Kay's Cross

We have had such a long, golden autumn here.  It's been divine.  Every day, I want to be outside, afraid it's the last good day.  Then we have another one.  Abe and Ptolemy annihilated the Halloween pumpkins for us, with a couple of kitchen knives.  Dull knives are dangerous.  I should have given them something sharper.  Every little boy should have a pocket knife, right?  I've been remiss in my training of boys.  Dull tools cause a lot worse injuries than sharp tools, but they seemed to do ok smashing the pumpkins, mostly by throwing them on the ground.  The delight they took in the destruction was highly entertaining.

This is what happens when Ruby has a free moment.  I came home to find the kitchen covered wall to wall with art projects, our three littles and Josh and Emily's three happily working away, Ruby overseeing the projects from the couch.  She is a natural with children.  If it were up to her, she wouldn't be in school learning more stuff, she'd be in a third world orphanage teaching things and nurturing kids.  For now, she has her students.

We've undertaken several expeditions into the back yard this week.  The kids, especially Freestone, are quite familiar with this territory.  I explored endlessly back there on "the trails" as a kid, so the terrain is vaguely familiar to me, too.  It's a boon that we can take ten steps from our house and be immersed in wilderness.  Sunday, we did two walks that came out behind the school.  Tizzy was so happy, and said, "Mama, are you excited to get lost?!"  Later, she started feeling like maybe we really were lost.  It had been a long time since we started!  She fretted, "This was your idea, Mama, and now Daddy will never find us!  We're lost!"

We weren't lost.  Freestone was our leader and knew exactly where we were.  That didn't stop him from playing into Tizzy's worry by telling her we'd have to sleep out there with the deer.  Tizzy loves to be worried and scared.  She's so funny!  The kid loves a good thrill.

Second "round-about" of the day, just Scott and me, getting some perspective on life.  The people that own the land run a spook alley on it, at an area called Kay's Cross, where there's a stone tower.  We ran into some of them packing it up and putting it away.  It sounded terrifying!  They had dug a tunnel that guests have to crawl through after getting into a "coffin."  In the tunnel, "monsters" are hiding in side tunnels to jump out and scare people.  Tizzy might think that's thrilling, but just the idea of it makes my heart race!  I'd rather just go on a walk, thank you!