer her on and watch while she did something hard. Of course once Sofie did it, John was on her heels.

I made him wait until they at least called for Kindergarten-ers. I thought that was close enough. :) And I did make him re-hearse what he was going to say. So when he walked up there, with Sofie for moral support, he said, "Hi! (which made everyone laugh) My name is John and I love CAMPING!"