Slices of Life

I just love fall!  The crisp cool air, the colors of the leaves, the fresh picked apples, pumpkin spice everything... There are so many wonderful tastes that I associate with fall-- apples, pumpkins, cranberry, pecan, turkey, and squash... and I just love them all. Here are some of my absolute favorite recipes for fall. 1.  Apple pie!   I am pretty particular about apple pie and prefer my mom's recipe (that I once shared here). 2.  Apple crisp.   Apple crisp is a real close second behind apple pie.  I love the crunchy crumbly topping and that fact that it goes together much quicker than apple pie.  When I'm craving warm apple goodness and don't have the energy to  make a pie I turn to apple crisp; but I like mine with extra crumb topping. 3.  Pecan Crusted Chicken. I love the crunch of the pecans with the tender chicken cutlet and that hint of cinnamon just makes this dish perfect for fall! 4.  Leftover Turke...

 We took a week off from our traditional schoolwork and just focused on filling up our days with some fun. We have had some spectacular sunsets and some amazingly warm fall weather too.  Most days the temps are hovering in the mid to upper 80's!  I do miss the fall weather and my jeans and sweaters but I am enjoying the lengthy stay of summer. We were heading to a corn maze on Friday with our homeschooling group.  I could not have picked a more perfect first day of fall activity if I had tried!  We quickly finished up a bit of math, grammar, and reading in the morning and worked together to clean a couple rooms in the house. Alec and I tried our hand at making caramel to make some yummy homemade caramel frosting to top our apple cupcakes with.  Once the caramel was cooled we added powdered sugar to it to make a very yummy frosting. Making caramel  Mixing up the frosting  We headed out to the corn maze and the sky star...

We had so much fun with our quick science experiment on Bernoulli's principle last week that we decided to try another fun experiment this week.  I'm really loving this 100 Days of Science Challenge!  This time we talked all about air molecules, how they move, what makes them speed up and slow down, etc. The only supplies we needed were: empty water bottle latex balloon freezer warm water  First we stretched the balloon over the top of our water bottle and made sure to take note of what both the balloon and the water bottle looked like. Then we stuck the water bottle in the freezer and set the timer for 30 minutes. During the last few minutes of time we filled up the kitchen sink with warm water.  When the timer went off we observed that the water bottle had "shrunk" a bit and the balloon looked like it was being sucked in.   My middle son explained that all the molecules were not moving around as much.  "It's like wh...