Beautiful views

Sunrise! What a beautiful spot to live. We are constantly in awe of the world around us here. This is a common site in the morning and our east-facing kitchen windows are the right spot to view it.

We have been finding all sorts of beautiful spots in NH through our geocaching adventures.
This is the Abenaki Tower overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee in Tuftonboro (near Melvin Village.) The kids have been up this tower several times in the past and this time was just as beautiful as we remembered it!


The view from the top was photo worthy on this blue sky, crisp fall day.

We went from this location to do a few caches (after grabbing the one here) and it was an adventure we will not soon forget. The "short" walk was much longer than anticipated so we were hoofing it back to the car at dusk, trying to beat the growing darkness.
I will bottle the moment toward the end when I passed our only flashlight off to Daddy and our youngest who were going to continue walking and then jogged up to the older boys. At my jogging approach they began to run. It was just like cross-country races from high school--only a little more giggling than I recall. We were certainly racing each other through the scrub pines on a single-track trail with uneven footing and laughing the whole way.
This track star mom could not catch those young teenagers who had wind enough to run, laugh and chatter while I had to concentrate on breathing just to keep up! They beat me to the car in the end, and I found one flat out on the moss to my relief as I would have taken the spot to rest too!
Muscles warm and a bit achy we stripped off the extra layers of clothes, popped the backpacks and walking sticks into the trunk of the car and then got in to warm it up. A moment to bottle for sure!

~Rachel

November

November! What happened to that month?

It seems like it just flew by. We were busy with schooling the kids and preparing for winter and lots of geocaching.

This first photo is of Brian working with a NH Fish & Game Biologist during Salmon Sunday. On this day the lake-locked Salmon which have been rounded up are "stripped". The process is very interesting.

Andrew was learning about density in science during November and this is one of his experiments of solution stacking. He was able to stack 4 solutions in the straw by their density. He also floated eggs and watched videos and there have been too many "dense" jokes going on!

Benjamin and Andrew got their awards at the end of soccer season. It's Ben's first trophy. We had a nice pot-luck with all the teams and said goodbye to soccer season in a bittersweet way!

Other November happenings in our homeschool involved the book club book "The Scarlet Pimpernel". We really enjoyed the classic and it sparked a whole study of the French Revolution. So much for my earlier history plans! 'Cest la vie.

We had a great group activity of making mouse trap cars, theater class has been going well, music lessons too and lots of excellent writing projects. Ben is finally turning a corner with learning to read and it has been a really neat experience for me as teacher to see him get excited about learning. We're sort of unschoolish so we have waited for Ben to be ready to learn. When he decided to learn or matured enough or whatever it was...this time is when he got *ready* to go and wow! the progress is astounding! He also lost his first baby tooth and learned to power slide his ATV. Important things in the life of a 6 year old!

I think that's a good recap of the month of November!

~Rachel