We are enjoying more pleasant days as fall approaches, and have returned to our schoolwork with renewed vigor.  Verity is zooming through her math book, though she seems most of all to enjoy her Latin.  She is already almost half way through the Latin for Children first year material.  Mercy continues to go through the Alphaphonics Lessons with me, and Peace seems to be picking up quickly on the alphabet just from watching us.  We are studying the founding of Georgia in Sonlight, just finished the Puritans and the Quakers, the founding of New England and of Pennsylvania.

Yesterday the girls were playing at scraping animal skins.  Their blankets were the skins, and they were scraping them with bits of broken dishes that they had found in the back yard.  One night they were playing Indian princesses, and named their sons Merriweather Lewis and William Clark.  I'm not sure if real Indian princesses would do that....

Mrs. Kobb has brought Aden over to play with us the last two Wed. mornings.  He is just Benjamin's age, but they all enjoy the company.  This Wed. Mrs. Kobb brought over the Pirates of Penzance for us to watch, and it was riveting for the girls.  All the sword-waving dismayed Mercy a bit at first, and she needed some convicing that it was all in fun.  Peace seemed to be most impressed by all of the girls with "pretty clothes on."

We celebrated Bruce's birthday last Saturday.  We ordered pizza, and I made a yummy cake....two layers of chocolate cake with a cheesecake sandwiched in between, with raspberry filling , and frosted with chocolate frosting.  It really was shaping up to be the most flawless cake of my life, until Peace fell on it.  Then it was ever so slightly lopsided. But it still tasted good.  We took the leftovers to church the next day and it was gone in no time.

The garden is coming into its own at last.  The tomatoes are finally being coaxed to part with their greenness.  The zucchini is producing well enough now to send me scrambling for new recipes.  The tomatillos are providing Mercy and Peace with pineapple-flavored snacks.  The tiny Mexican cucumbers are amusing Bruce with their diminutive watermelon look.  .  They are about as big as one of my fingernails, and tasty.

My tomatoes this year are Principe Borghese, a small red tomato that is sometimes used for drying, Green Zebra, a greenish-yellow tomato with green stripes, and Japanese Black Truffle, which is a chocolately color when ripe and sweeter than the others.

The kale has reseeded itself, and it is time for me to start the fall lettuce and spinach.  The herbs are still growing plenteously.

This has been a fairly quiet week.  Bruce had a day off yesterday, and we took the kids to the big library in downtown Akron.  There we got our requisite Laura Ingalls Wilder books and Henry and Mudge books, and a few others as well.  Benjamin got a lift-the-flap board book as he seems entranced with these.

Verity has been working hard on her Latin this week; Mercy has started Alpha-phonics with me.  She seems to enjoy this very much so far. 

I have generally been feeling better lately, and able to get up and start my day with a morning walk.  What a peaceful time of enjoying the varying beauties of creation.  Deer, mists, sunrise, a  heron, sweet honeysuckle. 

Vacation Bible School was this week and we had a wonderful time.  I taught the primary age class....19 kids, so we had quite a few visitors.  Verity was excited to be in my class.  Mercy was in the little kids' class.  Peace and Benjamin were in the nursery, but they had fun too.

The theme was "The King is Coming" so the focus was Jesus the King.  This year the grand entrance required "swimming" a moat of blue balloons at the beginning and end of each day.  What fun!

Bruce was the missionary man,  and he told the kids every day about  our missionary to Egypt, and the kids collected money to send to him.  The littlest kids collected the most, to the astonishment of us all.

Now that it is all over, Verity and Mercy have their bags of crafts (i.e., treasures) that they finished, and they are busying themselves playing Vacation Bible School.  :-)  and looking forward to the next big thing, which is Christmas.

I didn't have to worry about fixing dinner this week, because of my new Mega Menu-Mailer, which helped me prepare 22 preassembled (but not precooked) meals to freeze.  I initially was thinking about doing it when the baby came, so I would have stuff ready, but then I realized it would be perfect for VBS week too.  It is so nice, I may end up doing it all of the time!  No casseroles, which is just fine with Bruce and the girls.  It is more along the lines of meats in marinades, and dinners ready to pop in the crock pot, and such.  It is all very tasty so far.

I have never in my life been a coupon user.  Sometimes I have managed to cut them out, but I usually forget to use them or to hand them to the cashier before they end up expiring.  The Grocery Game is perfect for me.  Apparently sales run on a 12 week cycle--an item will be on sale for a few weeks, and then will not come on sale again for another 9 or 10 weeks.  The GG (Teri's List) helps you take advantage of the sale cycle by telling you when items are at their rock-bottom prices so that you can stock up on them.  It also coordinates the sales with coupons, and tells you when to use each coupon to your best advantage.  So I am actually using coupons!  I still have to remember to hand them to the cashier though.  :-)

Benjamin is a true toddler now.  He looks like he enjoys walking so much.  Sometimes he just walks around laughing to himself. 

Now that VBS is over, we will get back to our normal routine.  Schooltime tomorrow!

We took a field trip last week to Schoenbrunn Village near here.  This was a Moravian mission to the Delaware Indians in the 1770's.  A partial reconstruction of the town was built in the 1920's when the original site was confirmed by archeological digs.   There are around 16 buildings now... though the settlement originally was much larger, but it is a nice sampling to show the different kinds of dwellings that were there. 

Many of the cabins had dirt floors and were windowless....The cabins that the Indians typically lived in had a hole cut in the roof in lieu of a chimney.   We had a pleasant walk around the grounds, the  lush green of the outdoors contrasting starkly with the spareness of these wilderness homes.

There were a church and schoolhouse, both made of logs.  The minister's home was right next to the church, and had a nice pathway leading directly from the study at the back of the home to the pulpit in the church....Bruce was specially fond of that touch.  One of the missionary's homes had a mother and daughter in the Moravian costume ( very toasty in July)  preparing a meal in the fireplace.  We chatted for a bit and had a taste of pumpkin pudding and watched them make johnny cakes.

Benjamin enjoyed his chance to practice walking while holding our hands.  The girls enjoyed comparing the  relative comfort of the cabins.  On the way home in the car they decided that if we split the family up, Verity to one cabin, Mercy to another, and Bruce and I and the young ones in another, that we could live quite comfortably there....if we could bring whatever we wanted from home, that is. 

I have not felt well this week.  I had a migraine that wiped me out for a few days.  I am feeling much better today, and for that I am so thankful. 

It is hot weather now, and I decided to get out the water slide that I got at Aldi's last month.  Bruce set it up for the kids, and showed them how it is done.  It has a nice 16' long piece of plastic, kept wet with "sprinklers" that slides you right into a nice little pool of water at the bottom.   Peace does not enjoy getting wet.  She would rather watch.  Benjamin likes putting his little hands in the sprinklers.  Bruce and the older girls just get all wet and cool and have fun. 

School is going well, though we did miss a few days this week.  Verity has decided to start keeping a diary.  She wrote her first entry today, beginning thus, "Two light rains.  Then sun comes out,"  and proceeds to describe the various activities and foods of the day.   I asked her where she got the idea, and she said it was from Eustace in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  I'm hoping that she doesn't decide to emulate him in other ways.  ;-)

Rainstorms and showers have been coming daily this week.  The sky dims the air even at midday, and there is a general sense of dampness outdoors.

The fourth of July was last week.  That day was clear, and we decided to go up the hill in the park and watch the fireworks away downtown.  First we took the family to Portage Lakes for ice cream cones, and then to the park.  We sat on a blue quilt and fought off the mosquitos and watched the kids bounce around.  There were a number of children around us with cool light-up toys that Benjamin was determined to get.  To distract him, Bruce pulled out his flashlight and changed the filters in it, from blue, to red, to white.  This was about as exciting to the children as the actual fireworks.  The fireworks themselves were lovely, but the air was so still that the smoke just hung there, and soon the beauty was shrouded in grey.  But somehow that did not matter.  It was fun just being a family doing something totally different from our norm.

I started teaching the primary class for Sunday school this past week.  I think that I will really enjoy it.  The kids seem really sweet and attentive.

School is going well.  We are studying the Incas and the Aztecs right now.  I am learning a lot, as usual! 

Oh, Benjamin took his first step yesterday, and then sat down.  I cheered, so he repeated the performance.  The sitting down part, that is.  He seemed to think that was what I was so excited about!