Wednesday, September 17, 2008

What have we been up to?

Oh, a lil' of this, a lil' of that.

I set up the telescope Saturday night and while we couldn't see the Great Red Spot, we did see the 4 largest moons of Jupiter. Our own moon was nearly full and was so bright that we felt like we were staring at the sun. Could see the craters on the southern edge really well though.

Sunday, we picked up lamb from the processors (many thanks to our friend, C!), and then picked tons of apples from C's trees, and some grapes from C's mom's little vineyard. I forgot to take a photo of this year's crop of grapes, but it's not as huge as the one from 2004:And then Ike blew through. We were worried we couldn't get home as we only had one route to get home with the bridge being closed, but luckily no large trees came down on the roads we took, although many trees did come down all over the county. In fact, as of today, there were still thousands without electricity. We were lucky to have lost power for only 20 minutes.

Monday morning, I rescued an oven bird that had crashed into our window. After propping it up in the sunniest spot I could find on a cool morning, it recovered enough in about an hour to fly away.

Monday night, inspired by Gracefruit's jamming, I made grape jelly with the grapes we had picked (and the boys and dh had processed).Not as pretty as I'd like (a bit too cloudy), but I'm pleased that it went smoothly and well, and, boy, do the grapes smell fabulous.

And the rest is pretty much the usual - out most of the day the past several days with homeschool stuff. Whoever thinks that homeschoolers don't get enough "socialization" has never met a homeschooled child. Even with a homebody mom (I have always wanted to be a hermit when I grew up), my kids end up interacting with a lot of people all the time.

"Happiness depends upon ourselves." ~ Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)