Another November Saturday

Another beautiful November day! John is out in the driveway fixing a vehicle... again. Two kids are away from home... again. But, except for the Krispy Kreme doughnut pickup and delivery earlier this morning for Children's Chorus, I have no pressing Saturday issues- hooray! Of course, I have to clean the house for CARE group, and figure out what to make for CARE group dinner tomorrow, but I've decided to procrastinate and leave those problems for tomorrow. Hooray for procrastination!

John Mark and Becca are at a youth rally called Celebration, and John and Philip went deer hunting this morning. They saw a doe, but John has spent so much time processing John Mark's deer this past week, he is all deered out. Here are the final stages of the sausage-making production:

I believe dad had more "help" than he wanted, and notice Nathanael's inside-out and backwards shirt. We're all about priorities here, and I guess right-side out clothes just isn't one of them. It's possible I told him to go put on a clean shirt and this was his idea of a "clean shirt." Boys! Anyway, after it was all said and done, John got 10 summer sausages out of it, plus a bunch of deer burgers, and I have no idea what he's going to do with those. These are the sausages before they went into the oven. After they're cooked, they really look like summer sausage, and they taste pretty good too, if you like summer sausage.

John is quite proud of his efforts, but he says he will never do this again- way too much work! (What a relief!)

John Mark had a great time working on the campaign in Nashville this past week. His candidate lost to a better-funded incumbent, but the kids got to stay in a very ritzy area, and that was plenty of excitement in itself. The lady whose husband invented foam pool noodles opened her very large, very plush mansion to these kids. The girls all stayed in the rooms upstairs, but the boys all brought sleeping bags and stayed in the fantasy game room downstairs (it's a wonder any of them got any sleep). Apparently, Carrie Underwood lives next door, and the kids got to deliver campaign literature to Carrie's butler- such excitement! The campaign was smart and offered incentives to its teen volunteers, so John Mark came home with gift certificates from Walmart and Starbucks for making the most calls in a certain period of time, etc. He was full of stories to tell when he finally got home last Tuesday night. And that's all we'll say about election night.

In other news: Nathanael has been laid out this week with a double ear infection, but after a round of amoxicillin, he's all better. Just two weeks left in co-op: woo-hoo! We are busy preparing for the medieval feast, and can I just say, that against all expectations, my 4th and 5th graders all learned their lines for their play about St. George and the Dragon, and it's going to be a riot! And finally, I have read The Scarlet Pimpernel, and I just want to know why teachers forced us to read The Scarlet Letter when we could have been reading The Scarlet Pimpernel? Oh, I know, The Scarlet Letter has lots of important themes about sin and guilt and human nature, blah, blah, blah, but The Scarlet Pimpernel? Cloak and dagger and romance- love it! I had the book with me when I took Nathanael to the doctor, and his doctor confessed her high school crush on the Scarlet Pimpernel- too funny!

And I guess that's all for today. I'm off to procrastinate!