October!

I might win an award for most neglectful blogger.  The end of October and the entire month of November whizzed by us without a post! Well, I'll try to catch up with one or two long ones.

 This was the final harvest from our garden this year.  The carrots and potatoes were fantastic.  We hope to expand the garden next year so we can plant more.  We seem to eat up what we've planted early on.  We did manage to save these till Thanksgiving Dinner.  The pink and red flowers are Double Shirley Poppies.  There are so many advantages to having a vegetable garden, especially while homeschooling.  Rowan and Poppy spent a lot of time helping catch worms and slugs along with other bugs who live there.

 Rowan, Poppy, and I took another spontaneous drive and found ourselves at Fish Creek Park just off Macleod Trail and Canyon Meadows Blvd.  This time we took our dog, Peggy, with us so we could give her some exercise and adventure as well.

 Peggy had a blast jumping into this little stretch of water to retrieve sticks for us.  It was a bit cool outside but still warm enough to wander without a jacket.  The Fall colours were beautiful.  Not long after this photo was taken a huge gust of wind came up so we walked back to the van which was a bit of a hike.  It started to rain as soon as we reached the van.

 The Fire Station in our community hosted an Open House in October.  Rowan wasn't as interested in the vehicles and the inside of the station as I thought he would be, although he did enjoy hanging off the pole for a while.

 Rand's sister and her partner invited us to their Annual Family Soccer Game and BBQ.  Rowan talked about the upcoming game constantly for days beforehand.  It was on the site where the General Hospital used to be.  Poppy and I played at the park while Rowan and Rand played soccer with the group.  They played right till dark and we enjoyed a fantastic steak BBQ under the moon and street lights.  It was great fun!

 Rowan and I spent a few afternoons playing his favorite game of the month - Totally Tut from Discovery Toys.  Here we were playing the first level which is addition and subtraction only.  Each player chooses an answer tile and 5 yellow tiles.  The yellow tiles are placed in a row anywhere on the pyramid but must add and subtract to equal the orange answer tile.

 With each turn the player takes a turn at the spinner to draw, steal, or trade a number.  The player then arranges tiles on the board if possible and if not waits until the following turn.

 Rowan won 2 out of 3 games on this particular afternoon.  I think he will be up for the next level of the game which is to use the multiplication and division tiles.  The final level includes using all tiles together.

Rowan has expressed a lot of interest in Brazil lately.  He took out a cookbook with recipes from Brazil from the library and a book about Flags of the World.  The Brazilian Festival took place in October so we went down to the Chinese Cultural Centre where it was held.  We had some great food and there was  entertainment as well.  We felt a bit misled as the advertisements said the festival was free and then listed the food items available.  We took this to mean it was all free as there were no prices listed for the food.  However, the food and drinks were rather pricey so it was a much more expensive event than we expected.  Here Rowan is eating a cheese and artichoke pizza.  The food was authentic and we did enjoy it.

Quite a variety of activities up to the end of October!  Some days it feels like perhaps we should plan our life a little more.  But most days it feels like we're just enjoying each day and we do have a regular rhythm.  Rowan loves his Drama class and seems to be building some new relationships through it.   He is not enjoying his music practice very much but we're going to stick with it as we have committed until June.  Hopefully he will find it more interesting as time goes on.  Rowan completed his first art class at 4Cats Art Studio with a marvelous self-portrait in the style of Tamara deLempica.  He was very eager to take art again even though I was hoping to slow the classes down a bit.  SO he will be taking another session studying the work of Tom Thompson (who happens to be one of my favorite artists so I am excited to see what they tackle in this class!).