Country fun-planting pumpkins and watermelons

 Some of you may remember a few years ago when we decided to plant a garden and ended up with a pumpkin patch instead. Well, we've been saving the seeds from our pumpkins since then and finally decided that this was the year we were going to plant them. 

While we were working on school work one morning, Daniel went down and started preparing the garden spot. Then, in the afternoon, we all loaded up in the buggy and went to help finish smoothing things out and get rid of rocks and sticks.   

Here's the "before" view of our pumpkin patch. Just a tiny bit bigger than the last time.

We made a few rounds with Daniel in the buggy and then hopped out to watch while he finished up.

...you might be a redneck. Ha! Whatever works.

While we were waiting, the kids took pictures next to this big machine thingy. Not sure what it's called, but it's big and it's cool.

Here's a view from the other end.

Butter was on hand to supervise.

Once Daniel had everything nice and smooth, it was time for the kids to get busy ridding the garden of rocks and sticks. I really wanted to help, but I couldn't. SOMEONE had to operate the camera!

This poor tree became the target for flying rocks and sticks.

Sierra kept coming over and saying, "Take my picture with this one!" So I did.

 

 

With all the seeds we had saved from our first "garden" plus the seeds we saved from our Halloween pumpkins last year, we must have planted about a million pumpkin seeds. We also bought some seeds for white pumpkins (casper, I think) and a couple of kinds of watermelons. Yum!

Daniel's grandma said later that she thought maybe you're not supposed to plant watermelons next to pumpkins because the watermelons will take on the flavor of the pumpkins. Oops! I guess we'll find out!

Graduation/promotion

A couple of weekends ago, our homeschool group had a graduation/promotion ceremony to celebrate the end of the school year. It was an exciting day for us because Dakota graduated from 8th grade! It's so hard to believe that I'll have a high schooler next year. I know these next few years are going to fly by. My prayer is that I will remember to take the time to enjoy them before they're gone.

I'm so disappointed with the pictures I got. My camera's batteries were dead, of course, so I was using Cheyenne's little camera. To make things even more difficult to shoot, my kids apparently were nervous and were moving a super speed so they could get off the stage as fast as possible.

Even though they are terrible, I'm going to share what I got anyway. You'll get the idea...

 

Sierra did actually pause and smile, but very briefly. I couldn't quite get the focus right.

Cheyenne stayed on stage the longest. At least it's mostly in focus.

Landon and Dakota were sitting next to me, so I did manage to at least get a picture of them with their certificates.

 

After the ceremony, there was a fun reception. We had a chance to sit and visit with some of the other moms and dads while the kids played in the indoor playground and the gym. I love spending time with our homeschool friends! 

It's been so much fun to watch the group grow this year. When they started, there were four families. By the end of the year field trip, we had over 40 in attendance. 23 students participated in the graduation/promotion ceremony. I can't wait to see what next year holds! We're talking about some co-op classes and even more field trips. It's going to be so much fun!

I'm so proud of these kids! They've worked hard and learned a lot this year!

We still officially have 39 school days left before our (very) short summer break. The first week of September we will begin our new school year with a 9th grader, 6th grader, 3rd grader, and 2nd grader. Wow! I'm so thankful that I have the privilege of being their teacher and their mom! I wouldn't want to do anything else!