The Curse of the Peaches

Classical conversations began this Monday. The kids all packed lunches and they all did foundations where they practiced memory work. They did a science experiment where they looked at thermometers in the sun and the shade and saw which one was hotter. They also did an art lesson where they learned about all of the shapes that can make up drawings (circles, lines, angles, etc). After that they ate lunch, and then Rea Sara and Mom went to essentials where they learned about grammar and the parts of a sentence. They also played "Number Knockout". Rea really enjoyed it and she especially loved essentials. Boo went to the nursery, and the teacher said that she was very well behaved. Gideon says that the toy oven was a good crib for dolls. Timmy made a friend there, and Sara liked lunch.

After we were done with Classical Conversations, we all were super tired and fell asleep early and slept very late.

Mike periodically goes down to visit the Salt Lace Community College surplus equipment sale. The kids were looking at pond water in their microscope the other day, and Mike remembered that the SLCC surplus sale had a ton of microscopes the last time he went to it. He told Alison about it and she said that he should buy a few more so that the kids do not have to share as much. Mike went down to the sale this week and bought two microscopes for $50 each. They are really high quality, and Gideon and Timmy used them the other day and according to Gideon they were "Too good - no they were perfectly fine".

On Wednesday Sammy and Faith Dalyia came over to our house and the kids caught snails and made snail homes. After that all of the snails ran away. Thursday the Dalyias came over again, so we have had a lot of Dalyia visits this week.

Rea and Alison went to an ASL class this week. It was in a seminary building that was near Grandpa and Grandma Mike and Sheila's house. At the class one of the sign language missionaries was helping teach - it was the same one that taught Rea sign language at one of her young women's activities. They learned the numbers up to 100 and the alphabet and how to say different signs, like Help, Danger, Hello, Yes, and No. Rea and Alison both really liked it.

The caterpillars that the kids have been raising all started coming out of their cocoons this week. We had 8 butterfies hatch successfully. The breed that they were is called "Painted Ladies". On Saturday we released them into the wild because they were getting a bit stir-crazy and flying into everything.

Friday during the day we went to the new nature group and wildflower park. everything went really well. We love the fall weather - it is so much better than the summer. The morning air is crisp and it doesn't get too hot during the day.

On Friday Alison went to a Relief Society campout. She reports that she had a fun time at it, and while she was gone Mike cut up a watermellon into six pieces for a watermelon dinner. The reason why he did it was that we were worried that the watermelon was going bad, and we had to eat it all that day. Each person got one piece, but when we started eating the watermelon we decided that it was already bad, so we didnt eat much of it.

Since both Alison and Amy were gone we invited the Plastow kids to spend the night at our house. They told stories and made forts. They also played with legos and watched movies and played minecraft. It was very fun for them.

On Saturday morning we were gifted a large box of pears, and somehow Mike was cursed to call them peaches instead of pears. It was a curious curse, but he couldn't say the word pears without prompting for more than one full day. We plan on canning them and having pears for the future.

Saturday night we had a Saturday party that Mike decided to name Saturnalia. To celebrate it we all helped make dinner and had French toast with walnut sauce and rose hip jelly and also a blueberry/mango smoothie. It was fun.

Also on Saturday night Rea started learning Spanish on Duolingo, so if any of you are on Duolingo, feel free to friend her and help encourage her.

On Sunday Rea was asked to give a talk about girls camp. She was a little bit nervous but she did very well.

 After church was over, some of the kids wanted pictures: