VBS Week

New Tire Swing!

It has been a busy week here.  Every morning, I wake the kids minus Ian at 7:30 so they can get ready for Vacation Bible School.  They are all sleeping downstairs on the floor because no one wants Shane to sleep alone.  Isn't that sweet? Every morning I have to have breakfast ready by 8:00 and find them clean, unstained, matching clothes.  Every morning, I load them up into the van and drive 15 miles to our favorite church, drop them off, and find something to occupy my time for three hours.  It is almost like sending them to school...but not.  By the time we get home in the afternoon, tired and hungry, and the housework is still waiting for me from the day before, I get so tired I take a nap.  Yep, VBS week wears me out!

Doesn't Ian look tired? One of the parents is taking pictures of the campers and posting them on facebook for all us parents who miss our babies.  The boys have to wake up at 6:45 every morning.  HA HA HA HA HA! No wonder he has dark circles under his eyes!  Ian comes home late tomorrow night and Shane can't wait!

Oh, and Lula turned one year old on Wednesday!  We postponed our celebration until Ian can be here.

The Beetings Will Continue Until Your Appetite Improves

Our beets are doing wonderfully.  We've harvested almost half and have experimented with many wonderful beet dishes.  Forgive the garish pictuers; beets and camera flashes are not a good combination.

Summer Borscht

Pickled Beets

Hard-boiled Eggs in Pickled Beet Juice

Roasted Beets with Steamed Greens

Beet and Blueberry Pancakes

You can't beet a cute baby picture!

The kids weren't too fond of the borscht, but once Mark said, "Whoever finishes first gets to play video games!" the kids started eating as fast as they could.  I haven't opened my pickled beets, but I can tell they are going to be good based on how tasty the pickled eggs were!  The pancakes were made on the 4th of July; we called them Red, White, and Blueberry pancakes and topped them with whipped cream.  But the best thing we've made is...Beet Brownies!  The kids were amazed that the brownies had beets in them.  Of course I know how much butter and sugar went into the recipe; you could disguise ground beef if you wanted to! 

Daniel was a little confused when I handed him the brownie.  He looked at it hesitantly and asked, "This is Brownie?" I reassured him that I was not feeding him spiders, just beets in a cookie.  It reminded me of the time I offered him stickers for using the potty after he had a battle with the blackberry bush.

The second half of our harvest will be cooked into beef stew, pureed and frozen, and I will probably make another batch of pickles.  The greens will be cooked and frozen for stews, soups, and sides or put into smoothies.  We love beets.

Ian the Scout Goes to Camp

Today we said "Goodbye!" to Ian as he went to scout camp for a week.  I know most of the moms and boys in his troop are feeling nervous, but I think its worse for me. 

Most moms send their boys off to school every day and also send them off to spend the night at their friend's house all weekend.  Ian is home with us all day and only gone on sleep overs a few times (and not because he can't handle it, we just have a family rule against sleeping over for just fun).  He will be gone for five nights and I know once he is used to camp, he will love it.

The weight of his pack is crushing him!

Everything he needs for an entire week is in that pack, including his mess kit, bathing suit and towel, a tarp, his ten essentials, and six sets of clothing.  I don't think he owns six sets of clothing, but I do know that he came as close as possible to that requirement.  Mark showed him how to pack by category, instead of by day, to maximize efficiency.  Everything was put into gallon Ziploc bags (add them to my Costco list) and the air was squished out-we could just call it the poor man's Space Bags.

Mark ties some last-minute knots

Ian's Class A uniform is on its required hanger, but wrapped in plastic and nestled safely between his sleeping bag and pillow.  The first thing they do when they get to camp is take the swim test.  I am confident that Ian will pass with flying colors.  He has been working with Mark (and Shane and Evie) at perfecting their strokes so they can join the swim team in the fall.

"Just hang the scouts from trees!"

We already miss him.  I had to get right into a new sewing project to help keep my mind off the ache in my heart.  Shane said, "Well, since Ian isn't here, I might as well play with Evie!" and played a few rounds of chess and Mancala.  Now that Evie is playing house with Fiona and Daniel, he is bored and moping around the house. Yeah, me too.

A Tire Swing Adventure

Many years ago, a twenty-six year old young man climbed a tall tree to install a tire swing for his two little daughters.  Much time passed and the swing was well-loved by the girls.  By the man's fortieth birthday, he had added three more children to his family.  The children also loved the tire swing and the rope was starting to wear.  This dad, who had dedicated his life to his children, wasn't about to let the rope on the swing break, so he shimmied back up the tree to replace the rope.

Mark 2006

This tree is an old, leaning madrona.  It's branches are solid, when there are branches.  There is an expanse, about ten feet long, where there is nothing to hold on to.  For a young, twenty-six year old mountain climber, this was nothing.  To a forty year old father of five, it was a risk not worth taking.

Mark 2013

Seven  years later, the man had three more children and had one more on the way!  It was definitely time to replace that rope.  He shuddered at what lawsuits could filed against him if a child's friend fell from a broken rope.  His wife joked about making their friends sign release forms before they came over, just in case, but he didn't think that was funny at all.  She just didn't want her precious husband falling out of a tree and breaking his legs.  After several weeks and trials, the dad finally had blocks placed for climbing and had resurfaced his climbing harness and helmet.  He had planned this climb as a technical climb and not as a free climb.  His wife felt much better knowing her husband was tied to the tree in case of an emergency.

When he was done climbing the tree and tying the new rope, he called his wife to come out and see what he had accomplished.  She was so happy and relieved!  She knew he had gone out to work, but the Lord has blissfully erased her memory so she had spent the whole time sitting peacefully in front of her computer on facebook while he was in danger.  All he had left to do was remove the climbing blocks.  As he was hammering the blocks, she heard something.  A buzzing.  She looked down at the fragrant ground cover blooming in the driveway, but didn't see anything.  She raised the camera to take another picture of her handsome husbands and...

 ...oh my gosh, he was being attacked by yellow jackets!  They were swarming all over his face and clothes and getting inside his shirt and stinging him!  He started shouting and trying to get out of the tree, but his safety harness was pulled tight from him trying to get away from the wasps and he couldn't get the clip undone!  The wasps were stinging like crazy, trying to get the intruder away from their nest and the intruder's wife was standing helpless thinking it was all her fault he was being hurt because if she hadn't insisted on safety harnesses, he would have monkeyed right out of that tree!

We had no idea the nest was there.

He finally made it to the ground and pulled his shirt off and ran away from the yellow jackets that were still attacking him.  Strangely, they were not interested in me or Lula.  Mark got about eight stings in total and is feeling a bit woozy, but its hard to say if we are just recovering from the fright of him being trapped or the sting venom.  He says, "All's well that ends well," with a big grin on his face.  All I have to say is-wow! Yellow jackets build nests fast! The old swing was cut down just a few weeks ago.  I don't even want to think about what would have happened if the kids had hit it with the swing rope.

If...Then...

When information outside my grasp effects projects I'm working on, I get frustrated.

If MP3 doesn't accept students from out of district next year, then I need to have a back up plan for curriculum and how to pay for it.  If we use our own money, our curriculum choices, especially math, will be in a different format, and I will need to have a different daily routine so that I can present material for four children instead of using the computer for two... If I don't have school district support and I don't have to follow their rules, then I can just dump science for a year and spend half of every day doing language arts and never do art.  But if I do participate with the school district program, then I will just do a few language arts workbooks and call it good so we have enough time to cover all mandatory subjects.  If we don't get to participate, I would like to start school now so we can take a break when this baby (we call it Lucky) is born.  If we do participate, I still would like to start some subjects now so I can get that head start, but since I can't get my curriculum until September, we'll just have to work through Lucky's birth so we can continue to meet our monthly goals...

...since I can't get anything school related accomplished until MP3 lets us know if we can still use their program, I guess I'll try to get baby stuff done.  I only have two months left of summer before we are schooling full time and I have lots to do! Sewing, knitting, sorting baby clothes...

If Lucky is a boy, I can take all the flannel scraps from pajamas I've made for Ian and Shane and turn them into cool diapers with tanks, baseballs, and snakes.  If Lucky is a girl, I have plenty of newborn sized girl-themed diapers, plus I have some turtle fabric I can turn into gender-neutral diapers in the medium size for Lula.  If Lucky is a girl, we will have four girls and three boys in the house and three bedrooms.  It won't really work to put Daniel in with Ian and Shane because there is such an age difference.  But if Lucky is a boy, then Daniel and the baby can share the room where the girls are currently, and the three girls can all fit in the large bedroom.  But until then, Daniel, Lula, and Lucky will share the big room.  I can't possibly move furniture, unpack baby clothes, sew diapers, or anything until I know if Lucky is a boy or a girl!!!

Isn't it nice when the answers to the two most important questions come on the same day?

We still get MP3 funding for next year and Lucky is a GIRL.

I Love Vitamix!

My Vitamix is five years old.  On June 11th, while I was making...well, now I can't remember, but it was something with eggs, the canister base came unscrewed and flooded the unit.  It shorted and would not turn back on.  I use my Vitamix almost every day, so losing it was like losing an arm.

Beet Greens...yum!

I contacted customer service through a form on the website, but I never heard back.  Three days later I emailed and....nothing.  I emailed again, two days later.  Nothing!  And I was getting MAD.  Vitamix is supposed to have the best blender in the world with the most awesome warranty! Why were they ignoring me?

See? Yum!

Finally, I called.  I explained the problem, how I had tried to contact them, and whined about how my spinach bolted and went to seed while I was waiting for them to contact me.  Now the kale and chard and beet greens were getting all nasty, because who wants to actually CHEW those things? Ew!  The next time I checked my email, I had a shipping label for Fedex overnight to their repair house.

Oh, yeah!

I dropped my precious blender off last Thursday, only five days ago.  Today, the UPS man dropped it off.  Just in time too; I washed a huge pile of beet greens this morning, but hadn't gotten around to blanching them yet.

Um, yeah...

Not only did they fix my blender, they sent me a brand new canister and tamper!  It's so SHINY!  I think I'm going to be drinking my meals for the rest of the day.  *happy sigh*

Garden Bounty

I don't like to count my chickens before they're hatched, but I would like to share some pictures of our potential harvest!

Purple Beans

Golden Delicious Apples

Bartlett Pears (I think)

Jonathan Apples

The tomatoes the deer didn't eat (and little peppers too)

Mark's awesome garden (carrots, beets, green beans...

...spinach, many kinds of lettuce, peas, corn, and squash)

Purple Plums

Green Plums

Stanley Plums

Preparing to Pickle

Mark has put so much hard work into his gardens (I haven't-that's why I have only purple beans and asparagus and lots of chicken weeds).  We've been eating lots of salad, fresh picked every day!  I've found some great beet recipes online, so as soon as it cools down a bit, I'm going to start pickling and freezing some tasty treats for winter!