Starting Fall with some apple picking

Nothing starts fall off like a field trip for apple picking! We enjoyed spending the morning with Will's kindergarten class last week to pick apples, go on a tractor ride, and enjoy some apple donuts. The babies really loved the donuts too! 

I'm excited for fall and enjoying the crispness in the air! 

Tball!

Will started on a Tball team a few weeks ago.  He has always loved baseball and is really excited to be on a team this year. 

As we are discovering, doing a team sport is a full family commitment! He has games two nights a week from 5:30 til 7pm and sometimes has practices on Saturday mornings. It's only a 7 week season, so the chaos will be short lived. In the meantime, we are trying to keep 4 other kids entertained at the ball fields and feed everyone a late dinner a few times per week. 

So far he has had two games and has loved them! He also loves that his best friend from school is on his team. Before his first game, he wanted to know if we needed to buy tickets to his first game and how many fans would be there! 

It's really entertaining to watch a group of 5 year old boys chase after a baseball, give their best swing at bat, and slide into home base just for the fun of it. And then there's the kid who is standing in the outfield yelling "mom, I need to go potty!" And the kid who randomly comes out of the dugout to the stands to give his mom a hug. Pretty cute! 

So here's to our first Tball season! 

Back to school.

All 3 big kids are back in school. Catherine started about two weeks ago and is in second grade. So far this year has been an easier transition than last year since she was more familiar with the school and her classmates. She is in the Learning Community again this year, which is a cluster of 1st-5th grade classes. The teachers can move students into different groups for writing and math based off of ability, not grade level. She really likes her teacher and is even riding the bus home this year! 

Anna is in K3 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She was very excited to discover that she gets to go EVERY Tuesday and Thursday, not just this week. She gets really excited about packing and carrying her lunchbox. 

Will is in K5 this year. He says that he is not excited about it but I think he will really enjoy it. He's soooo close to reading on his own and I think with the focused effort and encouragement from his great teacher that he will "get it" really soon. He's also really good at math and can do addition and subtraction very easily in his mind. 

If you have children in school, you know how many papers and projects they bring home. It's hard to decide which ones to keep and where to keep them. So far my system (which I actually start when they're two) is to create an envelope for each child for each year. I will eventually get a large plastic box or tote for each child and put their envelope for each year in there. I keep the envelopes close to the kitchen so that I can easily add a paper or picture to them on a daily or weekly basis. I love to look back and see how their handwriting has changed or how they colored. I also add notes they write to us, special papers from church, etc. 

And this was our back to school shopping supplies. That's a lot of glue and pencils!!

Riding bikes

Last Saturday was beautiful weather and we enjoyed the morning by riding bikes with the big kids on the Swamp Rabbit Trail. 

When Catherine was learning to ride her bike without training wheels at the beginning of the year, we promised her that we would all go ride bikes on the trail as a reward outing. 

It was a beautiful morning and we had great fun. We even found this bike for 7 people at a local bike shop!! When the babies ate big enough we could all ride together. Isn't this the craziest bike?? 

We love doing fun activities like this with the kids as they're getting older. They're so much fun. 

Digging

Enjoying time digging in the yard and playing with neighbors for some afternoon fun! 

Who needs toys....

....when you can play with magazines and eat shoes?? 

Give Hope to Freeset

Yesterday a UPS cargo plane crashed in Birmingham. In addition to the pilot and copilot losing their lives, an organization called Freeset lost $150,000 in merchandise. This isn't just some company who can write off their loss and make more products though. These were bags made by 200 women in Calcutta, India who have been rescued from the sex trade and offered employment and a chance to rebuild their life. I'm sharing this because I know some of you can help these women.  Please read and pray about how you can help!

Local Non-Profit Affected By UPS Cargo Plane Crash in Birmingham, AL

Freeset USA, a non-profit business, lost over 13,000 bags, with a retail value of $150,000, in this morning’s plane crash in Birmingham, AL. Freeset USA represents Freeset Bags & Apparel, a fair trade business offering employment to women trapped in Calcultta, India’s sex trade. The products were a complete loss and represented an entire fall inventory for online sales, fair trade stores, and conference events.

“Our prayers and thoughts are with the families of the pilots that passed away in this tragedy,” says Kristi Griem, President of Freeset USA. “We seek to honor them and their families in the face of this loss. We also are thinking about the women at Freeset, whose lives will be impacted from the loss of these bags, as it represents three months of work of our 200 staff and we have lost the bags sales that represent the wages we would have sent for them to be paid.”

Freeset is in business for freedom. Freedom from human trafficking. Freeset is a fair trade business and ministry that sells bags and t-shirts, made by women freed from human trafficking in Calcutta, India. The women are able to have a job with dignity, making products, instead of being the product. Every woman receives three times the wage they would receive in a regular job, learn to read and write, daycare for their children, have medical insurance and retirement benefits. Women were tricked, trapped, or traded and find themselves seemingly without a choice. Our goal is to change the economic scope of Sonagacchi, Calcutta’s largest red light district, to one of freedom, instead of the sex trade. Because Freeset is a fair trade business a simple ‘re order’ is not possible. The women are paid fair wages for their work and we are not a mass-producing, slave labor force.

Click HERE  to read more from my friend who is organizing this and click HERE TO DONATE

Please help these women by "buying back" a bag that was lost was $25. And share this information with others who can also help.