Matthew's birthday was in August and all we gave him was a piece of paper. It was actually a handmade certificate which stated: "This certificate entitles you to attend Moorpark." For most 15 year olds, this probably wouldn't be very exciting. However, Matthew has been looking forward to this since his birthday!

Moorpark holds a Civil War reenactment in November which we had heard has a great battlefield. They also recreate actual battles from the Civil War. We decided that a trip down to this reenactment would be a great birthday gift for Matthew. I don't think he was disappointed.

Here are a few photos from this past weekend:

I have had a 10 pound box of blueberries in my freezer since Monday and I really needed to do something with some of them. This morning, I took out a bowl of them and bagged up the rest of them in freezer bags for later use. I ended up making a blueberry pie:

cinnamon-sugar pastry strips:

and blueberry jam:

Kelsey whipped up blueberry smoothies with what was left of the blueberries I took out:

Meanwhile, the guys were outside trying to get rid of a tree trunk that has been rotting away for three years now:

They ended up being successful, so I was able to plant some cyclamen and pansies:

Overall, it was a very productive day!

This last weekend, we headed up to the foothills to a place called Apple Hill. While we were there, we found canning pears and Granny Smith apples for a really good price. We ended up coming home with 90 pounds of fruit!

Today was a very blustery day here:

So I decided to let Kelsey make an apple cake to take to our Bible Study tonight.

Here she is following the steps from the recipe:

Once again, we packed up our vehicle to head to another Civil War Reenactment:

In the first battle of the day, Matthew proudly protected the Union colors:

The gentleman in the middle needs some period correct clothing:

Wait, what is this? Matthew switching places with a Rebel soldier?

Can you believe he actually went off marching with the Rebel soldiers?

Meanwhile, Kelsey and her friend were learning more civilized tasks. This is vintage rug hooking:

Now that the battle season is over (well, one more that Matthew will be participating in next month), the stuff is all packed away until next year. Let more sewing begin!

What type of government do you think we have in the United States of American? If you are not sure, be sure to watch this video.

I have resisted for years making a daily schedule. I have always felt that it would be too restrictive and I would be setting myself up to fail if I was unable to accomplish everything in the schedule.

Last year, I created lesson plans for Matthew each quarter, but didn't date them. I was very happy with how well the lesson plans worked that I did Matthew's lesson plans for the whole year already for this school year.

So, I decided to do up a daily schedule. However, similar to the lesson plans, I did not put times on our daily schedule.

Here is our daily schedule:

Mama

Quiet Time

Breakfast

Chores

Table Time

Couch Time

PE

Prarie Primer w/Kelsey

Additional chores

Lunch

Reading

Sewing

Photos

Update school work

Free time

Dinner prep

Dinner

Matthew

Quiet Time

Breakfast

Chores

Table Time

Couch Time

PE

Individual Work

Lunch

Reading

Individual Work if needed

Guitar practice

Free time

Dinner

Kelsey

Quiet Time

Breakfast

Chores

Table Time

Couch Time

PE

Prarie Primer

Individual Work

Lunch

Reading

Individual Work if needed

Piano/fiddle practice

Free time

Dinner

For PE, we have been walking one mile, three times a week. I am hoping we can increase this as the weeks go by. My favorite time of the day so far is our quiet reading time after lunch. It has been really nice to slow down a little after lunch before we go into the rest of our day. So far, the schedule has been working out nicely.

Our church has an annual beach trip every September. We all arrive around lunch time and hang out for the whole day together. Before we left this year, we had a little bit of rain, thunder and lightning. The clouds were amazing at home:

I was able to get a picture of Kelsey at the beginning of the day at the beach:

The waves were incredible:

Matthew tried his shot at volleyball and had a great serve:

My favorite picture of the day:

Today, I tackled my freezer outside. I have been wanting to reorganize my freezer content list for a while, so today was the day to get it done. I took everything out of the freezer and wrote down everything that was in there. Then I put everything back in a more organized fashion.

Then it was onto the computer to create a new list to keep track of everything. I created headings across a landscape setting in Excel. These headings are: Ground Beef, Pork or Beef, OJ, Beans, Chicken, Sauces/Broth, Fruit, and Veggies. I printed out this list and attached it to a clipboard to keep on top of the freezer. Then I listed everything in each category from my list I had written down earlier. I am hoping this list will help me with my weekly meal planning!

Over the past week, I have canned about 48 pints of tomatoes! And today, I just found out that Homestead Originals blog is having a contest to give away Homestead Blessings DVDs and one of them is a canning DVD! You can enter this contest too! Just head over to her blog!

We were suppose to start our book work today, but an opportunity came up for us to go listen to Ranger Bruce talk about the Pony Express and the one room schoolhouse up in Old Sacramento. I was excited to see that Old Sacramento was still celebrating Gold Rush Days, so this was an added bonus to the day since both kids will be studying mid 19th century history this year.

I was going to add some photos to this entry, but I decided to let the kids do the talking on this one. (I couldn't figure out how to rotate the video in Photobucket, so just turn your computer screen sideways! ) Here is Kelsey's report:

And here is Matthew's report:

On the way home, we stopped at Ghiradelli for hot fudge sundaes as a special treat for the day. Now I am trying to get last minute details hammered out so we can really get to the book work tomorrow!