More Fall Fun!

Gardens are a great part of homeschooling fun for kids, as we're finding out (although I have to confess they enjoy growing the ornamentals more than the vegetables :). They will be carving the pumpkins soon (it worked out great -- one per kid!), but we'll still get a bit of nutritional value by roasting the pumpkin and sunflower seeds.

Our first watermelon! (It may not seem like a big deal to you Ontarians but it's hard to grow watermelons in rainy Washington :) If you look closely you can see 3 other ones in the background. Holly is not very cooperative for pictures; she can't stand holding still for my slow camera.

We had lots of fun at the annual Pumpkin Pitch, where teams build trebuchets (medieval catapults) and compete for the most accurate hurls (it used to be a distance competition, but when Burlington made a world record for that with a hurl of 1866.8 feet, the distance part of the contest was put to a stop because a pumpkin shot through a building at the far end of the field :) )

Emily's taking a cake-decorating class at Friday school. These are her first two so far (the second one is already partially eaten; it was a sunflower).

We were sooo hoping to get Glenn Beck tickets last week (he was presented with a key to Mount Vernon at a dinner event, since he was born & raised here), but they sold out almost immediately. My in-laws went and thoroughly enjoyed it. Protesters came up all the way from Seattle! Steve read his latest book instead, "Arguing with Idiots"... useful material for talking to some people at his work ;)

Today we participated in the annual Life Chain. I think it's getting better attended every year and we were so thankful for the sunshine and beautiful weather this year. It's encouraging to meet other Christians who also share similar values, and it's also really good for our kids to grow up aware of and involved in pro-life values.