Cute Kids

Working On the Barn

The crew is hard at work again helping Dad with the barn.
And here is Dad doing his best to not fall of the roof. Because if he falls off, I am not taking him to the hospital. Ok, maybe I will. I just won't enjoy it.

Astronaut Liam

An unexpected box arrived in the mail today full of goodies from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Liam is dressed up as an astronaut. The kids have enjoyed astronaut ice cream and are busy playing with an International Space Station play set. We have books on making paper airplanes, helicopter type toys, wooden planes and a solar system. There is a small side of me trying to plan a unit study to go along with all of this stuff. The kids are enjoying themselves so in case you are reading this Donette, the kids all say thanks.

Caramel Apples

Look at that face. Can you tell she is enjoying her apple?
The kids all helped make their own caramel apples. They all then devoured them.
I have to say that this is about my favorite way to eat apples. I know, terribly healthy of me. But they are more than worth the mess.

113 Pounds of Apples

So what exactly does that many apples look like? Well, check the pictures and find out. Amazing how many apples 9 people can pick in under an hour. As usual, the kids had fun and ate plenty of apples as they picked. I see in my future a week of peeling, slicing and coring apples while we get applesauce, apple butter, pie filling and apple jelly made. The kids like dehydrated apples so I may put them in charge of running the dehydrator this week. At some point, we'll have an apple cake and caramel apples. And to make things even more fun, our pear trees are ready so I will have to spend some time canning those as well. It should be an interesting week.

Another barn update

Hi this is Alan again. I might not look like I have made much progress, but slow and steady wins the race right? Besides the things that I have been doing require a good deal of work to get it done right. Here are some pictures of the progress so far.


This shows most of the work I was able to get done. No that board is really in place. I just laid it up there to get an idea of how it was going to work.



This is just a close up of the same thing. As you can see I have not cut the "Bird's mouth" or anything.









As you can see I have put Joist hangers on the ridge crest to make placing the rafters easier.

In case you sere wondering the ridge crest and the two support beams are about 110 pounds. So they were really fun to move.

















Last I put in a center support.

Just a Few Pictures

I just wanted to share a few more pictures from our trip.

If you look closely at this next picture, you can see the cougar is actually stalking the children in the enclosed box. There is a tunnel for the kids to crawl in that brings them out into an enclosed room inside the habitat. Normally the animals are no where to be seen since they are napping or something. Yesterday they were up and walking around and stalking the children in the box.

The Zoo

We finally made the trek out to the zoo for Kieran since he finished his study on animals. I have to say that it seems we go to the zoo more for the playground than for the animals. Our zoo is on the smaller side with lots of small animals that hide in their habitats so you are often lucky to catch glimpses of half of them. Today they had a scavenger hunt for all the kids and everyone who finished it got a free jump rope. So we came home with 6 jump ropes. I decided Gabe really did not need one yet. We almost lost one scavenger hunt list when it fell into the elephant habitat. The kids were most upset when I said we were not going over the fence to retrieve it so they tracked down a large stick to remove it with. Took some time and patience but eventually they rescued it. So we saw a few animals, met up with a few friends and brought home new toys. And now the little ones are napping. Any trip that wears the kids out a bit is always a good one.

Do You See the Baby in this Picture?

Ok, I really need to stop calling Gabe a baby. He's not a baby. He's a full fledged toddler by now and an entire 14 months, almost. Anyway, this is how the little dude was entertaining himself this afternoon. Who would have thought a paper bag would be worth 30 minutes of blissful baby laughter. And you must ignore the mess in the picture because this is real life folks. A friend can deal with a cluttered house and if you aren't a friend and are about to comment on the clutter, well, get over yourself.

Barn Progress

Hi this is Alan. Since I don't really have any place to post what I am doing, and don't have enough interesting to create my own place I am borrowing Cheryl's blog.
So today we started working on the barn roof. It is just Cheryl and I so the progress is slow, but we are moving forward. We built an extra ladder, for Dad's use only.


We got some of the cross beams hung.










And we made the first cuts for the peak, but then it started raining so we called it at day.

Friday Round-up

It has been a very exciting, wet, rainy day. We saw a couple of plays put on by some very funny actors.
We found a cute little dude wearing a hat that was just way too big for him.
We picked up this little lady being escorted by both a Union and a Confederate soldier.
We rescued this little prairie girl from the rain.
And we did some lounging around while waiting for things to get started.
And did our best to entertain folks before the show.
The week at camp was a success. If only it had not rained all day today while the rest of us planned to hang out in the village. The rain did cause us to finally explore the art gallery which annoyed one of the grumpy old ladies working there. Oh my, you have children with you. Gasp! Um, deal with it lady. We came home with a van full of soaked but happy kids. We'll definitely being doing this camp again next year.

The Apple and the Boy

Yes, that is my super tiny Mr. Gabe eating a super big apple he stole from his sister. That she stole from the box on the table when I was not looking. These kids keep eating like this and there won't be enough apples left over for me to turn into applesauce tonight. We stopped by the produce stand and came home with 2 more boxes of free produce. You certainly can't complain about that and obviously, the kids are enjoying it.

Happy Birthday Blessed Mother!

September 8 is when the birthday of the Blessed Mother is celebrated. Going along with the hands-on way of teaching the faith, we celebrated the day with cake and homemade pizza. Yes, I normally use blue frosting since blue is traditionally associated with Marian feasts but things were a tad crazy here yesterday.

I believe it is very important that we start reclaiming the rich heritage that is the Catholic faith. Celebrate feast days, celebrate your patron saints' day, get back to the real faith. Sure, we all know God loves you and a few bible stories but there is so much more to being Catholic than that. People are leaving the Catholic church in droves simply because we are no longer being given the real faith or taught anything anymore. So many people claim they are Catholic while also saying they no longer believe in the true presence of the Eucharist, they think it is ok to use contraception, to support pro-abortion politicians and organizations, to avoid confession, never mention mortal sin or purgatory. We are loosing our rich heritage and it is time that stopped. When you take the time to celebrate feast days, you make the saints real people for your children. When you teach your children to pray for souls in purgatory (as opposed to just telling them that everyone goes right to heaven) you unite them with their loved ones who have passed away. There is so much more I'd love to say but I'm sure most folks would think I am a loon.

Bottom line is what have you done to celebrate your faith lately? Your Mother is calling and wants to share the joy of Her birthday with you. Do something fun and show your kids that faith is a fun thing. Make some more memories.

Step Back in Time

The pictures are in from the first day of camp. The boys had a great time. They fed the oxen and the pigs. They made journals and played games. They started to plan their play. And they got to wear some super cool clothes.

Sisters

I have been accused of not allowing my daughters to be kids because they dress in dresses pretty much all the time. Yes, around here we are big on dressing girls as girls and we avoid the immodest clothing lines that seem to permeate the stores lately. I have never seen an instance where being in a dress has kept my girls from doing anything. They climb trees, scale the rock wall, run, get in the mud, play in the snow, ride their bikes. Basically anything the boys do, they do. As someone said this weekend, they may look like princesses but there is quite a bit of tom boy in them.

Gabe is at it Again

See what Gabe likes to do when Mom is busy? I guess he decided it was snack time. He loves to hide behind the pantry curtain and help himself to Cheerios.
Here he is under my desk sitting in the box of printer paper.