We took a wonderful trip this past week to Pipestem State Park.  We used to do a trip like this every single year.  When my oldest son was in elementary school, they didn't say too much about them missing school as long as they kept up with their work.  We never had a problem with this with him. 

Well, now the school system doesn't want your child to have more than 3 unexcused absences per semester (like that is going to happen with the average elementary age child).  Trips are not excused.  There is also the fact that we have so many children between us now, that we can barely fit into one of the largest cabins.  So, we have pretty much curtailed the fall trips.  Now that we homeschool however, we can do them again.  Yippee!!!!  It breaks my heart though that I cannot take my nieces and nephews with me.  They are like my own children.

It was so exciting to watch my children in such awe over the changing leaves.  It's like this is the first year that the 2 middle children really saw what was happening.  We focused our lessons around trees, environmental communities, how the animals and plants work together to survive, etc.  It was so awesome.  It definitely brought to light another reason why I decided to homeschool. 

They have an arboretum there.  That was exciting for me because the children collected leaves that they made into an identification poster and all of the trees were labeled.  I learned quite alot myself.

On the way home, we stopped at a small farmers market beside the road and bought pumpkins, every type of bean you can imagine, fresh spices, and chestnuts.  And yes, we roasted the chestnuts.  Not by an open fire, but in the oven.  It was still exciting even though none of us really liked the taste of them.  It was a wonderful experience.

I wasn't exactly sure how much the kids actually retained from all that we learned.  We did so much and had so many discussions.  But, after the trip was over, I had them write about the trip.  I was so surprised by how much they remembered.  I was equally surprised when they talked about how amazing nature is and how perfect God created everything.

I will leave you with this photo of what we woke up to in the morning.  The colors won't be at peak until the end of this coming week, but we did get to see some amazing changes from the first day to the last.

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