In loving memory....

Today marks 20 years since Michael's sweet mother passed away. She's been greatly missed at such wonderful days likes weddings, births and holidays and thousands of other ordinary days over the last 20 years. Her sweet tender care of Michael despite the hardship of living as a single mom did so much to shape the wonderful man that Michael is today. I was so blessed to know her and spend time with her, though the time was short, before she passed away. She treated me like her own daughter from the very beginning. We're thankful to God for Peggy!
Peggy Dagerath (1935-1989)

Pumpkins and projects

Remember those pumpkins I got cheap at the corn maze....for a $1 each, to be exact! Well, I took them to mom and dad's one weekend and mom and I got busy.

We sliced them open, scraped out the goop...

dried and roasted the seeds (yum!)

and cooked those pretty babies! The outer shell peeled off kinda like wallpaper....it was almost fun to peel. Ok that's wierd, I know!

Then we puree'd the pumpkin. This photo was the flesh of just one of those pumpkins, so imagine this bowl times 3. Lots of pumpkin!!

Then we put the pumpkin in these jelly strainer bags and squeezed (and squeezed and squeezed) to get as much of the liquid out as we could. I haven't done this step before, but it really helped the pumpkin to have more of the texture of canned pumpkin.

There was an amazing amount of liquid. Most of it we threw out, some of it we put on Jackson's food (after finding out that he REALLY likes pumpkin! Such a healthy puppy! :-) )and some I froze in jars to cook pasta in or something. All in all, I ended up with the equivalent of 7 cans of pumpkin. Not bad for $3!! And I used some for some gluten-free pumpkin muffins with a mix that Michael brought home from work and they were AWESOME!!!

Now to everyone elses projects.
A couple of weeks before Christmas break, Josiah's assignment for the weekly presentation at Classical Conversations was to make a painting with oil paints and tell about it and which of the five elements of drawing were used in the painting. Now, really folks WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND gives an assignment to use OIL PAINTS to a bunch of kiddos. But who am I to not follow the rules?? And Hobby Lobby had them on sale that week, so we got Josiah the combo pack and set him to work.
We used only cheapola brushes so we could throw them away when he wanted to change colors because WHO keeps turpentine and paint thinner on hand?!?!

The paint set even came with that cute little palate with a place to put your thumb. He felt like a real artist! I think his painting was something like a schoolroom or something like that. It was a little...um....abstract! And hey THAT'S OK! It was fun and we did it!

Well, when it was Jeffrey's turn to do the project, we went the acrylic paint route since we were going to be heading over to mom and dad's and dad had many color options. And because they clean up with WATER!! Jeffrey chose to do a painting of the Crusades and talk about the timeline card that went with the Crusades. Here's Jeffrey's painting.

Like Josiah, he had a fun time drawing and painting his picture.

Then Jonathan and Jeremy each had projects to submit for their drama class. Jonathan built a model of the Globe Theatre and did an oral report on its history.

I don't know if you can tell, but he put those stage people on cardboard so they could stand up like they were acting on the stage.

And Jeremy did a report on falconry (training birds of prey). He also made 3-D birds to stand up in front of his project...they looked really cool. Like Jonathan, Jeremy also prepared an oral report to give to his class to explain his project.

Jeremy and Jonathan also finished up an economics stock market game project (that I didn't give pictures of...sorry). They were given $10,000 of "money" to invest in the stock market in 5 different companies at the beginning of September. They tracked their stocks all semester and then turned in a final report. J&J's report was complete with stock charts of each of their companies. It looked sharp! Jeremy made almost $1200 over the course of the game with Wells Fargo, Starbucks, Walgreens, Home Depot and Amazon. Jonathan just about broke even with CVS, NuStar Energy, Costco, SunMicro, and Target. They really enjoyed watching the market and seeing how things went over the course of the semester. Their economic project also included an budget for themselves imagining that they had $300/week to spend. Not only did they do a great job with Michael in setting up their budget, J&J spiced the graphics up with a pie chart. It looked really great.

Way to go guys...all of you! Great job on all your projects this semester.

Honoring Papa

A few weeks ago we had the great honoring of travelling to Lubbock, TX for my grandfather (Papa)'s 90th birthday celebration. My aunt and uncles and cousins and a hundreds of other friends and family came for a special party at the Embassy Suites to honor Papa. As always, it was great to have everyone together. We took a moment while we were there for our branch of the tree "The Bill Moores" to take a picture for mom and dad's Christmas card. It took a lot shots to get everyone looking in the same direction, not crying, without pacifiers, etc. and that was just MY boys! :-)

Here's what greeted us on the entrance of the hotel....

In the party room was a collection of photos of Papa through the years...

Here's Papa with Jonathan and Jeremy. The hats are from the "Moore Cup" game when McMurry University in Abilene (where my grandfather is in the Hall of Fame for coaching) plays Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene (where my grandfather is in the Hall of Fame for playing). The winner of the game is awarded The Moore Cup. Isn't that cool! Michael took Papa a sharpie to have him autograph the boys' caps, which started a trend. I think he had to autograph nearly all of the caps that were given out!

Here's Papa with Jeffrey and Josiah.

I have so many wonderful memories with Papa, I'm thrilled that my boys have some as well. It was such a pleasure to honor Papa!

And while we were there, Jackson got his first opportunity to stay at a Doggie Day Care. Since we couldn't have him in the hotel rooms, we booked a stay for him at the Tipton Pet Hotel (sounds upity doesn't it!...it WAS!) for a "Play day". He stayed in the car on the evenings before and after because we didn't want to have to wait until the doggie hotel opened on Sunday to be able to leave for home. We were very pleasantly surprised at the Pet Hotel. Very clean, not at all stinky, even nice artwork in the lobby! Michael and dad even threw around the idea of starting one in College Station, until they saw that someone beat them to it. Jackson, previously has had less than stellar memories of boarding situations, got a great report from the staff. "He played very well today" Seriously, that's what they said. Yeah, he plays well with others! I'm so proud! We were worried since he's homeschooled and therefore, unsocialized! Way to rise to the occasion, Jackson! :-)

Lost Maples State Park

Of all the things we've done this fall that have kept us hoppin', one of my favorites by far was going to visit Lost Maples State Park. Someone in our Classical Conversations group put together a field trip for their class, and our family tagged along. Michael took the day off and we went up together. Turns out it's just about an hour and a half from our house, but it feels like like Ozarks or something! It was beautiful. We were about a week past peak, but it was still a WONDERFUL time!! The weather was cool, but not cold. Just right for spending a day outside hiking. We took the hiking trail that was just about 5 miles round trip. A couple of times Josiah said "I've changed my mind, this isn't fun like I thought" but then he would see something cool and bound off with his brothers forgetting all about those aching legs. It was so much fun!

Here are some photos from the trip.

Isn't that cute!!!

We were so glad we made the trip. We'll be back!!

A-maizing fun

A couple of weeks ago we met some friends out at the South Texas Corn Maze (also called the Corn Maize...don't exactly know the reason for the different spellings b/c it's NOT maize....it's corn) We went on homeschool day and it was so much fun. Here's the boys at the entrance. Jeremy's standing on the right, Jonathan is the cow, Jeffrey is the horse and Josiah is the goat.

The maze was fun and they even had places where you could text if you got lost. Talk about up to date! We didn't get lost, though. Thankfullly!

In addition to the maze, there were bales of hay to play on...

And a HUGE air pillow called "The corn popper"...this was the highlight of the trip I think.

See those pumpkins on the ground, they had them for sale since it was close to the end of the season, I got three big ones from a different spot on the ground for $1 each! More about what I did with that in a later post.

Fun fun fun!!

And now...it's off to basketball!

With barely a time for a breath, we move on from football to basketball. Our season officially started Nov 6-7 with the Patriots playing in a tournament in, of all places, College Station! What fun! I mean it was more convenient for us to play in Bryan/College Station than it would have been even to play a tournament at FEAST. Mom and Dad's house was just about 10 min away from where the boys played. Which, BTW was ON CAMPUS at Texas A&M! Ok, it wasn't Reed Arena, but it sure was nice and fun! One great thing was that Michael's dad was able to drive up and see the game and Lacy (Michael's sister) was able to see all the games! AND Lacy took pictures...good ones! She should do it for a living! Wait...she does! To top the fun all off, Jonathan and Jeremy's team (they're on JV this year!) played in the Championship game and just lost by a few points to the team that won state last year! Way to go Patriots!!

In the pictures....Jonathan is #25, Jeremy is #12

Just had to stick in this super cute one of Grandpa and Josiah

Broken ankle??? What broken ankle???

Isn't that a great one?!?!

Basketball is fast and furious at this point, mostly with scrimmages, but will start "for real" tonight. Stay tuned for reports from Jeffrey's team soon. He's old enough to play this year and he's PUMPED!!

The end of an era

The middle school football era. What a fun year it was! Michael did a FABULOUS job coaching, Jonathan did a wonderful job at quarterback and Jeremy did a great job all around...we were so thankful he even got to play! The Patriots made it to the championship game for their league. They were the first FEAST middle school team to make it to the championship game EVER! Unfortunately, the game didn't turn out in the Patriots' favor. :-( The final score was 40-13, but it was a great game and a fun time! I tried to find some more pictures of the boys playing football, but I couldn't get the CD to open that a mom made, so you just get one picture of Jonathan playing. But we have video! Just ask....I'm sure the boys would LOVE to show you one! In the team picture, you can see Michael, Jeffrey, Josiah, Jeremy #24, on the back row and Jonathan #12, on the back row all the way to the right. Too bad there's no cheerleaders or twirlers or flag corp, then I could have been in the picture! :-)