Horrifying Harvest Hell

Y'all, if you have a sign a waiver form before you get to visit a Harvest Festival, prepare for the worst. I'm not kidding.

First, the hay ride: 

Wide open wagon being pulled by a tractor driving very fast around pedestrians.  I'm surprised Heidi didn't bounce out the back.  She actually ran away from us and scurried up on one of these wagons and wouldn't get down when I called her.  I thought for sure they were just going to let an unattended three year old go for a ride.

Second, the petting zoo:

If a puffy-eyed chicken will just sit there while little kids pet it and pet it and pet it and pet it, the chicken is probably sick.  There were other animals, like goats, sheep, midget cows, and frantic horses...but my friend's baby got his face BIT almost right off and they weren't even petting the horse, just standing near its stall. They had to fill out an incident report. Poor baby is going to have quite the shiner tomorrow.

Third, the archery range:

Daniel visited this Harvest Festival yesterday with another family, so he felt comfortable in the archery range.  I kept waiting for safety talks from the range master or at least some crowd control, but it was every archer for themselves.

I'm so glad I have enough sane hands on deck to help out.  Daniel did manage to walk right in front of Lula as she was pulling back her bow and got a sharp correction from me.  Jason kept trying to run out and gather arrows before the call.  I joked with the range master about the lack of skill and he replied, "Oh, I can't see a thing. I'm practically blind." Sure enough, he had coke bottle glasses. Why was he even there? How could he be a safe monitor?

Good job, Downens!  All the arrows either on the hill or on the ground in front of the bales!

Fourth, the boating/canoeing:

This activity was completely unmanned.  The storage for life jackets and oars/paddles was wide open and there wasn't an employee in sight anywhere.  People were just helping themselves and taking the boats out.  I learned my lesson a long time ago about taking any number of my kids in a boat and flat out refused to let them go.

I (we) did get some cute pics:

Selfie!

Genna is thoroughly annoyed with Heidi at this point.

Lula and her buddy that she loves so much!

I can't take this kid anywhere.

I was able to bribe the kids with little suckers to get them to leave the line for face painting (a friend looked like he had a flabby pickle painted on his forehead, so.... talent? Lacking.) and we were able to get to the van for my escape.

The best part of today was getting a text from Ian because he got an A on a history test.  I knew if he worked hard, he could bring his grade up from a C to an A.

Red Wing Round Up (vaulting)

Genevieve's vaulting season started out with a bang at the Fall Red Wing Round Up.  This was her first competition at Bronze.  Her goal was to score in the top five of the nine girls that were competing at her level.

Her final score for the first day were an average of her compulsories and her freestyle:

She placed FIRST in compulsoires and THIRD for freestyle, so Second Place overall for Round One.

Her final score for the weekend was calculated by averaging her final score for round one with her score for Round Two compulsories:

She came in third place for Round 2 so her final score for her first competition at bronze was...

SECOND PLACE

In addition to her normal event, she also did a barrel pairs with a teammate and then a costume freestyle.

I surprised her today with an early birthday present:

A Parrot?

This morning Heidi came bouncing into the boys' room and asked if she could have a parrot.

Pictures of Heidi taken while waiting at orchestra

Me: A Parrot?
Heidi: Yes!
Me: As a pet?
Heidi: No!
Me: A parrot like a bird?
Heidi: No! Not a bird! A Parrot!
Me: Hm. Why?
Heidi: To eat!

She spent an hour running into the parking lot. She was told she had no brain.

Me: To eat????  Do you mean...a carrot?
Heidi: No! A PARROT!
Me: ... do you mean maybe a PEAR?
Heidi: YES!

Because anyone with a brain wouldn't try to get run over.

We don't have any pears. Sorry. And no, we are not going to get a parrot either!

Scorpions and Megadeth Concert

Mark and I haven't left the house alone together in almost six years.  THIS was the last time. That was back when Ami and Laura could come watch their younger siblings.  Now we have Ian and Genevieve (Shane was on a sailing trip).  Jason didn't make it easy for me thought.  In case you can't understand him in the video, he is saying, "Don't leave me!"

Last summer Mark bought concert tickets! Thinking about going to a rock concert gave us both anxiety.  He was worried about being late and navigating parking/seat finding.  I was worried about being boxed in by old pot-smoking rockers and getting trampled and maybe even lost!

Our first stop was dinner out:

 ...out as in a quick stop at the grocery store for healthy chips and Lara bars.  Nope, Mark will not sway from his healthy eating for a once in a lifetime opportunity.  I had a sandwich. With bacon.

Parking was easy, finding our spots was easy, and waiting for the concert to start was fun.  There were so many people to watch!  So many old rockers!

We were in the last row as far as you can get from the stage and there was no one next to us, no one behind us, and barely anyone around us.  We didn't even have to stand.  That made my night.

Megadeth isn't my favorite band (ahem).  They were loud.  The people were pretty well-behaved.  I guess when you are an old rocker, you are up past your bedtime and don't have the energy to cause trouble.  But I loved the Scorpions!  They played most of my favorite songs.

And now that we've done this once, we can probably do it again!

Knit Hats and Shane

One of my assigned jobs for co-op is to be a teacher's aid in the practical needlework class.  Jason will not let me leave him in the nursery and he isn't allowed in the classroom, so I haven't been able to actually go to class yet.  The teacher and I are friends and have first hour in the nursery together.  She asked me to help by creating and test knitting patterns! My favorite!

This is just a quick garter stitch hat knit flat on straight needles.  It's *almost* like the first hat I ever knit, only I was still teaching myself from a book and I didn't know there was a difference between knitting flat and in the round.  So my hat looked like this even though it wasn't at all what it was supposed to look like:

That hat has been the most awesome, long-wearing hat.  In fact, that baby in the picture-Shane-pulled that hat out of the box to take with him on his sailing trip this weekend. 

When Shane was about three years old, he had a hard time telling if his shirt belonged to him and if it was on right instead of backwards.  It caused him some anxiety, so anytime he got dressed, he asked, "Is-is-is this MY shirt? And does it go on like THIS?" If we didn't answer yes to both questions, he would cry.  I've used this story recently to teach Shane about being patient with annoying younger siblings.

So today, Shane pulled the hat out of the hat box and put it on.  He said to me, "Hey Mom, is this my hat?"  I turned around and said, "Yeah, but it's on backward. The seam goes in the back."  He smiled sweetly as he slowly turned the hat to face the right way... and he said....

...."Soooo.... Does it go on like THIS?"  I laughed and then I lost it and cried for awhile.  I cried again after I dropped him off for Sea Scouts.  In fact, I'm crying again as I write this.  It's a mom thing.  I love that boy, the toddler and teen, all in one.

Bottle This Moment (Co-op too)

I would love to bottle this exact moment in time.  Right this very second it is Friday, 10:30ish am.  Mark is out here making his breakfast.  Fiona aced her math test this morning (but missed a few spelling words).  Everyone is behaving themselves (or at least I think they are; I haven't seen Lula or Heidi for awhile).  Daniel and Evie are tete a tete, Evie teaching Daniel some tricks she knows about math.  Daniel had a gold star day for behavior (I don't grade his work for the most part-it's always right).  Daniel groaned today when I pulled out a RightStart math sheet.  I had to though, he is flying through Saxon 2 so fast he might as well skip the whole book.  He flew through the RightStart page, adding numbers with nine in them like nobody's business (49+7, 63+9, for example). He wrote in pen, finished a whole page in about two minutes, and made no mistakes.  I hear him say to Evie, "You used to use RightStart? Is that how you got so good?"  He is ready to pass his other sister in math.

We had our second day of co-op yesterday.  I love co-op!  I love all the classes and the friends the kids have made so far.  I love that Fiona has two friends that she has known from dance and taekwondo and church and they all sit together during chapel and I have to shush them.  I love the cute projects Lula and Heidi do in their classes.  Lula sings, "Hypothesis, hypothesis, make a guess. Hypothesis, hypothesis, put it to the test!"  Mark adds, "...with replicates and a confidence interval of 95%!" I love spending three hours in the nursery knitting socks and chatting with moms while someone else teaches my kids.  I get a solid three days at home rocking Memoria Press for five kids and then I'm ready for a break on Thursday.  I'm supposed to teach in the practical needlework class, but Jason won't let me.  Maybe in a few weeks he will.

Getting Ready for Rain

The last few weeks have been keeping Mark busy preparing for the coming rains, autumn, and then...winter...

Our old, ancient, vintage firewood holder finally got too broken, so Mark built us a nice sturdy one.

Ian and Shane split firewood all summer long and now Genna, Fiona, and Daniel get to load it up in the woodbox.

The geese have their own fenced area, so they have learned to come begging at the play yard fence for treats.  Geese are greatly misunderstood.  They are like autistic kids with no social skills.

They can't control their volume, so even though they sound terrifyingly loud, they are really just seeing if you have an apple core or a few blackberries to share.  I used to be scared of them, but now I try to stand still if they get too close to me....although I did throw a turkey at them the other night when they came wondering what I was doing in their pen at dusk.  If that turkey would have gone to bed where it was supposed to, I wouldn't have to go in there and get it, that's what!

Jason potty trained a few weeks ago.  This is the first time in over 15 years that I haven't had to change diapers! I can't believe how quickly and easily he switched from diapers to underwear.  He is even dry at night.

Our apple trees aren't producing much this year, probably because last year was such a huge crop.  They needed a year off.  The tree with the sweetest apples didn't have a single fruit this year.  We also didn't have any pears.  I'm kinda glad because I'm still tired from last year's canning extravaganza.

The other day I heard heavy footsteps on the roof.  It's a bit early for Santa and Mark is done fixing the roof so....

 ...it had to be those darn turkeys.  They have no respect for fencing.  Mark and the kids spent a Saturday morning clipping wings, but some turkeys got away without a clipping.

 This owl was acting weird.  It was perched on a very low branch in broad daylight, blinking slowly and not responding to us.  Mark got about five feet away from it for the picture above.  I was worried the dogs would find it, so I was happy when the kids finally scared it into a higher branch.  I'm wondering if a neighbor is poisoning rodents which are then consumed by the owls? Or if the wildfire smoke is just too much for these guys?