All Saints and All Souls

I really enjoy celebrating All Saints and All Souls days. We had a big chicken dinner on Sunday, the Feast of All Saints, and had fun looking through the Patron Saints book. We found out that there is a Saint for just about any occupation, ailment or condition. In our search for patron saints we came across St. George, St. Isadore the farmer, St. Anne, St. Hippolitus, St. Joseph, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Francis of Assisi and so many more. Do you have a skin rash or lost article? Then ask St. Anthony to intercede on your behalf. I wish I had more knowledge of the Saints and their virtues. I do try to read their stories, but the reading wish list is so long that I'm sure I'll never even make a dent. Emily and Nick are studying many of the Saints through their Reading Comprehension studies. They read silently and then narrate to me all they learned, in this way we are learning together and typically I have many questions for them and I think they like taking on the teacher role sometimes.

I think many people have a misconception as to how the Saints are "used" in the Catholic Faith. For one we do not pray to the Saints, but we ask for them to intercede on our behalf. They are obviously more holy and closer to God than I am and Catholics believe they have a special place in heaven and are a direct link between us and God. So if you have misplaced an item, it would be appropriate to ask St. Anthony to present a special prayer to God on your behalf that you might find that item. That is called an intercessory prayer. I love introducing our kids to this type of prayer because it gives them something tangible to hang onto. I believe it helps them feel related to God in a much closer way. All those who have died before us are also the saints in heaven and can be called on to intercede on our behalf.

All Souls Day is serious and fun all at the same time. It's a day to pray for the souls of all the departed that may be in purgatory that their soul might be cleansed so they have eternal life in heaven. We used this day to put into action the Corporal Work of Mercy - Bury the Dead. We headed out to the cemetery to clean up around a few family grave sites.

We also celebrated it with a little Latin American flair by making these very cool Day of the Dead skulls.

Weekend Rambling

It's not really the weekend anymore, but I have lots to ramble on about from the weekend. First off cranberry harvest is done. I wasn't able to get in all my virtual cranberry harvest tour posts due to the weather. We had so many rainy, windy, freezing cold days that it was hard to get out and take pictures. The pics I did take turned out dark and blurry from the rain, drizzle and haze. But the harvest was a good one none the less.














We carved pumpkins.

We roasted pumpkin seeds. The kids love these. I don't wash off the pumpkin; that's what gives them the flavor. We just melt about 2 Tbsp. butter on the cookie sheet and then put a single layer of seeds on the pan, salt them and roast them for 12-13 minutes at 350 F. YUM!!!


And of course did a little Trick-or-Treating on Halloween. This year we had a soldier, cowboy, nurse and Nancy Drew. Little J wore his hunting clothes and slept in his carseat the entire time.

I spent quite a bit of time sewing in 15 minute increments. I'm making a little gift for a friend's birthday this Friday. Emily and I also made taggy blankies, one for our new nephew. He weighed in at 1o lbs. 9 oz. I don't even know if the receiving blanket will wrap around him. The other Emily made for Little J.

We had a very cold weekend, especially Saturday. I spent about 1 1/2 hours outside cleaning up the yard, feeding the birds, basically general cleaning up before the snow flies.

Warren's Words

This is not the place to detail our conversations, but I will say we were sharing our thoughts on God's work and the devil's work in our life. Real light conversation for 7:30am Saturday morning. We ended with Warren saying, "Life is just a series of adjustments." So True!

Grammar Woes

On the homeschooling front we've been just skipping along. Some weeks it can be drudgery, but some can be skippy. It's been pretty skippy here lately, well until now. Emily's working through Language of God Level E for middle school students. It's been a great fit for her allowing us to skip along at a nice pace, but today was a little different; she started on adverbs and the words they modify and adjectives and the words they modify. She did quite a bit with this last year and couldn't wait to complete the last page in May. So this year adjectives and the words they modify has been easily understood. However, adverbs is another thing. So we were doing the exercise together reading the sentences aloud with lots of emphasis on the subject and predicate and then softly saying the rest of the sentence except when I would forcefully enunciate the adverb. We did this a few times until she understood better and then I stopped the enunciating part and she would just pick out the words by herself. This worked great and we survived 26 sentences with multiple adverb/adjective/modifier combinations and still love one another. Yes! Keeping with her tradition she always looks ahead to tomorrows page letting me in on the fun we'll be having with grammar. Today she just laughed out loud when she read the next page's title

More Adjective-Adverb Confusion

Matter of fact the next 6 pages have that title which helps her to realize she's not the only one a bit confused. I always tell her the number of practice pages for a particular part of speech is directly proportionate to the number of kids (in millions) who need more practice. She usually turns away at the point, probably because I forbid her to roll her eyes at me. A tiny part of me thinks she might be rolling them, though, when she turns away.

Movie Night

Keeping with tradition, Tuesday was movie night. We went with Domino's pizza this week. It was good, but not great. Last year we rotated between homemade, freezer and Little Caesars pizza. But Little Caesars seemed to be going down hill so we needed to change it up a bit this year. Anyway, the movie was Imagine That. So many movies and TV shows make dads look like bumbling idiots without any parenting skills. I get so tired of that. But not Imagine That, this movie's dad is a hands off workaholic that through lots of twists and turns turns into a loving daddy that his little girl can't live without. He does have a few bumbling moments, but it's Eddie Murphy, enough said. And the Beatles song All You Need is Love is extremely catchy and if you happen to watch this movie you and your family will be humming it all the next day. We also spent a considerable amount of time listening to different renditions at Amazon.com. Enjoy!

Virtual Cranberry Marsh Tour Day 7

Well here we are at day 7 of the virtual cranberry marsh tour. In reality we are on day 12. During this time of year Warren does work on Sundays, although the harvest crew does not. I still don't have any new pics from this year of the trucks being loaded to share, but yesterday.....wow, what an awesome day, I took a few random pics on the marsh. The sunlight captured the color beautifully.

Note the shorts Sam is wearing, quite different from last week's apparel when it was snowing.

I love the color variations of the cranberries; the way they form swirls is captivating.

There's even time to have a few laughs.

A Little Halloween Prep

Halloween is a hard holiday for me. With talk of harvest, prep for

harvest, worries of harvest, excitement of harvest, visitors during harvest, preparing for and enjoying the harvest party, clean up from harvest, trying to rest after harvest, October is pretty well spoken for. Then BAM Halloween shows up on the last day of the month. It shouldn't come as a surprise considering it's the same day every year, but it does and I won't make excuses for myself. So I'm just tickled that Amber Lou and I carved out some time to make a few paper Jack-o-Lanterns this afternoon. We followed the directions at Art Projects For Kids. I just love Kathy's blog; check it out for tons of art projects to keep you and your children busy forever.

I just love this pumpkin Amber Lou made. I think it looks like a french artist because the mouth looks more like mustache to me.

Virtual Cranberry Marsh Tour Day 6

The exhaustion has taken its grip on everyone here. My eyes are so heavy as I type. Even though I don't get in on the rigors of harvest, the constant elevated awareness is so tiring. Yesterday I had a tour group here. It turned out to be the best day of the week weather wise. After the main part of the tour I gave them a chance to try the old way of hand raking. I wish I'd taken some pictures but with a baby on my back and my mind filled with harvest info I just totally forgot the camera. The tourists had a fun time hand raking. They couldn't believe how hard it was after just a minute or two. And the thought of doing that all day seemed impossible. Here's a link to some cranberry history. The rake used in the picture is exactly like the rakes we have for hand raking. Notice the picture is from 1874. It makes me wonder when our rakes were made.

Again today I didn't have the camera with me. Between dropping off and picking up kids from the horse stable, preparing a turkey and stuffing dinner, whipping up a batch of ginger cookies and heading to Walgreens for a ton of toilet paper, I never made it down on the marsh at all. Tomorrow 25 mph winds are predicted and even though it's the Sabbath day work will be done. This is one time of year that it has to be done. You never know what way the weather will turn from day to day and best to get the fruit harvested before extreme conditions set in.

My Girls

Virtual Cranberry Marsh Tour Day 5

Rain, snow and then a misty drizzle to finish off the day made for a cold walk for Little J and me, but we persevered to get pics of the booming and loading of the cranberries.

I stood up by our house so I could capture the whole action shot, but that makes it a little difficult to see what is exactly going on. Two guys on 4-wheelers drag a boom (yellow weighted floating device) from one end of the cranberry bed to the the other working hard to collect every cranberry. This is a pretty slow process since the cranberries weigh a ton or more literally.

Once they get to the end of the bed where they will be loading from the guys secure the boom.

They set up the sprayer jets and the berry cleaner and slowly begin to tighten the boom which keeps the berries moving towards the elevator. The water jets help push them along also.


The paddles on the elevator grab the fruit and carry them up to the cleaning belt. High pressure water is sprayed onto the cranberries to wash away as many leaves and bits of grass as possible.

The white bristled rollers spin continuously brushing away leaves, twigs and rotten cranberries. The trash falls onto the trailer and the clean cranberries go on their way up.

The cranberries are elevated once again, this time emptying into the dump truck.

*The above picture was taken on Tuesday when it was cold, yet sunny. I forgot to take a picture of the truck today. I guess I just couldn't wait to get back inside to my pot of chicken noodle soup simmering on the stove.

Virtual Cranberry Marsh Tour Day 4

Our mornings are filled with school and chores so by the time I get a chance to mosy out to the marsh it's typically after lunch. Today though, with violin lessons and then a momentary baking frenzy, I didn't get outside for pictures until 4:00. What I had wanted to share with you all today was the process of booming the bed, but it had already been done and won't happen until tomorrow mid-morning. While reviewing my pics from the last week I noticed a common theme of faces. I'm calling these the faces of cranberry harvest.

And here are my favorite cranberry recipes: cranberry pecan pie cranberry apple spice bars