This is What Happens When Paint Meets Cat

It all started with creating a closet in Grace's room. Grace's bedroom is actually a loft area that did not come with a closet, so technically it is not considered a bedroom. When we moved in we built a floor to ceiling wall of shelves to accommodate toys, clothing, etc. Well now that she is older and her clothing is bigger it just doesn't fit well on the shelves. I asked hubby to remove one shelf and create a rod to hang all of her shirts and sweaters up. In the process of removing the shelf a little touch up painting was required. The floor of this area is where Grace keeps all of her shoes and it was kind of dirty after 8 years so hubby painted that part too. After 30 minutes or so hubby went upstairs to check on things and below is what we found.

Little green cat foot prints throughout Grace's room. Of course we immediately knew who the culprit was, Silver the new cat. I have never had a more curious, affectionate, or energetic cat as Silver.

Silver is now in kitty jail until the paint drys. I might also add that when Scott removed the shelf she stole one of the screws and brought it downstairs.

Survival Training

Scott and Grace have been watching alot of survival type shows on Netflix. I know there is alot of blogs around that are teaching preparedness and such. We do alot of these things at our home. Storing food, raising chickens, soon to be raising catfish, gardening, etc. Well Scott wanted to start a series of lessons with Grace along those lines. Today was the first lesson - how to build a fire. First he taught her what type of materials to collect.

How to use a knife and continue to build the nest of materials.

What a flint was and what type of knife to use that would make a spark.

After three tries she made fire. She was very excited.

Random Updates

Still working on the catfish pond, it is deeper than it looks in this picture. Other projects have gotten in the way of finishing the pond.

Chickens are still giving up 4-6 eggs a day. Mostly from the buff orpingtons. I actually have three dozen eggs in the fridge at the moment. All the older chickens are finished with their molt and some added some colors that were not there before.

This chicken was completely black and I noticed today that she now has grey and some white on the tips of her feathers.

Toccoa Falls

Today while I was attending a board meeting for our home school support group, Scott and Grace went on a little field trip. This is Toccoa Falls one of the local attractions in our area. Very beautiful place that we have visited often over the years.

Hard Week on Our Cars

This week our cars have been run through the ringer. Truly by today I just had to stop and chuckle. I don't remember if I had mentioned before that Travis has two cars. One truck that is his daily drive and one old BMW that he has rebuilt for road racing. Well four nights ago while test driving the BMW Travis ran into a deer. Travis was very upset due to the fact he had just finished putting a new coat of paint on it and now the car will need a new hood and front bumper. Now cut to yesterday morning. I got a text message that Travis had flipped his truck. He was fine but he thinks the truck is totalled. No other cars involved, he drifted off the shoulder of the road then over corrected. Beyond the should was down hill, the tires slid on wet grass then slowly rolled over. Travis drove home the BMW last night to have a car to drive back and forth to work. It was a treacherous ride because it was raining and the BMW has no heat, defrost, and only one windshield wiper. I told him last night that he didn't need to be driving that car on the road so he took Scott's car to work and Scott took my car to his work. Well Scott called me a little while ago to say that he had hit a rock with my front bumper and it was going to need some work. Can you believe this!!!! We are blessed that no one is hurt and that is what I am trying to focus on.

Fall Break

Considering we started school back in July and have already racked up 71 school days, we decided it was time to take a couple of days off. All the public schools in our area have had their Fall Breaks we figured it was now time for ours. Yesterday Scott and Grace went on a hike and Grace got some beautiful pictures of all the colors of Fall around us here in the North Georga Mountains.

Halloween Party ...... Drama Style

Most of this drama group has been together for three years. The kids in our drama groups love spending time together so any chance we get we do it. Halloween is the perfect setting for a drama group. What do actors love better than dressing up and being other people. We put a twist on our party - they had to choose a character from a book, movie, musical, cartoon, show, etc. Upon arrival we all set in a circle and played a 20 question type game to guess the character. Everyone thought that Grace was Cleopatra but she was actually Queen Tiy from the book The Golden Goblet. Many interesting characters showed up: Geronimo, Princess from Prince of Persia, Lady Swan, Ella Enchanted, Jimmie Hendrix, Mr. Hyde, David from the Bible, Queen Elizabeth, John Wayne, Juliet, Gale from The Hunger Games, and Sneezy the Dwarf.

These kids love to play games. So other than eating a little we played group type games that kept us all laughing through the night.