Cold Autumn Rain

Goodness, it's turned chilly, brrrrr!

Last night we were brave and opened the chickie pen for a little more intense free-ranging. Well, not terribly brave, as we didn't open the gate until after 6:30, and the girls head to roost around 7:30. Anyway, all the Easter Eggers, the two silver/blue Andalusians, one Silver Wyndotte, one Gold Wyndotte and some Australorps wandered out to scratch and peck. I guess you can now add Chickieherder to our resume. The girls stayed pretty close, Arwen was good and they enjoyed their outing and were easy to go back at bedtime. Hopefully, we'll do more and more of that. We're getting two or three eggs a day now. Bean and Bugg each found one today.

This week at school has been wild and woolly-conferences. In addition, I'm trying really hard to wrap up this Egypt unit. I was determined that the pasting and papering balloons for the sarcophagus would be finished today. Others were working on canopic jars for their desiccated orange/Pharaoh innards.
By the time school was out, my patience had taken a hike to a warmer clime. As much as I love messes, even I grow weary of paste/glue from here to there and repeating directions five hundred and thirty two times. Anyway, I feel bad when my patience is gone on the day I get Bean and Bugg. Handy Man was kind enough to go fetch me a caramel coffee and, well you know, they are so funny and cute that it wasn't long before the woolly afternoon released me from it's clutches.

We decided to see if there were any peanuts at the bottom of plants they've been growing all summer. Sure enough, there were peanuts. Bugg called them walnuts. Bean brought a little pumpkin he'd started painting at school and wanted to finish painting it. Bugg asked could she paint one of her walnuts. So, front porch painting in our coats-good times.

My little peanut's peanut.

Our beautiful finished products.

Mr. Bean already has a long history of doing crafts with his Gramerly. His ability to stay with something, and his dexterity for one so young has always astounded me. He's been the proud owner of scissors of every make and model since he started "nipping" at eighteen months old. He's always played with buttons and scissors and beads and glue, though I am always right with him. He and his sister are so very different, but again, Missy Bugg has that same dexterity. Bean wanted to do this caterpillar craft and so Bugg wanted one too. I told her she was welcome to try, but that the beads were small and the wire tiny for a just barely three year old. She strung all of these beads except the last two and the littlest feet.

I have this collapsible nylon barrel like thing I keep upstairs for costumes. Bean dumped all the costumes out and stored them under the bed and told me he wanted to put all the craft supplies in the barrel. I explained that it was deep and the craft supplies small and they'd be kind of hard to manage in there. So he picked Bugg's pants she'd taken off, threw them in it and said, "Well, we'll just use it for a hamster." Everyone needs a good hamster to keep their clothes in I guess.

Poor Tiff. In all these five years of letting the poopies in the creek, on the lawn mowers and tractors, hoe the garden, shovel plants, peel wall paper, hammer and cut, we've never had a serious boo-boo. In the past few weeks, Miss Linee fell and broke her arm, Ol'Henry tripped and had to get stitches in his chin, and last night Antebellie was playing chase with her sister, tripped and had to get stitches in her head. I can't believe it. Bless her heart, Antebellie's, but mostly the mama's.