E-alized Medicine

Someone has been listening to the radio too much. She came out of the playroom last night with her play stethoscope and announced, "I am the Doctor and NOBODY gets to choose!"

For Big S...

...who thinks F gets unfair blog time ;)Today is all about my S. He is growing up into a big boy so quickly. When he was three years old, he loved Thomas. When he was four years old, he loved Lighting McQueen. When he was five years old, he loved Speed Racer. Now that he is six, he doesn't love Thomas, Lightning McQueen, or Speed Racer. He only loves Pokemon and video games. So yesterday he helped me clean all these toys out of the playroom and put them in a box to be thrown away. Because he hated them. But today he likes them again and I caught him playing with The King and the Mach 5. I've spent way too much money on toys for this kid. Hundreds of dollars wasted on die cast trains with faces and race cars with faces. But he did play with them until the faces and lead-based paint wore off...which might explain a few things...

Timber!

The rest of the big maple tree came down last night. M waited and waited for the rain, hail, wind, thunder, and lightning to stop. And when it did it was nearly dark! So he is busy today and here is the view from the other side of our pasture. We will be able to look through our big picture windows and see a lot more pasture, although I will miss the shade on those hot summer days.

Twanoh Chum

Yesterday M took a day off due to inclement weather. So we took a homeschool science field trip to Twanoh State Park in Belfair to watch the chum swim upstream and spawn. The kids were amazed that such large fish could struggle in so little water, just so they could spawn and die. We even got Grandad to come along, by promising the trail was short and flat and easy to walk. If you look right above the word "Fish" you will see a large chum resting:The first part of the walk was very easy, but my kids being their father's children, weren't satisfied with a short walk. We left Grandad in a nice flat part and followed the trail a little bit farther. Here are some other sights:

My tree huggers, says sarcastic M: All I could see of my children at one point See the red dot? That's E: And F, happy to pick little rocks off the trail and say, "Rock!"

Power Outage

We survived our first power outage in the wilderness. Barely. Oh we had enough food, light, heat, and water. After all, the power was only out for an hour. But some people just don't do well without power. And some people don't mix well with children while under the stress of having no power. So yeah. Barely survived. I took this picture in the dark while M was getting his flashlight. When the lights first went out, F cried and cried. I was holding her, so it wasn't like she was suddenly abandoned. I did not know she was so scared of the dark!

He's the Man!

And that is why he is in charge of cutting down trees. I might have hit the house with this one: And I'm glad I was in the back of the house when it fell because I would have screamed, "Run!" to my kids who were all in the room watching. M actually had to jump out of the way because the tree fell the opposite direction he intended. Instead of falling toward the pasture, it slid on the stump and twisted. M had been standing right where you see the end of the tree: It all reminds me of when he decided to cut down the tree in the backyard at the old place. He missed the porch by an inch, but squished the fence.

First Halloween Here

For the last five years I have spent Halloween with my dear friend and her kids. Change is hard, especially for me, so I tried to have fun...

We ran a booth for the Cub Scouts at the local community celebration instead of driving long distances to find a neighborhood for trick-or-treating. Our family donated a total of 15 hours of community service for the Cub Scouts! Even E worked by scooping out pumpkins and cutting out lily pads for the frog pond game.

Here are the kids in costume (Batman, Snow leopard, Unicorn, and Jedi):This little one won the Cute Costume award (although she isn't as cute with chocolate around her mouth): The handsome fella behind her won the Best Husband award (from me) because he ran the game booth for the entire hour we were there!

She wants to bite your candy! I don't feel bad at all that the kids didn't get to go trick-or-treating and gets tons of candy. Because they got tons of candy just for working. At the very end of the celebration we were cleaning up the booths. The lady in charge took all the bins of candy and dumped them on the floor for the kids to pick up. S came home with a bag literally bulging with candy. And mean mom that I am, they are working hard to earn the right to eat their candy by cleaning up the messes they have made all week!