Walking Twin Firs

 They do more than just rock out.  They walk out.

 Up we go, to check on the baby yew trees!

 "I look fabulous in my sister's hat!"

 S and a beautiful day!

 The cats always tag along.

 E went hiking in her skirt and cowgirl boots!

 The boys discovered a new tree to climb (and eventually move in to).

Yes, today was a gorgeous day!

Some Things are Just Too Cute

Rockin' the Baby

M loves music.  All kinds of music.  Our music collection takes up three times the memory that our digital pictures take up.  Three times.  We've been taking digital pictures since October of 2002, all in high resolution, just in case we get that perfect picture.  And I take a LOT of pictures (and they are mostly junky snapshots).  The music collection is THREE TIMES bigger than the picture collection.

D loves rockin' to music.  He loves his dad's music collection.  He also dances to other musical things: the Vitamix, the coffee grinder, the fan.  We thinks it's awesome how babies are just born with an instinct to rock to music.

This video shows D rockin' to Eluveitie, a Swiss/Celtic folk metal band.  The album is called The Arcane Dominion and is written completely in the extinct language of Gaulish.  We never would have heard of this music if it weren't for the library.

M turns on Media Monkey's visualization module to add visual stimulation for D:

M and D sit in front of the computer, together, listening to music from all over the world (another favorite is Soname, who composes Tibetan music), watching the effects.

It's not quite Baby Einstein, so maybe we should call it Rockin' Einstein?

And Now We Finish the Year

This post is for all of my blog-junkie friends, just like me, who can't wait to see the next new update and the latest funny picture.

Who doesn't love a two year old who has been left to forage for candy all day?

Merry Christmas!

 First you add the whole jar of red sprinkles...

Then you add the whole jar of green sprinkles... and then mom eats them because no one else will!  It must be great being two years old.  But more on that later.

 Lovely L and her Loving Brother S

We had a tasty "Surf n' Turf" Christmas Eve dinner last night.  As I was setting the table and was counting how many chairs I needed, I suddenly realized that there were ten people at my table.  I tend for forget how large my family is when we aren't all together.

S, who also loves his other big sister A

My plan for getting the kids good and tired with a sleepless Christmas Adam worked!  Last night we watched The Polar Express and sent the kids to bed at 10:30 and it wasn't long before the kids were sawing logs.  Even Night Owl IJ.  "He's up to a half cord already," M reported after I sent him back to check on them.

A great action shot of IJ jumping up to hit S's sword.  These babies get a lot of use in our house.

The girls like the candy...the chocolate candy!

Baby's First Christmas

And First Candy Cane!

And this was the absolute, most hilarious, part of our morning.  F, after cruising through the living room and sneaking candy all morning, got all prettied up and took her baby for a walk.  She is wearing Mrs. Potato Head's glasses.  She was dancing and prancing and putting on the funniest show for us.  I just can't describe it, she was so funny.  

Here I am with my seven children, lucky me!

Now I'm planning on just sitting around for the rest of the year, doing nothing but what I normally do.

Christmas Adam!

Last night we celebrated Christmas Adam, which is a little family joke.  You know, Adam came before Eve!

 "Bean dip anyone?" ~This kid is eating nonstop!

On Christmas Adam we make cookies:

and watch Christmas movies and fall asleep in front of the Christmas tree:

Why this silly little tradition (that has only truly started this year)?  My kids always want to sleep by the tree on Christmas Eve, so this is my compromise.  I've always wanted to do things like this anyway.  I want my kids to look back on their childhood and think, "Gosh, my mom was the best.  She may have been a strict disciplinarian, but she had fun with us."  Next year I'm going to add popcorn and hot cocoa!  And yes, D and I slept on the floor...for half the night.  Then we moved to the couch.

The best part was having L with us for cookie making and slumber partying and then having A roll in at 11:00 PM.  Neither Grandad nor The Pathetic Doberman noticed her sneaking in, even though she walked right by the two of them!

Cockadoodle-Stew!

I have to credit my friend, K, for today's title.  She got her first set of chickens a year before I did and made a joke about her roosters crowing that song.

I've learned a thing or two about my husband in the last nine years.  Which is obviously a dumb thing to say, but I want to say it anyway.  And he has also learned a thing or two about me.  Today's subject is: getting the other one to do something unpleasant, but necessary.

I've learned that to get M to do something, it has to be a critical situation that absolutely cannot be put off another second (like the time I brought home the chicks and there was no coop built).  And I don't blame him.  He is a very busy man who has to prioritize his tasks.  Chopping fire wood, home improvement projects, oh, and don't forget his regular full time job!  Add Cub Scout Leader and Taekwondo Instructor to that and you have a man who has to spend his vacation days and weekends working.

He's learned that if he says he doesn't think I can do something, I can't wait to prove him wrong and do it!  (I've always been like that, just ask my parents).  Like when he used to say, "You can't possibly take all three kids to Costco."  Oh yeah?  Watch me!  Which is funny, because now I take five!

Chief and Mate (now Chef and Meat) were our two old roosters.  They served no purpose except for entertainment.  They didn't guard the hens and they didn't mate (and for the record, Mate wasn't named for the verb, but for the noun).  All they did was stand around, act stupid, eat, and make messes.  I even found them curled up in the nesting boxes.  So yesterday I brought home two new roosters that were being given away for free.  As a sucker for a good deal, I had to have them.  But we were faced with the dilemma of having five roosters.

Farm Fresh Food

This morning (the first day of M's Christmas vacation) we got up at 6:00 AM, had a cup of coffee, and got right to work.  M didn't think I could get up early and he and his dad thought I would "chicken" out of the processing part.  But we did it!  By the light of the moon, M and I worked together, side by side, and killed, plucked, and butchered our roosters.  It was so romantic.  And I gutted both roosters all by myself while M was inside taking care of the baby.

So now Chief and Mate are stewing away on the stove and we are going to have Rooster Pot Pie for dinner tonight!

More Homemade Christmas

A little fruitcake is mellowing on my cooling rack.  I've never made a fruitcake before, but after gagging down two Costco brand fruitcakes with neon colored fruit I had to make my own.  I used dried fruit, not neon fruit.  And liquor!  Like, oh my goodness!  I have never been to the liquor store before!  Seriously!  I parked out front, told the kids I was going in the liquor store, and S shouted, "The LICKER STORE??? Are you going to LICK the STORE?"  Then I had to go in and find what I needed.  It was so confusing!  Then I got carded.  Which wasn't so bad since it has been a long time since I turned 21!  I just hope I cooked everything long enough so the alcohol burns off.  I don't want a bunch of drunk kids running around my house.  Or a drunk Grandad for that matter.

And now I'm staying up late in my elvish workshop, sewing these:

Skirts from pillowcases (and other random fabric scraps)!  Obviously these are for the girls.  I love the matching pillowcase skirts.  I can't wait to see my girls twirling around in them.

My Kids are CRAZY!

Welcome to the Polar Bear Club:

It all happened so fast.  I can't even remember whose dumb idea it was.  It was either me or IJ.  Go swimming and then come inside for hot cocoa?  Sounds great!!!  Or is it?

You see, there is frost on the grass.  And apparently, there is ice on the puddle too.  And you can also see that one child from the Polar Bear Club never made it to the frozen puddle.

"I'm cold!"

When he found out he would get hot cocoa without jumping the in puddle, he went back to playing.  Playing outside in his bathing suit, but playing anyway.

Christmas Crafting

I am notorious for thinking up fun Christmas things to do and not following through with them.  In fact, I'm notorious for coming up with LOTS of ideas about LOTS of things and not following through with them.  I'm too busy, too tired, too sick, too this, too that...

Except this year I'm actually doing some things that I want to do.

A sneak peak of presents!

Like making my own reusable wrapping.  I absolutely hate wrapping presents.  I spend all that money and all that time wrapping presents just to have that time and money ripped off and thrown on the floor.  And then I have to pick it up and throw it away.  This year I've been buying pretty fabric and making reusable wrapping.  I'm also making reusable gift tags with my stamping set that I haven't used since I quit scrapbooking!

When IJ and I were at the Dollar Store, he saw an elf hat and wanted me to buy it for him.  Instead, we crossed the parking lot to JoAnn and I bought some nice fleece and sewed elf hats for all!

These two look a lot alike sometimes!

And in my pathetic attempt to keep school going, we are doing art projects.  Like making more wrapping paper out of the packing paper that is coming in our packages.  I taught them how to make cool patterns with bubble wrap, cookie cutters, yarn, and tree branch twigs.  Very fun!  Messy, but fun.

Last night I tried to have a little chat with E about the meaning of Christmas while she was going on about how many presents she wanted and what she wanted in those presents.  I told her that God sees her at all times, even when I can't see her, and He sees when she is naughty or sneaky or deceitful.  And then I added, "God tells Santa which kids are naughty and which are nice.  The naughty kids get switches in their stockings instead of toys and candy."

She looked at me with her big green eyes and said, "Oh.  I guess I'll be good until after Christmas then."  And she skipped away.

Arachnophobia

We love Fuzzy, our bird-eating tarantula.  She is 12 years old, almost 13!  She has lasted longer than any dog M has ever had.  Last night I thought she was dead.  But she is actually molting!  This isn't quite Christmas, more Halloween.  But we thought she was ready to die from old age, so the fact that she is molting is a gift.

If spiders gross you out, skip the rest of the post!

Visiting Santa

My kids have been really worried about visiting Santa.  All this time, they have thought that Santa only goes to our old hometown!  We did, after all, go see him there last year.  And since my plans to go up there this month for a visit were foiled, I was stuck finding a new place for my annual picture.  I knew that I had to do something right away when IJ told me he had decided to knock out a tooth...a tooth that is not loose...so the Tooth Fairy could take a letter to Santa Claus for him.

My choices were a fancy-pants gift shop in the local snob town and taking my own picture on Saturday, driving an hour to the gangster mall and having the kids searched before they saw Santa, or driving an hour and 15 minutes to the other mall.  I chose Option 3.  We drove a long way to stand in line for about three minutes.  And there was no one in line behind us so my four talking children could prattle on as long as they wanted.  But not long enough for any child to start reminiscing and getting Santa in trouble ("Remember the year you thought we were going to be at Twin Firs but it snowed?  And you left my favorite present there?")   School days are great days to go see Santa.

Take the Gingerbread Party...

What I wish I was doing

...and make it a Cub Scout Pack Meeting/Christmas Party.  Wow!  I always have a hard time settling down after a meeting, but tonight it's even worse.  I'm so jittery, I had to get out of bed!  I'm not going to say a word about the boys and how crazy they were.  I won't even mention how they can't keep their hands and bodies to themselves.  You won't even hear a whisper about how I yelled at all of them because they pushed and shoved each other until Tigers were getting trampled and hurt-and you've never heard them so quiet when I did.  IJ said my face turned red.  I brought home all of the leftover cookies for the chickens, so we will see if they react the same way boys do.

The Wolves performed Jingle Bells for everyone tonight.  I provided a string of bells for each boy to cover our lack of talent.  S really showed his talent when his bells went flying across the room after the ribbon broke.  He saw that people were laughing, so he hammed it up by shaking his bell-less ribbon for the rest of the song.

Gingerbread House Party

Imagine twelve kids with unlimited access to multiple bowls of candy and frosting.  And imagine these kids had this access for five straight hours.  Now imagine what the car ride home was like and how our bedtime routine went.  And now imagine the nightmares!  Then add a crazy thunder and lightning storm that led to a power outage!  Yep, the last 18 hours have been memorable.

The three youngest D's

My friend hosted a lovely party last night in her beautifully decorated house.  She little gifts for all the kids and parents, graham cracker pieces glued together with candy glue, and bowls of candy covering her table!

Only half the candy

The kids played outside until it started to rain.  Then the fun really started!

After the houses were built, the kids played video games, watched Christmas movies, attempted a game of Monopoly (doesn't work too well with babies on the floor), and played hide-n-seek in two rooms.  Two rooms and 12 kids.  Not a lot of places to hide there!  IJ's friend (the one that stayed at our house for a few days) reminisced on how great our house was for hide-n-seek, especially when the power was out!  Then we had a pizza dinner!

I saw some very creative houses: a mansion, a tent, a licorice log cabin, a Tootsie Roll wood pile, and a reindeer also made from Tootsie Roll!

F figured out she could eat the candy instead of gluing it on her house.  So her house was the simplest of the bunch.  We moms enjoyed drinking coffee and chatting about homeschooling and homeschool curriculum.

D enjoyed graham crackers and his first piece of licorice.  This kid is eating nonstop!  He found a Red Hot on the floor and got a surprise!

We had so much fun!  The meltdowns were totally worth it.  And since this is an annual tradition (this is my first year going), I'm looking forward to it next year!

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

...the pasture is flooding!

Does any of this behavior surprise me?  Not in the least.  In January of 2006, the pasture looked like this:

And my boys looked like this:

IJ, almost four years old