Penrose

I need to get to the beach more.  So many things have changed in the last three or four years, and having Mark take us to the beach for rounds of Can You Name That Marine Invertebrate is something that doesn't happen much anymore.  Yesterday the tides and weather and schoolwork were cooperative and I took the seven kids on my own.

I had nothing to worry about.  As long as I keep reminding kids to not run and fall on the barnacles and I don't bring anything to carry (except the camera) or eat or drink, we are fine.  Ian is strong enough to flip that giant rock pictured above so that younger siblings can see the crabs scurry.

It was Heidi's first trip to the beach as a walker and she owned the place.  Her favorite thing to do was pick up little handfuls of mud and throw them. Cutie.

Ian, Shane, and Evie quickly took off to wade in the water.  I felt so at peace watching them just walk off and do something that older kids do.  They were barely in my vision, but as they grew older over the last few years, their Circle of Safety expanded.

Lula has no memory of anything beachy.  She refused to wear her boots and would only wear her shiny black shoes (which are falling apart anyway, so who cares).  When she saw her first pile of seaweed, she said, "Ew!" and wouldn't walk anymore.  Then she saw that it was all around her and she really freaked.  She may have thought it was chicken poo...

"Hey, Lula, wanna cookie?"  She sure did! But when Fiona passed her that sand dollar she....

....dropped it and said, "Ew!"  Ew was her word of the day.

Here is a little biology for you: Sand dollars are just like flat sea urchins.  They have short black spikes and tube feet that help it in feeding.  They catch little critters in the water and then pass them down to their mouths on their bottom sides.  Sometimes, when they are in a group and there is flowing water, they align themselves up in pancake stacks (pictured above) on their edges, which causes the water to spiral in toward their mouths and makes catching and eating prey easier.  Not all sand dollars do this though, just the Eccentric (AKA Pacific) Sand dollar does this. I learned that in college y'all.

Ian and Shane knew tons of macroinvertebrate terms by the time they were in early elementary, simply because we took them to the beach a lot.  Evie called the tube feet on the starfish above "tentacles" which made me sad and grumpy at the same time.  I need to take these kids to the beach more!!!

Lula didn't want to hold Ian's crab.

But Heidi did!  And Ian let her hold that big ole crab with sharp, strong pinchers.  But that crab is DEAD, so it was no big deal.  Daniel got pinched by a crab and cried, poor thing.  He was really worried about crabs pinching him for the week leading up to this beach trip, so it wasn't like he didn't know it could happen.

The crab above wasn't dead though!  I spotted it through the seaweed and sent Ian to catch it for me.  He slowly lifted it up out of the water because they usually flail their pinchers back to catch your tender skin...but this crab was a little too....busy....because that dark mass between his claws is actually another crab.  I'm sorry I embarrassed Ian because I laughed loudly and exclaimed (a little too loudly), "They're mating!"  He may never forgive me for that.  I'm pretty sure no one heard me, but he is pretty sure the whole peninsula heard me.

There were just so many cool little critters under rocks and in little pools.  And I took pictures of them with my new camera until my battery died.  

These critters were my favorite!

Ape Caves

Mark took Evie along to the Ape Caves with the Boy Scouts!  This was her first camp out since there is no local girl's group that is the cub/boy scout equivalent.  The boys were kind to Evie and let her join in their reindeer games, especially since she is a tough girl and can pull her own weight when it comes to working.

Training Lula

I'm a big fan of training kids to stay with me in the store or wherever I happen to be in public.  Once my current two year old decides they are too big to ride in the cart and they want to walk, the training begins.  It isn't pretty.

Lula is probably the most independent kid I've had (so far).  She just does what she wants, when she wants to.  She wants a cup of milk? She opens the fridge and pours herself a cup from the gallon.  Sometimes she spills, but more often than not I never know that she even had some milk.  Walking in stores and through parking lots means that she will not hold hands. Period.  If you offer, she screams, "No, walk!"  Once, Mark made the mistake of just picking her up and carrying her through the parking lot and Lula screamed the whole time and then cried all the way to our next stop.  She is going through a phase where she is seriously testing her boundaries.

This little story sums up what shopping with Lula is like: She trots along happily until she sees something breakable at her eye level.  She reaches out, touches, and names the item.  Yesterday it was a bowl (why oh why does Target put breakable things on lower shelves?).  I say, "Yes, that's a bowl. Don't touch!" in a sweet mama voice.  Her arms drop to her sides, her sad dimple appears (you can only see her dimple when she frowns), and she starts to cry.  I start walking and say, "Come on Lula! Stay with Mama!" and she doesn't budge.  Fiona starts worrying that Lula will be left behind and starts coaxing her and bribing her with piggy back rides.  "Stop, Fiona.  You are only encouraging her to not walk. Ignore her!"  I keep walking.  Lula starts howling.  People start staring.  I call back, "Come on Lula! Walk with Mama! Let's go!" still in the sweet Mama voice.  And then I turn the corner at the end of the aisle.  Lula can't see me yet still wants to stay where she is, so she screams, "MAMA! WAAAAAIIIIIIT!"  And gosh darn it, wouldn't you know that a granny or some other "helpful" female who has never had miniature versions of their own stubborn selves tries to interfere with my attempts at training my child to walk obediently with me.  They talk to her, get all sweet with her, get all worried that her mean mama just left her behind. So guess what? I have to give up my position and let them know that I'm just waiting for her to catch up.  I wish people would mind their own business.  She runs and catches up to me and I start walking as quick as I can to make the illusion that I was walking away the whole time.  As soon as she reaches me, I kiss her sweet RED face, wipe her tears away, and praise her for staying with me.  Fiona tries to pick her up and carry her, but Fiona is pretty small for her age and Lula is big and I don't want to have to go through someone needing stitches from a fall on store property, so I tell Fiona to put her down!  As soon as I turn around to start walking again, the pattern repeats itself.

Fun, I tell you.

Daniel's Birthday

Guess who is five?

Because we are Homeschoolers, birthdays are considered a No School holiday.  Daniel spent the day being pampered by his siblings.  They gave him homemade presents, like paper airplanes, and hand-me-down awesome things, like a video game and a piece of apatite.  I downloaded some new games to the Leapster and Mark spoiled him with a Nerf gun, foam sword, and a boomerang (which is now stuck on the roof).  I also let the kids make Magic Toads.  This is when they bury the hose in the sand box and wait for the water to bubble up through the sand.  It makes a huge mess and wastes a ton of water, so Magic Toads are a treat!
 

Sitting on a Magic Toad

Daniel was also given $10 from my parents, which he immediately spent on ice cream at Costco for his brothers and sisters (Lula was a joy when she found out she had to share with me and Heidi).  And he picked a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting topped with toasted coconut marshmallows. They looked creepily like tator tots...
 

I'm really looking forward to Daniel-as-a-five-year-old.  He is such a lot of work, but he is such a rewarding kid.

Daffodil Parade

Wow, what a long day we had yesterday!  I somehow ended up being the driver of seven Boy Scouts and Fiona and Evie for the Daffodil Parades yesterday.

Here are some important facts from my part of the day (because, you know, the kids will get all the community service credit in the newspaper and all they had to do was show up):

• I got up at 5:00 AM and had Shane, Evie, and Fiona out the door by 6:00 AM.  The last time we did this was in 2009 when we got the cats spayed.
• I drove my 12 passenger van to Tacoma, Puyallup, and Sumner.  I navigated tricky roads and went around road blocks.  I got stuck in parade float parking and had to ask the classic convertibles that carry princess to move out of my way.  I parked illegally.  I used Google Maps on my phone to figure out where I was and where I was supposed to meet the end of the parade.  
• I listened to the conversations of boys. Topics covered included The Illuminati, trail mix, knock-knock jokes, who-can-be-quietest-the-longest (and can Blake be quiet at all?), male anatomy ("There are girls and women in this car, boys!"), singing of "99 Bottles of Pop on the Wall," and more Illuminati.  They thought they could break me with the singing, but they failed to remember I have seven kids and blocking out annoying sounds is my specialty. They annoyed themselves long before I even twitched.
• I made a mental list of Good Boy Scouts and Bad Boy Scouts.
• The boys -who are all public schooled and are used to be separated by age (and still by gender for this age group) got a real life lesson in how to behave around younger girls and how their bad behavior can trickle down.  The boys were walking along the benches and I told them to be respectful of where other people might sit just as Fiona decided to join the boys in the bench walking.  The patrol leader, who was still nervous after the tongue-lashing he received for making anatomy jokes around my girls, immediately saw Fiona trying to copy them and lectured his troop mates on setting a good example for younger people.
• I spent the day with a friend I work really well with.  She is a self-described OCD control freak.  I'm happy to follow along with whatever her plans are and to not try to change them or give her my opinion on anything.  In fact, I never had an opinion on anything, which was even better, because if I would have had an opinion and not stood up for myself, I would have annoyed her for not standing up for myself.  I happily followed her down closed roads and back roads and completely trusted her to get us to where we needed to be.  She is very good at planning out details and getting things rolling.  She organized the whole parade experience for these kids.  Things outside her control, like keeping preteen boys from devolving into chaos when they are supposed to be working, tend to break her.  This is when my super power of managing with rowdy chaos around me kicks in. Having and homeschooling seven kids really helps develop this super power.
• We had 4000 daffodils to take off the float and put in vases after the three parades.  Exactly six daffodils were (supposed to be) in each vase (I knew my friend wouldn't count flowers over my shoulder, so I just estimated).  One boy wondered how many vases we would have to fill and couldn't reach his phone calculator to find out.  I said, "You should be able to figure that out in your head. How many times does six go into 40? Six? No, we will need more than 600 vases, because there are still 400 flowers left.  Six hundred and sixty-six." Big Eyes "The Illuminati!"
• When we delivered the flowers to the assisted living facility, I was able to witness the stripping of a boy's cocky attitude as he humbly approached his wheelchair-bound grandmother and gave her flowers.  That might have been the highlight of my day.
• I dropped the boys off 14 hours after I picked them up.  I put the van in park, turned around to the boys, and said, "GET OUT!"  One of the Good Boy Scouts, who doesn't know me and is an only child, looked shocked and apologized for being annoying.  I smiled and said, "Just kidding. I have seven kids. You guys were not annoying. Go find your rides and I'll see you later."
• I was originally going to have to bring all my kids to this event.  But I decided to keep Ian at home with Daniel so I wouldn't have to deal with carsickness.  And when Mark's trip to California got cancelled, I was able to leave Heidi and Lula with him.  I am so glad I didn't have Lula and Heidi.  They would have made the day so difficult. I left before they woke up and got home after they went to bed.  I was gone for 15 1/2 hours.
• Ian's friends wanted to know why he didn't want to participate.  His reasons were 1) He didn't want to get up that early and 2) waste a perfectly good video game day 3) marching in a parade with flowers.

Last, but not least, and actually first, because it happened first thing when we got to the first meeting place.....

...Fiona lost a tooth in the van.  Like, it is completely lost.  It fell on her lap and then got lost in the pile of jackets and blankets on the floor.  What a day!

Easter Egg Hunting

Let the Hunt Begin

Lula was pretty confused.  Why was there a red egg in the grass?

Daniel was upset that his sisters were faster than he was and he couldn't reach the egg on the gate.

I love my zoom lens.  Mark calls it The Lazy Person Lens.

After Kai ran Lula down, she was very watchful for him.  Here she is yelling at him to stay away.

Shane was Heidi's buddy

She's done. One egg is enough when the dogs are running around all crazy.

These guys kept going.  Why would we go to the public hunt when our pasture is bigger than the park?

Slugs find the eggs faster than the kids do!

The Big Basket, hiding in the grass.  It holds the Big Candy.

Daniel found it this year...and thought all of the Big Candy was for him.

The closest to a group photo we got (Lula is behind Shane)

"I found one by M. A.!"

The Easter Monkey hid a few eggs too!

These two are off to see if the Easter Blobber-Fish-About-This-Big hid eggs by the pond.

She wins Most Persistent Egg Hunter (she hunted three times for missing eggs)

This shows both Daniel and Fiona sharing eggs with Ian.

The kids ate piles of candy and a few hard-boiled eggs.  Mark made lamb for dinner.  We watched Veggie Tales: The Easter Carol and I read the Egermeier's Bible Story Book version of the crucifixion and resurrection.  Mark and I lounged on the side porch in the sun for most of the day.  We had a much-needed day of rest between two very difficult work weeks for Mark.  The boys played video games and Lula sneaked as much chocolate as she could.  It was a good day.

Chicken Lickin' Good!

Two weeks ago we added 20 meat birds to our flock. Yesterday we added five layers.

The size difference is amazing.  Meat birds grow so quickly!

Evie has also decided to let this broody hen hatch out some eggs.  Her name is Strawberry and she is the daughter of Kenny, our first rooster.

We know this because she is the meanest hen in the flock and Kenny was the meanest rooster we've ever had.  Evie decided to let her brood the eggs because it was easier than trying to get the eggs from her! She pecks us really hard when we try to get too close.  Unfortunately for the chicks, she will only let two chicks hatch before she starts kicking the other newly-hatched chicks out of the nest.  When our old Rhode Island Red (who might even be Strawberry's mother) goes broody, which she will, we will give her the rest of the chicks.

The chicken above, who I call Naked Neck, has quite the story.  Mark and I had to use our CSI skills to figure out what happened to her.  One morning, about a month ago, Ian found her next to the chicken coop covered in blood.  He put her on our "quarantine" side of the chicken coop until he received further instruction.  I heard him mention to Mark that we had a bloody chicken out there and he separated her and gave her food and water.  He didn't sound too worried, and I rarely go out to the coop, so I didn't bother following up on the bloody chicken.  A week passed and the chores rotated.  Shane saw this hen and noticed she was doing just fine (including laying eggs) and let her go back with the flock.  When I finally got out there, I saw for myself what had happened.  The skin on her neck had been completely ripped off, all the way down to muscle, and was hanging down her front.  She stepped on it whenever she scratched and pecked, so it was all muddy.  It was so gross.  Here is the CSI version of her story: She and some fellow coop mates decided to stay out all night and roost on some shelves in the carport.  They have done this before and it gets really messy, so Mark added some field fencing to the shelves to deter them.  The fencing was only propped against the shelves and not secure and the chickens just went around the side.  One night, a racoon reached through the fencing, grabbed the chicken by the neck, tried to pull it through the fencing.  During the struggle, the chicken was injured and the unattached fencing fell down, scaring the racoon.  I'm surprised she lived through this ordeal!

Flowers

Lula came through my tulip bed and picked every single flower.  I shouldn't be surprised.  That is what two year old girls do!

I've reached a stage in my homeschooling where I can take advantage of situations like this and turn it into a science lesson.  So although no one is in my "Core A" science level, I could still dig out my books and teach the parts of a flower.

Heidi sleeping on the couch behind Fiona

The stars aligned and both Heidi and Lula went down for a nap at the same time! (I've created a second school table downstairs to help with noise and distractions for all.  Ian and Shane use the old school room and/or computer and I work downstairs with the rest while babies crawl all over me)

Lula sleeping on the other couch behind Evie

With the girls asleep, we were able to easily head outside to find more flowers and try to identify the different parts: sepal, petal, pistil, and stamen.

Daniel was not happy that I ripped a cherry blossom in half

And then it started to rain, so I headed back in with my precious camera. 

We've got Spring Fever around here and are spending a lot of time hurrying through lessons so we can play!  We are counting how many more days of math, how many more chapters of history...