GRIM ACADEMY AND HURRICANE DORIAN

Rebecca has decided to home school the kids. They are using the kitchen table for some of their work and an old school desk that we bought Ben when he was a kid to do his homework on.

 I am calling her school Grim Academy - ah ha ha.  I have documented a few of their science projects - a terrarium, a skittles project and one of my favorites - we made a wind sock for Hurricane Dorian when it blew through.

Of course Becca and I poked a little fun at Dorian as well because we enjoyed drinking a Hurricane while waiting for it.

The kids seem to be handling the school work well - Jeremiah, in Scott's words - sometimes works very hard to do very little and gives his mom a bit of trouble with Language Arts.  When it comes to Math and Science however he is a sponge!  We have had several field trips including apple picking and pumpkin picking just for a few.  I will make posts for those soon.

TRAINS TABLE UPDATE

The long awaited post about the TRAINS!!  So Scott has a set of old, I mean REALLY old O Gauge trains that were his fathers when he was a child.  We used to set up a small loop around our Christmas tree when our kids were small, and then just got out of the habit (we kept moving our location for the tree and some of the places the train would not fit.  So the trains have been boxed for years.  One of his dreams has always been to set up a permanent table to run the trains. Now that we have the basement finished his dream is coming true.  He started by buying a piece of ply board  and 2 x 4 boards for the "table", saw horse legs to support it and green paint to paint the grass.

 Once it was painted we set it up on the legs and he proceeded to lay out the track on the board.  Jeremiah and Moriah have been his junior conductors helping with just about every step.

Not to be outdone, I found a train puzzle and had the kids work it with me.  We will be framing it to hang on one of the walls in the basement.

The primary train table is going to be Summertown.  Scott has run a smaller piece of board down the wall of the basement to the corner, where he has set up another smaller table called Falltown (he painted it brown).

For Moriah's birthday we bought a wooden doll house to the scale of the train set and set it up on the Falltown table.

Scott put it on a lazy susan swivel base so she could turn it around and play with it or have the front of the house facing out.  She set up a cow yard with a white picket fence to one side of it and it looks adorable!

We are working the board around the other wall, where he will cut a hole in the wall between the living room and bedroom and we will be setting up Wintertown (I get to decorate this one)  Of course we had  to add a Tardis since we are Doctor Who fans....

I will do an update once we have finalized Wintertown.We have had so much fun with this project, and the grandkids are thoroughly enjoying it!.

GARDEN UPDATE. BLUEBERRIES AND PEACH PICKING

Our garden has been quite productive this year.  We had several Patty pan squash that we stuffed with crab and baked - oh so yummo. 

Our spaghetti squash only produced three squash but they did not go to waste.  We made buttered "noodles" from two and gave the third to our son.  Our tomatoes did better than anything else, not only have we eaten tomatoes just about every day we have canned more than 20 quarts of them, as well as spaghetti sauce with our home grown herbs, garlic and onions. 

First batch of tomatoes and blueberries

Caprese salad is one of our favorites so we have enjoyed many of those.

The kids helping harvest from the garden

Some of the First Fruits of our garden

Caprese Salad

Blueberry danishes

Our blueberry bushes were prolific this year as well.  We have frozen approximately 8 gallon bags of blue berries, made blueberry cobblers, danishes, muffins, pancakes and canned about 10 quarts of them.  We opened up the blueberry picking to all of our neighbors and friends as well as our church family and many took us up on the offer and enjoyed the fruit as well.

We celebrated Jeremiahs birthday by taking him out for breakfast and buying him a water rocket.  He and Scott put it together and we had a maiden flight of it. 

They painted it fluorescent colors so they could shoot it at night and find it when it landed!

Moriah helped us plant sunflower seeds early in the season and they grew over 6 feet tall!  We are using the seeds to add to our wild bird feeders.

We wanted to go peach picking with the kids and found a farm Hanover that has pick your own.  We went on a Saturday morning and picked couple of bags full as well as buying a big box what they call "seconds" (apparently they are the peaches that were not good enough for them to sell commercially but the were wonderful!).  From that we canned 8 quarts of peaches - we are making great use of our storage shelves with all of this canning!

The next post will be about the train table that we have been putting together for the basement.  It has been an ongoing project since June so we've made quite a bit of progress.  Blessings!

SO FIXING UP THE BASEMENT WAS A GOD SEND

Hey so it's been a while since I have posted - and I apologize for that.  The last thing I post was where my son moved out, we renovated the basement and my niece was getting married.  Flash forward a few months and what we thought was going to be an empty nest (just Scott and I enjoying the house) turned into my daughter, son-in-law and grandkids moving in with us.  They got word in August that they were losing their house and pretty much had no other place to go.  So they moved in the basement that we recently renovated and the grandkids are in the room we set up for them with the bunk bed (our son's old room).  There has been some adjustments all around but we are making the best of it one and all. But let's catch up from the last post before I go into that.

We finished the basement by finishing off the storage room with shelving - which turned out amazing!

As always we had our little helper assisting us with just about every step.

We also bought a bed "new to us" for the bedroom that we had finished off in the basement.  I plan on getting a plaque made calling it "The Spare Room" - reference from The Chronicles of Narnia.  We eventually plan on refurbishingan old wardrobe we have and putting it in the room as well - ha!

That finalized the basement.  Then we went on to the next project - the TRAIN TABLE!!  But that will have to wait until the next post.  Blessings for now folks - I will post again soon.  I am working on a post for the train table set up, our peach picking trip, apple picking trip, update on our gardening and many other activities that we have been doing.  We have been quite busy here at Crumptonland - busy and blessed!!  And remember to never forget to count your blessings my friends! Till next time!

WHIRLWIND

When Scott and I announced that we were retiring the largest response was "WHAT are you going to do with your time?? Oh, you are going to be so bored. You should get a part time job." HA - we have been busier than a one armed paper hanger (for those who don't get the reference, it's for a wall paper hanger - get it? yeah, if you have to explain your jokes they are no longer jokes right - hahaha.)

We started in January with reorganizing some of our closets and other spaces - which was good timing since we had taken down the Christmas decorations so they needed organizing as well.  It was of course cold weather so the majority of our activities were inside. When we retired Scott decided he wanted to serve one day a week at our Church working on miscellaneous projects, so every Tuesday we drive to Mechanicsville, he to work at church and I go to my parents to assist with any projects they have there.  We also visit his parents at the end of every month.

There were also several doctor appointments as I was preparing to have knee replacement surgery.  That surgery took place at the end of February, which lead to more doctor appointments and some physical therapy.  I am happy to say my knee is "just like new" hahaha.  It still swells if I am on it too long, but each day I try to push it just a little bit farther to keep it going. No pain, no gain right?  Of course with all the down time from the knee recovery I was able to work a few puzzles - one of my passions!!

I worked this one for Moriah.  I need to frame it for her room.  I also did a puzzle for Jeremiah - of old cars to hang in his room.

Our next project was preparing our garden beds and starting our seedlings inside.  The kids were great help with this, and we had several sleep overs for them to help us prepare and plant.

Laying the cinderblocks

Tiling up the soil

Poppa's little helper

Spreading the layer of sand

Of course we took time to do some other fun things as well, like painting Jeremiah's wagon, clearing the paths in our woods, working on some flower beds, organizing my cook book shelves and just having fun.

Hosta bed

Rocks for the fire pit

Trimming trees

Moving our iris bed

COOKBOOKS!

Painting the wagon

Clearing the paths

Then, at the end of March our son announced that he was moving out, he had found an apartment to rent with a couple of buddies.  We helped him pack and move, then started the process of cleaning his room to and turn it into a room for the kids to sleep in.   We cleaned, spackled walls, painted, bought a bunk bed, sheets and curtains. PHEW what a job.  The grandkids helped with all of this as well.

Washing the Floor

Rug for the room

Setting up the bunk beds

Curtains!!

Too many stuffed animals - LOL

There was a quick break in our project schedule to attend the wedding of my niece.  It was so much fun, and I can say that she has been blessed by a wonderful husband!!  He fits into the family with ease.

My sweet Baby Girl <3

Proud Poppa

My Big Guy <3

Cutie One and Cutie Two

 When we got home from the wedding I put our game camera's on our garden spot and caught a bear passing through the garden!!  We've lived out here close to 30 years and never seen a bear!!

Of course along with the fun we also have had several days that we watched the kids when they were sick.  It's never fun when the kids are sick but I am glad we were able to help Becca out!

For our next project we took on the task of revamping our basement.  Our son had used it as his "man cave" and cave it was - it needed a sharp cleaning!! We rented a mini mobile to store things in and proceeded to move everything out of the living room and weight room for the renovation.  We ripped up the carpet in both rooms, painted the walls and had my nieces husband install wood flooring in both rooms.  Things are coming along smashingly.

Our most recent project is clearing out what I call our "gobby room".  It is basically a room that is a catch all for everything from Christmas decorations to Scott's old train set that was his grandfathers.  We are pulling everything out of the room and installing shelving along all of the walls to store everything more neatly and more organized!  I am so excited!

Well - I think that catches us up for now!  Till next time - blessings!!