This week started off with a fun trip to a relatively local, large, pumpkin patch. They definitely were not managing covid guidelines well. They had lots of signage and we saw a few people with “free masks” and we saw rides being sanitized. But the place was very popular and crowded and most people were not wearing masks in lines or in stores which made us change from our plan of just wearing masks when we couldn’t distance to wearing them almost all the time except in the corn maze where we could actually distance. Made me wish I’d brought the kids hats. It is all outdoors and we had brought our own sanitizer so we decided to have fun anyway. The kids enjoyed seeing family and friends, riding the carousel and train, going down slides, “panning” for marbles, exploring a corn maze, and picking out pumpkins. I got my “how much you’ve grown” pictures and some treats to give to friends. I wouldn’t mind going back at a less crowded time during covid or not but Caleb would prefer going back to our regular pumpkin patch/corn maze that isn’t crowded and I like that one just fine too so that’s probably what we’ll do next year.
During the week we had our regular school sessions. Some highlights were creatively reenacting some of Egypts plagues, exploring the creek at a local park, collecting more acorns, looking at aquarium water and plants under the microscope, and decorating our pumpkins.
Our house building is still at a standstill so we started working on our landscape design. We found a fun permaculture landscaper and have started working with her on designing our half acre with sustainability in mind. That’s a lot of fun.
Our kids have started thinking about pets they want to have when we are back on our property. (This may or may not have been started by me checking out a guide to raising farm animals on the backyard homestead, and buying a book on chickens…) Ari wants to a couple of rabbits, Cas wants a striped blue dog that is big enough he can tackle it…so if anyone knows where Dr Seuss got his animals…let me know 🙂
That was our week! We’ve looked at so many books I don’t think I can list them all…but books on Pocahontas and John Smith and Roanoke, books on backyard animals and gardens and fruit trees and permaculture, My Bible Friends and Little Pilgrim’s Progress and picture books galore. Ari built a new fort all by herself and we are doing our best to focus on the good things around us. Have a wonderful week all!
Returning to Paradise 
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