I'm taking a break from planning an All Saints' Day party that I'm hosting this Sunday, Nov. 1 with some of our homeschool families to update the blog on some of the Fall fun we've had in the past few weeks.

On Thursday, October 22, (St. John Paul II's feast day) some of our homeschool families met at Hubb's Corn Maze, which is about an hour and a half away from where we live.  This has become an annual tradition and it was so nice that my husband could join in on the fun.  It was a beautiful, fun day!


On Friday, October 23, we celebrated my son's 14th birthday with a camp out in our backyard with a few of his friends.  After playing football and soccer in the backyard, they roasted hot dogs, grilled cheeseburgers and made S'mores in our firepit. And here's the cake my son insisted I make.  I didn't complain about the simplicity of his request compared to the other cakes I've made in the past and  this gets the easiest cake I've "made" award.  :)

Since our backyard campsite was already set up for my son's Friday night camp out, my husband and 2 of my daughters camped out in our backyard on Saturday night.  They enjoyed this special time with their Dad.

If celebrating a birthday and camping out wasn't festive enough, we also celebrated and enjoyed meeting the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia from Nashville, TN that came to visit our parish from Friday, Oct. 23-25.  My family met the two visiting nuns on Friday morning after morning Mass and then my oldest daughter and I were able to chat with them again on Saturday and Sunday as they chatted with the youth and their families about their life and vocation.  It was so wonderful to meet them and be in their presence.  They are so joyful and peaceful and I was really drawn to them.  I could have chatted with them for hours! :)


One of the many questions they answered was about their habit and the significance and beautiful symbolism of each part of the their habit.  Here's a video I took of Sister Peter Marie explaining the Dominican habit:  (I'm having trouble uploading the video to this blog post, but click on the link below to my blog's Facebook page where I have the video)

https://www.facebook.com/tracy.b.smith.14/videos/10206637346630398/

Recently at TAN Homeschool, I was a guest blogger where I wrote a post about some ways our family lives our Catholic faith during our homeschool days.

"I hesitate to write posts regarding our family’s prayer life.  It’s not that I’m ashamed of our Catholic faith or that I don’t want to share the richness and beauty of our faith with others.  Rather, I would not want to make the impression that my family’s prayer life (and my personal prayer life) is as consistent and steadfast as my blog post may portray.
However, I thought I would share 5 ways our family strives to live our faith during our homeschool days in hopes to encourage, support and inspire other families in their faith journeys."..... Read more on my post titled 5 Ways We Live Our Faith.

 Hoping your week is a blessed one!

  

Right now, I am camping in the beautiful NC mountains again with my family so I am taking a much needed blog and Fall break.  The last time we visited here, it was in June 2010, so we are excited to spend some time this Fall season enjoying the beautiful mountain scenery.
I wrote this post a week prior to our camping trip and scheduled it to be published for today.
If you use Blogger for your blog, did you know you can schedule posts to be published on a certain date and time?  This can save some time.   If you didn't know this, all you do is click on "Post Options" at the bottom of your post box.

Then click on "Scheduled at" under "Post date and time". (This will be on the far right side of your screen and looks like this:) 

Post date and time

Automatic
Scheduled at

You can then specify the date and time of day you want any future posts to be published.  Since I will be away from a computer this weekend, I was able to schedule this post prior to our camping trip.

OK enough Blogging 101 from me, who is stilling learning new things every day about blogging.

I hope everyone is having a happy and blessed Fall!  I'll be back to visit the blogosphere soon!
 

What do you get when your daughters and their friend gather art supplies and use their imagination?


One of my blogging friends, Anna-Marie at Life's Adventures, recently posted some awesome sea creatures and scenes made from pumpkins and colorful squash!  Click here to visit her "Autumn is my favorite season" post. (You can click on each photo to make it larger to see the lovely Fall masterpieces.)  Thanks Anna-Marie for sharing these photos!