A New Predator

I'm tired.  Tired, tired, tired.  I'm thankful that we have Spring Break here and there is no Pioneer Club or Cub Scouts.  We still have baseball though!  I'm hoping to fold laundry today.  That is the ONLY thing on my list of things to do.  Well, maybe I'll play Battleship with IJ.  He is feeling under a lot of pressure to do better in baseball at the same time he is (half) testing for his black belt.  So we aren't doing any schoolwork.

The Cat

I assure you, this cat is HUGE.  Our normal-sized cats might come up to its shoulder.  When we first saw it pouncing on things in the pasture, we thought it was a lynx or a bobcat.  But it had a tail.  It's bigger than a coyote!  We couldn't get a good look at it until M took this picture and we could zoom in and see its face.  Locals think the wildcats hybridize with feral cats.  I'm wondering how I'm going to keep it out of my chicken yard!

Opening Day

S doesn't know what he is supposed to be doing.

IJ strikes out!

Wordless Wednesday

Veggie Tales Twisted Tunes

Just before E was born, over four years ago (!), the older members of the D family wrote our own versions of some Veggie Tales tunes.  Today I found them in an old notebook mixed in with old shopping lists and things-to-do (did I ever do them? I have no idea).  Here they are-mostly for the enjoyment of L and A- but also just in case I lose or throw away this notebook!

Grandad's House (to the tune of the opening song of Veggie Tales)
If you like to eat Hassenfeffer
If pig feet won't make you scream
If you flavor cereal with pepper
And bug your kids about Vitamin D....

Have we got a place for you!
Grandad's house, Grandad's house, Grandad's house, Grandad's house...

Fava Beans,
Non fat ice cream,
Jelly beans,
Grandad's house!
Low-fat Spam,
Turkey ham,
Veggie-meat, canned,
Grandad's house!

You've never, never, never been to a place like Grandad's house!

The D's Who Don't Do Anything (sung to the tune of The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything)
This song is incomplete, but the first verse was all about Pa D (aka M).  Ma D (or me) only got one line.  But I think I'll write the rest right now...

Pa D:
Well I never change the diapers and I
Never make the phone calls and I
Never return items that I bought and didn't need.
But I always read the kids stories and
I rock out on the weekends and I
Like to wear my boxers under fleece!

Ma D:
Well I never work on weekends...
And I never dust the cobwebs
And I won't eat any food that could be two days old.
But I always love my kiddies
And I knit them crazy stockings
And I like to feed the chickens in the Spring!

Progress

There is no use crying over spilled milk...

...or spilled Heavy Whipped Cream!

Building the Coop: Day All Done!

Yesterday, M finished the coop.  At least to the point where we could move the chicks out!

Will the Door Fit?

There was a moment where I was worried the door wouldn't fit and we would have to wait another week to get everything done.

The Last Screw!

But of course my husband doesn't stop when its good enough.  He has to find the weak spots in the floor and reinforce them.

"There's the house, and there you are, and that's all that's left of the Wicked Witch of the East."

Floor reinforcement didn't take long.  And the chicks are moved!  Here they are in their new little pen!

The chicks are going through their awkward stage of growing feathers.  They look like a cross between vultures and dinosaurs.  They are no longer cute.  But we can see how pretty they will be someday.  Right before we eat them!

IJ in the Pen

We let the kids loose in the pen so they could pick up the chicks (and socialize them) to their hearts content.  The chicks are used to IJ bringing them snacks, so they ran up to him and started pecking his fingers.

Even F was allowed in and was very gentle.  How did the Pathetic Doberman handle the move?  She runs around the outside of the coop... I really should call it a palace!  And barked and whined until she saw a cat and chased it.  Later M caught her chewing the corner of the palace and he nearly killed her.  Now he is thinking about siding the palace with metal sheeting to keep other predators from chewing through.

M spent their first night worrying if they would be warm enough, if a large animal was going to unplug the extension cord, or a raccoon would chew through the walls.  He was up looking out the window a lot last night.  Grandad thought we were going to blow the circuit breaker, so he shuffled down the hallway to look out the window too.  I didn't worry, but I dutifully looked out the window every time I woke up last night.  Which was a lot because we booted F out of our bed and into her own!  Both chicks and F survived the night just fine.

Talk about Spring Cleaning!

This Kid...

...drives me CRAZY!  He irritates, confuses, challenges, and surprises me to NO END!  He is the one that drags himself to the table every day to do school, complains that today is the worst day of his life, he'll be sitting at the table until he is nothing but bones, he is stupid and a twerp, and cries and cries.  I wish sometimes he could just unschool.  So many of my problems would go away (but I'm sure I'd create new problems for him down the road).

Today was another math break-down day (so was Tuesday).  For some reason he just...couldn't...focus...  Which is why I bought this shirt at Goodwill:

...although SpongeBob at least knows that something was said after Listen Carefully.  S would probably be standing on his chair blowing spit bubbles Mater-style.

Today the questions confused him, but he wanted to do everything all by himself.  He wouldn't listen and brushed my hand away from where he needed to write or count something.  I've learned that when he acts like this, there is always a non-school issue bothering him.  Sometimes he needs a sandwich, and doesn't realize it.  Sometimes he need to sit on the toilet and doesn't realize it.  Today... I think it was the sun.  And the fact that it is Friday.  He told me he "was an ant trapped in a spider's web."  His brother said that the sun was a powerful magnet and he was just a weak safety pin.  I gave him a short break (and some green smoothie), made him sit through a history lesson, and sure enough, he was done with his math and outside in just a few minutes.

Tuesday his crying spell was short, he had the sandwich, and took a 100 problem 5 minute timed test, beat the goal I set for him with flying colors, had a great attitude the whole time, and didn't need me to write for him.  Awesome.  I let him skip the rest of his assignment as a reward (and I saved the worksheet for a later punishment-haha-I mean Summer Enrichment).  So this is what he did with his free time:

This little Twerp (and twerpish he was) made up this "game" where he grabs a handful of color tiles from the container, sorts them into piles by color, and records the number of each color on a chart.  I could throttle him.  THIS IS MATH!!!  Why was he spending his free time from math with math?  But I didn't tell him that.  I told him that his game was exactly what a scientist does.  I showed him that what he did is exactly what his dad does when he samples a lake.  He reaches into a lake (or bowl) and catches fish with a net (grabs a handful of tiles).  He sorts the by species (colors) and makes a chart to show what he caught.  I even had some old charts to show him.  If he were older, I would tell him about statistics and if we can make assumptions about the population of fish in the lake by what we caught and run him through some multivariate statistical tests, just like I used to do in grad school with jelly beans.  But for once I had the wisdom to stop where I was and let him continue on his merry way.

All I have to say is, TGIF!

St. Patrick's Day...and the Day After

 F petting the cat with an ant's nest in the background

Really, I wanted to have a fun St. Patrick's Day.  But it just didn't happen.  My kids did wear green (and I wore a green hair band).  I took the girls with me to my midwife appointment, which is always fun.  The boys stayed home with Grandad because S had a fever.  We skipped baseball practice and Pioneer Club was canceled because too many people were sick.  I made corned beef and no one liked it.  We listened to Irish music during dinner and S complained how much he hated the music (he reminds me of A more and more each day).  And that was our St. Patrick's Day!

E in green (she even wore green underpants)

And the Day After... when my husband's Pathetic Doberman and my Sweet Kitty-Cat get to share the crock pot juices:

Awww....

Deadline Anxiety: 33 Days!

This morning I made my List of Things to Do Before Baby Comes.  The list was long.  And I still have all the other things that I need to do just to keep a family this big running smoothly.  Hmmm...  I'm starting to feel the same way I used to feel when I was in college and I had a huge paper due the next day and I hadn't started writing yet.  I feel like if I just make enough coffee I can stay up late enough to get it done.  But I keep falling asleep instead.  And Daylight Savings time is messing me up.  Here it is 10:15 in the morning and the kids are just now finishing their breakfast.  And I've already taken one nap!

But last night, S said to me that having children is better than a man having a bag of gold that can never be empty.  I totally agree.

Building the Coop: Day 4

I was wondering when the obsessive part of my husband would come out...

The Last Nail...or so he said

He has passed the "this is just a chicken coop," into the "I might as well make it right the first time," stage.  I'm surprised it took this long.  Four days?  That might be a record.  This chicken coop is going to be a building that humans could live in.  He is putting in a real exterior door (I thought we were going to attach some plywood on hinges and hook it closed) and papering the walls before he puts up the siding (huh?), and reinforcing the roof where the plywood seams are (because he won't be able to do it once the roofing paper is down).  I won't be surprised if he wires it for electricity and plumbs for water.  I don't understand why he does a lot of things he does and I don't think I ever will.  But I do know that I should just trust his judgment and go with the flow.  At least we have the cash to pay for the thing.

It all reminds me of knitting a sweater.  Knitting the body and arms are fast and easy, but then when it comes to the details: buttons, seams, collars, things get tricky and slow me down.  And then I toss it into a basket and forget all about it.  But that's me.  I don't get obsessive.  M would sit there and finish that sweater or die trying!

Those chickens better lay some tasty eggs!

Haste Makes Waste

I blame Daylights Savings.  When M woke up this morning, he felt an hour behind.  So he rushed through his coffee and out the door to get to the hardware store before he wasted any more time.

A stitch in Time saves Nine!

He took his dad with him so he could do some grocery shopping at the same time.  Last weekend it worked out really well to have M drop Grandad off and then find him in the cheese aisle when the lumber was loaded.

This week didn't work out as well.

This week M forgot to check to see if he brought his debit card...it was in my pocket here at the house. After a phone call home, I reminded him his check book was in the van, with only two checks left.

But that wasn't the worst part about rushing.

He also forgot to measure the hole where the door is going to go, which meant another phone call home.

But that wasn't the worst part either.

The worst part came when he locked the keys in the van.  After he had purchased two carts worth of lumber and supplies.

If this were a normal day and not a day from Hell, Grandad would have driven in with the spare keys and we would all have a good laugh at M's expense.  But since Grandad was already in town and stranded at the grocery store, it was up to me to pack the four kids into Grandad's car and bring the spare keys in.  But there was a problem.  I can't drive a stick shift!  M refused to call for help from any other source, refused to break a window, and was having a caffeine induced meltdown in the parking lot of the hardware store.

So it was up to me to find all the car seats (good thing they were here), load them into Grandad's car, and psyche myself up to a 45 minute drive that included driving without a license (it was in the van), having a child under the age of 12 in the front seat, highways, four-way stops, and roundabouts.  ROUNDABOUTS???  There was no freakin' way I was going to drive a stick shift through the roundabouts.  No way at all.  And this is when I had a meltdown.

My meltdown consisted of calling a tow truck and having them jimmy the door open.  It took 15 minutes and cost $59.00 (which they had to accept in check form even though they didn't want to).  And then I locked myself in my room and read Little Women for the rest of the morning.

Building the Coop: Day 3

The Roof! 

M took turns with the rain today.  He really really wants to get the chickens outside in their coop where they belong. Next step is putting on the roofing paper, which might be happening as I type.  I find the wind a bit too chilly for me, so I'm not watching today.

And check out this new haircut!  He didn't cry at all when I cut his hair.  Or get mad.  I guess I did a good job leaving the top long (but keeping the sides short).

Last Day of Camp Seymour

Friday was our last day until next school year.  I have to say, this program is one of the best.  Yesterday's weather, however, wasn't that great.

IJ in the Rain

The kids learned about predator/prey relationships, population and resources, and identified herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores from handling various skulls.

F in the Rain

The last activity of the day was a super complicated game of tag that involved applying all the knowledge from that morning.  And then the rain started and we went home!

S in the Rain

My Savant

I haven't had a good savant post about S in awhile.  The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are the latest craze around here.  Good (or annoying?) homeschooling mom that I am, I am trying to get the boys-at least IJ-to learn about the source of the TMNT's names, the history of the ninja and his weapons, whether or not the TMNTs are "awesome amphibians" or "radical reptiles," etc.  I have books about Renaissance art and painters that at least I'm enjoying!  But I think the boys like the pizza lessons the best.  When we go to Costco, they have been asking for pizza instead of hot dogs.  When S saw his first piece of giant Costco pizza, he exclaimed, "Fantabuloso Dude!" much to the enjoyment of the other people in line.  I didn't think he could eat the whole thing, but he could.  He later told us that "it only took him 23 bites. Or 24."  You never know!

Building the Coop: Day 2

The coop is coming up faster than I thought it would!  M took yesterday, a relatively clear day, to work on framing the walls.  I've taken three trips to the hardware store since Sunday to pick up material for my special guy.  I may be eight months pregnant, but I can still load a bunch of lumber into the back of my van, all by myself!

The First Wall

M had to depend on his pregnant wife and elderly father to hold the wall in place while he braced it.  He said that the two of us was worth about part of one Big S (L's boyfriend who has the same name as my S).

Cutting Windows in Wall 2

E holding the chalk line

E learned about helping hands at Pioneer Club last night.  When her teacher asked her what she does with her hands to help her family she didn't even think about holding the tape measure or chalk line, hauling tools for her dad, picking up wood scraps, unloading the dryer and hauling baskets of laundry for her mom, and all sorts of little errands she runs for us all day...she only thought about helping the cats by petting them.

The Second Wall!

F Stacking Scraps

Now that we are accumulating scraps of wood, the kids have something to do at the work site.  F makes little stacks of wood (why did I buy those Melissa and Doug blocks?), S works on his hammering skills,...

Making a Hammer. With a Hammer.

(It doesn't make sense to us either)

The New Playhouse

...and IJ is excited to use the scraps to build his very own playhouse.  M told IJ that after learning to "read, fight, calculate, and swim, learning to build is the most important thing a man can do."  I added that a man also needs to learn how to love.  M says, "we are born knowing that!"

All Walls are Up!

And just in time for pouring rain... It seems a shame to have a bigger room for the chickens than what the kids have in their bedroom (in terms of square footage), but there are only four kids and thirty chickens!

IJ and History

IJ was quickly introduced to the story of Ghengis Khan and the Mongolian Empire in his history book yesterday.  He said, "Didn't he learn anything from the Romans?  If your empire gets too big, you can't defend the whole thing!"  I guess we will see what happens today when we read about Kublai Khan.

Oh March, You Do Tease!

The boys are working on their Weather Belt Loop and Academics Pin for Cub Scouts. What a great time to study the weather! Yesterday we got rain, snow, hail, sun, clouds, wind, and freezing temperatures. 

 Daffodils, Yesterday

IJ was looking out the window at the clouds and said, "Mom, I see a mean-looking cloud coming."  I happened to be at the National Weather Service website collecting info for our weather chart, so I checked the forecast.  Snow?  That's ridiculous! Minutes later it started hailing.

My son, with his awful hair, playing in the hail

Two minutes later, it was sunny again

   Daffodils, Today: Frozen

Building the Coop: Day 1

I'm always surprised when I look out my kitchen window, which faces to the back of the property, to see my minivan bumping backwards over the grass and patio toward the porch.  Of course I should have known M would use machine power to move his concrete blocks instead of muscle; he is, after all, quite brilliant.

The First Stone

So started Day One of Building the Coop.  I'm so proud of M.  He took a bite-sized chunk of work today instead of buying everything he thought he might need and forgetting half of what he really needed.  Today's mission: The Floor.  Only. 

S helps with block placement.

We tried to have the kids help out.  Especially since it was a beautiful sunny day.  And since the chicks are currently blocking their access to video games (darn), they needed something to do.

Unloading the Van

Learning about Levels

"Bubbles!"

F tried to help too.  She really liked the level because she really likes bubbles!  She hauled tools around until she had to go potty.  Have I mentioned she is potty training herself?  We haven't changed a poopy diaper in weeks!

M is on his own...

By the time M needed to line up the joists, he needed to concentrate.  Which means the kids had to go.  Some played on the computer, some watched cartoons, one took a nap.

Almost done!

M poured his sweat AND blood into his work.

Its a good thing I was watching when M drove the nail into his finger.  He probably would have bled to death trying to decide if he needed a Band Aid or not. 

 

E came back at the end and was so excited to help clean up.  She said earlier in the day, "I'm tired of doing bad things.  I'm going to start doing good things!" And she was super helpful the whole time.

Mission: Accomplished!

Stay tuned for Day Two: Framing the Walls!

New New Babies!

Check out these chicks!

Rhode Island Reds

They are the latest addition to the family.  We are now up to 30 chicks.  M the Builder is spending the day building a chicken coop.  We are hoping the building will be done by the time the chicks outgrow their brooders (snake cages).

I'm having a hard time seeing the pictures on my screen because of the light inside, so hopefully the above picture isn't too funky.  The chick on the left has incredible eye markings!  Like Cleopatra!  So if it turns out to be a she that will be her name.  Otherwise we'll name him Stew.  The Amerucanas look like chipmunks with beaks (says M).

Chicks are like chips...its hard to stop with what is good for you.  It is easy to overindulge and write the extras off to future predators.  And boy are they fun to watch!  The Orpingtons and Amerucanas are old enough to enjoy scrambled egg treats.  I take the little bits that the kids can't pick up with their forks and finger feed the chicks.  When one gets an egg bit, it takes off running with the other chicks in hot pursuit, peeping at the top of their lungs.  The chicks go from lazing around in the brooder to madly dashing all over the place.  Hilarious!