2015 March Memories

We finally took advantage of the free day at the Museum of Flight. This is WAY better than paying the $98.00 it would have cost us if we didn't go on free day, which is the first Thursday of every month. We drove up and had a casual look around at many of their great airplanes, the favorite of which was the flying car, had some dinner at their cafeteria and then saw some interesting stuff in space building. Like the tube toilet they have to use in space.  We also watched the sad video of the Challenger explosion which confused Jasper. He kept thinking that Christa McAuliffe was my actual teacher.

The next day we learned about oases, so I had the kids go down to the beach, pretend the sand was a desert and make their own.

On March 7th, we said goodbye to all of our chickens. We gave away all of them including our coop and all of our chicken stuff to a family just starting out their chicken adventure. Kivi tried really hard to be sad. But they were a lot of hard work. She had to go out every night and lock them up so they wouldn't get eaten by raccoons.  Eben had let them out every morning and together they were in charge of getting them food, water and mucking out the coop.  So secretly I think she was a little relived Dada said it was time for them to go.

 We also had one of the last movie nights in the MamaDada bed!

This is Pella, sitting on the toilet, holding onto my legs. I had to have one of the kids get a picture of this so I won't forget how she has to go.  She's doing it less and less now (which is why I had to get a picture, because I know it won't last forever and soon I'll forget that she ever had to do this while sitting on the potty.) If I'm not there and she has to go poo, she'll yell, "Mama! Come here! I have to hold onto you!" She digs her little face into my knees, holds on tightly to my legs and then she can do her business.

 This is on the 14th. I want to remember how much these girls love their little brother. Opal and especially Pella love to put baby powder all over Tuffy. His head, tummy, back, neck, toes, arms, legs everything gets all rubbed down with these loving, big sister hands.

Little Summer Things

Here are some random things that happened at the end of July and August that I will probably forget if I don't write them down somewhere.

July 29th: We had a chicken escape and looked and looked everywhere for her. We had actually given up for a while when Pella the great chicken wrangler found her inside the house, caught her and carried her around for everyone to see before putting her back in the coup.

Poppie and Nonnie had brought us back some delicacies from Cambodia - Freeze Dried Tarantulas! So we decided to get them out and try them. All the kids tasted them but Opal and Pella ended up eating most of them. They loved the "beef jerky flavor". It was pretty gross watching them pull the legs off and eat them up!

August 27th: As we are in the middle of morning devotions, one of the kids spots the little pontoon boat floating out into the lake. Jasper and Kivi run and get their bathing suits on and dive in to save it. The little boat almost floated 3/4 of the way across the lake before they were able to swim out and reach it, but they made it and rowed it all the way back as we stood on the deck and cheered them on. What a morning workout!

Also Aug. 27th, I finally take a picture of Baby Bear and the cupcake cravings. I have eaten a cupcake almost everyday of this pregnancy. (Which might be why I am bigger and heavier than I've ever been before during a pregnancy!) I blame Peter. He went to the farmer's market every week to buy me my weekly supply of amazing, to die for cupcakes.

More Chicks!

On March 13th Kivi and Eben presented Dada with a petition it read:

OUR PETITION

               Dear Dada, 

Me and Eben would really like baby chicks. If you let us get them we will clean up after them. We will spend our money on them and take care of them when they are grown up as well. That means we will go out and feed them when they are out of food, collect eggs and take out the water and fill it up. When they are chicks, we will also feed and water them, clean up their poop, and when we first get them if we do, we will make up the fire place and garage for them. We have put away the older chickens to help the family and to prove to you we are responsible for chicks. If we get them it will mean more eggs to make up for Puff and Mooney's not laying and the loss of Eben, Jasper's and my chickens, from raccoon attacks. We will continue locking and letting out of the chickens. We hope you agree to our petition and let us have chicks. We have also proven ourselfs with fish and frogs.

             Love, 

                 Kivi and Eben

Needless to say Dada said yes to their adorable request. How could he say no? Dada agreed to three new chicks.

When we actually were able to go to get the chicks on March 26th, Dell's would only sell them in groups of six! So everyone got a new baby chick. We got three Leghorns and three Ameraucanas. Opal's is Winky. Pella's is Chunky Chicky. Kivi's is Butterscotch (Butter). Eben's is Hugo. Jasper's is Sleepy. Berg's is Bunky.

We actually got the idea of having the kids write a petition for something they really wanted from a family with 9 kids who went to our old church. When I found out their kids had to write their father a petition to help me lead preschoolers in song time I thought, "What strict parents!" However, when I thought more about it I realized that asking their father in such a formal way was not only good writing practice for one, it also helped them organize their thoughts, think through why they really wanted what they were petitioning for and come up with good reasons why. It is also what God calls us to do. We are to go to Him first. We are suppose to take all of our "petitions" to Him. Sometimes He says yes and sometimes it's no. Right now our kids have to trust their earthly father for decisions in life. Later on they're going to have to trust God alone. Both fathers have their best interest in mind for their children. I pray all our kids will know the love God has for them and the great plan He has for their lives and the importance of petitioning their Father just like they petition their Dada and know his love for them now.

Chickie Day 2013

On March 23, Dada decided it was time for new chicks! We packed up the kids in the bus and headed down to Dell's for sexed, medicated chicks. (We had learned our lesson the hard way before and ended up getting sick chickens and roosters.)

Eben picked out a Buff Orpington and named him Emo. 

Pella, Berg and Jasper got Golden Sussex chicks and named them Deh, Chicky Tail and Bullet. Kivi and Opal got Araucanas they named White Tip and Lucy.

 Berg was super nervous about the chicks at first and ran away from them at the store, but amazingly he held his Chicky Tail on the bus ride to Lowe's.

While Dada went inside to buy lumber to build me new garden boxes for the front lawn(!!!!!) we stayed with the new chicks on the lawn by the parking lot and ate the lollipops the kind people at Paldo World gave us. Dada had needed his Kim Chi and while we were there we ate Korean Bulgogi lunch and a man with a microphone followed us all around the produce section speaking in Korean and   giving us samples of every fruit we'd never seen before. 

When we got home we put our new chicks in the fireplace, a great plan we had come up with the time we had chicks before.

Mother & Daughter Sewing Brunch

Saturday, Jan. 26th we hosted a little Sewing Brunch for some of our friends. I love to sew, and Kivi is loving learning. One of her devotions challenged her to invite some friends over so we did. We had a lovely little brunch and taught our friends how to sew chickens! 

We had three sewing machines and each girl cut out the simple rectangle shape to make the chicken body and the triangle to make the beak. I had made the combs before hand. Then they sewed them up, stuffed them and added rice to the bottom before hand stitching the bottom. 

Everyone's chickens turned out so cute! It was a great simple afternoon project and the girls did a wonderful job. I see more sewing parties in our future! Maybe a sheep, or owl or apron?

All the mamas and their girl babies!

Some Christmasy Stuff, Dec. 13-16th

Dec. 13th - We watched The Grinch Who Stole Christmas as Pella crawled around and danced in her Who piggy tails.

Dec. 14th - Sewing Day!! We made the cutest little animals to give with our World Vision gifts this year. Our gifts were the gift of giving and we explained how there were so many other people in the world who didn't have as much as we did so we were going to give chickens and donkeys and rabbits and ducks to our family and some friends, but they wouldn't actually get them, so we made them instead so our loved ones would remember the love they sent and feel our homemade love. This was one of the chickens we invented. The girls had the best time with these little chickens! They played with them forever making them nests, roosts, a whole coop. I think they forget we have real ones right outside!

Kivi got quite good at hand sewing with those little fingers.

These are our rabbit and duck creations:

Jasper finally got to learn how to sew too! He was "sew" excited!

He made himself a yellow pillow, which he has slept with every night since.

 Dec. 15th - I made a peach pie, and marionberry bars for Christmas parties and I went to my first Nogger party with my friend Stephanie which was hosted by my lovely sister, Shmee, at her place in Seattle. My shirt said, "Stop, Nog and Roll" with cute graphics and hers said, "Sheriff of Noggingham". We realized we were old after having to leave at 10:30pm so we wouldn't fall asleep while driving.

Dec. 16th - The kids sang in church. The little ones did the traditional Away in a Manger song while wearing the sheep gear  and the big kids sang Peace on Earth. It was very beautiful. Once Dada got home from work we went to our friends house for a fun Happy Birthday Jesus party, where we stole a great movie gift in the gift exchange. That night we made some Christmas sugar cookies. 

Random Cutie Pictures

The rest of March summed up in pictures:

Opal holding Jasper (the chick).

The boys feeding Berg.

Eben's latest fashion accessory, Star Wars silly bands from Hannah.

The girls at a special princess night with Dada at the Olympia Children's Museum.

Berg and Opie holding Tiny II. Berg is such an animal lover. He's so soft and gets so excited to see the chicks. We still have Puff and Moony II from the original batch of chickens and they both regularly lay one egg a day. Six more should help with not needing to buy so many more eggs from the store. It's going to be crazy to see how many eggs our family eats when we have a house full of teenagers!

Theme Days!

I love homeschooling. I love being with our kids all day. I love watching them learn new things. I love seeing them help and teach each other. I didn't love that we had gotten stuck in a boring pattern. We kept doing the same routine everyday. Which is ok if your not me. I need fun and excitement and that's the reason we decided to homeschool in the first place (well, there were lots of reasons). Letting the kids choose what they wanted to learn about and have fun doing it were big ones. So we are changing it up a little and spending some days just learning about one thing. The first theme day we had was Eagle Day on March 15th. It was great! We read books about eagles in our actual sized eagle nest made out of blankets, (which is 8-6 feet across by the way!) watched eagle videos, and acted out hatching and flying and catching prey. We even made eagle cookies and had an eagle sighting in our backyard. Since then we've done theme days on St. Patrick, and polar bears, and last week we studied all about weather. This week we are learning all about Shakespeare and reading the kid versions of his plays by Lois Burdett. Hurray for fun! Also, Peter bought me an ipad, so the kids are really motivated to finish their work because the first one done gets to play on it until lunch.

St. Patrick's Day was fun for two reasons. Learning about St. Patrick (which we'd actually been doing since the beginning of the month, but mostly for my own curiosity) and Irish traditions. We had Dubblin Coddle for dinner - it was delicious! And Dada decided it was the day to get our new baby chicks!

This time we went to Dell's to get sexed chicks. And each kid picked out their own chick and named it. Eben got a Buff Orphington he named Tiny II, Kivi got a Rhode Island Red she named Dotty. Dada and Berg share Friar Tuck also a RIR. Jasper chose a Black Sexlink he named Jasper, but now calls J.J. Opal has a Golden Sexlink called Pokey. Mama has a Barred Rock named Rocky. We'll see how many of these live or are actually hens. So far they are much healthier than our last batch.

A guy offered to take our picture outside of Dell's and I'm so glad he did. I love this one!

The chickies live in the fireplace for now, like the last batch did, and we get to see them and hold them all the time. Now we just have to wait - hopefully not 8-9 months this time for eggs!

Our First Egg!

So after almost 9 months of waiting, and practically giving up hope that we were ever going to see an egg (because most chickens lay at 5 months old) we finally get a wonderful surprise! Puff, who turns out not to be a Barred Rock, like we thought, laid us a beautiful light brown egg, and has every day ever since Nov. 28th. Since this video however, we now only have 2 chickens because Nugget bit the dust. We knew he wasn't going to last long when he started pooping florescent green poop.

Good Summer Things

Kivi is always drawing, writing, coloring, creating. This was one of her super cute notes for Berg:

Cock-a-doodle-duped again! Another rooster! Eben's chicken, and everyone's favorite, Tiny, is definitely a roo. So we'll have to say goodbye to him too. But we might as well wait and see if any others are pretending to be hens, because we suspect more of them will come clean and start crowing. We have as of yet... no eggs.

Jasper "playing" with Berg:

The twins at Round Table pizza where we cashed in Eben and Kivi's library summer reading reward before heading to Sand in the City.

VBS and Chicken Update

VBS was the week of July 12th at Lake City and our family traveled to Ancient Egypt every day together to learn the story of Joseph, sing new songs and have lots of fun spending coins at the Egyptian marketplace buying and making crafts.

Kivi at the Embalmer's making a sarcophagus - I didn't say they were normal crafts. We had to tell the workers in the market place about our one true God and invite them to the celebration at the end of each day.

Eben weaving a basket.

Jasper building a sugar cube pyramid. The market place also included a hieroglyphics shop, jewelers, beauty shop, toy store, brick making, linen shop and a chicken store.

Opal and Berg hung out in the nursery while we journeyed.

We also got 4 more chickens during this week - White Jersey Giants. We had to replace Doody and Suzy who turned out to be roosters. Roosters are not allowed in Lakewood, plus they get mean. So we sold them at Yard Bird for $5 each and bought 4 pullets for $4 each. Sadly, the chicken Eben is holding, Cutie, and Moony, Japser's replacement chicken (Peep was eaten by the eagle we think.) have already died - from shock. So the chickens we now have are Puff (Mama's), Patty (Dada's), Tiny (Eben's), Speckles (Kivi's), Moony II (Jasper's [the one Kivi is holding]) and Nugget (Berg's).