Yesterday I met with our contact teacher. We are using IDEA, a homeschool group through the public school system. This is a sell-out route according to HLDSA. (Homeschool Legal Defense Association) which I can understand, it is through the public school and to many homeschoolers, that is bad. I, however, have no issue with public school. I just want to homeschool, so I registered. I will have guidance, but I am still the teacher. They will help if I need help, and some of the state money that goes to the school for each child, can be spent on my children. Non-faith based school materials, supplies and lessons can be covered.

The kids will be tested at the end of this yr and I was somewhat worried about how they would do in certain areas because I am a rather relaxed homeschool parent in some areas. The teacher met with the kids and alleviated these worries, even told me to be MORE relaxed! We enjoyed a book fair and checked on some school items from the IDEA library.

So today we spent the day in relaxed learning. We read books, listened to a music DVD that incorporates math facts, did our math test, spelling review. We have kept a movie on quietly playing in French-all part of our immersion. We did Rosetta Stone, and we worked on an outfit for Nathalie.

I have been cooking since I got up, I stewed a whole rabbit in chicken stock all night in the crock pot. Yesterday I cooked and put up beans, now I will only need to brown meat to have mexican dinners. We separated the bones and fat from the rabbit-those go to the chickens. Now I have several pies worth of rabbit pot pie filling made-with vegetables from our garden and a rabbit from our yard! I wish that the milk and cream had come from my goats, but alas they are not in milk. I have a crock pot full of rigatoni sauce simmering and I have sandwich bread and french bread in the oven. The french bread will be for rigatoni and spaghetti.

Now the children are picking the rest of the peas, we only grew enough for about 5 meals. Next yr will be better. The rabbits eat all of the pods after we shell them so that will feed them for several days. that is always nice! The animals will also eat the pea plants that I will pull today.

So thats it, sewing, putting up meals, homeschooling, gardening, caring for our animals. Enjoying our little farm and the wonderful fall weather we are having. The kids and I are still loving swim team practice, there are meets coming up in Oct that both kids are planning for. We take them swimming 2 additional days, so they swim 4 days a wk with team and 2 with us. We have some trim left on the barn and we are done building, set up for winter. I am really looking forward to a more relaxed season, spring/summer and fall have been all about working for winter-we are nearly there.