We began the morning by making acorn shaped ginger cookies (they taste like ginger snaps). Then we took the car for emissions testing and to the DMV to renew the license plate but THEN we got to go have some fun.
We went to Hawthorne Hollow. I had never been there before although I've driven past it so many times in the past four years and wondered what it was.
It was great.
We loaded the stroller up and set out on the main trail. It was so fun to walk through the forest. Abi was loving it. Maddy was loving it. The trail was a little complicated for the stroller but we did fine.
After a few minutes we came upon a huge open area. There were building scattered around. We walked around to the buildings and were excited to find that although there were no people there... they were unlocked. The first building was an old one room schoolhouse. I had brought school for today along with us and was so tempted to hold it inside the school... but I was pretty sure they wouldn't want that so I didn't.
The Town Hall..
One of the best things about finding this place is that
Abi and I have been reading Little House on the Prairie.
Every night we read a chapter from it and it has been one of the best experiences ever! She asks questions a lot and it has brought up so many interesting topics with her. Plus she loves the book so far! The other night she was looking at a picture of their house in the book after Pa had finally finished the floor and ceiling. She noticed there was no bathroom. I explained outhouses to her.
Here, I was able to show her exactly what I was talking about. The door was locked but I held her up to look in the crescent cut out so she could see what it was like inside. It was great to be able to follow up a question by showing her something like that... even if it was an outhouse.
There was also another schoolhouse that was bigger .. but still one room.
After exploring the buildings, we spent some time playing in a little grove of trees..
Then we spread out our blanket and got out our basket of goodness.
First, I gave the girls a new book for our family library...
Then we enjoyed a fun picnic. I was really hoping for some colder weather for our fall outing... but it was actually really warm. I made Vegetable soup that we had in the thermos and I almost changed my mind about it... eating hot soup outside on a hot day didn't sound that great.. but I'm glad I didn't because it was great and
Abi loved it.
We also had some sugar snap peas, bananas, apple juice, a Honey Crisp apple, some leftover garlic bread, and tried some cheese sticks of different flavors to go along with learning about dairy products in school this week. We had to both decide which flavor we liked the best. (We both picked Monteray Jack. The choices were Mont. Jack, Colby Jack, and Cheddar)
We also had some of those acorn cookies..
Maddy wasn't completely left out. She enjoyed some butternut squash and apples.
As we ate I read some squirrel stories to the girls...
I then had
Abi do some of her school work. I brought along things that I thought she could easily do outside.
She did some butterfly writing practice sheets (from Confessions of a homeschooler)
colored a B Butterfly...
traced some nuts like we would be gathering...
made a squirrel.. she had to color the squirrel and the tail, cut out the tail, and glue it on.
Then I drew a big acorn and gave her some black and brown paper scraps and glue and she glued them on.
One time the wind tried to take it from her!
then the Gathering began. We were going to gather maple (and other) fall leaves to make a crown but
Abi decided she wanted to focus on just gathering nuts for the squirrels when I told her we would be doing that as well. The idea behind the Nutting party (it's an old Victorian tradition) is to gather nuts and leave them at the bottom of trees for the squirrels. She was really excited to do this.
Maddy was not so happy about going back in the stroller.
Our little explorer..
One of my favorite moments- a long time ago (over a year ago) I had showed the top of the acorn to
Abi and told her that fairies used those as hats. Yesterday
Abi brought along one of her Polly Pockets. This particular Polly has been sporting wings for days now and
Abi is saying she is a fairy. So, as we were gathering I noticed
Abi being quiet for a minute. Then she showed me that her Polly fairy now had a hat!
Then we found this! No,
Abi doesn't really know why she is supposed to be scared. I just told her to stand next to the sign and look scared..
Here she is depositing some of her nuts at the first tree that she thought looked good..
Here is the Pet
Cemetery. It was pretty weird. There were all these slabs sticking up. All of them bore the name of the animal, the kind of animal it was, and the year it was buried. There were some really old graves here. The majority of the animals were dogs and horses..
On our way out, Abi left the rest of the nuts by this tree.
You can tell we were getting tired by this point. I asked her to pose and she did this slumped over pose accompanied by a very loud sigh.
Then we delivered some cookies to some friends...
and went to the library. Here Abi is washing some babies.
Maddy's top two teeth did finally break through this week and this shot actually kind of shows them!
I loved how Abi put on this red apron to vacuum and ....
then changed to the blue one to cook dinner.
It was a very long but very fun day! Happy Fall!!
