Serious Study

Today school at our house added in the three grade school age neighbor grandchildren along with the two preschoolers. Elijah started out the morning with his time and then Esther followed. Joy came over to read to Woody and then she had school with me after Esther finished. Joy (first grade) read and worked on her writing with me. Then came the first of the school sewing lessons. Graham has sewing on Mondays and Tuesdays. Abigail read to Woody during Graham's sewing time. Today I taught him all about seams. We were heading over to his house to sew a few seams when he happened to discover this cicada just emerging from its shell. Now this cicada is different than the ones we had earlier in the summer. The ones earlier were the 17-year-variety with red eyes. I believe that this is the 7-year-variety. Anyway, we decided to put sewing on hold till tomorrow so he could have a science lesson (lessons of the moment)! He enjoyed watching it finally come all the way out of its shell and move to the other side of the railing on their front porch. The whole family enjoyed checking this critter out. When they went in for lunch I sat on their front steps and watched it for a while and enjoyed getting pictures of it and also some pictures of a blue bird family that is living in one of our bird houses. After lunch, Graham brought his school work outside on the porch so he could work on his lessons and keep an eye on the cicada. It has been quite a learning day! I'm hoping that these pictures are clickable...this creature is quite incredible...note his eyes especially when the picture is enlarged. Yes, they are clickable...so be sure to click on them twice to see them huge...the wings on this creature are incredibly beautiful too...we all noticed how much like lace they looked.

Woody got up early as usual and went on a walk. I don't know how far he went and he is at Monday night prayer meeting so I can't ask him. He has been reading a lot today and helped clean up the kitchen. This afternoon after I rested a bit, I went downstairs to make our supper. It is "Crab and Vegetable Bow Ties." Lots of work...lots of dicing of lots of garden veggies...it is good...so guess it is worth all the work...but my back is questioning whether it was worth it at the moment! The kitchen is once again a mess. I'm going to go down and load up the dishwasher and get it running and then "hope" that my other dishwasher will clean up the rest of the dirty dishes that can't go in the dishwasher!