Fairy Princess

This is the lovely Jacqueline...she is one of the children we watched over the Summer. She is Dorathy's age, so all summer long was like one big playdate! She was always helpful and thinking of others and did a lot to serve and take care of the younger girls. They all adored her and competed for her attention.

I wish that I had taken pictures of all the girls in their "Fairy Princess" Daisy chains that we all learned how to make together...But by the time I finished Jacque and Courtney's pics...something else came up that I had to run and take care of, and by the time I was done...the remaining daisy chains had fallen apart. Oh, well...at least we are all expert flower-necklace makers now!

Courtney made a daisy crown, necklace, bracelet...even a flower ring! This was one project where Christopher just went and hid in his room! ;) All the girls thought it would be fun to put on a play about fairies and have Christopher be the fairy king...but he wasn't even going to consider that one!

Courtney loves to pose :)

Father's Day

For Father's day 2011, we crowned Scott the Daddy king...he loved that a lot, and all the kids thought it terrific. We made him our traditional waffles breakfast in bed...but we don't see Dad too much these days, so he opted out to come enjoy the feast with us!

Time to trim the beard?

Classic statue pose!

Scott got into a really bad car accident in May of 2011. He displaced his collar bone and a couple of ribs...but it took 6 weeks for a doctor/ physical therapist to finally diagnose it!! By then everything was out of alignment so bad, the therapist said his collar bone would never go back to normal, but would have to make its own socket. This would be a minimum 6 month recovery.

Scott suffered from months of pain. Even now, 8 moths later, he is still having a hard time. If he tries to do push ups, the ribs pop out again.

It didn't make it easier on his body that he started working double shifts of "overtime" to help compensate and pay for all the extra bills stemming from the accident. It is an awesome Fatherly thing to fulfill the responsibility of providing for your family...but it's a hard thing on everyone else when that means we sometimes only see him on Sundays! Working 4 to 6 days a week of 18 hour days and living off of 4 hours of sleep is not for healthy physically or emotionally for anyone, either! For the first time in our marriage, I was getting more sleep that Scott!

But happily, Scott's efforts in the overtime department payed for the purchase of a new car, several vehicle repairs, new tires for our huge pricey van, our whole yellowstone trip, our Hawaii trip in Feb. and 3 years supply of food storage that we've been wanting to make for years and years...

But time with our loved ones is always more precious than any earthly possessions...
I'd rather have loads of debt than never see my sweet helpful hubby. :(

We missed you, Scott!

Happy Father's day...you deserve a day of fun and rest!!!

Hopefully the dog-days of overtime will soon be at an end, and we can enjoy having you home with the family again!!!

Summer school

My grand plans for 2011 to continue to hold "Summer School" fell through the cracks. This is where I discovered that for me and my family, unless I do something regularly, it just takes too much energy to continue forward with a project. You can't do something half-heartedly! It's all...or NOTHING!

I chose this summer to help out a friend and watch her wonderful, sweet, fun, children 2 or 3 days per week. I thought this would be great break and treat for my kids to get some summer fun and play with friends, and then we'd balance it by doing "school" the other days of the week...but life just doesn't work that way! I was crazy for thinking that would work! When my kids friends came over at 6 a.m....of course they all wanted to play! I could barely get my kids to do their regular chores or even concentrate on piano practice.

For a big family to function, there has to be synergy, a family focus, certain accepted ideologies and rules of behavior. And especially for homeschooling families, schedule is everything! If you don't have a plan and stick to it, none of your goals are going to happen. We got into "play mode" and that was it for the whole summer. There were too many wonderful, fun, outdoorsy things to do for my kids to even fathom sitting at the table working on math. Any attempts to facilitate formal schooling was officially flushed down the toilet!! And as I could see the writing on the wall, there was no use fighting it...we just took all that energy and went a different direction!

Playing all summer didn't mean that learning didn't happen at my house this summer...oh, no, not by a long shot! We read tons and tons of books, did projects, and created. We had fun baking, cleaning, gardening, and park-hopping. We did art, wrote plays and filmed them. We found and cataloged bugs and other misc. creatures. (see interesting beetle below that we captured, identified online, and then sketched in our nature books)

We went to pick fruit. (This was THE major effort of the summer!) We had huge cherry pitting parties while watching the new My Little Pony series. And of course there was the Berries...we picked 300 lbs of Strawberries, 300 lbs of blueberries, 100. lbs of boysenberries, 200 lbs of raspberries, 500 lbs of peaches...and I have no idea how many hundreds of pounds we picked, processed, and froze of apples and pears! We also did 100lbs of grapes. I didn't even try to count how many pounds of blackberries we did...because none of it ever made it to our freezer!!! We just consumed them...continually :) I had weeks of scratches on my arms and legs from the brambles, and the creases in my hands seemed continually stained purple. My kids mouths and teeth were purple, too! We made pies, jams, and lots and lots of smoothies. :)

All the kids participated and had a grand time in all our yummy endeavors. We also did some plum harvests...we consumed all those fresh, too! The rest of it all we froze because we eat daily a variety of fruit in our green smoothies and kefir smoothies...yum! I will be so sad when it is all gone...I doubt it will all last till next summer!!!

The highlight of the summer for the kids was DRAMA CAMP put on by an awesomely creative family in Salem. Every Summer, their teenage daughters adapt a famous story into a musical. All the proceeds from their camp go to pay for their church girls camp and other school costs for the coming year.

This year, the play they wrote was on NORSE MYTHOLOGY!!!

Dorathy here on the left is FREYA, the goddess of love and beauty. Athena on her right is her twin brother, the god Frey.

Sanford played THOR and Christopher played Loki. This was so hilarious to Mary and I as we realized that these roles fit their personalities Perfectly!!! Sanford it a leader who loves to take charge and has quite a temper. And Christopher is the comic side-kick who is always pulling tricks, telling jokes, and making everybody laugh.

The costumes were great, there were several creative musical numbers, and Courtney and her cousin Jared made two very adorable doggies!

My camera battery DIED right in the middle of the performance...so I didn't get more shots...but at least I got the whole thing on my camcorder! My kids can't wait till next year, they really want to participate again. We'll see!

This year I also volunteered at a Girl Scout Day Camp so all my girls could have that opportunity and experience...it was a wonderful but exhausting week. I'm not sure I'll be up for that again next year... it might have been a once in a lifetime thing for my girls.

I wonder what the summer of 2012 will be like? Already, it doesn't feel to far away...

Posting Record

So, I think I've set a record for ignoring my blog! I haven't posted regularly...since when? 2010?

My best excuse is my 5 growing-up-too fast blondies! But I've got to stop and take a breath and start enjoying those moments more....

And start taking more photos...and trying to capture better pictures! Maybe I'll become a more dedicated moment-capturer in 2012 since I lost 18 months + worth of photos when my computer crashed in September...I am only now in Jan. getting things working smoothly again. It's been one long technological nightmare. I really really DON'T like computers. It's frustrating because I don't know enough to fix problems that should be simple. And when you are that ignorant...things are bound to happen in a bad, bad way. In September...a few days after downloading all my beautiful Summer pictures and vacation photos of our big trip to Yellowstone...my computer crashed and never again rebooted. Every file, picture, song, movie, and document was forever lost. It's so big...I still can't face it full-on. I just have to move forward from here and try to learn more, and get better....now if only I had the time to do it in!

I'll tell you who DOES have enough time to finagle problems like these....kids! Christopher is just begging to learn how to program and work on computers...and he can usually figure out basic things just by experimenting with things. He's a natural, anyway...the kind of spatial intelligence where you look at something, or observe it...and then just comprehend it! Marvelous!

And here's me...the crazy woman with a bad hair day!

Outgrowing Naps

This is what happens when your 3 year old is out growing naps. She doesn't (will not) sleep in her bed during the day anymore...but when the body needs to sleep...it just shuts down!

This is so unusual for my kids...they almost never fall asleep anywhere other then their own beds...so when this does happen, it's special and I love to catch photos of it!

The best afternoon activity there is...curling up with a nice book!

State Fair Part 2

After the animals and ice cream and shows we went to the petting zoo. I always feel so bad for those animals. There is no doubt, however, in how much the children enjoyed it.

Julie is my best eater ever. She eats whole carrots, whole peppers, tomatoes...any kind of fruit or vegetable...as long as it is RAW. She does not like them cooked. Here she is happily eating a carrott. We always bring in all our own food from home to eat at the fair (except for the ice cream!) but when you eat a lot of fruit that makes for some very very heavy bags. Thank goodness for the wagon!

Here Dorathy and Christopher are excited to spend their hard-earned money on some junk food. Dorathy bought a deep-fried twinkie, and Christopher got deep fried oreos. Seriously? Junk food that is also FRIED? That's a heart attack waiting to happen...but since my kids are super healthy eaters on a daily basis I have no problem with them buying treats when we got out on special occasions. Just as long as they aren't riding their bikes to Safeway to buy donuts all the time! I prefer treats to be rare, or they cease to be special and then they become a crutch or an addiction. Talking from experience here...

They kids were generous enough to let Daddy take a small sample ;) We joke about "Mommy and Daddy tax."

We always do the rides at the fair last when we are all exhausted, hot, and tired...ready to go home! Everyone got to pick two rides. Except Dorathy by luck got a third ride. (She went on the small rides with the younger sisters to help them out!)

The Canoe ride is always the favorite of the younger set. Everyone is always a little grumpy when we leave the fair because it's hard to stop something so exhilerating. We found a nice patch of blackberries on the way home and had a berry feast.

Too bad I don't have any pictures of the purple mouths!