Happy Birthday Liam!

Today Liam turned 10.  This a big milestone. Not only do you hit double digits, you get an allowance (and a few more chores) and an ID card (once your parents take care of it).

His birthday started with the end of the boys' campout. In other words, he woke up totally soaked.  It's been raining a wee little bit.  We would have gone out to get his birthday gift but instead Dad required a visit to urgent care so we'll take care of that tomorrow after his birthday lunch out.  Granted, he has been kept totally happy with the box full of duct tape he got from his Grandparents and a LEGO game from his cousins.  He was even nice enough to share. Katie made a cake for him, Ellie tried to eat half of it, and Sean covered the damage with orange frosting.  Yup, it's been a typical birthday around here.

Frontier Girls Bonfire Night

A few brave families decided to brave the weather on Thursday night and come out for our family bonfire night.  We got the fire going and dinner cooking, then the skies opened up.

 So we moved the festivities inside.  Everyone went home fed, wet, and hopefully happy.

Here's hoping next year the weather will cooperate with us a bit more.

Lions and Tigers and Bears

Ok, not really because we went to our local zoo so they don't really have so many animals.  Lion, yes. Tigers, no. And the bears were no where to be seen today.  But when Alan got to work yesterday he discovered that he actually had that day and the next day off. He just sort of forgot. So he stayed at work on Thursday and then took today off.  Alan had all sorts of plans for the day that mostly involved farm related work but I suggested that we take the kids to the zoo instead.  So we loaded them up, got most of the way there, and blew a tire.  On the van. After about an hour and having a child stand on the  tire iron to see if the bolts would loosen (nope, but Alan did get hit in the leg) and some help from a few local folks, we finally got the tire changed.  About 5 minutes after I'd called the roadside assistance folks to come do it.  Now if I'd been alone, that would have been the first call I made because even though I know how to change a tire and can do so, changing the tires on the van involve a bit more work than normal and that's kind of what we pay for the roadside assistance for in the first place. So now instead of just needing 2 new tires on the van, we likely will end up having to replace all 4 because, of course, it wasn't one of the older ones that got hit with a nail.

So we finally made it to the zoo and everyone had a great time. There are lots of baby animals who have just been born. Very cute little things.

This was our first zoo trip without a stroller. Very odd for me.  Ellie absolutely enjoyed herself and the older kids were wonderful with her. I think the only complaint the kids had was that I refused to buy food at the zoo. Because I'm just so mean.

  I love that our local zoo is small enough to get through in 2 hours and yet keeps growing enough to have new things to enjoy. Of course, I would be rather annoyed if we actually paid a daily admission rate when we wee visiting the area because it is rather small (comparing it the zoo in Tampa). But I guess the benefit of the membership is you can go for a few hours and then come back another day and not worry. And for a family of 11 the membership is cheaper than one days admission anyway.

The $5 Grin

This was the best $5 we have spent in a long time. Just look at that grin.

Strawberries

He clearly has a rough life.

She just sat still and ate.

We did our first round of strawberry picking today. I say first round because we often need a bit more strawberries than we got today to see us through the year but we've learned it is best to get them in batches so as not to become overwhelmed with processing them. I'm hoping to make several batches of strawberry jam and triple berry jam as well as some strawberry syrup.  And just put some in the freezer for later in the year.

I only took 6 of the kids with me since Alan took 3 of the boys to go work on the farm.  The ladies working at the strawberry fields already thought our crew was a large family until the children informed them that a bunch of kids had been left behind to do other work.  Call me crazy, but I love the incredulous looks on people's faces when they learn something of that sort. Followed by the sheer amazement in their voices as they say "And your kids are just so well behaved."  Because, of course, you must always be shocked by children behaving as they should I suppose.  Ah well. We had a good time and the kids are looking forward to going again.

These two were my big kid crew today.

The fruits of our labor.

The Weekend in Pictures

Building a new sheep pen.

Ellie wearing muck boots and carrying a golf club just totally sums up the way things work around here. Watching to make sure Liam does things properly.

This is just a pure Katie picture. 

The younger crews' version of being helpful.

Ellie

The sheep enjoying their new pen (now we hopefully won't find them in the cornfield across the street.)

Some of the chickens.

Guinness hanging out by the barn (or the Beer Dog as a friend has taken to calling him).

Donut Day

One of those small simple ways to add a little fun into our daily routine. Today is National Donut Day so we celebrated with donuts and coffee for breakfast. Yes, the kids had coffee. Heavy on the milk for most of them.

I do realize that today is a feast day as well. We'll hit that celebration with dessert tonight.

Abby's Dessert

I've been wanting to take a break from ice cream on Sunday nights for our Sundae's on Sunday tradition for a while.  Mostly because it seems I can't eat ice cream myself anymore without feeling sick which is truly quite a bummer. We wanted to start adding small simple traditions to our daily life but sometime the same old thing gets a bit boring for Mom and Dad.

This week Abby helped me make a banana split dessert. I seem to recall my Mom making something of this sort a time or two when we were growing up but I'm not sure if this was it.  I looked at a few recipes on-line and then tweaked them a bit to match what we had in the house at the time. We ended up with something simple, almost no-bake but decidedly not a healthy dessert. Alan claims it can be considered healthy because it has bananas and pineapple in it. I'm not sure if we really want to go down that road because I can see the absolute potential for truly abusing that kind of a rule.  Anyway, here's what we did just in case you want to try it yourself.

Mix about 2 cups of crushed graham crackers with 1 stick of melted butter. Spread in the bottom of a 9 by 13 pan and bake for 5 minutes or so.  Combine 16 oz of softened cream cheese with 2 cups of powdered sugar and layer on top of the crust.  Next cut up 3 bananas and layer those on.   Top with one can of drained crushed pineapple.  The next layer is a container of cool-whip type whipped cream stuff.  Then you can add marachino cherries or chocolate or nuts or whatever you might like or have around. Like I said, not healthy but sometimes it is nice to just not worry about such things.