Cabin fever relieved for a little while

I know most people will think of a claustrophobic type of cabin fever but I seem to have a fever to need to get to the cabin! My girlfriend, Lorelei and her husband own the cabin that her parents built years ago. She showed me the picture just this past weekend of her dad setting the stones in the fireplace - so when I say 'built,' I mean 'built!' They also build things in the cabin, table, chairs, headboards, quilts. The one thing that amazes me is that they found a fireplace cover that fits almost perfectly just laying in the woods one day. 

Front of cabin

Back of cabin

I don't know how many acres they have up there, I think at least 10 but they've built trails all over that we love to get out and hike on. While we're there, we also do a bit of clean up on the trails, sweeping the leaves off so they're not as slippery come May when they open the cabin back up, trimming back some of the over growth along the trails, This time, we added pulling up White Pines that aren't native to the area and even chopping down the bigger ones. 

Patch clipping down a White Pine

Ryan clipping down a White Pine

View of the woods from the driveway - around the next corner is the cabin

(Yes, using one real name since he has his own FB page now...) 

There's always so much to do up there that we can never get everything done but with such a short trip this time, we at least made it to the cheese factory and the giant slide. They've added stairs to the giant slide! And even the big kids like to slide down it...

Patch

Lorelei

Phil

Just to show you the size of it!

The closest we got to any snow. Ryan thought he was going to hit his momma  with a snowball - then he thought again. 

 We also got to drive home after picking up some YUMMY apples along the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was a little hazy out that day but still a beautiful drive.

It's always fun to visit our friends, we missed their girls bunches!! We're ready to visit again :)

Hermione loves it up there but you should have seen how excited she was to get in the car to head home. I know she misses it too but she loves her people more :)

Ryan is all about technology of any form but at least this time he had an excuse. He's writing 1134 words a day for NANOWRIMO. Hermione just wants to be with her people. :)

Did I mention fall was in the air?

Once again it's time to enjoy that cooler weather. Sometimes I miss the north and all the beautiful colors that we don't seem to get this far south. But, the leaves are changing a bit and hopefully, we'll get out to see some color this week.

But, we've been up to some stuff recently...

We got to go see my mom while she vacationed in Myrtle Beach. I didn't get many pics (stupid camera batteries dying - I know! I know! Bring spare batteries for once!) But, we did get in a pool a bit and the boys thought the brief visit to the hot tub was okay. Grammy bought the boys some pretty kites that we flew for a bit on the beach. It's great the way they make kites these days - you can drop them in the ocean, drag them in through the surf and we'll be out flying these kites again! :)

John Edwards (the guy who talks to the dead) recently had a birthday and had some drawings on his page to celebrate. For the Evolve gift package there were over 7000 people who left comments and I was one of five picked to win that one! The package arrived yesterday and it's pretty cool!

It arrived the day we found out some of the cars in the neighborhood had been broken into. I looked at my dew covered windows in the van and knew we had been checked out too but thankfully, we passed! No valuables worth stealing in this girl's van! (And, Todd's car was gone but I'm guessing his passed too :)  ) Our knowledge of the break ins began when Todd found a backpack in our side yard with the contents laying there. When he checked, he found mail addressed to a house around the corner. He went to return it and found the police there - the neighbor's truck had been involved in a smash & grab. In talking to neighbors, we found a few more cars had been broken into. Now I'm thinking that we  REALLY need to have a motion detector light hooked up for the driveway and side yard - look how secluded it is! No low windows, fences in both yards - perfect for darkness. :( 

So, use this as a reminder to keep your valuables out of site or better yet, not in your car at all! Thank you.

~End of service message...

Fall is in the air...

It hasn't gotten much cooler yet but I'm ready for that soon!

Have I mentioned here that my goal is to visit State Parks all over South Carolina? I figure that if I'm going to live here, I should know more about my state :) We've been to Sesquicentennial a bunch of times but it's time to branch out. Today we visited:

It's in Camden so not to far away (And Patch has an attachment to Camden.) We had bought the Park Plus package and received a coffee table book that in my humble opinion, is terrible. I'd like to see pictures of what the parks actually look like instead of blurry artistic pictures of leaves. So, here are a few that we took today (no, not all that we took - we took 94 and I deleted at least 40 of those and I'm not sharing all 54 that remain either! LOL)

 
 

 

 

 

 

A couple homeschooling pics to share.... The difference between a 5th's grader's math and an 8th grader's:

 

I had heard that learning cursive helps improve printing skills - what's shown here is better printing than the 8th grader had but I'm way impressed with his cursive - better than mine ever was!

I went to the doctor on Monday and found out that I have tennis elbow so now I get to ice my elbow after work every night :) Lucky me!

Hope ya'll get to enjoy the fall season soon!

Over the deep 'Green' edge?

Okay, so most of you know that I've made my own laundry soap but I've also dabbled in other cleaners, dish detergent, windex, carpet cleaner, all-purpose cleaner. I used a lot of them on the rental house and they worked really well. After all my couponing efforts, I still have a lot of stock on manufactured cleaners so I haven't been using them here but I will when I run out of the others. It just seems silly to waste the other cleaners.

I've also started trying to make more food cost-cutting techniques. One being cutting up whole chickens. They truly taste better! I've made my own vanilla and chicken stock. Last week we made taquitos and Patch wants more! The mini-chicken pot pies were not a great idea because we still had to spend over an hour cooking them when we wanted to eat them.

Before you read further, take a guess at what these are:

These are why I'm wondering if I've gone over the edge of 'Green'

They are Soap Nuts and I'm going to try using them for the laundry! I read that these are how people washed their clothes in the rivers. They also gave me a small bottle of concentrate that I can use to clean other things. Now I want my own soap nut tree! LOL

Cooking day!

I keep saying that I would love to spend my day off doing absolutely nothing. It never seems to happen though. I love my job. I love the money I make but I miss my weekends. I do try to make the most out of my day off and do something fun with the boys.

I was bad and didn't take pics of the boys actually helping but I know Patch and Franklin enjoyed most of it. We made mini chicken pot pies:

And, chicken taquitos!

 The first thing we did was cook and shred the chicken. I figured that I had never shredded any meat until just recently and now the boys already know. After that, they didn't help much with the pot pies but we had a fun assembly line going for the taquitos. Patch loaded the tortillas w/ chicken and cheese, I rolled them and stuck them with a toothpick or two and Franklin cooked them. It's always a learning experience and we know that we need to find better tortillas next time. We did taste test them (isn't that the best part of cooking??) and they taste good even if they aren't the prettiest tortillas we've seen - at least they have something in them unlike some we've seen at the grocery store ;-) ) And now we have a couple fairly quick meals waiting for us in the freezer.

And our reward for all our hard work? Going out to dinner!!

School update

School is going really well this year. The boys are a huge help with getting their day started even if it's a late work night for me, they both still get up and get started w/o me.

This is my most organized school year yet. We had never actually worked at spelling before but I picked up some used Rod & Staff spelling books and they use them! Both boys are learning cursive and trying to figure out why they need to know it. I said there are only really two reasons... 1) to sign your John Hancock and 2) to read fancy signs. I really don't like that some schools aren't teaching it anymore. I am wondering if any other languages use a cursive type font.

For math, we found the Life of Fred series and the boys seem to really like it. I like the idea of teaching them when they'll actually use this stuff rather than just giving them problem after problem to solve.

Franklin is going to attempt the junior version of NANO this year. I'm excited for him! We are working hard on opening him up to different types of writing this year. I think he has a real talent there and he loves writing.

I'm going to look for more Charlotte Mason type science and social studies for them because what we're doing now is a little boring.

We're learning about Ancient Greece now but moving on to Space soon. It seems like there's always more to learn about a unit study topic.

Nature Walking...

I admit it, I will bribe the boys to get their school work done. And, why shouldn't I? I don't mind doing the things I bribe them with. Like today, we hit Pooh Park! The weather is perfect lately and I don't really want to spend every day penned up in the house. We headed to the Lake House side since we've hit the Pooh Park side so many times. Hermione liked it too. I'm sure she appreciates the cooler weather since she has that fur coat to wear all year long. 

Patch took most of the pictures. This is one of the trails we walked. 

Franklin gave up his iPod for most of the pictures. Too bad he missed some things because he was jamming to his music. But, he does love his music!

The butterflies were abundant today, they were flying all around us in brilliant color.

I'm not sure what look Patch was going for here. He did comment that boys could show their bellies though.

I guess since I'm not the only one holding the camera now, I have to get my picture taken sometimes.

Patch know more about this camera than I do. He set it up to take the picture and then ran to get it in. I think the photography camp he did taught him a few things.

I love looking at reflections in the pond. He decided that walking up closer to the pond gave this shot a better look.

These next two are framing the picture of the lilies.

These two are a worms eye view. The sparkle on the pine needle was beautiful but of course, you just can't capture some things in a picture.

This is a cropped version of the first butterfly picture. He does get some good focus on a picture.

So... in other words. It was a wonderful day for a hike in the woods. I hope this cooler weather hangs around a while!