The "Saturday" 7

1. I've been bemoaning my lack of time to read lately. I didn't expect homeschooling to take up as much of my time as it does. Even though it only takes us a few hours each morning, I'm coming to realize those were the hours I usually spent on housework or errands. So now I have to cram that in after lunch. And our kids go to bed so late that I usually don't even come back downstairs until after 9. I can't start a book that late because then I'll stay up all night to finish it. Case in point: yesterday. I have a huge stack of books that I got from the library weeks ago which are rapidly approaching their due dates. I decided it was Saturday night and I could afford to stay up a little bit late. But of course I picked a very suspenseful murder mystery and had to read straight through to the end. I didn't get to bed until 2:00 a.m. Oops. (Hence the lack of a Saturday 7) But I read a book! So now I'm only 15 behind to reach my Goodreads goal. Lol.

2. It was a really good book, too: The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond by Jamie Jo Wright. It's gotten rave reviews in the Christian fiction community, but I've never read anything by her, so I didn't know what to expect. It really surprised me - in a good way! Not only was it a good story with excellent mystery elements that really did leave me guessing, there were also some serious faith elements. This quote kind of blew my mind:

One must fear God for what he can do, while loving Him for what he doesn't do. A contrite heart results in the withholding of discipline in exchange for mercy - and love.

3. I'm still slogging through a particularly bad depressive episode (that makes it sound way more clinical than it is). Usually I have a couple bad days and then I'm back to normal for a couple weeks. This time, it's taking me longer to claw my way back to normal. I think it's partially the weather. I despise being cold. I also think I might be experiencing a little bit of homeschool burnout already. I should've scheduled a break sometime in October. Although we usually end up taking most Fridays off anyway. I'm just extremely irritable and short tempered and moody. It's really getting old.

4. We're going to see another house on Tuesday. It's been beautifully remodeled - down to my favorite color schemes. We wouldn't even have to paint! Haha. But it's a little on the small side, it's a little outside our preferred area, and it's heated by propane which is more expensive than we'd like. But it's a good price and actually has a little bit of acreage. We'll see. I'm learning not to get my hopes up.

5. I tried out my Instant Pot for the first time this week.

I was kind of nervous. All the directions practically scream, "DON'T FORGET TO LOCK IT IN THE SEALING POSITION! DON'T STAND NEAR THE STEAM! MAKE SURE THE LID IS ON TIGHT!" I thought for sure I was going to do it wrong and blow up my kitchen. But it was successful and injury free!

Kind of a weird recipe to start with, I know, but it was the ingredients I had on hand. I don't have an extremely refined palate, but I did really like this burger, and I loved the hands-off cooking method and ease of clean up. I tried cooking frozen ground beef in it on Friday. Despite letting it pressure cook for 32 minutes, my two pounds of ground beef still had pink in the middle. So that was kind of disappointing. But I'm excited to keep trying out recipes with it.

6. We hosted our second annual family fall fest with our small group on Friday. We're blessed to be in an amazing small fellowship group through church, but we almost exclusively meet without our kids. There are 16 of them. Can you blame us? Haha. But we like to get together with the families occasionally. Our house is the perfect for fall activities because of my dad's apple orchard/cider press. Unfortunately, it was kind of a cold, rainy day. But we still managed to pick a bunch of apples and press a dozen or so gallons of cider. And by we, I mean the dads. Us moms and kids helped pick and wash the apples, and the kids watched the pressing the first few times, but eventually we left the hard work up to the dads. Thanks, guys!

Christina picking pensively

I love this one.

Pastor shenanigans - who needs a ladder?

A bit of an optical illusion - I was standing under the tree so the branch with 2 apples was hanging overhead and in front of me. Haha. They're not just suspended in mid-air.

Jared showing the kids how it's done.

Instructing them to chant, "Juice! Juice! Juice!"

Teamwork

Moving on to terrifying hammock rides . . .

Briella sampling the wares pre-pressing

I know this doesn't look like 16 kids. That's because they don't all fit at one table! Christina took some pictures of all of them with her good camera. I'll share those when I get them.

7. Just a few more pictures: