Before and After FOT 2012

So much has happened both before and after the Feast of Tabernacles 2012 and its post (the one immediately previous to this post), but I'm going to make it ultra-short, considering.  Then my plan is to get back to weekly blogging, and I've come up with a much better and organized way for us doing things.  It will be the best since Jaden William was an only child.  The outline was actually planned for a poster board project for the kids for the FOT, tying in a spiritual lesson dealing with the seven days of the week and then the following 8th Day (which is the day following the seven-day FOT and symbolizes eternity).  It didn't work out for that week, though, and ironically, even though it was a religious festival week, the kids and I didn't even read our bible, etc. together as much as a normal week.  Just too much distraction.  I did manage to have alone prayer time and write in my prayer journal, shut in my bedroom after nursing the baby.  It's hard to maintain one's routine with company.  Overall, though, it was a great feast, and we really enjoyed all the company and fellowship.

I'll share the poster board (which we've since done) in the next post, which I'm hoping to be tomorrow, but if not, then sometime this week.

So for a SUPER-CUT summary with a few photos of what went on right before the FOT and what has happened since. Oh hey, look how I also updated our blog photos, both my profile picture and the picture of the kids on the front page.  The latter now includes our Sweet E. 

Here goes...

The pictures above were taken of Jaden William when he went for a week to stay with my parents to help out with the White County Fair in Arkansas.  Both my parents are on the fair board, and my daddy is the fairgrounds manager.  Jaden William loves to go to work with him whenever we visit, but this was the first time he got to go help out during fair week.  The girl watching the monster truck show with him is the daughter of a police captain or something.  Jaden told me that she liked to follow him around, but he's not looking for any girlfriend, because he loves Kaia.

Helping at the fair was a good experience for him.  He learned a lot, plus he had fun.

Meanwhile the other three kids and I were still back at home.

Believe it or not, this was the first time I'd ever seen the really big yellow hornets.  I've only ever seen the white "baldfaced" hornets.  These things are huge, and after this I saw them a few more times during the summer and early fall.  To the right is flowering spearmint.

Trust and Liv with wild plums.  They weren't too tasty.  What do you think of Trusten's hairdo? 

The kids and I went to drop off a bunch of stuff at Helping Hands while Jade was gone, and we decided to go in to buy some books.  I got a few for Trust and Liv, letting them help pick out.  The ones pictured above are the ones I picked out for Jaden William.  He took a long break from reading books (as in two or three months), but he just started it up again.  He broke his break with the Abraham Lincoln book seen above, and he said he was loving it.  I'm hoping the historical fiction books about the royal women are not real girly.  They looked really interesting.

The picture above I found in Google Images.  This one came from the Wikipedia entry for "beef."  I looked it up for Jaden after a visit to The Fresh Market to get some meat.  He had asked about the different cuts of meat.  Different countries do it a little differently, though.  The above picture is how the U.S. typically labels and uses the different cuts pictured. 

These were some of the things we've read lately.  (Periodicals pictured twice mean that we didn't finish it one day.)  There has been a lot more, including storybooks.  Jaden William really hates politics.  I was reading one of the election articles from the Weekly Reader, and he got rather agitated and finally just said something about how he really didn't care about it, didn't understand why we needed to finish it, who cared, etc.  He was very sick of hearing about Romney and Obama (who can blame him?). I think we'd reached the questions at the end of the article, and he usually does superbly at reading comprehension, but he wasn't getting anything right on that.  I realized it was a waste of time, and quite truthfully I don't care, either.  I want him to know what's going on in the world, but he's right that we don't have to waste so much time on it.  He answered all the questions from the article after that one quickly and correctly, just as he usually does.

I've been getting Trusten to read some of his Weekly Reader issues aloud, and a lot of the stuff he gets without any help.

The above picture shows what is in the Inchimals math set I bought for the kids.  This is perfect for Trusten and Liv now, but it will also still be helpful for Jaden who is a bit slow in math.

Okay, this is it for pictures for now.  I'm hoping I'll get the next post up before this week is over.

Until next time...