We had a really nice weekend. I took Momma shopping on Saturday, her first time out since her surgery. We didn’t stay out too long, just enough for her to check out the newest store addition (a Boscov’s opened) at our local mall. We attended Mass on Saturday which left all of Sunday free…and I spent it cooking and baking. I made 2 recipes from Paula Deen’s Christmas magazine, cheesecake with a praline topping and a chocolate pound cake. The poundcake was delicious!!! I also made crockpot pork bbq and cole slaw from a recipe out of one of Mary Emmerling’s cookbooks. I baked two loaves of bread and Quinn, Cade, Connor and I headed down to Momma’s and Daddy’s with all the goodies so we could leave Michael alone at home to do his reading for school. The pork bbq was a hit and my Daddy really liked the cole slaw.

Michael starts 4 nights of school this week which means Boy Scouts, karate and everything else falls on me (and Sean when I can catch him home!). Because I’m such an early bird (I get up around 3:00 a.m.), I’m really brain dead by dinner time so this should be really interesting. *smile*

This morning Quinn will be evaluated for speech therapy. I’m praying that he cooperates with the speech teacher. She’s pretty so hopefully my little flirt will act nicely. This evening is the twins’ Boy Scout Harvest Party and I’m making cute little pumpkin cakes and stuffed sandwiches that I’ll cutout with a pumpkin cookie cutter. Very autumn-y!

Some Halloween websites to visit:

I snapped this yesterday while Momma was enjoying a piece of the easy devil’s food cake with surprise filling that I had baked for her yesterday morning. She’d kill me if she knew I was posting this photo. Shhhh…don’t tell! *smile*

Easy Devil’s Food Cake with Surprise Filling

1 box of your favorite Devil’s Food Cake mix
1 Large Hershey’s Symphony Bar with English Toffee
1 can whipped Vanilla Frosting

• Bake cake following directions on box for 8″ or 9″ cake pans.

• While cake is cooling in the pan, crush the chocolate bar by placing in a ziploc bag and smashing with the bottom of a heavy frying pan.

• Remove cake from pans, place cake layer on your cake dish and add crushed pieces of the chocolate (reserve about a 1/4 of it to use as a topping for the cake) to the top of the hot cake.

• Let sit for several moments while chocolate melts. Spread.

• Let cakes cool completely.

• Frost cake layers with vanilla frosting and sprinkle the reserved crushed chocolate to the the top.

Momma’s surgery went fine…thank you so much for your prayers.

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Nice homeschooling downloads and links…

Homeschool eStore.com is giving away a free download, a Spiders Lapbook. It looks really nice but but is only available for a limited time so download it now.

I ran across a website with Dolch Word Lists that are beautifully illustrated by Jan Brett. I don’t need them now but I downloaded them and eventually will print them out and laminate them.

ChildCareLand.com has some nice preschool printables.

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Halloween is only a few days away…do you have your costumes, candy? Free Paper Toys to download, print, cut out and wear (masks) can be found at The ToyShop’s Haunted Paper Toys.

Momma has another surgery this morning to remove cancerous tumors from her bladder…prayers are very much appreciated.

Quinn’s autumn lapbook is finally finished!!! (For more details, click on the image to see one a bit bigger.)

It has an autumn prayer, a list of the autumn-themed books Quinn’s read, two autumn poems and a little autumn song that I’ve been teaching him. The small booklet has his apple and leaf prints that he made and his leaf person (leaf with acorn head). I’ve included the clay leaf he made at Kids ‘n Clay, pumpkin flash cards and a few pictures.

Time to start planning the next one…

At least the boys are here this weekend to help. It’s going to be a long day, selling from 12-8. Hopefully, with the boys being here and wearing their Boy Scout uniforms, we’ll see an increase in sales.

I got up at 3 this morning and there was no cable or internet so I started working on Quinn’s autumn/creation lapbook. I really just need a picture of him playing in the leaves to finish…if only the weather would cooperate!

The man up the street is having his pier and dock worked on and boy is it noisy this morning. If you’ve never heard a pile driver at 7 in the morning just consider yourself lucky. *smile*

No photo hunt.

…from Pottery class.

I’m not sure exactly what he made yesterday but Mr. Chris and I let him do what he wanted. He basically rolled out the clay and then proceeded to mark it with the tools…a fork and a knife. I told Grammie that she could have these when they are finished because they are blue (her whole house is blue). *smile*

I’ve labeled them so you can tell what they are. LOL Please excuse the mess on my poor old scarred kitchen table but I have everything out for the autumn/creation lapbook.

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Learning Treasures is offering more of the cute printables…Ms. Belinda now has some cute little Pilgrim Boy and Girl Flashcards. Make sure you follow the links to find the pumpkins, mice and scarecrows. I printed the little mice out on good printer paper and then sprayed the back with adhesive and adhered them to sturdy, colorful scrapbook paper so they are attractive both front and back.

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Halloween Things to Visit and Do:

Meddybemps Spooky Games

The Swan Virtual Jack O’ Lantern

TheToymaker.com’s Halloween Town

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Pumpkin, Pumpkin

It’s clay class today for Quinn at Kids ‘n Clay. Last week we glazed the leaves and pumpkin that we made the previous week and I’m hoping that they will be finished so I can snap a photo and post it.

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I find the coolest things just doing random web searches sometimes. I put “God’s autumn” in Google and found this great webpage, St. Antony’s Priory…Season of Mist and Mellow Fruitfulness…To explore the seasonal autumn and the autumns of our lives.

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Blog Notes:

Tara Marie has posted Emma Sage’s Curriculum (as well as some adorable photos!) at The Education of Emma Sage. I always love to read what others are using.

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Prayer

Bless to us, O God, this day fresh made
In the chorus of the birds, bless us
In the sound of the wild wind, bless us
In the wet grass and autumn leaves, bless us
Bless us, heal us, for we come to you in love and trust
We come to you in expectant hope.

For the time being I’m going to have to turn off the comments as well as trackbacks. It seems that this IP number (shown below) has discovered my blog and won’t stop the relentless attack of placing links to porn on my website. I’ve tried using my IP Deny Manager on my cpanel but it’s just too many to add due to the range of numbers they can use. I truly don’t understand this but I do understand that if I don’t allow comments then they can’t leave their filthy links.