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Powered by LifeType6/14 - On our camping trip, Faith liked to play Ice Cream Shop. Her flavors are unique: pineapple hot sauce, strawberry beet, water, to name a few. After those, I requested just plain ice creams, though she really wanted to put hot sauce on most of them. We finally settled on a good flavor that I thiink someone should really make: mint chocolate chip cookie dough.
6/15 - Noah,"I thought 'spores' were graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows."
7/5 - After some discussion about what colors make when mixed together, I suggested that Jonathan make a color wheel. He started basic, with the three primary and three secondary colors. When dividing his circle, at first he drew in radii, estimating how much space he needed to make sixths. The next time he did it (when he accidentally colored two pieces red) he drew diameter lines.
7/5 - (I don't remember the context for this) Noah, "Faith, if you see a dead guy with an American flag on him, that means he's an American soldier."
7/6 - Noah can pump himself on the swings.
7/9 - We were talking about milk banks (oh, because I was thinking it might be time to use up the breastmilk I have in the freezer) and Noah, my punster, said, "So do they put milk in the penny rolls?"
7/9 - Jonathan, "I don't know why, but being generous makes me happy."
7/20 - Joy started pushing up on hands and knees.
7/29 - Faith, when meeting someone, "I is my baby sister's big girl."
Faith says this often, when I ask her what she said, "I is just talking to mine own self."
8/12 - Joy started making forward progress on hands and knees, mostly by drawing her knees up and then lunging.
8/13 - Noah, on the boat ride back from Star Island, "Star Island is a special island. It always brings you back."
8/13 - Jonathan, also on the boat, as he watched the island recede from view, "Mom, I think you gave me some of your brains when I was born, because I recognize a lot of these things."
8/13 - Noah, discussing a word he and Jonathan were looking at, "I thought 'ON' had two 'F's" A couple of days before, he had noticed "NO" on a cap on the floor and we discussed how "NO" and "ON" are upside down from each other. "OFF" was also on that cap. I suspect that he did not understand what we meant. He knew "NO" and so the other word, "OFF" must be what we called "ON".
We are now home from our very long and mostly fun vacation. Here's a quick summary. We went to Madison, OH and stayed on the beach of Lake Erie. Then Jonathan and Noah went camping with Grammy and Papa on an island in Lake Erie while Jon and the girls and I came home. Jon picked up the boys on Tuesday. Unpacking, washing, and repacking. I sprayed poison ivy in the yard and poked a (not poison) stick into my cornea. We left for NH the next day, me riding with a pillow over my face the whole time. Jon and his mom went on a weekend canoe trip, while I stay in bed and the kids play Wii. My eye, amazingly, is better by Sunday, as the eye doctor had predicted. (Except for some blurrines for which I am going to see him again today to check out.) A few more days in NH, then to the Maggie P. The Swiss contingent is there and it is so much fun to meet Joseph in person! Big Weekend, 7 Wonders, beach bocce, swimming, crabs, etc. Jonathan caught a soft shell crab. Day trip to Star Island turned into an overnight, then turned into a week. Jon stayed on the island to help lead the youth conference for the next week. The kids and I went back to CT to finish our visit with the family. Driving by myself on a long trip with a young baby is not fun. Please remind me not to do it again. Last couple of days at the Mag were sgort and sweet. We'll miss that little guy (and everyone else, too.) Back to NH, back to the boat that couldn't seem to get us there, but finally we did. Lots of fun and yes, even relaxation, on Star Island. Then back to CT to pack up the sailboat and all the other things that we did not take to Star. One night in the Flounder, then a long and rainy trip HOME!!!
If I'm not getting sleep because I have a sick baby, at least I can make a post!
Jon was with a bunch of people we don't see often last night, and one of the men mentioned that his wife was discouraged by all these homeschooling mother-of-many type blogs where everyone has all their lives together and nothing goes wrong. So I thought I'd post how my life is not perfect, though it is very blessed. I am not a perfect mother, but I'm the best one for my children. I am not a perfect teacher, but I am the best one for my children. I am not a perfect homemaker, but I'm the best one for my home. I'm not a perfect wife, but I'm the best one for my husband. I hope this post is encouraging to other not-perfect moms. (More)
Joy has two hair swirls at the back of her head. One goes clockwise and one counter-clockwise. Each of my other children only have one.
5/3 - Joy's two month appointment. 12 lb, 3 oz. She is developing a birthmark in the upper right of her forehead (can't remember the very long medical term, and interestingly enough, "birth"marks can appear within a few months of birth and not only at birth.) It's likely to grow to about a nickel size and then recede to be gone when she's about five or six. When her hair grows out, it should completely cover it. Her bellybutton finally finished its healing and got the ok. (More)
Here is our Christmas letter - if you are reading this blog, you probably know most of it anyway, but I figure there are some people that we didn't mail this too, and who don't read every word of these posts... :)
1/20 - Jonathan, as usual, singing while he plays and works. This time it was, "Come, Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadil. Come, Tom Bombadil..."
1/22 - When boys have a tea party: Noah, Faith and I were playing with Faith's tea set. Noah said he couldn't eat his soup because the bad guys had poisoned it. It was such a deadly poison we couldn't even touch it and I had him call 911 to send a squad out to take it away. I never remember anything like this happening at other tea parties... (More)
Actually, the only thing written in my pocket notes from all this time is that on 11/16, Jon solved the mirror cube with his eyes closed.
Jonathan's 7th birthday was a very fun time. He got a lot of cool presents and had a lot of cool people over to play. Grandma and Dad-o were there for the occasion and the next few days were also busy with fun. (More)
11/6 - Noah and I were making rice krispie treats and Noah was stirring. He asked for a marshmallow, but I said no, they had to go in the recipe and he could have one of the finished products. Well, he decided to snitch and got a natural lesson. I, only a few feet away in the kitchen, heard him screaming. He had dipped his finger in the melted marshmallow to taste it! I rushed him over to the sink and after a while of running it under the cold water, I made an ice bath in a bowl for him. His finger turned out fine after a few minutes and he had learned a good lesson. (More)
We arrived at the Fitzkees' house on Thursday night, and Nick said we could stay as long as we wanted. We ended up extending our trip by a day and coming home on Tuesday, which was a good decision. I think we spent the right amount of time for the whole family to enjoy the sight-seeing. (More)
We cooked bacon and pancakes (I found a nifty plastic pint jug in Walmart or somewhere that you simply pour water into the jug, shake it up, and pour it on the griddle) for breakfast, and then packed up and planned to meet for lunch at Great Falls, 15 miles away.
Heather went back to the store for bread and bandaids (I cut myself doing something, and Heather thought we might run out of bandaids) and also to a McDonalds to sit in the air conditioning while she looked up directions to the Fitzkee's house where we were going to stay for the next couple days. Heather bought smoothies for Faith and herself since they were pretty hot. (More)
As I looked at the maps for the third day, we were going to be biking near various battlefields and other tourist-type places to visit, and so in the interest of resting a little, I decided we should drive for a ways and then maybe bike in the afternoon. (More)
I've wanted to bike to DC for a while, but there never seemed like a good opportunity to do so. Once we purchased the tandem bike, and started thinking about the possibility of biking all over the country, the Washington trip seemed like a good first step.
The trip did get shorter over time, and originally other people were going to come with us, but everyone backed out at the last minute.
I thought it would be best to start at the highest point of the trail, rather than biking all the way from Pittsburgh, in order to avoid the uphill climb, and also shorten the trip from 334 miles to 207 miles. And to avoid Heather having to drive in downtown DC traffic, I shortened the other end of the trip by 8 miles as well.
This is going to be woefully brief. The bike trip was adventure after adventure, lots of fun, but lots of work. Among the things you'd normally expect on a bike trip, it included four tire blowouts on the triple-tandem, a torrential downpour, a tent with no stakes, Jonathan riding on someone's back carrier platform for seven miles (and two others each wheeling an extra bike those same extra miles), lost-off-the-top-of-the-car gloves and found again, new tires but now the brakes broke, little or no cell reception, a young man left behind, a purse left in a restaurant. More details? Maybe never, because... (More)
6/11 - We planted more seeds in our garden. Faith helped me plant beans and she very carefully placed the seed in the hole and gently covered it with soil. It was so sweet to see her tender care.
I discovered a robin's nest in the bush outside our bathroom window. We watched mama diligently sitting on her eggs and papa guarding while mama took her breaks. On 6/12, we saw the babies had hatched! We watched the parents feed them a few times. But then on the morning of 6/14, I saw the nest askew on the branch and stuffing falling out. Bad sign. I took the kitchen stool outside to closely examine - all inhabitants were missing. Papa robin scolded me from a high branch of a nearby tree. Interestingly enough, Faith was the only one to ask about the birds after that. (More)
We just put a deposit down for a used triplet bike, with two child conversion kits. Which means it will look something like the pictures on this site. Though our current plan is for Faith to be in a trailer attached to the back, and each of the boys will have the raised pedals clamped to their seat post. We need to pick it up in New Jersey (people don't seem to do tandem bikes around here, and this was the best price by far that I've found, so I think we'll do pretty well.
Now I just need to build up my strength to haul all of them, and then Heather needs to work on her strength to bike by herself, though the bike store owner thought with me loaded down, she should be able to keep up pretty well.
Here's my take on the biking/camping trip.
With last year's notes, it was actually pretty fun planning camping meals for 14 people, the vast majority of which are young men. I only made two mistakes, one was forgetting oil for the eggs (we used some butter from the mountain pie supply) and the other was getting half the amount of peanut butter and jelly (which turned out ok because half the crew left before the second lunch.) The other mistake was not my fault - the number of slices in the bacon packages were not what was on the label, but that worked out also with just a couple of guys getting one slice instead of two. (More)