Life in the City...Formerly known as Life in the County

Maggie and Big Red

2011-07-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

Maggie has turned out to be an excellent rider. She loves to go fast and jump high. This summer she has been spoiled by Gail. She's working really hard - training horses, bucking hay, mucking stalls, moving pipe and learning to drive a stick shift, and Gail has rewarded her with clinics, dressage and jumping lessons, and horse shows. It's going to be hard getting her home at the end of August.

Big Red is one of the more challenging jumps at Gail's. It is about as large as our dining room table - three feet high by three feet wide. I would be nervous if she didn't make it look so easy!

Horse Camp

2011-07-26T08:26:00.000-07:00

After our trip to the beach, we came home for a few days so I could finish getting my garden planted and then I headed off to Wallowa County with the girls for a week of Horse Camp with Gail. Miss Brown Eyes was already there having ridden back from the beach trip with Gail and Maggie. The girls asked if we could stop at the barn on the way to the house, but as it was already about 9 pm, we headed straight to the bunkhouse and unpacked our stuff.

Early mornings were spent in eager anticipation of riding. Gail took a few girls with her every morning to help with chores, but not all of them as it would have been overwhelming. After breakfast the girls watched Gail, Maggie and her friend, Tay, ride before bringing their horses into the barn and tacking up. I was amazed at how much they retained from their previous riding. They didn't miss a beat.

Sunshine tried out a new horse during the camp and had a blast jumping him on the stadium course.

2011 Beach Trip

2011-07-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

We have been enjoying our summer tremendously. At the end of June we spent a week on the coast while Maggie was at horse camp at the beach. Sunshine's best friend came with us and explored the coast with us while Maggie was at camp. The kids spent hours playing in the sand dunes and body surfed in the ocean despite the cool temperatures. I had fun playing around with the camera trying to get neat silhouettes against the ocean and the kids willing obliged with gymnastic and surfing poses. I took the girls down to the ocean one night to go "star stomping." There are tiny phosphorescent creatures in the tidal puddles on the beach and when you stomp the puddles or gently rub your hand across the wet sand, they glow like tiny floating stars. At first it was a little eerie walking along the beach by the light of the moon, but soon the girls were too excited by the sparks in the sand and the stars overhead to notice how small we felt.

We explored several new beaches along the coast and found some neat places to bring cousins to play when they come out to the west coast. One of the beaches (where Monkey Boy appears to be scaling a cliff) is at the end of a short path that winds through old growth forest. The kids climbed up, over and through the roots and branches of the trees all along the path. At the end of the trail, a beautiful ocean cove lay before us with a sandy beach surrounded by cliffs on either side. We walked over to the tidepools on the edge of the beach and explored a small cave we found, visible only because the tide was out. Of course Monkey Boy and Sculpey Hair marched right in to the cave because it was there and they could. It was a little bit scary to see the tide pool creatures lining the walls and water line above our heads inside the cave. All of the kids had fun climbing out onto the rock wall to make it look like they were scaling the cliffs.

The Good, the Bad, and Everything in Between

2011-05-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

Ok. This is Maggie, because my mom refuses to find time to write ANYTHING on her blog. Probably not her fault, but I'll take over a post anyway. Well...let's see...not as good at coming up with things as all you bloggers out there, but I'll give it a shot.

Our dog died on April 18, totally unexpectedly and it was very sad. She was seven years old and we loved her very much.

We got a new puppy on April 21, Sculpey Hair's birthday. This was a surprise from our amazing neighbors and my dad. My mom, seeing that she couldn't say no to us, instead immediately named the dog Anza, short for Esperanza. She is now almost 12 weeks old and the cutest puppy ever!

Today was the Jogathon and Field Day at our school, and since its a private school everyone was a little bit crazy just because they didn't have to wear a uniform. The middle school (especially 7th and 8th grade) brought face paint, colored sharpies and many different accessories to show their school spirit. The whole school, Kindergarten through 8th grade ran for one hour and got around a total of about 400 laps. Then everyone sat in the bleachers to eat lunch, and some people took naps. Field Day was fun, but long and had a lot of activities. Everyone will sleep well tonight!

It was Sculpey Hair's birthday on the 21st of April. She really wanted a surprise party, so we did our best.

She was very happy with the party, and promptly put herself down for a nap when they all left. Hmmm...maybe there is something to inviting a bunch of little girls over.

Not much else is going on, so I'll just stop here. Maybe tomorrow I'll think of something else to write.

Fresh Paint

2011-02-15T13:22:00.000-08:00

It's been quite a while since I've had a minute to sit down and write something new here. We are busy all day, every day, and it's hard to take the time to sit down and relive what we are barely managing to get through in a day. But today, I am home with a sick kid, Miss Brown Eyes, so I'll take a second and post some photos of my latest project. The girls room was a very lovely bubblegum pink with a baby blue ceiling when we moved in almost a year ago. Pink may be a great color for some people, but not for me. It's been near the top of the list for new paint since we got here, but I haven't had the time or money to do anything about it - until yesterday when I had an unexpected day off with Miss Brown Eyes. Not that I had the money, but I did have paint already from a previous project, so I decided to tie the bedroom, hallway and living room together using the same color. I still have to get some ceiling paint to finish the project.

Last weekend, I redesigned the girls closet and built shelves so they can put away their clothes without my help. (Obviously that was before I knew I would have a day off to paint.) It's nice not seeing their clothes all over the floor after school. I never posted photos of our house when we moved, so I'm included a few of those as well. The living room was antique (a word which here means old and dirty) white and I painted it the same color as the girls room. We haven't done anything to the kitchen yet except to buy appliance and add drawer pulls (which were mysteriously missing), but hopefully I can paint it after school gets out. Last fall, I started rearranging my shrub beds in the front and I'm working on plans for a trellis/fence to block the road. More on that later...  I'm off to fold the heaping pile of laundry I moved to take the living room photo.

The Boys Visit

2010-10-15T19:21:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, we were very fortunate to host a west coast reunion of more than half of the siblings in our family. Our thoughts (but not ourselves) were with Brian and Kara as they set out to run the Portland Marathon in a dumping downpour. We showed up at the end to watch the finish, just as the sun came out. It was a fantastic weekend. The kids did an exposition of their newly invented game, "Moose Ball," named in honor of Uncle Silly Moose. I'll write a post about that later.

We went to the Pumpkin Patch and the kids (mine, of course) picked out the largest pumpkins they could find. They also tried to get in the good graces of the owners by riding the wagons full-tilt down the hill towards pumpkin patch. Tom and the boys helped install some doors in our house. Unfortunately, the photo of them sitting on the circular saw and holding hammers came out blurry. (Don't worry, the saw was unplugged.) Do you recognize the striped shirt, Mom? It took a little while for the littlest cousins to warmup to each other, but once they did, they chased each other around the house and had a good time together.

Clarissa spent an afternoon making fresh-baked pumpkin and apple pies with Sunshine's help. We were too full to eat them after dinner so we had pie and ice cream with homemade whipped cream for breakfast in the morning.

The only bad thing about the weekend was the weather. While we had a great time visiting, I didn't get to take many photos because we were inside most of the time.

Back to School

2010-09-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

This year we have gone through a major change for school. Everyone one is going - including me. After taking classes all summer, I ended up on a waiting list for my fall classes, so instead of getting my prerequisites out of the way, I took a job as an aide in Kindergarten. It's quite a change from what I where I was headed, but I'm enjoying it and I still am planning on applying for the Master's program that starts next summer. After trying without success to enroll the kids in Dante's school district, we ended up with three of them in private school and two in the public school just down the street from us because there was no room for them in the 5th grade.

I'm at the school with three of the kids. So far, they all love school. Sculpey Hair is particularly enthusiastic. When we asked her if she ever talks without raising her hand, she said, "Oh, no! Not EVER! I never talk unless the teacher calls on me." I believe it, too. Every time I pass her in the hall she is marching along, eyes on the back of the person in front of her and her mouth closed with a big smile on her face. There are only 17 kids in Miss Brown Eyes' class and she loves it too. The kids are definitely being challenged and it feels good to have somebody else being responsible for them all day long. We are considering enrolling the twins there as well, but in the fourth grade because there isn't room in fifth. I think the work would be challenging enough for them and it would be a good chance for them to get a better grasp of some of the subjects they struggle with - mainly Math for both of them, writing for Monkey Boy and spelling for Sunshine. And there is a lot more writing and higher expectations at the private school. We are trying to decide this weekend. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. We've gone over the pros and cons, and the only con we can come up with is that they might be the oldest kids in their class until they get into high school.

What's Happening in the Backyard

2010-08-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

The kids have found a new use for ratchet straps... tree-climbing harnesses. They've moved beyond just pulling themselves up into the tree with the ratchet straps. You can't really see the elaborate harness system that they are wearing in these photos. Now they can also rappel down from the tree once they've pulled themselves up.

They've also cornered the market on sheer curtains and tarps to build multi-roomed nomadic homes. The remaining blackberries are getting ripe, and there is a fire pit in the backyard, so now we are just waiting for them to move out there for the rest of the summer.

Crash Course in Botany

2010-06-06T21:34:00.000-07:00

Cornus kousa "Rosabella"

Yesterday, I started writing about Botany because the kids suggested it, but my post made a dramatic turn to the mud pit in the back yard, so I'll try again. As I mentioned we have done some experiments, including this one which made our neighbors wonder what was going on over here. All they could see was something like this:

We had read that deciduous trees transpire about 90 percent of the water they absorb through their roots. They lose their leaves in winter because there isn't a lot of moisture in the ground and they would essentially become dehydrated through transpiration. Coniferous trees don't transpire as much because they need to conserve moisture in order to keep their leaves year-round.

Our experiment was to compare the amount of water transpired by two deciduous and two coniferous trees. We were not surprised that the bags on the apple and maple trees collected plenty of water. Nor that the bag on the rhododendron didn't have a single drop. (That was Monkey Boy's tree, and he was very disenchanted with the experiment because he didn't think his tree was cooperating.) But we were all surprised by the large quantity of water that was in Sculpey Hair's bag on the pine tree. It was really clear, too. We never did figure out why.

Homeschooling has not been very exciting this year. Usually we take lots of hikes and field trips, but this year we moved and drove across country and back, worked on our house, moved again, and moved some more. So last week, for a change in our routine, I took the kids on a field trip to the Arboretum. I brought along a picnic, some Tree ID forms I'd made, and several books to help us identify plants. Right of the bat, Miss Brown Eyes got stung by a bee - next to the first tree she looked at. Thankfully, she is not allergic to bees and once she pressed a metal water bottle to the bee sting, she was able to go on. This is what the forms looked like:

The first two are laminated and give information to help fill out the last form. I modified a form I got from Grampa's papers to make a kid-friendly one (as long as you have the cheat sheet to go with it). Sunshine and Monkey Boy posed for studious-looking photos next to the trees they identified. Sculpey Hair is standing in front of a tree that I wanted to dig up and bring home with me - it's called Tall Stewartia. I'll have to get one at a nursery instead, as well as the beautiful dogwood at the top.

After the kids each filled out a form, they did a scavenger hunt where they had to find a certain shaped leaf or leaf margin. It was a lot more interesting for them to have to match leaves to the shape they were looking for, rather than just filling out the form. It really made them look carefully at all of the plants too. The next time, we'll do the scavenger hunt first and I'll keep certain trees in mind when I'm telling the kids what to look for.

Backyard "Survivor"

2010-06-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

This year for science, we have been studying Botany. The phrase, "Get your Botany notebooks out!" is typically followed by a course of groans and loud vocal complaints. Sunshine always asks, "Why can't we do Astronomy?" She has forgotten that last year, she hated Astronomy. Part of the problem is that it has been raining, tropical storm-style, for the entire winter and the forecast for the coming weeks looks bleak. It has been hard to get outside for hands-on learning because we haven't had very many sunny days (and I'm not a big fan of rain and mud). We have been able to do a few things, like planting some of the garden and practicing tree identification in our yard. We've also done some of experiments - comparing transpiration between coniferous and deciduous trees and starting seeds in different environments, but nothing really exciting.

Sunny days have been so rare that, instead of delving into Botany during the occasional sunshine, I try to get outside and work as long as possible, while the kids take it upon themselves to dig as many holes as possible. In fact, after listening to the book Holes, by Louis Sachar, the kids decided to turn the partially cleared blackberry patch into Camp Green Lake. Armed with shovels of varying lengths, they went out to dig their holes - as deep and as wide as their shovels are tall. The photo on the left must have been when they were cleaning up because Monkey Boy is wearing socks and neither child is filthy. Hmm. I'm sure those socks never made it back in the house either.

After re-enacting Holes for several days, they decided to join forces and dig one hole. A really big one. When I went out to check on their progress, I found Monkey Boy knee-deep in a hole, a very large, heart-shaped hole. A heart half-full of water. For me. The girls were perched on the edge of the pond, as it was now a pond and no longer just a hole, grinning proudly at their creation.

Work on the pond was suspended for another week of rain, but yesterday, the sun finally made an appearance. Now, the pond was brim-full of clear, tempting, water and the sun was shining. Dante took the kids to a basketball game in the morning while I worked around the house - moving the goats around to clean-up weeds in various parts of the yard, burning brush piles and mowing the lawn. As soon as they got home, the kids started begging to go swimming in their pond. I was reluctant, but they persisted, so I passed the buck to Dante, and he said he didn't care. As long as they promised to clean-up after themselves, and not bring all of the mud into the house, they could swim.

It started out tamely enough. Kids in swimsuits playing with Legos in a puddle.

Pretty soon they took the plunge.

Then, things got really messy.

Doesn't this look like fun, Mom?

With the Blackberry Trails, Mud Pit, and eager participants, we have could our own version of Survivor.

It looks like the Lego guys don't mind the muddy surf either.

The swim in the mud pond reminded me of when Jack took us swimming at one of the ponds at the Turkey Farm. It was so mucky and covered with pond scum, no one wanted to venture in, even though it was a broiling, sticky-hot, August day. I'd wager that my own kids wouldn't have minded the revolting feeling of muck and green slime on their bodies, if it meant they could go swimming on a day when the sun merely made an appearance. Digging and swimming in a mud hole is definitely not Botany. Do you think I could call it earth science and physical education?

City Chicks

2010-06-04T22:54:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, I made a trip back to the county with Maggie to drop her off at Horse Camp for the summer. She is going on a week-long trip to the beach with our good friend, Gail, and has a couple of jobs riding horses to pay for her trip. Imagine that. Getting paid to ride horses. She's a lucky kid, I think. Gail let all of the kids ride while we were there. They have all grown about four inches since we moved it made riding easier for them. Sculpey Hair was finally tall enough to use a saddle and was able to trot around the arena on Noah by herself. She was very proud. Sunshine was thrilled to ride Danser again and would have spent the entire time cantering around the arena if we'd let her.

The day before we left, Gail asked if Sunshine could spend a week there as a working student. She could see the longing look in Sunshine's eyes, and possibly hear the fit Sunshine threw about being old enough to be a working student, and it not being fair that Maggie always got to ride and she never did. Of course, Sunshine was thrilled to be able to stay. Gail is such a gift to us and never wants to see any kid disappointed. We love her like family and feel very fortunate that Maggie is able to stay with her this summer.

While we were staying at Gail's, I brought the kids to the farm up the road from our house, where we used to get raw milk. I had forgotten about all of the chickens we brought up to the farm when we moved, but apparently they had not. While I was visiting and looking at gardens and new farm animals, and getting caught up on what we'd missed since we'd left, the kids were traipsing all over the farm rounding up the little banty hens we'd left there. Ducky, Sapphire, Isabella, Opal and Pretty Boy soon found themselves locked up in a broken cat carrier. With the exception of Pretty Boy, (no roosters allowed in the city limits), we brought the hens back to the west side. Somewhere along I-84, Isabella laid an egg and there was quite a racket in the back of the Suburban.

Dante was not at all surprised to see the bantys show up at the house. We had been talking about getting chickens again as soon as we had something built for them, and having chickens camped out in a cat carrier was a good motivation to get the project started. We looked up several designs for chicken tractors on the web and decided to make something small enough to fit in the rows of the garden. Let the chickens take care of the weeds, bugs, and slugs.

Framing the Chicken Tractor

We used 2x4x10' lumber for the rails. The little coop is about 33" wide and 36" long and 40" tall. The run in front is about 7" long 40" tall and is covered with chicken wire. The front is not finished yet. The roll of chicken wire is temporary until we build a gate so we can access the water and empty compost into their run. The back will also have a door on it when it's finished so the coop will be dry and the chickens won't be able to sneak out the cracks. (And the kids won't chase them into the road). We used metal roofing that we salvaged from the dump and cedar fence boards for siding. We may cut the roof back at some point, but for now it's fine. The bantys will have shade in the summer and (hopefully) a dry place to hang out in the winter.

The mostly finished coop sitting in the front yard.

Isabella inspecting the nest boxes.

It will get moved into the garden as soon as it's finished, but for now it is sitting in the new shrub bed that I'm putting in front of the house. The chickens have done a good job cleaning up the grass clumps that were left from the tiller. And while the chickens are cleaning up the yard and getting rid of slugs for us, the goats (on loan from a co-worker of Dante's) are taking care of the blackberries and ivy that are threatening to take over the side yard, in front of the house. They are a bit of pain and constantly get tangled up with each other, but they are doing a nice job of keeping the jungle-look down. I have the goats tethered to some big logs that have the centers hollowed out so they can entertain themselves by climbing up on the logs. So far, our neighbors haven't minded our little urban farm.

Fun and Games

2010-05-03T08:07:00.000-07:00

Watching the kids make inroads on the blackberries helped me decide that cleaning up the blackberry thicket was a project I could handle without the help of Jack and a small backhoe. After thinking about it for a little while, I went out and bought a machete and started attacking the blackberries. So far, there are no pictures of my assault on the thicket, but I have made some progress. I freed a beautiful vine maple, rescued the lower branches of a sweet gum tree and am starting to see the branches of a completely buried plum tree.

Swinging the machete around apparently gave the kids ideas for some new games. They disappeared down Hunca Munca and emerged a little while later with various weapons. "We're playing Chronicles of Narnia, Mom!" After Sunshine crafted a bow from a bent stick and a scarf from her American Girl doll, Monkey Boy ran into the house and came out with the strings off of the apron I'd had since I was little. "But, Mom! Sculpey Hair said it was hers and she didn't care if I cut them off!" One rollerblade per child completed the ensemble.

Here they are taking aim in an archery contest - a Robin Hood-esque version of the Chronicles of Narnia. I think the rollerblades take the place of horses.

Soon, they noticed that I had a fire going in the back yard and they dropped their weapons to help me with my attack on the blackberries. Don't worry, Mom. They aren't allowed anywhere near the machete.

A Fresh Start

2010-05-02T13:27:00.000-07:00

We moved back into our house on the west side and spent a couple of months painting and remodeling, getting the house ready for the market. When it did't sell as quickly as we had hoped, we moved out again and rented it out again. We were fortunate to have generous friends who turned one of their bedrooms into a dorm room for us. Dante rented a room near Portland and came down to see us on the weekends. What was going to be a few weeks in transition stretched into a few months with all of us anxious to make the move to a new house. We finally settled on a house on almost an acre just outside of the city, in need of a little work but not too much. After nearly two stressful months of waiting for the closing, we got the keys. The kids and I brought load after load of stuff out of storage and across town on our trailer.

The photos above are from our first visit to the house. I didn't realize how big the yard was until I saw that the kids playing in it looked small. The photo on the right is looking towards the back of the property where there is about 1/4 of an acre completely overgrown with blackberries.

For the first couple of weeks the kids were content with exploring around the yard and climbing the huge maple tree just beyond the patio. At first they used a ladder to get into the tree, but now they have made a rope ladder with knots so they can get up to the first branch. Sunshine is particularly adept at climbing. Can you see her about halfway up the tree on the left?

From the tree, the kids made their way to the blackberry thicket where they began to disappear for long stretches of time, once they were done with school for the day. Dressed in boots, long pants and fleece jackets and armed with gloves and shovels, they began to tunnel into the blackberries to make paths with names like Hunca Munca, Beaver Dam and Triple Black Diamond.

Soon they began to emerge with "treasures" hidden deep in the thicket. This chain driven small lawn mower was the first. Monkey Boy proudly lugged the motor across the yard while the girls took turns pushing each other on the tractor. With our friend Kevin's help, Monkey Boy got the chain off and that sparked a whole new set of games involving the cart, a skateboard, bikes and some ratchet straps.

Almost Home

2010-05-02T12:25:00.001-07:00

As you can imagine, despite the lapses in my writing, we did make it back to Oregon. We had a beautiful drive through Lolo Pass in Idaho, the famous escape route of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians as they fled from the soldiers. We stopped for a relaxing picnic along the way and the kids enjoying swimming and rock art while Jack read his book and napped.

And then, with brakes smoking and the smell of burnt rubber filling our nostrils, we drove very slowly down the Rattlesnake grade and very slowly back up again on the Oregon side. Revisiting the job at the end of the road made me grateful that Dante had already started his new job outside of Portland and more than a little sad that we could no longer call the county home.

Yoga Poses above Chief Joseph Canyon on Hwy. 3 in Oregon.

We stopped in the county for a few days to finish getting our things together for the move back to Western Oregon. The kids and I took Jack to over favorite spots - Gail's barn, the sandy end of the lake, 25 cent ice cream at R&R, Carolyn's house to harvest potatoes - really big potatoes. Maggie had several horse shows and events planned and she stayed behind while Jack and I and the others drove the truck and Suburban to the west side. Almost home.

Sleeping Under the Stars in Montana

2010-04-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

Our destination for the day was the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Great Falls, MT. It was a beautiful day with blue skies and sunshine and the interpretive center was a lot of fun. There were loads of hands-on activities for the kids because it wasn't a museum with the real artifacts, but a place to learn more about Lewis and Clark's trip. Everyone got to try on little Pompey in his cradle board - and let me tell you he wasn't as light as you might think. Sacajawea must have had an incredibly strong neck.

You can see that the papoose is nearly as tall as Sculpey Hair.

The "Parle" exhibit was one of their favorites. You could listen to a discussion as it was translated from English into French, Hidatsa and Shoshone. The other favorite was the horse head where you could practice bridling a horse in Indian fashion.

A creative use of pulleys and weights on this display gave us a a chance to see how it felt to pull a loaded dug-out up the river. At the paltry rate we managed to pull, we would have made only three miles a day.

We ended our visit in the dress-up room where, if you know my kids, we spent most of our time. There were so many outfits to try on and so many things to act out. I think Sacagewea is standing there sans Pompey with some sheep in the photo below. Since we've gotten home, the girls have been playing Indians and occasionally I'll hear Sculpey Hair calling her friend, "Hey Sac! Co'mere!"

Monkey Boy really wanted to help haul this boat up the hill.

We had a very late lunch after leaving the Interpretive Center. By this time in the trip, we had run out of the many pounds of chicken I cooked before leaving New York, so it was ham and cheese or peanut butter and jelly for lunch. I fixed sandwiches in the parking lot and then we wandered over to the Missouri River overlook.

After lunch we drove for a little while, looking for a place to camp out for the night. As we were in Montana, we wanted to fulfill a lifelong dream of Jack's. "Someday I'm going to sleep under the stars in Montana." Unfortunately, the perfect spot we found did not come with electricity for the sleep apnea machine. We drove on and looked and drove and looked some more. By the time we find a campground, it was getting dark. It was not how we had pictured sleeping under the stars in Montana, but we set up camp anyway - sans tents - and everyone slept under the wide open Montana sky.

Flight from Culbertson

2010-04-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

Setting up Camp - Oblivious to the Backdrop

So, I left of my story at the best part. At least the best part when you are retelling a story, but not the actual event. That's where your listener shakes her head in disbelief, as if the thing you are retelling couldn't possibly have happened. But it did.

Remember, a couple of months ago when I entered my last blog and it ended with something like, "The whistle of the train lulled us to sleep." Well, in the wee hours of the next morning, the screeching, howling sound of the concrete batch plant we were sleeping next to jolted us from what little sleep we had managed. It was as if someone had set off the burglar alarm in our kitchen and we didn't know how to shut it off - but that's another story. I lay in bed listening to the amplified sound of fingernails on a blackboard for a little while, wondering what could possibly make such an awful sound. When the train went by at 4:30, I gave up on sleep entirely. In addition to the train whistles and the horrible screeching sound of the concrete plant, there were no fewer than 20 trucks lined up, idling their engines, and waiting for their load of concrete. I'm not sure what time Jack woke up, but it was before me. And despite all of the outlets for his sleep apnea machine, he didn't get a whole lot of sleep either.

As you can see, it was pitch black when we woke up. The two photos at the bottom are deceivingly light. I used the flash on the camera and it washed out the colors of the sunrise. If you look to the left of the concrete plant, you can see the train whizzing by. Despite all the noise, I still had to wake the kids up to get them ready to go. Maggie and Monkey Boy helped Jack take the tents down while I crammed all of our sleeping bags and pillows into the big orange bag on the trailer. We skipped breakfast with the promise of convenience store hot chocolate if everyone cooperated and got into the car. We loaded the trailer and got on the road in record time and, as we drove out of Culbertson, we stopped at and got hot chocolates for Jack and the kids and a giant coffee for me.

Montana. The landscape changed dramatically from the fields of wheat, soybeans, sugar beets and bright sunflowers of North Dakota to the dry, shrubby sage covering both sides of Highway 2 in Montana. To the south of the highway, we could see the cottonwood trees that marked the meandering path of the Missouri River. After a couple hours of driving, we pulled into off the road at a Historical Marker for a late breakfast. While the kids sat on the trailer eating bowls of cereal, I put the rest our things away from our flight out of Culbertson in the morning.

To the Red River Valley and Beyond

2010-01-16T19:29:00.000-08:00

We crossed the Red River into East Grand Forks, MN today and the kids checked out the flood marker next to the river. In the record breaking flood of 1997, the river crested at 54.4 feet. They also found some statuary to climb on at Cabela's and we went into the store to look at the fantastic display of North American birds and mammals.

We walked across the bridge to the North Dakota side of the Red River while Jack went to get the car. My good friend Carolyn grew up in Grand Forks, so the kids tried to show how excited we were to be here. I think they did a pretty good job expressing themselves!

Spent the night at Devil’s Lake State Park in North Dakota en route to Rugby, ND, the geographical center of North America. The park was a bit off the main highway, but our other camping choice was Jan’s Stall Mall and RV Park which sounded suspiciously like a ¼ acre lot on the side of the highway. Devil’s Lake turned out to be a very nearly deserted state park with lots of room for the kids to roam and a large playground the kids had to themselves. We set up the tents and Jack’s sleep apnea machine, then built a fire to cook hotdogs and roast marshmallows. It marked the first time on our trip, coming and going, that we made it somewhere in time to stop and enjoy a campfire. After dinner, the kids took luxuriously long hot showers after Maggie discovered the double shower head in the handicap shower. We read another chapter of the Mysterious Benedict Society together before turning off the headlamp and sending Monkey Boy to his tent.

In the morning we set off for Rugby in order to stand in the center of North America and also to pick up Jack’s prescription at the post office. Sunshine woke up on the wrong side of the tent and was struggling to keep her composure as we traveled. We skipped around the tall stone cairn naming all of the countries in North America and then South America. “Uh, Mom.” Maggie said, “Aren’t we in the center of North America? Why are we singing the countries in South America too.” Oh, right. My mistake.

Traveling Cross-Country in Style

Jack’s package was waiting for him at the Post Office on 2nd Street, having just arrived that morning. Now we were free to go north to the International Peace Park on the border of North Dakota and Manitoba. On the way north, at the gateway to the Turtle Mountains, we passed a giant turtle made from tire rims and made a quick U-Turn to get a closer look.

You didn't think we'd just drive by it did you?

North of Highway 2, the landscape changed almost immediately from large expanses of hay fields to rolling hills (I guess in North Dakota they are considered mountains) and large fields of sunflowers. The kids were still keeping it together in the backseats while keeping an eye out the windows for signs for the International Peace Park. We drove past the US Customs booth and the border and then hung a left into the park. At the tower outside the Peace Chapel, the kids immediately began collecting a large pile of rocks to bring with us. Large rocks. No thank you. The rocks have to stay here I told them. Sunshine, already struggling because she was woken up too early, resumed her sulk. The kids posed briefly for photos of themselves straddling the border of the US and Canada. We ate lunch at the Peace Garden and laid our tents out to dry in the early afternoon heat.

Crossing the line between North Dakota and Manitoba, Canada

Getting back into the US proved to be more of an adventure than we’d planned. Apparently, when we passed the US customs booth, we were actually leaving the country, even though we didn’t go through the Canadian customs booth further down the road. “Can I see some identification please.” And then, “Do you have birth certificates for the children.” When I couldn’t produce any birth certificates, or any ID at all for the kids he had me write all of the names and birthdates on a slip of paper so he could enter their info into his computer. Then he asked me to pull forward so he could have a look in the back. As I pulled forward I was thinking, please don’t let everything fall out when I open the door, or worse yet, make me unpack the back only to have to reload it again. And don’t even ask me about the Christmas Attic on top of the Suburban - we’ll be here all day. Fortunately, it didn’t take too long. The kids all got to say hello to the Custom’s Official and they can officially say they’ve all been to Manitoba now.

About thirty seconds after leaving the border we pulled over for a photo op next to the North Dakota sign.

We drove along ND 5, passing hundreds of acres of sunflowers and numerous sloughs full of sparkling blue water and ducks, egrets and blue herons. As we dropped south towards Hwy 2, the land changed to great expanses of wheat fields. We tried to keep the doors closed and the kids happy so we could make it to Montana for the night.

We found a municipal park in Culbertson, on the westernmost side of Montana to camp for the night. Dante and I had stayed there before with some of the kids and I recognized it when we pulled in and saw the large playground and covered picnic tables. There were also about 12 outlets for Jack’s sleep apnea machine so things looked good…

About an hour later, the mosquitoes and gnats came out to join us and things went downhill from there. I got the stove out to heat up baked beans to go with the roast chicken I had picked up at the grocery store. About five minutes after I got the burner going, I came back to check on the beans and discovered I was out of propane. While we ate roast chicken and cold beans with bread, Jack headed out with the Suburban to pick up some ice and bug spray. He returned an hour later with popsicles for everybody. There was not a drop of bug spray to be found so we all went to bed. A blasting train whistle lulled us to sleep.

Big Iron 2009

2010-01-09T10:31:00.000-08:00

Sculpy Hair took a photo of everyone after one of our many stops of the day...

On the third day of our trip, we made it to Gwinner, North Dakota where Jack had made arrangements for a tour of the Bobcat factory. Unfortunately, you could only go on the tour if you were 18 or older, so after watching the safety video in the lobby, the kids and I left to find a nearby park. While the kids played, I cleaned out the car and rearranged books, blankets and pillows to make it more comfortable - for me! I can't stand it when the car is a mess! I pulled the tents and wet towels out of the camping bag and laid them out in the sun to dry. Maggie helped me get out the lunch stuff - the rest of the chicken salad, PB and J and a can of Pringles and then I made sandwiches. By the time I was done with clean-up, it was time to head over pick up Jack. He was waiting out in front toting a large bag of treats for the kids. While he waited in the car with the kids, I ran into the mail room at Bobcat at picked up a small matchbox Bobcat for Monkey Boy to play with in the car and a couple of larger ones for Christmas presents.

Jack and I consulted the atlas briefly and decided against going to Bismarck in order to visit Bonanzaville in Fargo and a few other sites along Rte. 2 in the northern part of the state. After a stop at a convenience store for bathrooms and water, we drove along the back roads to Fargo admiring the acres of nodding sunflowers. In the back seats, the kids were relatively quiet having had a chance to get some of their energy out before the car ride.

The GPS led us on a circuitous route to the campground, which turned out to be a small spot on the grass in the middle of the Big Iron 2009 show at the Red River Valley Fairgrounds in West Fargo. After setting up the tents, Jack took all of the kids and headed over to see the tractor pull. Naturally. They were excited to see that one of the tractors in the pull was one we had seen the day before being hauled down the highway in front us.

I didn't take any photos at the tractor pull, but I found some online so you can get an idea what goes on at one - lots of noise and smoke from the tractors as they attempt to pull a sled with weights up to 65,000 lbs. As the tractor moves along, a series of pulleys move the weight to the front of the sled's axles increasing resistance the farther it is pulled. The goal is to pull the sled the farthest. After the tractor pull, we had a chance to walk around and meet the drivers and see their tractors.

In the morning we walked back to the Big Iron Show to explore a little bit more. Jack took Monkey Boy with him and the girls and I set off to see the sights. If they had their way, we would have left with the enormous tractor they were sitting in and a calf house for each of them. I really liked the giant woodstove that sits outside the house and is big enough to heat a barn.

North Dakota

2010-01-07T22:12:00.000-08:00

Initially, the kids were not too thrilled about spending several days roaming around North Dakota. They voiced their opinions very loudly and repeatedly... "Can't we go back to Park City, Utah and try out ski jumping instead? "Let's just drive back to the county so we can ride horses." "How 'bout we stay at the Best Western for a couple of days. They've got a pool!"

I tried to impress on them that spending time with Grandpa Jack was really special. "It's not every day you get to drive across the country with your grandpa."

We stopped for lunch at a rest stop along the highway in Minnesota and Jack and Monkey Boy headed off to see a Bobcat tractor trailer in the parking lot. Somehow, Jack ended up meeting a truck driver who had immigrated from Germany to Canada. They talked and the kids asked if they could see inside the truck. Before any of us knew it, there were five kids checking out the bed in the back of the truck cab - a large bunk bed. They visited with the driver for a little while and tried out all of the bells and whistles in the cab. Jack went back to the car and returned with a bag of Belly Flops for the driver as a thank-you for letting us invade his truck.

As we crossed Minnesota, I entered Fargo, ND as our destination into the GPS. The kids counted down the minutes until we got the border and everyone cheered when we crossed the state line. And guess what we saw...

That's right...sugar beets!

To be honest, this is not the exact sequence of events, as I did not keep a journal of the entire trip, but it was something along these lines. We passed a giant pile of sugar beets piled next to a processing plant and then saw a farmer out in the field pictured above. I got off at the closest exit and then backtracked to the field with the farmer and the sugar beets. The kids were thrilled to be let out of the car. They had been hearing about sugar beets and potatoes for a good portion of the trip and were happy to finally get out and do something about it.

The farmer explained how the beets were harvested - first a mower chops the green tops of the sugar beets, then the harvester comes along and rotary tines turn the beets out of the soil and up into the basket. Then there was something about a ferris wheel ride up to the elevator. He let the kids dig up a sugar beet so they could see what it looked like. When he was finished, Sculpey Hair instructed the others on the finer points of sugar beets, their nutritional content, fertilizer requirements and the controversy surrounding the use of the RoundUp Ready Beet seed.

We camped near Fargo that night and made arrangements for Jack to visit the Bobcat Factory in Gwinner, ND in the morning.

Return to Oregon

2010-01-02T21:36:00.000-08:00

Hanging out on the Welcome to Ohio sign

After a long hiatus from blogging, I am going to attempt to catch you up on what we've been doing since we left NY. I tried to keep a diary of our trip west with Dad, but it went mainly something like this...

Rolled out of bed early this morning and started taking down camp. Got breakfast out for the kids and woke them up to come out and eat. Sunshine still sleeping. Put away everyone's sleeping bags and mats. Sunshine still sleeping. Moved Sunshine and rolled up her mat and took her pillow. Relocated Sunshine to the car amidst sleepy protests. Warned everyone not to go anywhere near her. Sent the kids off to the bathrooms to get ready for the day. Began the drive...Sunshine not cooperating. No one can sit anywhere near her. Tears and complaints are sending me over the edge.

Two hours into the drive...Sunshine finally recovering from her 7 am wake-up. Now Monkey Boy is needling Sunshine. Crying commenced again!

Three hours into the drive...Finally done with crying and fighting for the morning. MB and Sunshine are fooling around. Must be time for lunch...

Our first stop was the Jelly Belly Factory just outside of Chicago. After leaving NY at a reasonable hour, we arrived in Illinois around 9 and pressed on through the city in order to avoid city traffic in the morning. Unfortunately, there were no campgrounds to be found within 60 miles of the city, so we ended up setting up camp in the dark, close to 11 pm. Most remarkable in all of this was the fact that Jack was still awake and DRIVING!

After a tour of the factory, the kids hung out at the tasting counter and waited patiently while the attendant handed out samples. She had a special serving spoon to scoop out sample beans - one bean at a time - so we were there for quite a while. There were really neat mosaics made out of Jelly Bellies - about 10,000 beans per mosaic. Before we left, Jack picked up a box of Belly Flops and a few other treats. Later in the day we stopped for a cheese and bread picnic in Wisconsin. The kids also tried to get some milk from an obliging cow.

Getting By

2009-07-15T22:09:00.000-07:00

It's been a little crazy here this summer. Ever since Dante's position was cut at school, we've been scanning EdZapp, an online resource for teaching positions, and compiling letters of recommendation, teaching documents, resumes and insightful answers to application questions. In addition to looking for a teaching job, we've also taken on a variety of completely unrelated jobs in order to get by. Dante is doing some type of supervision for adult foster care, repairing siding on a barn, driving to the airport three hours away to pick up clients for a rafting business and heading off to interviews as they come up. Tomorrow he's getting paid to raft down a river - I hope he can steer the raft okay so he doesn't lose the job! Meanwhile, I have been doing landscaping work for a friend of ours, housesitting (and cleaning tanks and feeding fish at their fish hatchery, watering plants, cat sitting and caring for chickens - including one who is vision-impaired), tutoring a 2nd grader, updating websites, making bread to sell, baking for a concession stand at a horse show, moving pipe every moring at 6am and trying to keep the kids fed and the house clean. We also had friends from the west side visiting us for a week and helping out with our wide variety of jobs. We were very sorry they had to leave - I'm not sure how long we can keep up this juggling act without them.

Here are a few photos of the past week. It's 10:30 and I have to get up early, so photos are all you'll get from me for now.

Two of Speckles' eggs hatched this week and Miss Brown Eyes and Z spent an afternoon playing with them.

I helped organize a family hike last week and about 20 kids hiked up to the top of the moraine.

It's worth the hike for the view from the top. This is also where we watched the fireworks and camped out on the Fourth of July. Our camping trip ended abruptly at about 4 am when all the stars went out and the wind started blowing ominously. We debated for a while whether it was worth waking up 8 sleeping kids to avoid getting stuck out in a thunderstorm. We made it home by 5:30 am and then spent the rest of the day helping my neighbor get her hay in before the rain hit. It was a great feeling to sit in a barn full of hay and watch the storm hit.

Sculpey Hair is doing a summer camp with the rest of the kids this week. I am leading hiking groups with a friend of mine so all of our kids get to be in the camp. Sculpey Hair has really been enjoying herself and feels very grown up about going off to camp.

Last weekend was the kids' horse show. I did a concession stand for the show and spent several days and nights making food and organizing everything. We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast and grilled chicken sandwichs with guacamole for lunch and made enough money to pay for groceries for a week or so, as well as the entry fees for the show.

Maggie got to ride two horses in the show because she's helping train a horse for one of the younger pony club kids. She was doing great on this horse until stadium jumping when he tried to take off with her, but I think she learned a lot from her experience.

Sunshine decided not to jump this time and stuck with a dressage test. She got a great score and was very pleased with her performance.

Miss Brown Eyes did the grasshopper level and did a dressage test and jumping. She did a great job and looked very cute in her show outfit.

It's now 11:00 pm and 5:45 will be here before I know it. Thanks for all of your encouragement in the job search and for your morale boosting phone calls. We made it through another month! Hope we can keep up this pace.

Happy Father's Day

2009-06-21T10:52:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to think of appropriate topics to write about for Father's Day. Fishing would have been perfect, bringing back memories of pulling sunfish, scarcely larger than minnows, out of the river, but I covered that one recently. How tall is the corn? Another great topic, but mine is barely out of the ground and there are no corn fields around here to stage photos of the kids in. Writing about a month of weather like western Oregon in winter would only be complaining, although I haven't really minded it too much until the past few days.

But yesterday, we went to an old schoolhouse near the school at the end of the winding road for a demonstration of pioneer skills, and Dad would have really enjoyed it. So I'll post some photos of our day.

The girls tried out the treadle sewing machine and practiced making patterns with the needle on paper. It took a little practice to get it going in the right direction. Maggie also tried her hand at quilting and found it challenging to get her stitches even and straight. We watched the mules plowing and hoped for a chance to try it ourselves, but we didn't get to.

The kids tried their hand at candle-making and felting and we sampled a delicious dutch oven meal of chicken, beans, corn bread and sour dough bread. Somebody was making charcoal in a pan over a fire and we used several sticks of it for drawing. There was also butter-making and wheat grinding, but since we already do that at home, the kids weren't impressed.

If Monkey Boy had been with us, he would have been combing the grounds for artifacts left over from pioneers for us to bring home. He might also have convinced the men who were plowing to give him a ride, or the tractor driver to let him drive the tractor for the tour of the town. But MB and Dante are on a fishing trip in central Oregon, so they missed out this time. They are celebrating Father's Day by fly-fishing with friends from the west side.

Happy Father's Day Padre! We hope you make it out to visit us soon. Sleeping under the stars in the county beats Montana's Big Sky any day!

Fishing Derby

2009-06-11T22:00:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, Dante took the kids to a free fishing day. The ODFW released about 1,000 fish into a local pond so everyone could really enjoy a day of fishing. And Dante was such a good sport about it. Most of the time he was untangling lines and helping the kids bait their hooks. Sunshine figured out casting and came in 2nd place in the casting contest. She came home with a new tackle box for her prize. Monkey Boy would have done a little better if he didn't already know how to cast. He sent the line sailing over the fence and missed his target by about 100 feet.
I met Dante and the kids at the pond after they'd already been there for several hours. I helped Miss Brown Eyes cast out her line because she hasn't gotten the hang of it yet. She caught a few fish while I was there and Sculpey Hair reeled in fish for anyone who would give her the chance. Miss Brown Eyes demonstrated how to take the fish off the hook. Watching the kids enjoy themelves brought back good memories of fishing with Dad when we were small. He must have felt like Dante did when he walked with the door with the girls that night, 28 fish in hand - it was a long day, but lots of fun.

Catching Up

2009-06-09T00:05:00.000-07:00

So here's a little bit of what has been going on in the county for the past several weeks. Dante had surgery on his knee from an injury he got at work. I brought the kids to the hospital to pick him up after the surgery and Sculpey Hair wrote about it in her journal later on that day. She moved her chair into the living room so she could make an accurate drawing of Dante on the couch next to his crutches.

The kids have been working hard on school so they can take a little time off. Most days they are done with everything by lunchtime. Lately they have been going outside with bug catchers and butterfly nets to catch insects. We've also been learning about how to identify plants by looking at the flower type and arrangement and leaf shape, margin and arrangement.

The girls have been very busy with riding, and Maggie and I have been getting up at 5:30 to move pipe in exchange for lessons. Maddie did a jumping clinic a couple weeks ago and I made photo cds for all of the riders in the clinic. It was a lot of fun for both of us.

Sunshine got to jump outside for the first time last week and was very excited about it. This week, she is doing a three day riding camp with a girl from a nearby town. She got to jump bareback on the cross-country trail and is doing a little show today for the end of camp.

Monkey Boy played baseball last month and loved everything about it, except playing catcher. He was one of the few kids on the team that could catch, so he ended up playing catcher for at least one inning of every game. He just got his report card and was a little unhappy with his grades - as were we. "A 74 in Language Arts MB? Your grade really went down from the last term." "I don't even know what Language Arts is, Mom! My teacher never wrote Language Arts on the board."

Right around the time of Dante's surgery, he found out that he didn't get the job at the end of the winding road. He's been laid up for over a week wondering what we are going to do this fall. Lots of teachers have been cut due to budget constraints, so there aren't a lot of jobs and there are lots of people looking. I have lined up a couple of jobs to design websites for people, and I'm hopeful that business will take off for me.

Here are a few photos I took of Sculpey Hair and Miss Brown Eyes. They ride horses whenever they can and love to help me in the garden. Sculpey Hair makes us all laugh and Miss Brown Eyes keeps everyone organized.

Boys Will Be Boys

2009-06-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

Monkey Boy had a friend over a few nights ago. We'd spent the afternoon at the lake until a thunderstorm sent us packing and we arrived home in the middle of a torrential downpour. The boys were ready to go out and play, but I sent them upstairs instead. It seemed like it would be safe, as there is not a lot to get into up there, but a few minutes later, down they came. Their story went something like this...

The Boys: We were pretending that we were throwing a javelin, but we weren't really throwing it, we just pretended we were. Like, we just pretended to throw it and then we'd drop it right next to us.

MB: Well, I was pretending, and then Noah really did throw it.

Me: So what window did you break?

MB: He just accidentally threw the metal pole that we were using for a javelin and it went right through the window. We didn't mean to break the window.

Me: So, what window did you break?

The Friend: Do I have to go home now? My mom said if I broke anything I'd have to go home and then I'd get all of my stuff taken away.

Me: You don't have to go home, but you need to help me clean up the mess and then you and MB can do some chores to make up for it. You can start by cleaning up the mud in the entry way and then you have the dishes to do after dinner.

The Friend: (as he's cleaning up the entry way with MB) This isn't so bad. All we have to do are some little jobs for breaking the window.

The Friend: (after dinner, as they are cleaning up the table and washing the dishes) This is worse then I thought. It's like being a slave or something!

NOW SEEDS START GROWING!

2009-05-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

I have been digging up and planting the garden for the past couple of weeks. No tilling the soil up quick and dashing the seeds into the ground. I had to turn over all the soil by hand and pull out all of the quack grass roots. When I got some of my garden beds ready and decided the broccoli was facing eminent doom if it didn't go in the ground right away, I brought it out and planted it. It hailed that day and snowed the next. So I put more broccoli and the ground and carefully covered and uncovered it daily, according to the weather. It has grown about 2 inches since I planted it last month. The lettuce seedlings I stuck in the ground as spindly little starts haven't fared a whole lot better, but they are still alive despite being heavily pruned by the chickens last week. My spinach and onions look good and I got some corn and beans planted last week. Yesterday I put my basil in the ground. We started it inside over a month ago and it's barely an inch tall and was turning a sad shade of yellow-green in my makeshift greenhouse. I pounded some stakes into the ground and set up a hog panel to fence off my rows of basil. Then we wrapped the fence in chicken wire to make sure the chickens would stay out. So, now seeds start growing!

This is what the house looked like when we moved here in the middle of winter. The first thing I did was to lop off half of the tree in front of the small kitchen window so I could see the mountains. Then, in the spring, we had a friend bring his backhoe over to rip out the fly-infested shrubs around the house. I was just going to put mulch down, but a bare patch of dirt looks so inviting that I started collecting plants again.

My basil is growing under the straw. I check the leaves every day to see if they've gotten any bigger, but the plants are still really tiny. My flower garden is the only one that's thriving around here. Last year I bought the most root-bound plants I could find at the nursery and divided them into lots of new little plants before I put them in the ground. I divided them again this year and got more starts from friends. It should be filled in by the end of the summer.

I started this post a week ago and since then we've had a lot of rain and thunderstorms. Things are finally started to grow. I harvested some spinach for dinner yesterday. The corn and beans are coming up and the cucumbers are starting to climb up my homemade trellis. I'll try to post a picture of my vegetable garden tomorrow along with photos of everything we've been doing for the past several weeks. Sorry I dropped out of blogsphere for a little while, but it's been quite hectic here.

*********************** Update **************************************************

Pioneer Days

2009-05-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

Today I went in to Monkey Boy's classroom to give a demonstration on bread making to the K-3 classes for Pioneer Day. I stayed up until midnight the night before making bread for the kids to sample and putting together a load of supplies to bring into the classroom with me, including the wheat grinder (sans motor). The kids tried their hand at ironing and got their costumes ready for the Pioneer Parade around the courthouse. While I stayed in the classroom to do my demonstration, they got to go around to the various stations to learn about other pioneer skills, like butter making, spinning, quilt making, tanning, and horse shoeing. It was a lot of fun. I only had ten minutes for each group that came through, so it was a rather condensed version of planting and harvesting wheat and making the bread, but it was a very hands on activity, so I think everybody enjoyed it.

On a completely different note, Sculpey Hair got stuck in a tree tonight and had to be coached out of it by Miss Brown Eyes. Will she ever learn???

Happy Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

Prior to Mother's Day, I'm supposed to give some thought to this special occasion, put a card in the mail with a thoughtful note and gift, and plan for some quiet time during the day to make a phone call. Somehow, it never works out like this. I rarely go to the store and don't get the paper, the kids aren't in school working on Mother's Day projects, so I have no idea Mother's Day is approaching until it is upon me. This year I was actually aware of the impending holiday and I still didn't get anything in the mail, so it's going to be a blog post for you, Mom, instead of a card because this will get to you on time. I have a bouquet of beautiful stargazer lilies, alstromerium and magenta stock on a shelf that my neighbor gave me that make me think of you. The kids have been making little cards for me all day with beautiful little drawings on them and they remind me of the little cards we made for you when we were little. The sun is shining and it's warm, so we would probably have a picnic at the lake this afternoon with egg salad sandwiches and kettle chips and homemade cookies for dessert if the girls didn't have Pony Club lessons all afternoon. Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I hope you have a great day.

Mother's Day at our house used to mean I'd take care of the kids all day while Dante was working. But lately, the second Sunday in May has ushered in the first warm, sunny day of the year. Dante is home so I go outside to garden in the morning and don't come in again until evening. My Mother's Day present is hours and hours of uninterrupted bliss in the garden, getting my hands dirty and putting plants in the ground that have been growing thin and spindly in my windows. This year we went shopping at the dump and came home with four sliding glass doors (free) to make cold frames. After Pony Club lessons, I get to build the cold frames to protect my little plants from the elements. And that is the best Mother's Day gift that I can think of.

The Art Show

2009-05-08T22:55:00.000-07:00

Recently our county had an Youth Arts Show with artwork and musical groups from all of the schools, including homeschools. We have been doing art and music lessons at our house since the beginning of the year, so I cut mats for all of the kids artwork and entered it in the show. They were thrilled to see their work hanging up at the community center. The older girls, Maggie and two of her friends that do art and music with us, were too shy to sing the songs they have been learning all year, so we planned an art show and music recital of our own. I hung up all of the kids' artwork in the living room and the girls brushed up on their songs for a few days. Each child learned a poem to recite and they practiced over and over and over so all of us learned all of the poems. We wrote the Homeschool Poem over lunch on the day of the show. I made pizza and our friends brought tea and homemade cinnamon rolls and the kids put on their show. It was a lot of fun and everyone did a beautiful job. If I can ever figure out how to get a video off of my camera and onto my blog, I'll put their songs on here. But for now here are some samples of their artwork. Can you guess who did what?

Homeschooling is...

2009-05-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

Maggie memorized the poem Arithmetic, by Carl Sandburg, for our Homeschool Recital and Art Exhibition. I like the poem so much I asked the kids to come up with ideas for their own poem, written in the same style, about homeschooling. This is what we came up with...

Homeschooling is where you fall out of your chair five times during a Math lesson and your mom asks you if you need a seat belt.

Homeschooling is where you drop your pencil 17 times during science, and then you have sharpen it because you sat on it and broke the tip.

Homeschooling is where you stand on the story spot on the rug and rotate and revolve around the sun as fast or as slow as the planets revolve and rotate. Or if you are Uranus, you turn somersaults as you revolve until you get dizzy and somebody trips over you and everyone falls down in a heap.

Homeschooling is hearing "But I'm hungry," over and over and over until lunch, and then over and over and over again until dinner.

Homeschooling is finding owl pellets in the field and carrying them home like treasures to dissect on the front porch. It is trying to figure out what the owl was eating for dinner by putting the tiny bones back together again.

Homeschooling is finding out that it is true that the female preying mantis eats the male and being very sad because you had the male first and he was bright green and you took care of him, and the female was dull and brown and not the first one you found.

If you get a cut and come running in the house for a band aid and your mom gets a slide and dabs some of your blood on it, and then makes you look at your blood cells under the microscope, only a homeschooled kid would be so amazed, they would stop crying and start running around the house looking for other things to look at under the microscope.

Homeschooling is where you can run outside because it stopped raining for five minutes and the sun finally came out.

Homeschool Distractions

2009-04-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

During Art and Music class the other day, the girls were terribly distracted by all of the activity going on in the front yard. While they were supposed to be harmonizing together on Oft in the Stilly Night, the puppy made it's first big kill. Actually it might have already been killed by the cat, but it was impressive to see such a large gopher hanging out of puppy Lulu's mouth. (No, we didn't get another dog, we're just puppy sitting for a week.) Anyway, Sunshine came screaming into the house to announce the big moment and the three girls in the music lesson fled the table and went running outside to see. It took a little while to get them back inside and under control again.

A few minutes later, there was another bustle of activity in the front yard. Monkey Boy and Sunshine were very busy setting things up in the yard. They got the camping chairs and sleds from the shed, fleece blankets from their beds and large cardboard boxes and dragged them into the front yard. Then, Monkey Boy gathered some wood chips and large pieces of wood and put them in a pile in the middle of the circle of chairs. When we looked out again, Sunshine was briskly rubbing two pieces of wood together while Monkey Boy and Miss Brown Eyes added tinder to the fire, an imaginary one, thankfully.

The three big girls tried to shut the curtain on all of the commotion, but they had definitely lost all of their concentration. Three girls, singing out of tune and out of time, all the while glancing out the window to watch the activity, doesn't make much of a music lesson. Soon, they were out in the yard in midst of the camping trip. Only they were using the camp chairs and fire as horse jumps, so there was a major conflict as soon as they got out the door. Fortunately, it started to rain and everything had to be put away before they came to blows with each other.

Greenhouse Girls

2009-04-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

Miss Brown Eyes is my garden girl. She's always right at my side while I'm working in the garden. This weekend, she and Sculpey Hair came with me to work in the greenhouse at our neighbor's house. They helped weed the cabbage and lettuce, pushed the soil up into hills and poked their fingers into the soil to cucumbers, and planted several rows of navy and kidney beans. Miss Brown Eyes found a watering can, and Sculpey Hair took a trowel to scoop water out of the rows and onto the plants.

At home Miss Brown Eyes has taken it upon herself to care for the seeds we planted in the newspaper pots. She tends them carefully in the morning, watering each individual plant, and reporting each new shoot that emerges from the soil. There is something magical about planting seeds in the dirt and watching new shoots unfold. When I tried to thin the broccoli, she insisted that I save each plant. So now we have at least 100 broccoli plants to put in the garden or distribute to friends. We should also have an abundance of basil if snow doesn't fall in July or August this year. I am hopeful that with help from Miss Brown Eyes and some good weather, we'll have a good harvest this year.

The Rest of the Story

2009-04-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

In case you are wondering how we got on this rollerblade kick in the first place, here is where it all started. While we were visiting our friends on the west side, they introduced us to the fine sport of living-room skating. Start near the front door, glide across the living room, around the dining room table and back across the living. Stop, gracefully or otherwise, before you hit the glass in the front door. And again. Dante donned a pair of vintage roller skates and joined in the fun. It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A... Yes. We were rocking. And rolling.

Now the rollerblades have become the standard way to do chores around here. And everyone gets into the spirit of the game, except Dante doesn't have the same exhuberance as above.

While we were on the west side, we also spent a night at the coast. It was a little rainy when we got there, but we had a great time anyway. I took these photos of the kids playing on the beach with their friends. Monkey Boy was thrilled to see his friends again.

We also stayed with friends in Central Oregon for a few days before we made it to the west side. I started running again, thanks to the encouragement of my motivated, superwoman friend, Kay. And our kids played ball and rode bikes together, and enjoyed each others' company again.

Rolling Chores

2009-04-20T22:51:00.001-07:00

I have a large repertoire of games designed to get the house clean depending on the occasion. And chore wheels are really effective for ordinary things, like dishes, laundry, and the bathroom. Unfortunately, even with all of the games to make cleaning more enjoyable, rarely does anyone go out of their way to pick up after themselves, or clean-up without being asked, or check their chore wheel without a reminder from me.

That all changed tonight. Tonight, while I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, I got some unsolicited help cleaning up the rest of the house. There was no bribery. No promise of media time. Sunshine and Miss Brown Eyes pulled out a pair of rollerblades that have sat, unused, since we got here (because there is nowhere to use them). They each put on a skate and started rolling supper dishes out to the kitchen. Then the table got washed. Rooms were picked up. And then there was nothing left to do, except sweep and mop the whole house. Sculpey Hair got in on the act with her shopping cart. She also contributed to the festive mood in the house by playing a harmonica and shaking her bank to the beat.

It looks like doing chores on rollerblades are going to be the next greatest thing around here. I'll keep an eye out for pairs at the quarter store.

A Community Rising

2009-04-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

Today I painted a friend's house. Her husband was killed in an avalanche last month, and a big group of friends and strangers gathered to work on the "project" house that she and her husband and two boys had been working on together. When we showed up this morning, there were several crews already at work, putting a deck on the front of the house and laying subfloor and framing walls for an addition on the back. Another crew was out in the pasture, cutting up a tree that had blown down in a recent storm. I put a second coat of paint on all of the walls in the house, while a friend came along behind me and cut in around the ceiling, windows and doors. Someone else primed closets and cupboards to get them ready for a first coat of paint. In just one day, two decks were built and stained, an addition went on with the windows and door installed, and the interior of the house was painted (except the kitchen). It was remarkable to see, and participate in, all of the work.

It's even more incredible to live in a place where the community really comes together to help in a time of need. A couple of weeks ago, six teenagers were in a terrible accident and the driver, a youth pastor, was killed. The truck they were in rolled more than 300 feet down a steep ravine, the kids were ejected from the vehicle, and all of them ended up with broken bones. Search and Rescue had to rappel down to the crash site, and the ER doctor actually went to the scene of the crash, rather than the hospital, to help out. One of the kids ended up in a coma with a serious brain injury and he is in a hospital five hours from here. A couple days ago, a dessert auction was held at the Tavern in our little town and $10,000 was raised to go towards his medical expenses. Pies and cakes were selling for up to $400 each!

It's not just people coming together in the face of tragedy that makes this place special. There is comfort in knowing that the community is looking out for your kids. This winter when we were skiing, we were able to let the kids ski on their own and know that people would look out for them, and stop to offer a hand if necessary. Our kids can ride their bikes down the road alone to visit our neighbors. People here aren't afraid to speak up if someone's kid, including ours, is out of line. They know what is going on in your kids' lives, (in part because there just isn't a whole lot of news here), and they are interested in your kids.

In a small town, where everyone knows you and knows everything about you, it's hard to keep a low profile. That's one thing that's really hard about being in such a little place. But if you can ignore that part, or at least not dwell on it too much, there is a real sense of community and people looking out for one another.

An Unexpected Treat

2009-04-15T20:59:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday night, we got an unexpected package from the UPS man. He pulled into our front yard and five kids fled from the table like the house was on fire, and raced out the front door to see what goodies the package man was bringing. I opened a Lehman's box and found an Easter gift or a spring treat, (or something along those lines), from GP and J. Thank you! We've been having lots of fun with it, as you can see. I started making pots right away out of the Wall Street Journals that I rescued from the recycling center. Then Miss Brown Eyes took over for me and perfected the technique of making pots.

Today, we had stations set up to mass produce little newspaper pots. I ripped strips of newspaper and Sunshine, very neatly, made lots of little pots. Miss Brown Eyes and Sculpey Hair transferred the pots to cardboard flats, and then they helped me fill the pots with potting soil. We planted a whole tray of broccoli and another one of basil, and our sweet pea seeds are soaking overnight so they'll be ready to go into pots in the morning. Sunshine and Miss Brown Eyes played Farmer Girls tonight and helped me rake out some of the raised beds to plant onions and spinach. They were both very interested in using the soil scooper to do their work.

I just got a catalog from Territorial Seed Company in Oregon, so tomorrow, we'll look through it together and pick out some more seeds. I also need to invest in some Reemay, a light-weight fabric to protect plants from frost, because the weather here is so unpredictable. We had snow in June and August last year!

Easter Eggs

2009-04-15T19:39:00.000-07:00

Easter was a fun and relaxing day for us. The kids dyed eggs the day before - five dozen store eggs plus a dozen or more banty eggs. They especially enjoyed coloring the blue, green and pink banty eggs because they produced interesting shades of blue and chartreuse. And the brown eggs took the dye much darker than the white eggs. We had fun using a candle to make wax reliefs on the eggs.

Then I stayed up way too late making special Easter nests out of braided bread and arranging things on the table to make it look beautiful. (Starting a yeast dough at 9:30 pm is never a good idea.) Sometimes I regret having inherited the obsessive-compulsive creative, project gene, but the bird nests were a hit in the morning, so I was glad I made them after all.

On Sunday afternoon, the kids did an egg hunt on most of ten acres. The pictures I took didn't come out very good so I'm not posting them. But the kids love doing egg hunts around the yard, so I will take more pictures another time. It was quite a parade with chickens and lambs assisting in the egg hunt.

Tin Man made an excellent hiding spot for an egg. He was hanging up on our barn when we moved in and surprisingly he has lasted despite being walked around the yard like a marionette on numerous occasions. On the day after Easter, a package arrived from Nana and Poppa with lots more Easter goodies. The kids were so excited to get the package. They polished off half of the candy almost immediately.

Thankfully, the weather was nice on Easter - no snow. But snow fell on Monday night and on Tuesday the ground was completely covered. It wasn't bitter cold out at least, despite the snow, and the snow was gone by the end of the day.

Mozzarella

2009-04-10T21:48:00.000-07:00

Today I decided to make cheese. I had several gallons of milk in the fridge that needed to be used up or they would end up as food for the chickens. So, when Dante headed out the door to get plumbing supplies to finish re-plumbing the sink and tub in the bathroom, I gave him a short list of cheese-making supplies to pick up at the natural foods store in town.

It was pretty quiet around the house while he was gone because Maggie and Monkey Boy had spent the night at friends' houses and they were still gone. And Sunshine and her friend were playing in the little stream in our backyard with Miss Brown Eyes and Sculpey Hair. I cleaned the house, started sorting out winter stuff to put some of it away, did several loads of laundry and made arrangements for an afternoon play date for Miss Brown Eyes and Sculpey Hair. Then, a half-hour before they were supposed to go, Miss Brown Eyes laid down on the couch complaining of a headache. I left her there with Sunshine in charge and went to drop off Sculpey Hair for her first solo play-date. Later, when Sunshine's friend left to go home, it got really quiet. I should have known things were about to explode.

First Dante walked in the house with several bags from the store. He handed me the phone so I could call Mama JJ for info on how to make mozzarella. I was excited to try something I haven't done yet and was writing down the recipe, when Sunshine followed Dante into the house with a baby chick. A what??? I thought she was kidding, but no. Dante was out the door, and back in again, with 11 more chicks in a large metal bucket.

I moved my conversation into the kitchen and started filling up my stainless steel pot with two gallons of milk, while Sunshine hustled around the house setting up the chicks with water and food. When she started pestering me for help finding the chick feeder, I told her to go ask Dante. I went on chatting with Mama JJ about kids, chickens, isolated teaching jobs and other bits, when all of a sudden Dante burst into the kitchen looking for a bucket because Miss Brown Eyes was throwing up. All over the couch. And the rug. I got off the phone in a hurry and ran in to help out.

So now, instead of blogging about making cheese, which was my original plan, this blog is about everything else that was going on while I was trying to make cheese. As I brought up the temperature of the milk to 55 degrees, I kept running into the living room to check on Miss Brown Eyes who was now complaining of a terrible headache and was taking shallow, rapid breaths as if she were having a hard time breathing. Dante came in to check on her and started getting ready to bring her to the hospital because she was scaring us. I brought cold washcloths and pressed them on her forehead, while I asked her questions to figure out what might be going on. Does your stomach hurt? Does your throat hurt? Sit up. Can you touch your neck to your chest? Can you turn your head? Did you hit your head today? Is it hard to breathe? Nothing seemed wrong except her headache, which appeared to be causing the rapid breathing. Meanwhile the milk reached 55 degrees - time to add the citric acid. I did that, stirred the milk and went back to attend to Miss Brown Eyes.

Then Dante asked me to help him with some plumbing. He was trying to take the drain out of the tub so he could replace it, but it was rusted together and he needed my help to try to separate the drain in the tub from the pipe under the house. I am not the most patient assistant in the world and I do not make a very good helper for any plumbing activities. I like to multi-task when I'm working so I can get lots of things done at the same time, so I'm never in place to help out at the moment my assistance is required. Standing around, watching someone else try to figure things out while I wait for my next instruction doesn't bode very well with me. I don't have a long enough attention span - especially when I have a sick kid on the couch and exact temperatures to hover over on the stove. As soon as I was finished "helping" I fled the scene to check the milk temperature - 88 degrees - time to add the rennet. I stirred in an up and down motion until it was mixed in and then went back to check on Miss Brown Eyes, cooled off the cloth on her forehead, got her a drink of water and then went to get the door because Sculpey Hair was home. She came into the house with her friend and a half dozen brightly colored Easter eggs. As you can see, she was exceedingly proud of her work.

I ran into the kitchen to check on the curdling activity of the cheese and found an amazing, yogurt-like, rubbery mass in the pot. It looks a bit like a brain made out of cheese.

Then Maggie got home from working and riding all day and she jumped right in to help me out, which was a pleasant surprise and very thoughtful. She started emptying the dishwasher and then took over my nursing job for Miss Brown Eyes, who, between bouts of sleeping was asking for water, cool cloths for her forehead and a bucket.

Then Monkey Boy got home, and thankfully he took my job as assistant plumber in the pantry so I could put the pizzas together for dinner. Which is why I decided to make cheese in the first place, instead of giving the milk to the chickens.

While Dante and I were eating dinner, Monkey Boy walked by with a heaping load of laundry to fold. We were so shocked, Dante made him stand up with the basket again so I could get a picture of this historic moment. Of course, it was all for about 20 minutes of media time, but it was all his idea.

The cheese came out a bit rubbery and did not have a lot of flavor because I didn't have cheese salt, but it was easy, despite all of the activity going on. I was able to grate it and it melted on the pizza, but next time I hope the flavor and texture are better. I also hope the plumbing is finished, Miss Brown Eyes is healthy and the chicks are living outdoors. And Dante better not decide to bring piglets home the next time I attempt cheese-making.

Change is in the Air

2009-04-08T21:36:00.000-07:00

In January, just after Christmas break, Dante received a notice in the mail informing him that his position is going to be cut in June due to lack of sufficient funds to keep the program going. He does have the option to keep his job half-time, but that also means half-salary, and we are already just barely getting by. Schools in the county are also seeing a decline in the number of enrolled students, so other teaching positions here are being cut or consolidated as well. Our first instinct was to look for jobs in Western Oregon, where we moved here from, but they are also cutting budgets drastically and that means there are no jobs to be had.

A few weeks ago, Dante heard about a possible teaching opportunity in the county. It's a one room schoolhouse in a beautiful valley, in an even more remote location in the county. If you've already been here and seen how remote it is, you still have no grasp of how remote this place is. We drove there last night to attend a planning session on the direction the school is going to take in the next couple of years. This is a picture of the scenery about halfway to our destination.

Then we drove on this lovely road for quite a ways and I began to reconsider my initial excitement over getting paid to teach all of our kids, as well as two to five other children. And yes, this road actually does go somewhere.

When we finally arrived in the very tiny town, we parked near this pedestrians-only bridge and walked over it to the school. You can just barely make it out on the other side of the bridge.

It appears that, aside from fishing and hunting, the school is the best thing in this town. The classroom is as large as our downstairs and very well equipped. I was envious of all of the space for the five current students. There is a paved basketball court outside as well as a small playground and the whole school property is fenced in, so we wouldn't have to worry (too much) about kids ending up in the river if we end up here. So, unless a good opportunity comes up in a more civilized area, it looks like this place might be the start of another adventure.

Disaster

2009-04-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

I got home after my run today to find this disaster scene. Our toilet hasn't been working very well for quite some time and today it stopped working completely - not a good thing with only one bathroom in the house. So Dante decided to replace the toilet this weekend. Things were going okay until I walked in the kitchen and heard water spraying under the sink. When I opened the cupboard, hot steam hit me in the face. Dante was quick to hit the shut-off valve on the hot water heater to stop the flood, but he discovered that we had a bigger problem than the toilet. Somewhere, deep in the ground enroute to the sewer, there is a pipe from the sink that is completely blocked, so Dante has to do some additional plumbing under the house to reroute the water line to fix it. I came home from my run to find the bottom of the pantry emptied into the kitchen and a large hole cut in the pantry floor.

Meanwhile I'm moving the pantry into the girl's bedroom for the weekend. And I don't think I can bring myself to eat the brownies the kids made while the toilet was being replaced.

Road Trip

2009-03-26T00:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning we left on our trip to the West Side for Spring Break. It was a long night of packing (and baking bread until 2 am) to get ready to leave. Most of the getting ready was done Sunday night because we had a horse show for Sunshine, a birthday party for Maggie (complete with Martha's bird nest cupcakes) and an afternoon potluck at a neighbor's house, all on Sunday afternoon. But, we finally made it in the truck before 9 am, got all the doors closed and hit the road.

We followed the winding highway out of the county looking for elk and deer on the hillsides and listening to Taj Mahal.

Bet you're goin' fishing all of the time. Baby's goin' fishin' too. Bet your life, your sweet wife is gonna catch more fish than you.

Miss Brown Eyes lost her first top tooth the day before we left, so Sculpey Hair took lots of photos of her. We made several pit stops along the way for gas, coffee and bathroom breaks (for us and the dog). Then Sunshine took out her sketchbook and entertained herself by drawing the gas station with hills and mountains behind it.

Sculpey Hair took pictures with the kids' camera, then passed it to the kids in the back to take more photos. Finally Sunshine handed it back to me with a blue screen on the back that said "Warning! The batteries are exhausted!" "Mom," she said, "It says it's exhausted. You need to put it down for a rest." And Johnny Cash belted out tunes for an hour or so, while the camera got its second wind.

Will the circle be unbroken, by and by Lord, by and by;
Daddy sang bass, Mama sang tenor, me and little brother would join right in there...

Miss Brown Eyes moved up front to read Frog and Toad to me. Then she laid down on my lap and looked up at the towering cliffs of the Columbia, scanning the flat, grassy spots for a view of the Big Horn sheep that live in that area. "Are we almost there yet?" The persistent cry started in the backseat. "I'm hungry. When can we stop and eat?" "Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom." I was trying to take a nap and my name sounded like a fly buzzing in my ear. Eric Clapton tried to soothe everyone's nerves.

Knock, knock, knockin' on Heaven's door...

We stopped briefly to eat and as we got back I was a little premature when I told the kids in the back to keep an eye out for Highway 97. For the next two hours Monkey Boy read every single sign aloud to me. He didn't miss a single one. Dante put some Metallica on to drown him out, but I don't know any words to their songs. And I didn't get any rest either.

Finally, Highway 97 and the last leg of our trip. Hedgie wanted to drive for a little while and Dante was more than happy to hand over the wheel to him.

Complaints from the back seat became more frequent until Gillian Welch come on to interrupt their unpleasantness.

Lease twenty acres and one Jenny mule, from the Alabama trust. Half of it cotton, and third
of it corn. Get a handful of dust. We cannot have all things to please us, no matter how we try...

Finally, we reached the red soil and Ponderosa pine forests of central Oregon. An unbroken line of blue mountains on the horizon marked the Cascade range. Three hours later than planned, we showed up at our friends' house. The kids were happy to unload the bikes and ride around the loop with their friends while I made them a quick dinner.

Tonight we are rollerblading around our friends' living room. That should make the blog soon...

Martha Stewart's Evil Twin Sister Event

2009-03-21T22:59:00.000-07:00

There is never a lack of things to do in this county. I used to think summer was the busiest social time here, but even in the winter, it's hard to keep up with everything. I missed posting a blog about the Inauguration Bonfire and the famous Thrift Store Formal on Valentine's Day. And the Sweetheart Slalom we participated in at Fergi on Valentine's Day didn't make it to a blog either. (We had to ski through a slalom course holding hands all the way through the finish line. We didn't win, but we made a good showing!)

Tonight I had the wonderful oppurtunity to attend the annual Martha Stewart's Evil Twin Sister potluck right here in our very small town. There were about 25 people there in a variety of 'classy' outfits and hats, including a beautiful tulips-tacked-onto-a-paper-plate hat. At the end of the potluck we had a white elephant gift exchange. Almost everyone dug in their cupboards and closets for tacky, un-Martha-like gifts they could find, and wrapped them up beautifully for the gift exchange. It was hilarious. Me, being a bit like Martha, made three handblown banty eggs from our Aracana and Spanish banties. Their eggs are green and pink, so I left the natural colors and and decorated the eggs with a very simple bit of lace around the middle. They came out beautiful, but I forgot to take a picture of them before I put them in their individual boxes, so I'll have to make some more with the kids. I think the next big event is the Soroptomist's Fashion Review, a fashion and vaudeville show that is a hugely popular show in the county.

I think our ski season is officially over. Today the temperature got up to 50 and it smelled like spring for the first time this year. It was our first Saturday at home in a long time, so I got lots of work done around the house. Sculpey Hair wants to learn how to ride a bike, so I took the pedals off her bike so she can learn how to balance while she pushes herself along.

It's not easy to do on a gravel road with the lambs and the cat chasing you.

Miss Brown Eyes and Monkey Boy helped me give the Camry a bath. Then I vacuumed it out thoroughly and washed the interior. It looks so much better. Next week the snow tires can finally come off.

This afternoon I made three loaves of bread and was surprised to find Monkey Boy and Miss Brown Eyes in the kitchen holding crustaceans over my bread bowl. I had the usual questions for them. Where did you find a crab leg around here? And why are you holding it over the bread dough. Then I ran and got the camera so I could take this posed picture.

Tomorrow it's another day of Martha. Maggie is turning 11 and we are making Nesting Baby-Bluebird Cupcakes in honor of the big day because I'm on an egg and nest kick.

March Showers

2009-03-09T22:29:00.000-07:00

No signs of Spring yet!

With everyone posting on their blogs about Spring springing, and taking lovely pictures of forsythia and azaleas in bloom, I'm starting to get a little anxious for spring. Unfortunately, it's not in the cards, or the clouds this week. It snowed this weekend and now it's about 10 degrees outside and it is still snowing like crazy in the county. Spring is definitely not around the corner this week. I took these photos of the kids still enjoying winter during the day.

And again at night with headlamps.

As you can see it is really snowing. It was hard to get a good shot through all of the snowflakes. Sculpey Hair came down with a cold and a fever after a day in the powder at Fergi and another day of basketball. She has spent the last two days recovering.

Here she is cooling herself off with Mirette and Carl.

Then she and Dante jammed to Lazy John.

********************************************************

There is a full moon tonight and it's incredibly bright out because of all of the snow. It's a reminder of what a beautiful place we live in. Beauty comes at a price though. Our county is a gateway to a large wilderness area, and this past weekend a local man was killed in an avalanche when he was backcountry skiing with his son and a group of friends. Several friends of ours are skiing into the backcountry today to recover his body, and our thoughts are prayers are with them and the family.

Happy Birthday!

2009-03-02T22:24:00.000-08:00

The twins turned 9 on Saturday. Sunshine kept track of the countdown to the "big day" on a calendar next to her bed. Unfortunately, we had a lot going on that day and did not celebrate other than making pancakes and bacon for breakfast, and opening gifts from GP and Jack. Sunshine had to be at the theater all day, and Monkey Boy and Sculpey Hair went skiing with Dante for most of the day. Plans for their party at Fergi the next day had to be postponed until next weekend, because of a Pony Club meeting in the afternoon.

It's hard to believe that nine years (and a few days) have gone by since the twins arrived. Dante and I love to tell the story of their arrival because it was quite comical, so I'm going to share it with you here. Bear with me if you've heard it before. At the time, Dante was going to school full time and working 40 hours a week at night and on the weekends. He was also on crutches, having undergone reconstructive surgery for a broken ankle three weeks before the twins were due. My midwife, a 5 foot Goldie Hawn look-alike, was not quite prepared for a one hour labor with twins. She pushed me through the halls of the hospital in a circuitous route to the operating room while Dante attempted to get into a size Small set of scrubs, booties included, so he could join me.

I refused to get on the operating table, so about 25 people crammed in the room around my bed, or waited in the wings to cut me open should the need arise. It didn't. At 7 and 7 1/2 pounds, the twins were incredibly healthy. As Baby A was being born, the anesthesiologist said, "Do you mind if I take a brief medical history?" Well yes, actually I do. I don't think this is a very good time. I waited about 15 minutes for Baby B to decide to make his appearance, and I heard the doctor (who was required to be there) ask my midwife, "Do you think this is going to be much longer? I have to get upstairs for a hysterectomy." So sorry to inconvenience you and not have these twins in a more timely fashion...

The next morning, a nurse came into my room. After pushing the two empty bassinets out of the way to get into the room, she started asking me questions about my epidural. "What epidural?" I asked. "Oh," she said, "That explains why there was some confusion about this survey." After a brief stay at the hospital, less than 24 hours, we got to leave. Dante couldn't carry all of our stuff, or push it out in a wheelchair, because he was on crutches. So he sat in the wheelchair, that we were required to use, and he held the twins, and the nurse pushed him out to the parking garage. I followed behind pushing a wheelchair with our luggage.

On the way home, we picked up Maggie from a friend's house. Her face was all scratched up from her overly aggressive "friend," and she was a bit traumatized from being left overnight, away from us, for the first time. Dante went back to work and school the next day. And a week later, I declared Dante healed because I was completely exhausted from doing all of the toting, feeding and cleaning up after, of two 7 pound babies and an almost two year old kid.

And now I'll leave you with this very restful photo of the lake, just because I love it and it seems soothing after my story about the twins.

Rumplestiltskin

2009-03-01T20:39:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning found us at the theater bright and early. I helped Villagers, Gnomes and Bees into costumes. (The Wizards and Royal Court were old enough to look after themselves.) All the kids took their places backstage and ran through their dress rehearsal. I took a seat in the audience and watched and then handed out lunches while the directors went over the final details before the performances.

Sunshine was a Villager who took part in a bragging contest at the festival.

(Villagers): Hey nonny, nonny, tell us what's your boast?

(S): While I was wandering hither, I saw a pile of rocks. So I lifted one high, over my head. It was roughly
the size of an ox!

(Villagers): She lifted one high, over her head. It was roughly the size of an ox.

(S): Yes, roughly!

(The Missoula Children's Theater plays do not follow the traditional story lines!)

Miss Brown Eyes was a very enthusiastic bee from the Honey Farm.

And Maggie was a terrific wizard. Monkey Boy helped hand out programs for the play and is thinking about participating next year. Sculpey Hair tried to sneak into the audition, but had to come sit with me when she told the directors she was "almost five," just a little shy of the age requirement.

She's a He...and Other Bits

2009-02-23T21:50:00.000-08:00

In October, Sunshine and Miss Brown Eyes discovered a stray kitten living under our house and they adopted it. Last week, Dante took the cat, Joy, into the vet to have her spayed. The next day we got a call from the vet and he, rather sheepishly, told us that he'd started to perform the operation and then couldn't find the uterus he was supposed to take out. Upon closer examination, he discovered that Joy was actually a boy, whereupon he performed the appropriate operation. So Joy came home with two incisions for the price of one. Sunshine was devastated, "Can we still call her Joy, Mom?" I said, "I guess it doesn't really matter now, does it? How about Joey - that's really close to Joy."

Other random things...

Tonight while she was saying her prayers, Miss Brown Eyes said, "Forgive us our trespasses...Is us a pronoun Mom, 'cause us could take the place of a noun, right?" I guess she really was listening during her language arts lesson today. It always surprises me how much information she retains.

This week the kids are practicing for Rumplestiltskin, a play produced by the Missoula Children's Theater (MCT). There are two directors and they teach the play to about 60 kids in only four days. On Saturday, the kids will don costumes provided by the MCT and put on two shows at the theater. It's really remarkable. Sunshine is a Villager and has a solo as a Boaster. Last night she came home upset that the directors were being "too bossy" and she didn't want to do the play anymore. Maggie is a wizard and she spent most of her school time today practicing her lines. Miss Brown Eyes is a bee and fortunately she doesn't have any lines because she was too shy to speak during the audition. Monkey Boy had absolutely no interest in being in the play and Sculpey Hair sat tried to sneak into the audition, but the directors told her that she had to be five, not almost five. I'll post pictures after the show this weekend.

We've moved the lambs outside. Their diapers don't stay on very well anymore and changing stinky lamb diapers quickly lost it's appeal for the kids. The lambs come in at night and sleep in the dog kennel and Maggie feeds them in the morning and puts them back out again.

Sunshine got a humility pill (which makes her role as a Boaster quite humorous) last Saturday when we were skiing. She has been bragging about how fast she is and how she never falls down. She was going way too fast down the slope and took quite a tumble and lost both of her skis and poles and did a face plant into the snow. Ski patrol was ready to come and bail her out, but I made her brush herself off, put her skis back on, and finish the run.

Dante took Maggie to the dentist yesterday for an abscessed tooth. Her friend was climbing out of the lamb pen and she slipped and kicked Maggie right in the mouth. Now Maggie's tooth is infected and the dentist has to pull it out on Monday to make room for the new tooth growing in behind it. The funny thing is Maggie was more upset about taking antibiotics than getting her tooth pulled. I guess that's a good thing.

And finally, shadow dancing in our picture window is becoming quite a hit with Miss Brown Eyes and Sculpey Hair. They love to pull the curtain shut and put on a show for us.

Spring Fever

2009-02-17T21:47:00.000-08:00

Spring Fever is usually a term reserved for running to the garden center in February to get a head start on your garden, or putting away winter clothes early with a great optimism that you won't need to pull them out again until next winter. It might also be cleaning your house and opening all the windows to let out the stale air from winter and freshen up the house with the smell of spring. I have spring fever, but unfortunately the above reasons for it do not apply. Mine is a malady of the mind, a temporary lapse of good judgment, one that I may regret for the next three months or so, and hopefully there are no long term effects.

It started with a phone call about two, early spring, lambs that were, for some reason, rejected by their mothers. And it ended, (so far), with two lambs in Size 2 Huggies traipsing around our living room. "We can have a potluck this summer. Remember the delicious goat we had at the First of May party last year?" Dante said. "Ummm," I said, "I do remember, but it all seems so distant, especially since the main dish is currently drinking out of a bottle and running all over the house in diapers."

We didn't have diapers when we first brought them home and one of them soon ended up in a cloth diaper duct taped to it hindquarters. A sign for Lamb's Day Care was quickly hung on the kids' bedroom door and the kids disappeared in their room to . Monkey Boy and Sunshine helped with the 7 pm feeding and Dante and I just finished the 10 pm meal. Tomorrow they are moving outside.

News from Space

2009-02-12T21:49:00.000-08:00

This is, as I promised, a closer look at an ecosystem designed to bring life on Earth to Mars. You should be able to (and should) click on the image to enlarge it for a better view of Sunshine's interpretation of science fiction. It was interesting to see her ideas about what she would need for life on Mars evolve as her drawing progressed.

We just finished studying Mars this week using the Apologia Astronomy Book. I love it because the information is so easy for kids to digest and retain. We have an oriental rug in the living room and the kids stand on the "story spot" in the center to give their presentations about the planets, the sun, the moon, and other space related topics. I ask questions and Miss Brown Eyes loves to get all the answers first, so she pushes Sunshine on her uncooperative days. Sometimes I record them during their presentations and they love to see themselves on the television.

Today we witnessed the eruption on the volcano Olympus Mons, the largest mountain in the Solar System. I think we forgot to mix in the food coloring before we set off the eruption, or perhaps lava on Mars is sort of white and soapy!

This month we have been watching the changing shape of the moon and tracking Venus' path across the sky. We look for constellations and point out the Milky Way, stretching across the heavens. We watch the earth's rotation at sunrise when the light slowly fills the windows next to the wood stove. It's really incredible becoming aware of the world we live in.

Tomorrow, I'll try to take a picture of Sunshine's comic strip of a day on Venus. It's hilarious!

_____________________________________________________________
2/26/09 Update

I just found the Venus comic on the floor under Sunshine's desk and am posting a copy of it before we lose it again. Click on the picture to enlarge it so you can read it. Each of the numbers on top coordinates with a picture below. I like to hope that Sunshine's creativity will help make up for her poor spelling!

Take-Home Folder

2009-02-11T21:19:00.000-08:00

Monkey Boy has a "Take-Home" folder for school. The idea is to corral his papers as he is heading out of the classroom so they arrive home in a fairly organized fashion, and then we will sit down at the table and look over his work together. Not exactly. For all practical purposes, the folder serves as a backboard to support the papers as MB crams them into his backpack. His papers arrive at home in a variety of shapes and crumples with numerous creases and folds. They have yet to make it home in the "Take-Home" folder. I even purchased a very nice, green plastic folder, so it wouldn't get beat up in his bag. And it doesn't. It still almost brand new because it's hardly been used since school started.

The nostalgic idea of sitting down with Monkey Boy at the table or anywhere else is another misconception. I pull his crumpled papers out of his backpack, when he remembers to even bring it in the house, and then I try to corral him to go over his work. It's frustrating to see a math worksheet with eight completely unrelated problems. And MB has gotten about half of them wrong because he's not one to read directions, or pay attention to details and subtle differences in the multiple choice answers. One word to him about the not-so-great work he's brought home and he disappears from the room like Dash from The Incredibles.

Tomorrow, Monkey Boy has to do a speech about President's Day. Initially, he was excited about the speech. He brought home the outline in his folder and went right in to use the computer to do his research. We printed off a couple of pages of information about President's Day, and then he started to copy the information, verbatim, onto his paper. I explained plagiarism to him and, unfortunately, that is where his interest in the project flagged. "What'd you expect, Sarah?" Dante asked me, "Academics aren't his specialty." We spent the rest of the week working on the speech piecemeal.

Me: "We celebrate President's Day because..."

MB: "In honor of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln."

Me: "Who are they?"

MB: "Presidents."

Me: "Which ones? Why did we pick those two presidents to honor?"

A blur streaks across the living room and disappears into the kitchen.

Me: "Monkey Boy, where are you?" Then again, "Which presidents? Why did we pick those two presidents to honor?"

MB: "I don't know. Their birthdays are in February?"

Me: "Yes, but what did they do?"

MB: "George Washington was a surveyor."

Me: "Anything else you can think of? Something a little bigger, maybe?"

And so it went. And after I had coaxed each sentence out of his mouth and onto the paper, I proudly showed it to Dante. "Oh," he said, "I forgot to tell you. His teacher said that two other kids are giving their speeches on Washington and Lincoln, so she said not to have MB cover too much history about the presidents."

Back to the drawing board. And the Google Search Engine. Two more nights of composing sentences and practicing the revised speech about a holiday that isn't even called President's Day - it is still Washington's Birthday, even though it is never again going to be celebrated on his actual birthday. We went to the quarter store and put together an Abraham Lincoln costume, complete with a 25 cent child's tuxedo shirt. I can't even guess the odds of finding a shirt like that anywhere else the day before it's needed. Tonight he helped me make Washington Pie, which, incidentally is a cake like a Boston Cream Pie. He tried on his costume and gave his speech for everybody. And then he tucked his speech cards carefully into his take-home folder, along with a copy of the Washington Pie recipe, to bring in to school.

Meanwhile, Sunshine and Miss Brown Eyes are preparing to give a presentation tomorrow about Mars and their Mars Ecosystem drawings they made. And for their grand finale, they are going to erupt their plaster Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system. More on that later...

What's Hectic?

2009-02-03T13:21:00.001-08:00

"What's hectic, Mama?"

"Really, Sunshine? You don't know what hectic means?"

We were reading a book that has a scene with four kids, and their dog, trying to get in the car to return home after an extended, summer vacation. The word hectic was mentioned to describe all of the activity that was going on. In all of the chaos and confusion in her life, I was shocked that she hadn't heard the word before, or couldn't recall what it meant. Surely I've mentioned it at least once, and probably at the top of my lungs, so I'm certain the neighbors are well-aware of the definition of hectic. Is her mind so serene and calm that she is blissfully unaware of what's going on around her all the time?

So what is hectic, anyway? This afternoon, when I was putting away our skiing stuff for the week, Miss Brown Eyes came into the house with a small piece of bark in her eye. As I was working on rinsing it out for her, my neighbor showed up with some mail for Sculpey Hair - a note and five packages of Valentine hearts for her to share with each of her siblings. She also had a bag of nectarines for me because I've had a cold, and she was picking up Maggie to help her muck out stalls. Maggie went out and hopped into her truck, wearing only shorts and a t-shirt because the sun is shining, so surely it's warm enough for summer clothes. And at the same moment, the dad of the little girl I watch came to pick her up, because she was feeling a little punk, and she had a mini-meltdown in the entry way as she was getting ready to go. It was a brief moment of triage trying to determine where to go first, and I guess that's hectic.

I don't like to think of our lives as hectic. It's definitely more of a controlled chaos. Occasionally, when I start working on a project I can block out what is going on in the rest of the house. I can barely hear the kids arguing, I don't see the messes they are making, and I can turn a blind eye to them as they turn the kitchen upside-down to make a snack or lunch for themselves. To my mind's eye, the only thing happening is what is right in front of me - the ceiling turning bright white, old varnish coming off a dresser, the hoe turning under the weeds in the garden, fence boards (level and plumb, of course) being nailed to the rails. Dante usually gets home after an especially messy snack, like homemade yogurt with jam or tortillas with butter and cinnamon; or a run-on project, like refinishing doors on the dining room table. Then I have to face reality again, clean up the mess, and bring an end to the controlled chaos.

Right now, the girls are outside playing in the sunshine, sliding on the ice on the irrigation ditch. School is done for the day and it is blissfully quiet in the house. I guess that means I should be doing something besides writing on my blog...

Sculpey Hair

2009-01-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

I was re-reading one of my first posts tonight and I realized that I never followed up on my promise to write more about Sculpey Hair. She is the funniest kid. She talks non-stop and often keeps the other kids awake with her talking, either to them or to herself. She was the only two year old we've had where we didn't have to wonder what was going on inside her head. She couldn't keep her thoughts in her head and shared the progression of them all, in minute detail, with us. And still does.

The other day she was walking out of the bathroom and noticed herself in the mirror, just outside the bathroom door. I heard her say something to herself, then as she approached the mirror, I could hear this conversation.

"Hi! You look like me. You're wearing the same shirt. And you are wearing the same pants. Oh! And we have the same noses and eyes. My name is Maria Rose. What's your name?

By this point in the conversation, she was so close to the mirror her nose was touching it and her reflection starting talking back to her, but I unfortunately I can't remember that side of the conversation. I made a quick dash for the video camera to record her antics, but she was finished by the time I got back.

Sculpey Hair has not grown a whole lot of hair in her almost five years. She has never had a haircut and I think she's a little envious of her sisters' long hair. To make matters worse for her, she has very fine curly hair that turns into a frizzy mess if she brushes it. Which she loves to do. About two years ago, she took matters into her own hands by making her own long hair, complete with a very convenient handle to hold it in place.

Lately, her blue hair has resurfaced, along with a variety of long scarves and even a faux hair tie that can be styled and put up. Sunshine and Miss Brown Eyes love to help her get her hair done.

Sculpey Hair lives in a world of pretend. Her stick horse, Sparkle Pinky Pie, takes her on frequent jaunts in and around the house, correctly changing gaits and leads on command. And when Sculpey Hair gets into her characters, she's very expressive and hilarious. Once when she was trying to improvise on a script provided by Miss Brown Eyes, they started arguing over the logistics of their pretend game. Miss Brown Eyes got frustrated with her and said, very matter-of-factly, "You aren't the baby. You are the princess, and you're about to have a baby."

Trying to do school with this kid is a joke because she provides so much commentary for everything, that it's hard to get a word in edgewise. She and Miss Brown Eyes love to drape a very long, sheer, black curtain over their heads. They put on black hats over it and walk around the house singing their favorite Johnny Cash tune, "She walks these days, with a long black vEH-il."

Today, Sculpey Hair gave herself several treatments of abuterol with the nebulizer because she has a cold, and as she told me, "I need to do this so I can breathe, 'cause when I'm coughing I just can't breathe, and Daddy helped me do this last night when he was watching football after I threw up on your bed and then I had a shower and then he just sat with me, an' I did my breathing thing, and Daddy watched football with me. An' then I got in your bed again. I put my pillow on your pillow, 'cause that's where I'm going to sleep, an' you're going to sleep on the floor and Daddy gets the couch (smile...eye squint...pause... sigh...) and I get your bed." And that's where she is tonight, until she gets a reality check and wakes up in her own bed in the morning.

Hey, Tooth Fairy!

2009-01-25T22:02:00.000-08:00

Tonight I was obsessively compulsively sweeping the house and putting it back in order after a day of skiing and bringing in wood, (and chicken manure, mud and snow). I pulled out the chairs and swept under the table and pushed in the chairs and swept off the rug and was accumulating quite a pile when I heard, "Hey! Tooth Fairy! Don't forget my tooth!" It was Miss Brown Eyes, who lost her tooth over a week ago, and then really lost it until yesterday when she found it and put it under her pillow. I nudged the tooth fairy after he'd gone to bed last night and asked him if he had, you know, taken care of things. "I'll do it tomorrow morning." Ha! Famous last words.

Here we are at tomorrow and things still aren't taken care of. At bedtime, Sculpey Hair was chasing Miss Brown Eyes around the house trying to get her tooth. "I'm the tooth fairy," she yelled. "Give me the tooth! It was so hilarious that I had a hard time getting the owner of the tooth and the alleged tooth fairy back into bed. And when I did finally get everyone down, I cleaned the house some more and washed a pile of dishes and thought about the Tooth Fairy, Santa, and all of the other holiday and special occasion visitors.

Obviously, all the kids know who the Tooth Fairy is, and Santa too. Earlier this week, I had this conversation with Miss Brown Eyes. She was hiding her coconut scented shampoo behind the jumbo bag of toilet paper in the bathroom. "It's mine, Mama. I got it in my stocking." I hate to give you a reality check kid, but I don't think Santa intended for you to have the entire 64 oz bottle of shampoo for yourself. He knows how big our shower is and there is not enough shelf space to accomodate individual bottles of shampoo for each child. So there. A closer inspection of the bathroom shelves uncovered two more bottles of coconut shampoo carefully tucked in among the towels and washcloths. I guess they take their personal possessions seriously.

I think that must be why they love the Tooth Fairy so much. She has a stash of $2.00 bills to distribute for the first teeth lost, or the longest wait. Sometimes, she has dollar coins, quarters or a variety of other little treats to hand out. And best of all, the kids don't have to share the spoils. They can put their money in their banks, or spend it at the quarter store. So we play the game and wait for the inevitable note.

Dear Tooth Fairy, I lost my tooth tonight when Maggie threw the football to me and I hit my tooth with my knee and it fell out. Love, Monkey Boy

Sled Dog Extreme

2009-01-22T21:04:00.000-08:00

On the Deck of Voodoo Lodge

Last weekend, we volunteered to be on the communications team for a sled dog race. As part of our job, if you could call it that, we camped out at Voodoo Lodge at the top of Fergi and radioed the race organizers when teams passed the lodge. Our home-away-from-home was a well-insulated 14x22 foot cabin with a wood stove designed for a 2000 square foot house, and an incredible view of the mountains. On our first night there, the temperature inside got up to about 120 degrees - so much for packing for the cold weather! It was like sleeping in a sauna with a down sleeping bag and a crowd!

After watching the start of the race on Thursday afternoon, we piled all of our camping gear in the back of a Rhino and headed up to top of the ski run. While I cleaned out construction debris. set up our beds and made dinner, the kids explored various ski runs and slid down the icy slopes.

When the stars came out, we all bundled up and went out on the deck to look for constellations. We used the book Constellations: A Glow in the Dark Guide to the Night Sky, by Chris Sasaki. It has beautiful illustrations and gives the myth behind each constellation. And best of all, the stars glow in the dark, so you can hold the book out in front of you and tilt it until it matches the position of the constellation. Then it's easy to show find the stars that make up the constellation. Inside the cabin, the kids climbed in their sleeping bags and used their headlamps to make shadow pictures on the ceiling while I read to them.

The first sled dog team passed the lodge at 5:50 am the next morning, and all the kids were out on the porch cheering. I think he was a little surprised to see us. We found out later that he was really glad we were there, because then he knew he was going the right way! Five hours later we got word that the next team was getting close, so we hiked a little way up the trail to watch.

Then the kids raced to get their skis on (and Monkey Boy's snowboard) and took off down the Face to be first in line for the lift. After a full afternoon of skiing, we took the last T up to the top for the night. It felt like quite an adventure, getting off at the top of the lift to spend the night in our little cabin! I thought everyone would be tired out, but they headed right off to explore while it was still light out. They were sound asleep when the first team to finish the 200 mile race came in around 1 am. Dante radioed down the the official timer that the first finisher was on the way, and then he raced down to the finish line in the Rhino to make sure his message was received. The other four teams didn't start arriving until about nine hours later.

After three nights of camping, I was ready to go home. We packed up early in the morning and most of us skied down while Dante brought our stuff in the Rhino. It was a very memorable adventure for the kids and lots of fun.

So Long Partner

2009-01-13T20:53:00.000-08:00

The past few days have been hectic, waiting days. Maggie got up at 6:30 on Monday and went down to the barn next door to help with morning chores. When she arrived, she found our neighbor, Gail, frantically trying to get her horse, Harley, back on his feet. He had gone down sometime during the night with colic and was rolling and thrashing along the side of the barn trying to get upright. Gail made a quick call to Dante to stop at the barn on his way to work to help pull Harley to his feet - not a job you want to do on your way in to school. Dante left for work dressed in rain pants and muck boots, stopped at the barn to pull Harley away from the side of the barn and onto his feet, and then drove into town for school.

Once Harley was on his feet, Maggie walked him over to the arena, and then around and around it, trying to keep him moving, keep him from rolling again. The vet was called, and Maggie stood at Harley's head holding onto his halter. The vet explained what she already knew, that it was important to keep the horse on his feet, or his intestines could get twisted and completely blocked. She asked questions, listened to his heart beat and gut sounds, and then kept walking him. I picked her up five hours later so she could get some rest. Then, she went back to Gail's again after dinner, so she could spend the night and keep tabs on Harley.

Gail tried hard to prep Maggie for the worst, but Maggie was ever hopeful that things would turn around. They went back to the barn at 8 and again at 10, and walked Harley around and around, trying to make him more comfortable. At midnight, Gail called Dante and he left to help get Harley up again. He was down there until 3 am, walking the horse, encouraging him to get up, pulling him to his feet and trying to keep him there.

Maggie was back at the barn at 5:30 am, talking to Harley, still hopeful. Gail managed to get him into the arena to walk, but he was so exhausted. I brought the other kids down to see him one more time. The vet came again - this time with bad news. Harley's intestinal wall had ruptured and there was nothing to do, nothing to help him. We left and the vet put Harley to sleep, and later in the day, a neighbor came over to bury him in the paddock. Maggie and a friend spent the rest of the day making a beautiful memorial for her horse.

Today, we had a little funeral for Harley. The kids gathered rocks out in the field and put them around a little cross they made for him, while they told stories about him. Maggie put his empty halter on the cross and put out some apples and carrots for him. It was very sweet, and sad.

Ski School

2009-01-11T21:05:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, we taught Sunshine and Miss Brown Eyes the basics of skiing. They got on the T-bar and headed up to the top of the first hill. Sunshine made a pizza with her skis and headed off down the hill. As she picked up speed, she started to get a little nervous and sat down on the back of her skis. Instead of slowing down, she started to go much faster and sailed through the trees at top speed. Another try with the same results and that was it. Her brief skiing career was over. The next day, we convinced her give it another try. She took the T-bar to the first hill and followed us down the hill, arms out to steer, pizza slice with your feet, and bend your knees. Slowly, slowly she made her way down the hill. And up. And down. And up. And down.

Then it was Miss Brown Eyes' turn. Every time she got in out front of me, she took off like a rocket and landed in a heap. But, she was more persistent than Sunshine. She went up the T-bar several times and crashed her way down to the bottom before I finally stuck her in front of me and made sweeping turns down the hill with her. A couple trips with me and she figured it out. I left them at the bottom to practice and got a couple runs in before I checked in with them. She and Sunshine were power wedging their way down the hill, upright, and fairly in control. By the end of the day, Dante took them to the top of the lift and they followed him down Hays Maze. Two more down, one to go.

Dante found tiny ski boots at the quarter store this week, and a friend passed down a ski helmet to us, so this weekend was Sculpey Hair's turn. She doesn't have the athleticism of Sunshine, nor the perseverance of Miss Brown Eyes. I stuck her in front of me and rode up to lift to the first hill. I took her down in front of me several times before I let her try a couple of turns on her own. She stayed upright alone for about two seconds, and when she fell over, she lay in the snow like a limp fish, laughing and waiting to be stood upright again. This was not going to be easy. My legs were burning and my arms were tired after a morning of skiing with her. After a few runs in the afternoon, I was convinced she was never going to figure it out. Until ski school. I brought her up the T and across the Face to the bunny slope, and then I turned her over to someone else. The instructor skiied backwards down the hill holding the tips of her skis the way they were supposed to go. He told her to put her arms up in front of her like she's steering a car, make a pizza slice with the skis and squish grapes with her legs with the front of her boots. And she did! It took her a while to get down, but she didn't fall as many times and she was able to follow his tracks. She skiied down with him about three times and then Dante and I worked with her for most of the afternoon. Her skiing is still a work in progress, but thankfully, she's getting it figured out.

And the other kids? They did Ski School in the afternoon and went clear up to the top of the lift and followed the instructor down the Face. A far cry from the little slope they started on last week. By the end of the day, Sunshine and Miss Brown Eyes were taking the T-bar to the top and skiing down together. Next week they are going to learn some racing techniques. Hmmm. Maybe I should join them after my stellar descent of Stump Garden yesterday! I'm sure I could pick up some useful pointers.

The Old Timey Dance

2009-01-05T21:58:00.000-08:00

Every three weeks at the Odd Fellows Hall, there is an old-time community dance, with a live string band and a caller. We'd heard about the dances from several friends, and the girls were excited about going. Dante was a little hesitant, and Monkey Boy had absolutely no interest in going to a dance. But, I noticed that as the girls started getting ready, Monkey Boy put on a clean shirt and a nice pair of pants. Then I saw him in front of the mirror trying to comb his hair down, so I guess he changed his mind about not wanting to go. When we got to the Odd Fellows Hall, we hung up our coats in the cloak room and paid $5.00 at the door for our family. Sunshine put our plate of cookies on the table, and then all the kids helped themselves to a generous portion of cookies that other families had brought to share.

Our friend Laura was calling the dances. She started off with a very easy Sicilian circle dance and the kids paired off with us and each other. First she walked everybody through all the steps for the dance. Then the musicians started playing and everybody tried to remember what we were supposed to be doing. "Allemand left." "Balance and swing." "Right-hand star." Pretty soon we were do-si-do-ing, allemanding left and right, and promenading full tilt around the room. Even Sculpey Hair had it figured out.

In the photo on the top, Dante is doing the Texas Star with the kids. It doesn't look like many people are there, but actually the room was packed. Everyone was trying to steer clear of us because of all the little kids in our group. There were lots of high school kids there from the three little schools in the county, and lots of homeschool kids (besides ours). It was really neat to see people of all different ages enjoying themselves together on a Saturday evening.

The music and dancing lasted until 10 pm. Miss Brown Eyes was very disappointed when we told her it was her last dance at 9:30. And Monkey Boy wandered downstairs and copied the dates of all of the upcoming dances onto a little scrap of paper, so we could be sure to come again.

The Christmas Wreath

2008-12-28T16:19:00.000-08:00

We did not do any winter sports today. It was warm and a little rainy when we woke up, so I was spared from doing any more movie-style stunt falls, at least for the day. A few days ago, I posted a photo of the wreath the kids made for our neighbor, Gail. It was a work of art cutting out and decorating the gingerbread cookies for the wreath. First, I mixed up a batch of Tasha Tudor's Gingerbread Recipe. The book describes her turning out perfect replicas of her various animals - and there are photos to prove it. Ours are a bit more interesting.

The dough was quite sticky, but I rolled it out with lots of flour. Then, we tried several different ways to draw and cut out the horses before we found out what worked the best. Sculpey Hair and Miss Brown Eyes tried drawing the horses on paper. Then, I cut out their pictures, laid them on the gingerbread, and cut around them with a knife. That worked okay, but involved a lot of labor and the pictures they drew were quite small. Maggie and Sunshine tried rolling out the gingerbread and cutting out horses with butter knives. Monkey Boy drew on the dough with a pencil, and when I went to cut it out for him, I couldn't tell the head from the tail and ended up cutting off the head. Fortunately, he was a good sport about it, and then he wasn't too shy about making fun of my creations either. I found the best way to cut out the shapes was to use a small spatula and then move the legs into whatever position you wanted them in. That way I didn't cut off the legs every time. This photo shows our best results.

Once the cookies were baked, it was time to dress them up with icing. I wanted to do it at night to avoid the mess of having the kids help, but Dante said they had to do it because it was their present. So I waited.

The recipe said to "boil the sugar with water to spin a fine thread." I thought I could figure that out without too much trouble, but I ended up with lumps of hard candy. That mess ended up in the garbage and then I went online for a quick lesson in fine threads and candy-making. The second batch came out okay. I was doubtful about the next direction, and the ease with which Tasha was decorating the cookies using "paper cornucopias" full of icing. Fortunately, it worked great and was easy enough for the kids to do. And not too messy despite the paper pouches loaded with icing. So, I was glad I waited for their help.

Fergi Time

2008-12-27T18:51:00.000-08:00

There is a little ski club in a neighboring town that we became members of this year. Mind you, this is not a fancy, hoity-toity sort of place. It's a little hole in the wall. A peace-sign-shaped path through the trees, with a T-Bar to get you to the top. A lifetime membership costs $100 a year for five years, plus four days of work per family, per year. The restrooms are, well, primitive to say the least. A two-holer, housed in a small building that looks a bit like a plywood chapel. The lodge is well-heated and furnished with second hand couches and chairs, and several van seats propped up against the wall. Best of all, Fergi is fun!

Daily rental for boots/skiis/poles is only $15, but Fergi would still be out of our price range if it weren't for hand-me-downs and the 25 cent store to outfit our entire family. We have a wide range of equipment for everyone. Some of it was handed down to us, some was purchased at the 25 cent store or the Ski Swap, all of it is outdated. But for less than $50, we outfitted the whole family with downhill skiis, and all of the kids with x-country skiis. We even have extras in case you want to visit, and have very small feet.

Today, Dante worked up at the top of the lift while I ran kid patrol. First, I made them use the bathroom, because there is nothing like trying to rush a kid to the outhouse, pulling off gloves, hats, coats, and snowpants en route to an emergency pitstop. We learned that the hard way. It took me an hour to get everyone ready. Then, Monkey Boy and Maggie headed to the T-Bar and the other three strapped on cross-country skiis and paddled through the snow to the rope tow.

By the time I got everyone ready, I only had time to take one run down the slopes before it was my turn to pull T's. And when my relief came, it was time for lunch, and then getting kids dressed again for the snow. So much for a day of skiing. It turned out to be for the best though, because I took a couple of dramatic spills later on in the afternoon. "Wow, Mom! Are you okay?" Maggie asked me, as I did a reverse snowplow down the hill with my chin in the snow. She gracefully executed a turn and stopped below me. "That looked really bad." "I'm okay Mags," I said, "I'm trying to save a trip to the chiropractor by realigning my neck on my own. Thank you."

When we got in the car to drive home this afternoon, the kids started asking if we could go sledding tonight. They can't be serious. I didn't mention it in my skating post, but I had a cartoonesque fall when we were playing hockey. Both of my feet came out from under me when I was going after the puck and I dropped flat on my back on the ice. And then I wrecked again today on the slope. So, no. We did not go sledding tonight. I took some Advil, put my feet up, wrote this post, and am getting ready for another day of winter fun.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T15:20:00.000-08:00

We are thinking of everybody today, and wishing we were a little closer to the East coast for a day. Last night when the kids put all the presents under the tree, Monkey Boy said, "It looks like Grandma Claus came this year!" We have been enjoying a very relaxing day today. The kids opened their stockings with great excitement this morning. It looked quite a bit like Santa hit the grocery store on his way to our house, but their stockings are very large! After gifts were tucked back into stockings, we had Baked French Toast with real maple syrup for breakfast.

Everyone opened the rest of the gifts from Grandma Claus after breakfast. Monkey Boy especially enjoyed his giant tub of marbles and Sunshine immediately sat down at the table with her drawing supplies. Miss Brown Eyes, the little scientist, was thrilled with her miniature globe and Maggie loved all of her horse-related items. Then we all put on our new wool socks, Monkey Boy pulled new skates out of a bag, and we drove into town to the skating rink.

Now that MB has a new pair of skates, Sculpey Hair wanted to try out his old ones. It was interesting, to say the least. She started out by hanging on to two milk crates, stacked on top of each other, to keep her balance. After a couple of hours on the ice, she was able to stand without help, as long as she didn't try to go anywhere. Miss Brown Eyes skated for the first time a couple days ago and she tried her hand at hockey today with the rest of us. In the photo above, Maggie is sitting on the ice rink, in front of a house we were thinking of buying when we moved here. We decided not to, after looking at all of the work we'd have to put into it. But the photo does make the house look idyllic.

After an afternoon of skating, we came home and warmed up Christmas Eve pizza and calzones for lunch. No one was hungry for Christmas dinner, so I stuck it in the fridge for later. When it got dark out, the kids got ready to go sledding on the big hill outside our house. We gave them their last present on the way out the door - a headlamp for everybody wrapped up in their hat. There was a lot of excitement as they put them on and headed outside. We lit up the hill and had a blast piling, one or two at a time, on sleds and flying down the hill.

Winter Wonderland

2008-12-23T20:21:00.000-08:00

Today, our friend Gail had a Christmas party for the our little Pony Club group. For a special treat, we got to take a snow ride on the cross-country course, along the river. There is over a foot of snow in the cross-country field and the horses made a path through it, and slip-walked down the hill to the river. Snow was falling as we walked, blanketing the aspens, the cross-country jumps, and the ice on the river. It was magical! Usually there are wild turkeys roosting in the aspen grove and deer along the river, but fortunately it was quiet today, so no one made a quick, and unexpected trip off their horse. Dante came along with us and brought the camera along to capture our ride. Even Miss Brown Eyes got to ride on Old Noah, but she got cold, so Monkey Boy got to take a turn, as well.

After our snow ride, the kids helped with chores and then we went back to Gail's house for a little party. We spent many hours making Gail's gift and it turned out great. I couldn't figure out what to make for her until the last minute. Then I planned on making the wreath, but spent all of my time helping the kids cut out and decorate their horse cookies. So Dante ended up running out to get a wreath at the last minute and I attached all of the horses.

Dante took pictures of the cookie-making process and he wouldn't let me put the icing on while the kids were in bed, which turned out to be a good idea because it was fun, and they did a great job. Did you hear that right, Dante? A Good Idea! Tomorrow I'll post those pictures.

Now We're in Antarctica

2008-12-18T22:41:00.000-08:00

It's snowing here! Snow started falling thickly last night and it snowed most of the day today. We are supposed to get another 14" by tomorrow morning. Finally! I hate the cold without snow. I brought the ski boots and skates into the house yesterday to thaw them out and have the kids try them on before they take the initiative to do that for themselves. Maggie promptly put my skates on and claimed them for herself. I don't think so, kid. I just found them a few weeks ago after going without them during all of the snow and ice last year.

Our new woodstove, which we took out of our rental house, is great for keeping the house warm. We are actually comfortable more than five feet from the stove, unlike last year. But, the house is still quite drafty because it's really old, with lots of single pane windows, and there's no insulation. We just had a cold spell; -10 at night and not much above 0 in the daytime, and despite the large woodstove, it was really cold in the house. So, I hung a blanket between the dining room and the kitchen, effectively conserving the heat in the east end of the house where we spend most of our time. We didn't realize how much heat was being lost out of the west end of the house until last night when I went into the kitchen to make dinner and a blast of cold air hit me in the face. The kids came running out to see their breath in the kitchen. And when I went to do the laundry, the wet towels were frozen to the floor. Last night the kids kept darting back and forth through the curtain, between the kitchen and the dining room. "Now we're in Antarctica. Now we're in South America." I was happy to be able to provide such a realistic learning experience for them.

I am still little concerned about pipes freezing, so today I put a thermometer in the kitchen to make sure temperatures don't drop below 32 degrees. So far, the west end of the house has been holding steady at 36 degrees and upstairs is even colder. There have been some positive things about living right next door to Antarctica. I don't need to worry about the leftovers spoiling on the stove or the counter, there are no kids underfoot when I'm making dinner, and there are no lines for the bathroom.

Pizza Night

2008-12-12T22:57:00.000-08:00

One of the kids' favorite foods to make is pizza. Any time we have a pile of kids over, I make a triple batch of dough and a big pot of sauce and let the kids make their own pizzas. We only have 3 pans, so I encourage the smaller kids to play with the dough for a while before they finish their crust. Cooked in oiled cast iron pans, the crust comes out perfectly every time.

Pizza Dough (from Grampa's book, Farm Journal's Homemade Breads)

1 pkg. active dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1 c. warm water
2 TBLS vegetable oil
1 tsp. salt
3 to 3 1/4 c. flour

Dissolve the yeast in water with the sugar. Add salt, oil and enough flour to make a soft dough. You can use half wheat/half white flour, just add the wheat first. I think one recipe will make 2 or 3, 10" to 12" pizzas in cast irons pans. Sprinkle cornmeal on the bottom of the pans before you put in the crust.

Top with sauce, mozzarella cheese and toppings. Bake at 400 for about 20 min.

I got this recipe for Pizza Sauce from my friend Steph, and I think she got it from her mom. It's very easy to make, and tastes delicious.

Pizza Sauce
1 32 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1/3 c. olive oil
2 cloves garlic minced
oregano, basil, parsley
salt and pepper

Let it marinate. Makes enough for 6 12" pizzas.

A Christmas List

2008-12-10T22:54:00.000-08:00

Dante brought home some skinny rolls of paper (for an adding machine) for the kids. I thought about using them for timelines because they are little and it would be fun to roll out to look at all the little drawings about history. Then, Sculpey Hair, with a little help from Miss Brown Eyes, used hers to make drawings of all the horses she knows. Soon all the kids were making little drawings of various things, until one of them got the idea of making a Christmas list. And now our Christmas tree is covered with a lists of varying lengths. I'd like to scan and post them, but that would require more effort than I'm willing to put into it, so I'll list some of the better items including the original spelling.

Sunshine - I love how all of her little items lead up to...well, read it for yourself!
Bryer Horse
barn for doll house
a kitten
doll skeys
a long pritty ribbon
a soft silky blanket
a pritty silk pillow
a pair of soft socks
a tiny rug
my own room

Miss Brown Eyes - After she wrote it, she had some problems interpreting it herself! Any homeschooling moms out there who want to take a stab at this?
bir hsis
cipecin jijmin
jinjbedhas
jupop
falit

Maggie's is very horse-related and I'm not sure where Monkey Boy's list is, but I'm sure it includes, at the very least, an Ipod, a cell phone, and a Oui.

This is not a great photo of the tree, but it hasn't been knocked over yet by the kids or by the dogs wagging their tails into it. I opened the big boxes of presents from GP and Jack and stashed all of them on top of the maple bookcase that Dante built for me several years ago. Voila! Instant decorations for Christmas that we don't have to store all year, and they are too high for the kids to reach.

Dante just asked me if I minded getting the bookcase for Christmas again this year. I said that was fine, as long as he didn't mind getting the guitar I gave him for his birthday when Maggie was born. So it looks like I'm getting a bookcase, and he's getting a guitar. And we might also get a jinjbedhas, some jupops, and 2 falits!

The Perfect Christmas Tree

2008-12-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

Today we picked out our Christmas tree. We drove out the North highway into the National Forest and found a spot to pull off the road and hike around to look for the elusive perfect tree. Our first one in the county. We have been very fortunate when it comes to trees over the years. Several have been delivered to our house, hand-picked by friends with tree farms. Others were lush noble firs, perfectly shaped with lovely, full branches, that we picked up for $15 along the side of the road. So when we headed out today, I was a little anxious about what we would find.

The kids made several discoveries of fun and dangerous things to do right off the bat. Sculpey Hair found a homemade swing, made from a split log and some rope. There was ice to skate on. We climbed in, on, and through the skeleton of a fort someone built.

Once the hunt for our tree got into full swing, we had lots of favorites to choose from. The majority of them were beautiful trees from a distance that morphed into clusters of four or five scrawny trees as we approached. There were others that were lovely, but too small for our nine foot ceilings. And some that soared 20 feet in the air that were too large. "We can just cut off the top of that one, and it would be perfect."

Dante was the one who finally found the keeper. Monkey Boy helped cut the tree down and everyone carried it to the car. Sculpy Hair inhaled the sweet piney smell on the way. Sunshine spent the day at a friend's house so she's not in any of the photos. I'll post some more photos tomorrow of the decorated tree. Putting up the tree involved much moving of furniture and electronics. Dante was helping our neighbor milk so there was no limit on how much stuff I could move to make everything just right. I even installed a hard drive on my computer during the tree trimming process, but I didn't get any photos of that!

Pan Para Todos (That's Bread not Pans)

2008-12-04T21:36:00.000-08:00

This is a bread recipe that is a combination of Mama JJ's, Kate's and mine. I used to make one recipe into two large loaves or three small loaves, but now I make a two batches into about 50 rolls. I freeze half of them and pull them out to use about half way through the week. I've found we go through less bread if it's in single serving sizes rather than whole loaves.

Sarah’s Wheat Bread

1. At least 30 minutes to 1 night before…

4 c. wheat flour
2 c. water
2 TBLS apple cider vinegar (makes it easier for your system to digest bread)

Mix well and cover and let sit on the counter for at least 30 minutes.

2. Dissolve 2 TBLS yeast in 1 c. warm water. Add a pinch of sugar to activate the yeast.

3. Add the following to the wheat/water mixture:

Large glop of honey
1/3 c. brown sugar
2/3 c. oil (canola, sunflower, vegetable, coconut…)
1 c. coarsely ground corn meal (like Polenta, but regular cornmeal is fine too)
1 ½ tsp. salt

4. Add the yeast mixture to the above and stir.

If you are using a mixer with a dough hook, add 2 c. wheat flour and 1 c. white flour and stir for a couple of minutes until the flour is mixed in a little. Then let it sit for a few minutes before you knead the dough with the mixer. This is to let the liquid in the dough absorb some of the flour you’ve just added and make it easier to knead the dough. (This also works if you are kneading by hand.) Turn the mixer on again and add additional white flour as needed until the ball of dough comes away from the sides of the bowl and is no longer sticky. It should take about one more cup of flour to make that happen.

Let the dough rise in a warm place until double - about 1 hour. Then punch down the dough and shape it. It makes 2 large or 3 smaller loaves. You can also cut the dough into quarters, and each quarter into six pieces and shape it into rolls. I oil the pans and put cornmeal on them to keep the bread from sticking.

Let it rise again until double. Mix an egg and 1 TBLS of water and brush it on the bread or rolls before baking.

Bake bread at 400 for 40 min. and rolls at 400 for 20 min. Times are approximate Sarah times. If you make loaves of bread, you may have to cover the them towards the end to keep them from getting dark. Remove from pans immediately and put on wire racks to cool.

Not So Sparkly

2008-11-29T19:24:00.000-08:00

Originally my post was going to be about Thanksgiving. Then I started writing a reply to Mama JJ's post about jewelry and I realized my experiences with jewelry are rather comical, so I decided to write a post of my own. The first vivid memory I have involving unwanted jewelry happened when John and I were visiting Grandma and Grandpa. As we were getting ready to go out to dinner at Grandma's McDonald's one night, she gave me an amethyst ring that had been hers. She wanted me to have it because it was my birthstone. So I felt a little more than obligated to wear it out to dinner. All I can remember of that evening is John and I riding in the back of Grandpa's car, the scent new car filling our nostrils as we slid around the the slippery leather seats in the back, silently laughing our heads off about everything. The ring. The literate blue salamanders who had their own culverts to get under the road (We joked that they were literate because Grandma asked, "How do they know to use the culverts?") That night at dinner, I carefully laid the ring under the rim of the plate so I wouldn't have to wear it during dinner, or look at it. I didn't want to ruin a perfectly good dinner by getting nauseous from the feel of a ring on my finger or the sight of one laying on the table in front of me. Ebay, anyone?!

When Dante asked me to marry him, he gave me a diamond ring. He thought that I might really want a ring even though I told him I didn't. (I guess I never told him about the previous ring story.) I could barely even bring myself to try it on and promptly returned it to the store. Later on he told me that his original idea was to give me a lump of coal in a box. You know, because coal turns into diamonds. Now that's my kind of a rock. I didn't even want a wedding ring. I was going to have a ring tattooed on my finger so I didn't have to feel the cold metal against my finger. Ever. But, about two weeks before the wedding, we did get them. After wearing wedding rings for several years, we now keep them in a little tea cup and look at them occasionally to make sure they are still there.

I knew the topic of jewelry would eventually come up again. We do have four daughters after all. Our girls really wanted their ears pierced. Finally, I said when they were big enough that I would never had to help them, they could get earrings. So when the time came and the girls seemed responsible enough, Dante took them to get their ears pierced and he helped them pick out their first pair of earrings. He did a good job teaching them how to take care of their ears and helping them clean them at night. But one night when he was gone, one of Sunshine's earrings fell out. I tried to get it back it for about 20 minutes without any luck. I wanted to call Kate for advice on how to put earrings in, but it was already after 9 PST and I didn't think she would appreciate a 12 am wake-up call for an earring dilemma. I finally called a friend of mine and she talked me through using a potato behind the ear to shove the earring into. Ewwww! Fortunately for me, and for them, that was the only time I've ever had to help with earrings.

I'm thankful that our kids are into horses and dirtbikes and not hair and spangles. Because as I've discovered, it's easier to tack up a horse or change a bike tire than it is to put in a pair of earrings.

The Story of Science

2008-11-24T21:19:00.001-08:00

This is a homeschoolish post, so bear with me if you don't homeschool. It's very interesting anyway. While we were at the Science conference, I came across a vendor who was selling Joy Hakim's books, The Story of Science. I had seen them in a catalog before and was thinking about getting them for Maggie. If you aren't familiar with her books, they are written in a storytelling style that interweaves creation myths, history, physics, and mathematics to give a thorough historical perspective to modern science. Her books humanize science and offer a wealth of historical literature, illustrations and photographs of ancient works. I picked up Aristotle Leads the Way and the teacher's guide and workbook. I've never been excited about science before, and I can't wait to start doing this series with Maggie.

We also got a complimentary dissection kit home at the conference. And a bag of specimins. "Should I put it in the cooler?" Dante wondered. No thank you. Cow hearts, pig kidneys and sheep eye balls don't mix well with the deli ham and turkey. And besides, they are preserved until we open them. I think I can handle the heart and the kidney, but I've seen the inside of the eyeball and I'm definitely leaving it up to Dante.

Mythbusters

2008-11-21T09:36:00.001-08:00

Dante has been taking classes toward his Science and Math endorsement and this week, through a grant for Eastern Oregon teachers, our family went with him to a National Science Conference in Portland. Our hotel had a pool that was open 24 hours a day, and a continental breakfast that included waffles. I should tell you right away (because they will if I don't) that on the first morning, I poured gravy into the waffle maker by accident and Dante and the kids had a field day with my mistake.

The layout of the breakfast buffet was like this:

Waffle Maker, Gravy, Biscuits (covered with a towel), Jam Assortment, Waffle Batter

I tried to cook the gravy and scrape it out, but failed miserably. They had to take away the waffle maker to clean it so we didn't get any waffles. The next day things were arranged in a more logical layout and we had waffles for breakfast.

After the waffle debacle, we made it to the conference and went to hear the hosts of Mythbusters give a talk about their show. They picked 15 people, including Maggie, from the audience to come up and ask questions during their talk. She has never seen Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel, so she didn't know that most of their experiments involve explosions and such. Maggie asked a question about whether caffeine stunts a child's growth. They said her question reminded them of another myth they tried to bust - the one about the cardboard box of a sugary cereal being more nutritious than the cereal itself.

Their experiment was set up like this: Cage One had three mice who were given regular mouse food. Cage Two had three mice who were fed only sugary cereal. And Cage Three had three mice who were fed only pellets made from the cereal box. Things were going well until they left for the weekend. They returned to find three happy mice in each of the first two cages and only one, very fat, mouse in Cage Three. They could actually see the heads of the other two mice crammed in the rib cage of the remaining mouse, now aptly named Killer. Then they fed him to the snake. So the short answer to Maggie's question was that they weren't about to experiment on children after the "Killer" incident. And though you will never see it televised on their show, the nutritious cardboard box myth is really...a myth.

Finishing Touches

2008-11-10T21:00:00.000-08:00

I got out the paint tonight for the first time in several months. I love painting. There is something therapeutic and energizing about fresh paint on a (thoroughly washed, of course Mom) dingy wall. When we moved into this house, there were lots of walls that needed fresh paint. The kitchen, with its maroon painted cupboards and a navy blue ceiling was one of the worst. It was like a tunnel. After several weeks of living in the house, I decided I'd just paint the kitchen ceiling. I thought I could live with maroon cupboards as long as the ceiling was brightened up a bit. And there was a huge improvement in the light once the ceiling was white. But it wasn't enough. I waited a few more weeks before I decided to brighten up the rest of the kitchen. I also replaced the shiny saucer plate knobs with something a little classier. It was like night and day.

The only problem I ran into was that I used Silicone caulk to fill in all of the gaps around the woodwork, and I was a little sloppy. And when I went to cut in around the ceiling, the paint wouldn't stick to the caulk, no matter how many coats I used. And there were large white patches on the wall where I was careless with the caulk. I left it and went to work on other more drastic paint combinations around the house, but it kept bugging me.

Yesterday I was still feeling a little adrenaline rush from the completion of my last projects, so I decided to finish the kitchen. I started about an hour before dinner, (which is generally when I start my biggest projects). I had to wash all of the cupboards and woodwork and then re-caulk everything with acrylic caulk so I could paint over it. I was feeling pretty confident when that was done and no one was asking for food yet, so I opened the cans of paint.

This is what the kitchen looked like when Rob came home. I was up on a stool cutting in around the ceiling, with the caulk gun at my feet. There were bread rolls started on one counter while dinner was going on the stove. Media time was long over with, so I took the camera and went around the house to see what everyone was doing while I worked on my project.

Tandem Headstands

Guitar Practice

Bread Sculptures

Journal Entries

Extended Version of Chess (in which the last man, woman or pawn surviving is the winner)

At the last minute, Sunshine came out and helped me stuff the shells for dinner and I cleaned up my mess while they were baking. Today the kids were awful, Sunshine broke out in hives again, and I was tired, so I guess that's going to be it for awhile, as far as projects go.

All in a Day's Work

2008-11-08T22:27:00.000-08:00

I woke up with a bad headache yesterday and a desire to do nothing but lay in bed and read my book about Alexander Hamilton. I guess that doesn't sound like much of a cure for a headache, but that's okay, it works for me. Instead I had to get up early and take Maggie to meet the bus for her Friday science program, then make breakfast for the other kids and get them going on their morning chores. When they finished their chores and were busily practicing an ongoing gymnastics routine all around the house, I sat down to read my book.

As I sat there, I started thinking about all of the unfinished projects I had waiting for me to finish. There was a curtain rod waiting to be installed in my bedroom, a quilt I made that needed some repairs, cookie dough sitting in the fridge, chickens with no water and dirty nests, wood to be stacked, cars to be cleaned. I stopped thinking and decided that I would finish everything in a day and then blog about it. It would be like a little competition for me. A goal to achieve. Something to motivate me. And so I did it. And then I was too tired to write about it until now.

I installed the curtain rod and rehung the curtain I made from an old tablecloth of Granny's. I patched Maggie's quilt in numerous places and made the decision never to use old sheet material on a new quilt again.

I printed and laminated the cards I've been promising to make for our neighbor who has the riding arena.

The chickens got fresh water and clean straw in their boxes. They sat up on their perches and seemed pleased with the changes in their accommodations.

I pulled all of the winter stuff out of the shed and replaced with with all of our bikes, the stroller and the lawnmower. Then I built a rack to put the skis in so they are balanced in a haphazard pile on the back porch. Fortunately you cannot see the craftsmanship of the rack in this small photo, but it did not involve baling twine, dental floss or duct tape. In the mid-afternoon, it started to rain a bit so I had to run and get the clothes off the line. When I brought them inside, I did the breakfast and lunch dishes, vacuumed and split wood while I baked four dozen cookies.

After I fed the kids lunch, I went back outside to finish chopping and stacking the wood that Rob had thrown off the truck. I deleted the picture of my beautiful woodpile that the kids helped me stack, but altogether, I think we stacked about a cord of wood.

I made a pile of scrap metal and garbage that needs to be hauled away sometime very soon. And with the bikes out of the barn, I accomplished what I'd been trying to do all day...make a spot to park the Camry to protect it from the elements. Then I had to vacuum the Camry, polish the dashboard, clean out the trunk and...I didn't get a chance to wash it quite yet. But it seems happy in its new home.

I filled up the Camry's trunk with recycling and several boxes of stuff I condensed during the day and that was all I had time for. Maggie needed to be picked up, the kids were tired of being ignored or put to work, and everybody was hungry. So tomorrow, I'll make another To Do list and knock out the rest of my unfinished projects. And now I'm going back to my book to read about Hamilton's role in the Constitutional Convention.