Caramel Apples!

Apple picking at Lynd's...and everything set up for making caramel apples!

Scarlett: Do we grow when we're sleeping?
Me: Yes
Scarlett: Even when it's not our birthday?

Scarlett has been nursing a serious fascination with meerkats and lemurs over the past few months so when I learned that 4 Meerkats had just moved in to the Boonshoft museum down the road in Dayton, we planned a roadtrip. The Meerkats were a riot, but we also discovered a fab museum. Our favorite areas were the pizza kitchen-extensive, creative, preschool paradise (brown pom-pom meatballs were my favorite)! And the Treehouse, which was an area of the museum, covered from floor to ceiling-literally-with creatively presented facts about forests and trees and the area itself jutted out over the forest behind the museum (see Zeke with the binoculars?) I want a room in my house like that!

Visiting Youngs Jersey Dairy in Yellow Springs on our way home from Dayton. Kids didn't believe the giant pumpkin was real

1) the 3 girls outside the train display at Easton

2) Georgia headed to school in her handmade winter gear from Bubby

3) The kids with our trusty van that has carried us on so many adventures

4+5) some creative downtime at home - Georgia making friendship bracelets and Scarlett embroidering

Georgia took the top photo of me and I thought I'd go ahead and put it up here since I'm usually on the other side of the camera and all...In order to navigate the (illiterate) crew used this 1/2 hour glass and put a peg in the board to mark the direction they were traveling as each 1/2 hour went by, then every so often Columbus would do some sort of mathematical calculation to figure out where to go next. Stella and Zeke are showing the steering area from where there was zero visibility...so the guy steering relied on another guy up in a basket above the ship yelling down to him what to do

A Columbus Day Weekend visit to the Santa Maria. Top pic: kids pumping water (I think, I don't really remember what the pump was all about) Next: Georgia fixing a sailors' supper of bean soup and hard tack, Yikes! of course we spent the whole tour wondering WHERE DID THEY GO TO THE BATHROOM? Well, they hung from a rope on the OUTSIDE! of the ship and squatted over the open ocean and then wiped with this frayed rope end - known as "the bitter end" then tossed the rope back in the water to drag along until the next guy had to go!

Portions of a book Georgia wrote and illustrated yesterday. "Hearts are love and peace" "Plums are yummy."

One of the items on Scarlett's weekend "to do" list was "learn to draw animals." So we did!

Here we are making pumpkin bread...Georgia is searching for a specific black dress she wants to wear to be a witch for trick-or-treat. She was getting super frustrated that I don't know which dress she's looking for so she drew a picture to help me remember it (still not triggering a memory though...)

The 1st cold Sunday....After a lazy Saturday at home we were itching to go SOMEWHERE...We wore our winter coats and stopped by Bubby's house to visit and to pick up the new hats, scarves, and mittens she crocheted for us then it was off to the Franklin Park Conservatory to check out the carnivorous plants exhibit. We saw the live venous fly trap feeding, investigated pitcher plants with magnifying glasses and discovered my new personal favorite carnivorous plant, the sundew (but somehow got no pix of it. It's red with sticky bright tips that look illuminated. Then we went to Bob Evans for lunch and cracked up writing madlibs about poop while we ate...then came home and cooked pumpkin bread, butternut squash risotto with peas (which Scarlett and I polished off straight from the pan), and tofu and spinach curry. We also started a "curiosity list" of things we want to look up on line or at the library starting with "How many birds are in the sky?"