Things

It is hard to believe that October is halfway over.   This weekend the boys and I are helping the Boy Scouts sell pretzels at Leavenworth's Oktoberfest.  This is one festival I could do without.  My Baptist, legalist, Christian background wants nothing to do with a drunken party.  You won't ever find me in a bar nor working in one, so placing myself and my kids in the midst of a giant, beer-centered festival has been something of a moral dilemma for me.  The festival is advertised as a family-fun event.  Granted we are not in the beer tent but in the vendor area outside of it.  However, 99% of the people coming to our booth are carrying their stein and sloshing their beer around.  The one positive is that both of my boys have stated that they want nothing to do with that lifestyle.  (Just a side note- drinking alcohol is not a sin.  Drunkenness is.  Being controlled by any substance is wrong.  I understand that. So having a beer or drinking a glass of wine is ok.  On the other hand, festivals like Oktoberfest seem to promote drinking to excess and letting all of your inhibitions down, making you vulnerable.)

On the positive side, we are getting the property cleaned up.  My mother-in-law and I have been thinning out our perennials and re-planting them at the property.  Todd mowed down our garden patch and a neighbor has agreed to come out on Monday to till up the soil so that the soil will be that much closer to being ready for next year's garden.  Todd has removed two more truckloads of junk and has had multiple bonfires to get rid of the wood debris.  My dehydrator is full of apples that Todd picked off one of the apple trees.  I hope to pick some more this afternoon.

Also, school is going much better.  We only had one blow-up session this week.  Ask Brian to evaluate and write about the how and why's of a topic and you might as well ask him to fly to the moon.  However, he is getting better at it.  For the most part, he is finishing up his school work by noon and his grades are improving.  BTW according to the Washington state grade school, you have to have a 60% to pass a class.  That is a C in their grade book.  In my school, that was a failing grade.  You had to have a 75% to pass.