rowan and sawyer started soccer a few weeks ago. i think kenny and i have secretly been waiting for soccer season to begin since rowan was born!

we were surprised to find that our local YMCA doesn't have soccer until january, and it's indoors. to me, soccer and fall go hand in hand, so i was a bit disappointed when i went to sign them up. then i found another (still local) YMCA offering sign-ups for their soccer season, starting at the end of august and running through october. perfect! we promptly signed them up, kenny volunteered to help coach, and so our soccer season began.

it's no wonder they make the games short and sweet (two 12-minute halves)...the game is chaos. there are one, maybe two "good" players on each team. and by "good" i mean they know what to do when the ball passes by their feet. the typical "great job! go blue team!" cheers were few and far between the "no! the other way! run the other way!" cheers from the sidelines (or parents) and the coach's whistle got a great workout. this picture proves the chaos (running in all directions):

it's as though our neighborhood responded to an overnight memo that autumn has begun since i see a burst of new color coming from the trees just today. perhaps it's the incredibly dry summer we've had, and the leaves will all just change color quickly, get crispy and fall off at the same time. this is a change from last autumn as it was so wet we could never get the leaves up off the ground, and they sat under a winter's worth of snow for several months.

we're finally in autumn, and i haven't reported much about our garden experience this summer. we harvested and ate most of the pole (green) beans, broccoli, and herbs. the corn didn't grow very large (except the indian corn is drying out now - those stalks reached 8 feet!). we also did some small-grade canning. we don't have canning equipment, but we have enough to get a few pints and a quart or two of something put by. we ate the majority of our tomatoes, made three (or four?) batches of fresh salsa (gobbled up the same day it was made), let some of them rot on the ground or on the vine, gave some away, and then finally canned three small pints of tomato sauce.

our grape vine produces a lot of green and purple grapes (concord) so we finally harvested them this year, and kenny (with help from rowan and sawyer) made 2 1/2 pints of grape jam. my grammy gave me her food mill years ago, and it got quite the workout for the grape jam removing all those seeds!

birthday blessings to the boy with the million dollar smile...

and the best fashion sense...



we are so blessed to have a sawco in our family!!! happy FOUR YEARS!

...10.

last week, the boys were tucked in bed and kenny and i were watching a movie in our bedroom. it was around 10:30 and we were 20 minutes into the movie when we heard it: the sound of chickens screaming. screaming! loudly!

we knew exactly what was going on and kenny ran outside as quickly as i could pause the movie. they got louder and louder and then finally stopped once kenny got out there. he found one dead chicken, secured the chicken tractor and came back in.

an hour later, we heard it again. this time, not as loud. and this time, i joined him outside. he found two more dead chickens (two araucaunas...blue egg-layers!) and four or five escapees. they must have gotten out where a raccoon got in. a raccoon: kenny's favorite animal is to blame for three chickens gone within an hour. i don't think he's got a favorite animal anymore.

so chickens do not see when it's dark. by this time, it was midnight and very dark, but the chickens who escaped were scared, so they ran. i put the deck lights on, and they found the light and ran to the deck. kenny and i carried them one-by-one into the coop, closed it up and said goodnight.

our chicken tractor served us well for 6 weeks, but since a 'coon found a way to get in, we need to re-engineer it for the spring and summer next year. it was a great system - a coop on wheels, and the chickens got fresh grass/grubs to eat on a daily basis, and we didn't have to mow up by the barn for at least the past 6-7 weeks. but we'll put it away for the cold months now, and we'll fix up the chicken pen and keep them in the coop for the fall/winter.

unfortunately, the incident left the chickens scared-eggless. they stopped laying for a few days, but i think they're beginning to lay more.

i am not emotionally attached to these chickens like i am a family pet. but still, we are their caretakers, and i can't help but feel as though we let them down by not protecting them enough. the tractor was secure for a long time...and i guess you can never tell when a raccoon will be smart enough to find some food. but i still feel a bit responsible. i know it's all in the life of a homesteader, but i wish we were immune to it, i guess.

last week, we said good bye to our beloved cat, greymalkin. kenny got grey when she was just 6 weeks old. this year, she turned 17. it was her time, and it was harder than we imagined. she was very devoted to kenny, although recently she preferred my feet to his to sleep on.

it took us two days to tell rowan and sawyer. they loved that cat and loved to play with her (much to her...um...disliking). we told her the day kenny and the boys made a little stepping stone for her to put where we have her buried (it's so nice to have a yard big enough to bury your pets!). they took it a lot better than we thought. rowan's little bottom lip quivered for a minute, but then he recovered and the questions began: "is she with jesus now?" "is she going to wait for us in heaven?" "how old was she?" at least we'd been preparing them for this...telling them that she was very old and getting more sick by the week.

still...we've noticed her absence this week. we are not awakened by her meows for food at 6:00 (which is probably why we've been sleeping in until 7:00!!). and the boys haven't had their "pet" to chase around the house any more.

we do miss her, but we're more happy to have had her a part of our family for so long.

this past weekend, we spent a lot of time on the road...but even more time with family and friends. my older brother and his wife live in Michigan, and my sister-in-law's family all have little trailers in a development called Sandy Pines, so we spent the weekend there.

this is not an ordinary trailer park. it's a park around a very large lake and the trailers are like mini beach homes with decadent decking, porches, landscaping and gourmet-ish kitchens. the place is a paradise for kids. the boys (and their cousins!) never stopped running, playing, digging, climbing, swimming, and boating (as you can see below). they couldn't even sit still for one picture (as you can also see below).

charlie (the youngest of my brother's kids) with adam. check out adam's cool shades!

one of rowan's favorite activities was taking the pontoon boat out on the lake. he even caught a fish!

the backyard to one of the cottages (rachel's parents') looks out onto the lake with a sand beach in between. it's lovely.

on our way home, we stopped in for a (much too brief) lunch with our friends from pittsburgh who recently moved to Michigan. we hadn't seen them since christmas. our kids played together since birth (rowan and bella are a few weeks apart and sawyer and sofie are a few weeks apart as well). here they are admiring a hay baler (baylor? bayler?).

the weekend was much too short, and we wish we could have seen more friends when out there (serina! you're first on the list to visit the next time we come up...it was just too packed and not enough time this trip. i'm sure you know how it is with kids and driving and stuff...). 

we have another trip coming up to hang out with kenny's brothers and their families. we're really looking forward to that trip to the poconos. we hope to plan another trip to see another one of my brothers (tennessee!) and his family. we have a busy fall planned...and we haven't even started school yet!

i hope to update our other blog soon with information on how we're getting ready for school, and how happy i am not to have to rush the kids out of the house in the morning. especially since we've all been sleeping past 7:00 in the morning recently.