Roman Gladiators and Flying

As you can see from the outfits above, our homeschool has reached Ancient Rome in history!

Also, I am in a mad dash to finalize packing for a trip to Pennsylvania to visit my Nana!  The blog will be silent for a few days until I return.

Dancing With Joy

Can you believe in the few days from the last Lula post that she has started pulling herself up (yesterday) and has cut her second tooth (today)?!?  She is determined to meet all her major milestones before we get on a plane!

The Prince and the Frog

 Ian caught this handsome gorgeous frog today!  She is all ready to go lay some eggs!

 

Spring is coming!

A Big Week for Lula

Lula had such a busy week!

"I started eating Cheerios!"

"I cut my first tooth!"

"I discovered sunshine!"

"I'm crawling all over the house! I like to chase my shadow!"

Lula crawled for the first time last Sunday.  By last night, she figured out she no longer needs to stay where I put her.  I left her to play in her room while I tucked the other girls in bed and within a few moments, Lula was crawling on in!  We now have to be super-vigilant about keeping the house vacuumed and little toys picked up.  One of her favorite games is to look at Daniel and then freeze in the crawling position.  She looks at him again, squeals with excitement, and crawls away as fast as she can!  She started playing Peek-a-boo too!  She doesn't like our Ice Age version.  Listen carefully for Mark, sounding like a saber-toothed tiger:

She cries every time someone growls at her. Mark surprised her last night and she really howled!  It is pathetically cute.  A long time ago, Mark was trying to get Ian and Shane to smile by making growling noises, which they normally loved.  But for some reason, Shane didn't like the noise and started bawling as soon as the picture was over.  This was the picture:

It has been a long time since these two boys were so angelic looking.  Sometimes I miss those days.

Wrestling (Last Meet)

Ian got his first pin!

Shane missed a "tech fall" by only one point.

The boys worked hard this year and became more confident as the season approached its end.  I am so proud of the way they showed the taekwondo chun chin: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, indomitable spirit.

Integumentary, My Dear Watson

We started our ten week unit on the human body with a quick look at cells and DNA:

Building DNA

And now we are working our way from the outside of the body to the inside!  The integumentary system is basically the skin, hair, and nails. 

The kids get fingerprinted.

Instead of the recommended experiment from my teacher's guide (bleaching hair and comparing its strength to an unbleached hair), we got a close look at our fingerprints.  We used this little kit to collect our fingerprints...  

 ...and I pulled out our colorful stamp pads to make fingerprint art.  While the kids were having fun making little lady bugs and caterpillars, I taught them "Who Stole the Cookie From the Cookie Jar?"  Things got a little silly around here, let me tell you!  But then something serious happened!  Something really went missing!  Someone ate my CHIPS!

We dusted for prints and compared them to the prints we all did earlier.  Turns out it was ME (with Shane's help).  IJ said, "It couldn't have been me.  If I would have eaten all the chips, 1. I would not leave any prints and 2. I would dispose of the evidence by putting the empty bad inside another bag and then hiding THAT bag under a bunch of smelly garbage."  Criminal Mastermind? Nope, just well-informed thanks to this little book (he got it for his 7th or 8th birthday). 

Valentine's Day (Stump Removal)

Today is a day we have been waiting for for a long, long time!  When this house was built, it was snuggled in between many large trees.  I remember the first time I came here; it was dark, we had been driving forever, we drove down a long, dark driveway, and the house was completely surrounded in trees.  I almost felt like I could be kidnapped and no one would ever be able to find me.  Shortly after Mark and I were married, Grandad had the property logged because the fir needles were ruining the roof.  Now we are removing all the stumps.  

This stump obstructed the view of the driveway and provided a naughty chicken a place to lay her eggs:
There WAS a huge stump that completely blocked our view to the pond in the picture below.  Evie made a nice movie of it being ripped from the ground.  At the last minute, I needed to have this bush removed too:

I like the bush and all, but it just seemed out of place with our new, open plan.  We still have a lot of work to do, but you can see the potential!  Mark is going to build a little porch for me for Valentine's Day.  I'm dreaming of early morning coffee watching the sun rise over the trees and sunny days doing schoolwork with the kids.

We are also removing stumps in the apple orchard.  Mark risked his life rescuing one of his apple trees.  They are hard to see this time of year.

 Ian and Daniel were caught trying to replant a salal... I think they better find a new spot...

We have the excavator for six hours today.  I can't wait to see how much we get done!

*editing to add following pictures*

This used to be my blackberries

Looking toward the orchard from the pasture

Dragging a stump

Replacing the apple trees

 The man who runs the business is married to an old friend of Mark's.  She stopped by with her three kids and stayed for the rest of the afternoon...

All done!

 ...when the job was done, they took four of our kids home with them!

Lula

This video captures most of Lula's tricks.  She is so close to crawling and pulling herself up to standing.  She likes to "sing" and clap her hands.

Sleeping With Spiders

In my never-ending quest to get Daniel to sleep in his own room (shared with Lula), I set up a little bed next to his for us to fall asleep in together:

Sweet, isn't it?

Every other kid transitioned into their own bed by this age (except IJ now that I think about it-which doesn't surprise me.  IJ and Daniel have been my neediest kids so far).  Most of them needed either Mark or I to snuggle with them to sleep in their bottom bunk.  They would wake up once during the night for a few weeks and then slept through the night.

Daniel and I spent the weekend while Mark and the older boys were gone getting used to our new little bed.  I was hoping that we would sleep together on the floor for awhile, then I would get him up to his own bed while I slept on the floor, and then I would just holler, "Go to bed!" like I do with the rest of the kids that successfully moved out of my bed.

But then a bad thing happened last night, right before bed.  A teensy tiny spider crawled across the floor.  The older kids played with it.  The younger kids were fascinated by it, but didn't want to get too close.  And then all of a sudden, I was left alone with the teensy tiny spider, Daniel, and Lula.  I was attached to my pump and wasn't free to move about.  I watched the teensy tiny spider crawl slowly toward Lula, who was busy picking up little things and putting them in her mouth.  Of course I had to call Mark to come kill the teensy tiny spider so Lula wouldn't eat it.  I wasn't scared.  Mark couldn't even see it when he came in-that's how small it was.  But Daniel saw me call Mark to kill a perceived threat and he came to his own conclusions.

Daniel has his own special relationship with spiders.  He has always been fascinated with their webs and their eight legs, but has always been a little jumpy when they move.  We have a lot of spiders in and around our house.  That just comes with our chemical-free farmy woodsy lifestyle.

Anyway, right after Mark "rescued" Lula from the teensy tiny spider, Daniel got up on his toddler bed and checked out the window sill for more spiders.  He saw a false black widow spider on its web, which I quickly removed before he could make a big deal about it.  And then I saw The Rock, covered with web:

Awesome rock.  Awesome spider habitat.

I slowly spun the rock around to see...a Giant Funnel Spider!  There are three species of funneling spider in this area: the barn funnel weaver, the giant house spider, and the hobo spider.  You need a microscope to tell the difference-or a good magnifying glass and an education in entomology.  My husband has both, thank goodness.  I took a deep calming breath, turned around, and slowly walked to Mark's office.  I said, slowly and calmly, my voice getting higher and higher, "Honey, I don't want to freak out in front of the kids because I don't believe its a good idea to teach them to freak out when they see a spider.  But there is another really big spider and I need you to KILL IT."  He of course is big and brave around spiders, so he had a good time poking fun at me as he turned the rock this way and that, trying to see the spider in the many holes.  After finding a flashlight and illuminating the right hole, he jumped back, which caused me to jump and gasp.

Dead.  We don't take chances with funnel web spiders.  (You can see the moth it ate at the top)

And then it was bedtime.  But the damage was done.  There was NO WAY we could talk Daniel into sleeping in that room last night.  We tried to convince him Daddy killed all the spiders.  We tried to show him the spiders were all dead.  I think I might have even told him something like, "Guess what? There are spiders in every room in our house!  There are probably some right under MY bed.  So go to sleep!"

Guess who had nightmares all night?  Apparently, my bed is FULL of spiders (it sure felt like it with all the thrashing around he did last night).  Maybe he will sleep in his own bed tonight...

Camp Sheppard

Mark and the boys headed home a little early from their weekend at Camp Sheppard due to IJ's morning retching in the snow...looks like our flu bug worked its way into the older kids.

One of the great things about Camp Sheppard is this awesome sledding hill.  The kids are required to wear helmets and they can only go down on inner tubes.  The boys have all sorts of great stories about kids bumping on the sides of their tubes and catching air.

IJ doing outdoor cooking

Another great thing about Camp Sheppard is the opportunity to knock out several activity badges for Webelos!  IJ has already earned all 20, so he just redid some of them.  Redoing activity badges, especially ones like Readyman (first aid and emergency preparedness), is always a good use of time.  See the bandaid on IJ's thumb in the picture above? Yes, first aid is something that should be practiced over and over-as is knife safety *ahem*  Our pack had four Super 20 Webelos attending, so the camp allowed them to practice some of the early requirements for Tenderfoot, the first rank in Boys Scouts!

Shane makes a leather knife case

Shane got most of the requirements done for Craftsman and completed Readyman, Scientist, and Naturalist.  Other pins that can be earned are Artist, Communicator, Forester, Geologist, Outdoorsman, and Showman. They also had campfire and skits.  Shane has shown himself to be quite the showman!

IJ makes a metal bowl

Most of the trip was paid for by the popcorn sales, but we had to pay half.  We used Christmas money from my parents to pay for their trip.  Now that's a great Christmas present!

Shane makes a catapult.

The boys have so much fun on these trips and Mark does too (of course).  We are thankful IJ didn't get sick until the last day; the only thing they missed was the polar bear hike.  IJ joked that they had their very own polar bear hike getting all their gear to the car in the early morning.  Me thinks the flu bug is finally starting to get Mark and I as well...

Engineering a Scout Meeting

One of the requirements for the Webelos Scouts is to build a model of a bridge.  This is what Mark came up with to do with his den:

The problem: The bridge isn't strong enough to keep the car from getting eaten by the dinosaur!

Review some knots: taut line

Suspend the bridge

It works!

Now, the ultimate test.  It survived playtime with Daniel and Fiona, can it survive Mark's Cub Scout den???

Oh yes.  These are the kinds of activities Mark's boys thrive on.  But next time Mark needs to check his boxes before he leave so he knows that Daniel hasn't pilfered through beforehand.  Yes, Mark was short a few materials, but he was able to scrounge up replacements at the church.

February Sun

Days like today cannot be wasted!

Ling Ling wishes she could walk around with us.

Looking at amazing discoveries (snail or slug eggs)!

Jack was hilarious with this paint tray.  He would chomp on the edge and run wildly...and blindly around!

Mark saw us having fun and took a short "coffee break."

Daniel throws "ice ceem" cones into the pond (fir cones).

Checking the trail around the pond.

The bridge to Jungle Pungle Island

Oooo...chilly bare baby feet!

It's almost spring!!!

Puke free for 18 hours!

Mon Petit Chou et Choux de Bruxelles

Climbing barefoot...again!