transition

I blinked...





Autumn is on its way. Autumn is a type of transition in and of itself and then there is the autumn that is there when summer is no more. We have started the transition to autumn, the transition of autumn. Really, I have seen a few leaves in a few trees here and there, looking autumn-ish for a few days, weeks, now. Yesterday, I noticed for the first time the leaves on the blueberry bushes were changing color. There are still a few blueberries out there to pick, a half pint or a little bit more. I picked very thoroughly last week a few pints, up into the tops of the bushes. I found some wonderfully sweet blueberries and we finished them off yesterday. I love the contrast between the changing leaves and the last lingering blueberries.

Our bright red bush out front will soon be bright red again. It is one of the first changes to happen when the seasons move on.

What a cat won't do for some really good premium cat food. Maxwell was put on a special diet of Evo Innova wet cat food several months ago and Agnes just really can't get enough of it. She is technically not supposed to jump because of the arthritis in her knees, but she has found she can balance on this chair, left by Eva, and make the precarious leap across the kitchen to get to Maxwell's food (kept on top of the counter so Jack doesn't eat it- everyone likes it; it is really good cat food!).

Eva's babies- the one in magenta is Beauty of the Wonders and is the first baby she made. They are out camping.

unschooling

What does unschooling look like for us? Today in the car I was thinking about posting this because it was just so typical of what to expect from unschooling- which is just another fancy word for life- around here. While driving in the car on the way to a birthday party, Samuel asked about states, provinces, countries, and continents. Which countries are in North America. How many countries are there. Why do people change countries? Boundaries? Wars? How I don't know where all of the countries in Africa are. Also oceans. But more on continents. Then where I have been, where he wants to go, setting up a knight club (after talking about wanting to go to England and France to see castles). Then why did people stop living in castles. Gun powder. The nature of war when people used castles. Switch gears...How is the courtroom run again? How does the jury work? Are judges elected? (Samuel wants to be a judge.) What do lawyers do? Accused? Prosecutors? Defence attorneys? The fact that I was my senior class president (and I am not doing the reunions- Oh wait, we didn't cover that :) and how to get involved in city politics.

On the way home from the birthday party, we talked about how many Lego sets you could get with one quillion dollars. I assumed one quillion to be past quadrillion (as in million, billion trillion, quadrillion, quillion...) and based my figuring on that figure he came up with, using that logic... We figured out he could buy all of the sets he wanted plus a horse plus a custom toy car to take on walks (so I can walk) plus chickens plus a house with a farm plus the Lego chess set and he would still have enough to live on comfortably for the rest of his life. And he said he would buy something for Eva as well.

Now they are playing with Eva's new Playmobil fairy and his Lego guys and I am realizing I need to take this time to EAT!

Eva's new fairy enjoying a float in the pool. Check out her froggie friend in the background (the little red guy- my camera didn't want to go quite this small...)

Funny little robot magnet guys on the refrigerator.

I have a couple of trunks with keepsake type stuff in them and they have been locked without a key to be found for about 5 years now. I lost the key sometime around the time that we moved up here from San Rafael. Samuel broke open one of them several months ago but the other one remained locked. I had a few ideas about what was inside but it had been several years since I had really been able to look through it. Last night, Eva and I were looking through the trunk that Samuel had managed to get open with a hammer and Eva found one of the missing keys! We opened up the other trunk and inside were so many old clothes and scarves and bags, many that I had completely forgotten about, many from college and from Russia and even things others had given me from Peru and Mexico. Eva is wearing a skirt I used to wear in college and an old hippie shirt that was first my moms and then mine, one I also wore in college. She has a locket that Matt's grandma Annabelle gave me several years ago. She had so much fun dressing up with everything last night and today is still enjoying everything she found. She said the trunk had "wondrous riches" inside. She is holding the heart of the locket open to where her heart is!