Matt's Massive Organic Tomato Plant!

I thought it was important to take pics of Matt's plant the night before our first frost, just in case.

Matt picked this tiny little tomato plant at Moondance Organic Gardens in Angus, in June and has toted it around, watered it and then planted it at the beginning of July in the front bed of our new home. Well, this beast has taken over the flower bed! It's huge and producing a tonne of fruit! We don't see it ripening yet, so we brought some of the bigger fruits inside to ripen. We covered it with a sheet, on the night we thought there would be frost as per Grandma Caines advice!

Congrats Matt on a job well done!

Rock Climbing at the Grotto

So, it turns out we have a new major interest-INDOOR ROCK CLIMBING! I'm sure it will lead to much outdoor rock climbing also! :)

Two weeks ago, the boys joined the group, WHAT'S UP YOUTH and went to the Guelph Grotto for rock climbing. We had a huge group from both the Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph Homeschoolers.

It was a lot of fun to feel the energy and interest of all involved and to see them reaching and surpassing their goals on their first day!!

We couldn't attend this past Saturday as Josh fell off his pogo stick and potentially fractured his wrist. We'll find out on Thursday how it's healing up. Cross your fingers as he doesn't want to miss another day of climbing!

Thanks to Erica for her efforts and organization and to all who helped the kids have a great time! Also, we loved meeting more moms, dads and kids! Wonderful to be at a homeschooling venue with lots of dads especially!!! :)

An Amazing Day!!!!

Last weekend, our family shared an absolutely amazing and memorable day together. This day included Grandma and Grandpa Goodman and our cousin, Laurie (great name by the way :)) and was spent at her home, at her friend John's estate and the Milton Fall Fair. This is one of those days that was so packed full, it is difficult to truly articulate in words and images just how much we did, learned, observed, tasted and felt!

First, we met Laurie's new and energetic puppy, Murphy. What a cutie!

Then, onto the sweet stuff. Laurie is new to bee keeping and invited us to help extract and jar honey! We never cease to be impressed by Laurie's drive, determination, skill and results of whatever her latest passion is... In our minds, Laurie can do - and truly does do, anything! It's fun and educational to hang out with Laurie as she has a great way of sharing stories and information and can always make us smile! Today was no exception. We learned about bee supers, capping/decapping honey combs, the queen bee and her workers, how to feed bees in winter and so much more including how yummy warm honey is on homemade biscuits! Every drop is like liquid gold and just as precious.

Afterwards, we went to visit Laurie's bees at John's breathtaking property nearby... land, pond, stone sculptures, barn, horses, aviary, australian swans, a knights dungeon, roof-top views...ahhh what an amazing place! Here we observed Laurie in her full bee keeping attire as she took sugar water to her bees to help feed them for winter. Laurie says there are about 300, 000 bees here. Absolutely incredible. The bees were not overly active due to the cold, which suited us fine as we didn't need to run for cover! :) As we were leaving the bees, Laurie offered for Lucas to drive back to the house...well, yes! What joy on his face! Everyone arrived safe and sound! After feeding the horses some apples, we had to make a mad dash to the Milton Fall Fair to be in time for the Demolition Derby of course.

We also, went to check out all the exhibits and see if any of our art and photography submissions placed. We were happy to see that many of them had with First, Second and Third Prize ribbons all around! Laurie, too won many ribbons... of course we knew her maple syrup and honey would win! The kids were impressed with the whole production and plan to make multiple submissions to the fair next year. Before we left, the managed two dizzying rides, learned even more about bees at an exhibit, had ice cream thanx to Laurie and watched cars get smashed up... A perfect day, if you ask me!

We are really looking forward to helping out with more honey extracting, making candles and hopefully maple syrup in the late winter/early spring!

Thanks to everyone involved for making it such a wonderful day that we won't soon forget!