Last night Gary needed to take our youngest to A and E as she didn’t seem to be using her left arm properly and kept waking up in pain. Because of a chest infection I had to stay at home, and spent a tearful few hours watching the clock move with the slowest tick tocks EVER. He had to wait a couple of hours and then saw a doctor, have her arm x-rayed and then come home. B2 is fine, and the doctors could not see any damage on the X-ray and all seems to be normal today. Gary didn’t get home until 1am and he had to get up at 4 30 am for work. Please would you pray for energy for him and that he doesn’t inadvertently fall asleep whilst operating a piece of heavy machinery! Thank you.
I was given something very special yesterday that completely made my day. I had been planning to use one of my photos and change it to black and white, frame it and hang it in our Little House as a memento of our best summer yet. A couple of days ago I had visited Marie-Claude’s China Blog Marie’s Pastiche. Almost daily there is treasure to be found here. Marie is not a home schooling mum (although in my humble opinion the title was made for her!) but she does lots and lots of extra educational activities with her two daughters. She and her family are spending the whole year experiencing China without so much as an airport in sight! It is a must follow blog! Anyway, she had posted this beautiful old-fashioned photo of her and her daughters all dressed up in olde worlde costumes. The photo was just gorgeous, not in colour but not in black and white either. I left a comment admiring it and thought no more about it.
Meanwhile, without me even having an inkling about it, Marie got busy creating me the following photo. I don’t know how you did it, Marie, but I’m ever so pleased you did! I LOVE it! Here it is, my very own olde worlde picture of our Little House on the Prairie summer:
Isn’t that just AMAZING? Gary and I are going to have it blown up, framed and hung in our living room. Thank you so much Marie, I absolutely love it!
This week we are all ill again! Yes, I’m beginning to think we might be a little run down and need a wee break, and with only one week left until we officially begin our summer holidays, a break is almost upon us! Even ill we managed one or two things.
This was the house at the beginning of the 10 weeks:
And this is it now. I’m using the same photo from last week because absolutely nothing has changed on the outside:
You might recognise this photo as the twin of Marie’s and you’d be right.
And the inside at the beginning:
And now, 9 weeks later:


Gary and T11 have been busy putting up shelves and hooks to store some of our goodies. As a reward for all the hard work the children have done all summer, we bought them a coffee pot and cup set as a surprise. These are proper camping ones, made of enamel and fully useable:

The girls had also asked for hooks by the door to hang their aprons up. We also hung some enamel lanterns procured from my living room. In addition T11 screwed in a large hook to hang the baskets the girls used for the laundry and collecting the vegetables from their kitchen garden:
We placed a battery operated set of fairy lights into the lanterns so that they could be safely used inside the house, negating the need for candles.
A4 has been tending her kitchen garden:
And picking her harvest:
And of course there has been an awful lot of playing:
As I was taking photos for this weeks post I noticed this hanging on one of the hooks by the stove:
I’m not sure it’s clear but it reads:
SPRING CLEANING DAY
Wash clothes
Sharpen pencil (!)
Clean upstairs
Clean downstairs
Collect dry clothes
Then they had proceeded to scribble it all out and had written EVERYTHING in great big hand writing. My children crack me up!
This is essentially my last post in relation to projects done. Next week we shall be having a wrap up Prairie Party in honour of making it through ten weeks of Prairie learning and to celebrate my newly five-year old’s birthday.
For all other posts: http://angelicscalliwagshomeschool.com/the-little-house-on-the-prairie/
I’m linking up to some of these great parties.