Chase, Nolde Forest, and Katy walking

This post is mostly about Chase... 

Here he is showing of his picture of himself at the chicken chase in the paper:

School is going well with him.  He really likes to write the letter "M"... I have to bribe him to write the other letters by saying "once you write these letters then you can write 'M's'", haha!

My schedule has been very helpful and is working out really well for us. I really like the cleaning schedule and it makes housework seem a little less daunting.
We sometimes take run-around-the-room breaks, or jump-on-the-trampoline breaks, or do-a-handstand-on-the-couch breaks :P

We've gone and practiced shooting our bows the last few weekends.  I was trying to get a video of Chase doing his "I hit something with my bow" victory dance but I wasn't able to.  Maybe next time :P

Thursday my friend Ronda and two of her boys went with me to check out Nolde State Forest.  I had never been there before but when we were camping this spring the park ranger at World's End said that it was a really nice park with  an educational center so I wanted to check it out.  It was very interesting.  There was a castle homestead where the Nolde family used to live.  Now it is the park office.  We checked out the castle and then walked on a little path around it, reading the placards along the way.

I don't know how well you can read that but it says that Jacob Nolde planted 500,000 evergreen trees in the 1900s because he wanted to create the "most beautiful pine forest in Pennsylvania".

we found a little garden

the back of the castle:

after we walked around a little we found a map and decided to try and find the saw mill so we cut through the woods, finding a little salamander on the way:

And enjoying the day

All the little trouble makers :P

I think I can officially say Katy is walking now... crawling is still faster for her but she gains more confidence every day and loves trying out her new skill: