Foraging, Shredding and Fencing

We've been learning about wild mushrooms.  These are shaggy manes and Willy sauteed them up for his steak.  I highly recommend buying a quarter beef from a local farmer after it's processed by a butcher.  Amazing! 

Cole was Shredder from The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  We pooled our efforts to make this costume happen.  Our amazing neighbor, Cheryl, sewed it and Willy and Cole melted records to make the armor and helmet.  It was a good Halloween night trick or treating with Iron Man and Shredder. 

Cole had his first homeschool fencing lesson today.  This video is awesome!  Cole really got into it.  He has one lesson per week until mid January.  Gotta love community centers!

For more gems like these click this link!

I'm learning how to be super horse savvy working at the barn and with Sioux.  Cole is also learning a lot there as well.  More at the horse world later, I have to enforce bed time.

Camping Pictures

July 2014 Album: Camping and Grandma and Uncle visit Boise

Busy Summer!  Leigh and John are staying nearby.  Lots of nice family dinners, nonsense and camping trips happening.  We traveled north to Cour d'Alene with John and then we went to Joseph, Oregon for a Possum Livin show.  Lot's of camping to come:  A tour of the NW.  Gardening, horses, home school and family really do not allow leisure for blogging cohesive sentences!

Camping with John, Willy and Cole

 My favorite time on this camping trip in OR.  Ally and Cole were running through the muddy grass. 

Busy June

Here's another album!

So far this month has been nuts!  Cole graduated Kindergarten and is turning 6 years old.  John and Leigh are living in Boise for the summer.  We traveled all the way north to Cour d'Alene.  Gardens, house stuff and Willy's music.  He released a brand new CD with his band and is also learning jazz.   Whaa whaa wee wah!  Enjoy the pictures!

It's been awhile...

It seems the blog is here to stay.  I wonder if I should have a photo album for Cole.  Maybe it falls within my motherly duties to scrapbook.  To compromise between scissors and printing pictures, I better at least keep up with this blog

At the end of April, the sky in Boise is impossibly blue.  Leigh and John will be here in a few weeks.  Cole is finishing up his year in Kindergarten.  Willy installed another nuc of bees in the hive and I am busy preparing the garden and starting seeds.  Last night, we pulled up the best patch of parsnips yet.

Since November I've been taking care of a rescue horse.  I think she'll be sold soon to a new home.  It's been such a good experience and reignited one of my passions.  I'm still plugging away at my novel while Cole and Willy are in school.  It's going well and something I love to do.  It's hard work, though.

My dad sent me the most beautiful gardening tools.  They're natural extensions of my arms.  I don't know how I managed to weed before them and I greedily keep them to myself.  (Thank you so much Dad!)

I'll work on being more diligent about pictures!