Ward, I think you were a little hard on the Beaver last night.

Petey's two favorite things in the world are affection and sunshine. He's had a great week, and has gotten pretty spoiled. He now wants us to meet him outside when he goes into the enclosure, as he expects us to pet/scratch him while he's relaxing in his sunbeam. It's pretty cute, and we've been pretty accommodating with him, because he's so adorable when he's that happy!

Lila likes the idea of the enclosure, but she's still timid about the big scary outdoors. She's decided that the perfect solution is for her to lie across the cat door, so half her body is in the house, and half is in the enclosure. I'm working on breaking that behavior, which is problematic for many reasons. When I lay awake at night for hours thinking of all the possible bad, dangerous, destructive things the cats could do to/in the enclosure, a cat parking in the middle of the door never crossed my mind. I always miss something, and they always find it!

L finished her first week of school. She has a few new subjects this year, which I think she will enjoy (that's always my hope) and is taking on more responsibility for scheduling her own work. Rather than giving her a daily schedule, I'm now giving her a weekly schedule, and she determines her own daily schedule. It's good for her to take that responsibility and learn how to manage her time and work load on her own.

I had some activities and subjects planned for our Friday school work, but L woke up with a different idea. She returned from breakfast with a handful of things she had gathered from the garden and the house and her microscope. I skipped drawing and cut art history short, so we could spend all morning on the microscope. She was so into it! It is a lot of fun to look at various items. I thought the coolest thing we looked at was the aloe plant leaf that we split. We looked at the cells inside the plant, and it was pretty cool. She thought the most interesting was a bit of an robin's egg shell she had collected.

Thursday night she came downstairs, a good hour or two after she went to bed, all excited to show me something. She had used her watercolor pencils to draw a tattoo on her leg that matches the one on my thigh. I'm surprised she was able to get the watercolor pencils to draw that well on her skin. It still looked good after she woke up the next morning, too, which surprised me as well.

M has been slaving away at his fall plant sale, along with a high number of night-time speaking engagements. He's working seven days a week again. We see glimpses of him, but not much more these days. We'll get a brief break (maybe) for a few weeks next month between fall cleanup and putting up the light show, where he will work almost like a normal person with a full-time job. Those are nice little respites for us.

I had to wake the kids early yesterday, so we could attend Logan's first football game at 9:30 am. I still don't know how this child ended up so determined to play football! Neither of his parents is into football or any other professional sport. We certainly aren't in this household either! He's always been strangely enchanted by football, though, and at 8, wanted to play full contact through his school. We braved the damp, rainy weather to watch his first game. It is VERY hard for me to sit calmly when kids are getting knocked down, piled upon, and hurt. It upsets me a lot and triggers this primitive urge to run out to the field and pull the small child on the bottom out. By the time one little guy got out from under everyone and stood up, he was hurt and crying. It really took everything in me to NOT run out and grab him and baby him. Somehow his grandma restrained herself. If it had been my own child, or maybe even Logan, I'm not sure I could have stayed back (though I know that would be the single most embarrassing, scarring moment for a young boy). While I'm the complete opposite of a football fan, I am a Logan fan, so I'll probably be going to more of his Sat. morning games.