Shane: 14

Shane isn't too happy that his birthday party had to be postponed due to sickness.  This guy cleaned up after his baby brother.  He missed his Court of Honor where he was going to be presented with his Life Award.  And now this.  He didn't complain too much and I promise that we'll have his friends over in the future.

Shane truly is an amazing person.  He is steady and responsible and dependable.  He does of course contribute to brotherly interactions in a negative manner, but I think he is pretty balanced and normal.

I can't wait to see how he grows this year! I have a great one planned for him!

Flu

How strange to have the stomach flu come through our house this time of year.  First Lula and Fiona had a stomach ache.  Then Jason, Genevieve, and I were down for 24 hours.  A few days later Shane got sick, probably from cleaning up Jason's puke while I was sick in my room.  And then it hit Daniel and Ian over the weekend. 

Back in the day when I had only littles and Mark had to work, being sick just couldn't happen.  Now that little guys have older sibs to run things, I can be sicker than all of them and things won't fall apart.

Eclipse Pics

I was like a kid looking forward to Christmas.  I ordered my solar glasses months ago and seriously thought about flipping them for a profit to the unprepared.  I read all sorts of articles about how to make pin hole viewers and other neat things to look for.  I knew we wouldn't have 100% cover and see Bailey's Beads or the corona (Latin for crown), but I was excited to see what we could see.

Pin Hole Viewer

 I even read articles on how to keep your "fur babies" (oh how I hate that term) safe from the eclipse.  I agree with everyone that says only humans are stupid enough to look at the sun.

Jack doesn't seem concerned

I'm a good pet owner

Lula didn't care and told me to go away

A shot through the eclipse glasses

I'm not exactly sure how safe my glasses are, so I had rules about who, what, where, when, and how long people could look at the sun.

Hopefully we won't be blind tomorrow

 The shadows turned out to be the best way to watch the eclipse:

I love that we can see the individual branches

It didn't get completely dark here, but it was a darky inky dusk feeling with the sun still shining.  All our senses were messed up because when the sun is shining and the sky is blue in August, it is hot.  We felt like we were looking through tinted glasses and the air was chilly enough that Mark headed in to find a sweatshirt.  It was strangely quiet here, but my friend says all the dogs were howling in her neighborhood. 

It was hard to capture the darkness with my camera because it automatically adjusts its settings in low light.  But you can see in the picture of Heidi above how the sun is shining right on her face, but she isn't squinting or looking away.

Ian is at football practice.  I sent him with a pair of glasses plus an extra to share.  I hope they got to take a break and watch a little of it!

Peachy Keen (Lula's Lie)

We HAD some awesome amazing peaches growing on our peach tree.

But they mysteriously disappeared one day...

Heidi happily confessed to eating one of them. "It was doosy and wipe!" she said.  Lula eventually confessed after making up a story about a gorilla that came out of the woods and hid the pits in a bird's nest.  She's gonna be a tough nut to crack about lying!

Competition

Genna and Daniel are very competitive, both with each other and with others.  When they compete against each other, good things happen for the most part.

We've been back in the swing of school things for the last two weeks because they stopped jumping on the trampoline and playing outside and started wanting to play Minecraft again.  One of the hardest obstacles to homeschooling is the mental block that we can't get everything done, so why try?

Once Genna figured out she actually can get everything done if she does a little every day, she has been very productive.  I overheard her say that she was done with breakfast, so there was no reason she couldn't just get started on her math so she can go out and pick blackberries and get back to her experimenting (she, Fiona, and Daniel are experimenting with blackberry recipes).  Daniel didn't want to be left behind, so he was quick to get through his work too...and upped the ante by wanting to be done first.  They were out picking blackberries by 10:30 this morning.

We haven't added all our subjects yet; we are only working on math, spelling, and handwriting.  Plus Latin for Fiona and grammar, history, and geography for Genna.  Shane will start his schoolwork when Ian goes back to school.  I'll write up my back to school post then.

Shark Bait

Many moons have passed since Mark has had a day off that coincides with a good night's sleep and no home improvement projects.  The little kids and I have been neglected in our travels outside the surrounding property, so we decided that today would be a good day to head to the beach.  For the kids' sake.  We, Mark and I, would have been happy to stay home and disappear in our hobbies.

We decided to go to Penrose since we went to Joemma last time.  Penrose has a great intertidal zone with tons of critters and fun rocks and trees to climb on.  I love taking pictures of the kids there, so I made sure I brought my lazy lens.

I was just getting started with picture taking when Daniel, who was swimming barefoot against my wishes...

 ...stepped on a very sharp shell.  He said, "Hey mom, take a picture of my blood dripping into the water!" like any boy would, right?

When the blood pooled all around his legs, I had to get a better look.  I immediately scooped him up in my arms, said, "Come on, Shark Bait, we gotta go home."

After cleaning his deeply cut toe and reassuring him that we would not take him in to see the doctor, we made sure he was nice and toasty warm and not suffering from shock (he cried hard all the way home and he really did bleed a LOT).  He is now happily playing video games with everyone else crowded on the couch watching.  You know, SpongeBob does have a song about the safety of staying indoors...

Farm KIT

AKA Farm Kid in Training.

Feeding time at the Farm is crazy.  What used to be a morning chore has turned into a twice a day, at least two people job.  Mark and Genna usually do it all with Lula's help running the hose, but Jason has become quite... tyrannical with his desire to help.

Tonight he wanted to help and was willing to break down fences to get there.  Luckily we had a small flock of turkeys that needed to be chased up the hill and back to their gate...

Our little sheepdog got every last one up to the right yard! (It helped that the turkeys know their food is in there)

Mark has been taking Lula, Heidi, and Jason in to help with the chickens too...

 ...feeding the chickens....and gathering eggs...

They break about two eggs a night.  Mark calls it..... Gander-garten.  Kindergarten? Gander-garten? Get it?

Homeschool Science

When Mom and Dad are scientists and Mom has an inner Ms. Frizzle...

....and Dad finds a deal owl...

..Have you ever seen an owl's ear???  Their ear canals are bigger than a kid's!  Amazing!

Science, check.