Water Babies

Water fun abounds this time of year.  So much for schooling year round.  We can't even think during the summer, so I'll just keep heading down to the pond or to the porch to be the lifeguard.

Ian and Shane: The Pirates that Don't Do Anything...But Annoy their Siblings

Ian added a new rope swing down at the pond and the older kids have been testing it out.  Maybe someday I'll get around to adding video links so you can see Daniel's first few go's on the swing...he looks like he just falls out of the tree and belly flops in the water. But...

Daniel has improved greatly!

I've come up with new rules for paddle boards, based on Lula's experience falling off in shallow water and freaking out.  Anyone who wants to go on a paddle board must be able to float in their life jacket without screaming or whining.  Lula and Heidi have been working, first in our wading pool, then in the pond, for the right to sit on a paddle board.

Jason came up with the back floating idea

They haven't made much progress...

Like Cats in Water

Is she 11? Or 16?

The patience this girl shows with her younger siblings and the love on her face as she gently propels her baby brother through the water simply melts my heart.  She has almost never ending grace even for Daniel and is very good at telling him spiritual truths about treating people kindly and forgiving those who trespass against you.  

Surprisingly, Heidi, the one that cries if a single drop of water is splashed on her, was the only one to remain calm enough in the water to SIT on the paddle board.  She can't go anywhere yet, but with the weather forecast being what it is this week, I'm sure they all will have a lot more practice.

Water Safety

Having the pond on the property is not something we take lightly.  When Daniel was an adventurous tyke, Ian made up a story about The Blobber Fish About This Big (hold your arms out as far as they can go).  Daniel never went to the pond alone.

We've got another batch of little swimmers this summer and we require they always wear a life jacket, even if they are not going on the paddle boards.  Mark always checks to make sure they are adjusted correctly.

Last week, Ian and I found a turtle on the road.  I pulled over and "rescued" it. After we researched the variety of turtle, we decided to let it go in the pond.  Ian told Lula that it would bite her toes off if she went in the pond by herself.

So when she fell off the paddle board....

...and totally freaked out and needed to be rescued...

...even though she could touch the ground... (Daniel was quick to paddle to her as fast as he could)...

...it was all because she thought the turtle was going to bite her.  She swallowed half the pond screaming and got a great introduction on how to float with a life jacket on.

The Vanilla Lumberjack Guy

Just before Christmas I had to go to Costco and get a bottle of vanilla.  But guess what? Instead of the normal price (of like $7), the price per bottle was $19.99!!!!  I have never paid that much for Costco's vanilla, ever!  I went and found an employee to make sure the vanilla was labeled correctly.  This Costco employee was in his late 20's and was wearing a plaid shirt and had a full, nicely trimmed beard.  He looked just like a Millennial Lumberjack.  He checked the price and yes, that was the correct price.  I gave him a few of my thoughts on the matter and he just shrugged.  "You should see the price for butter," he said and he walked away. 

I must be getting old because that really steamed me.  You want to know what a REAL lumberjack looks like?

He's wearing plaid, he has a nicely trimmed beard, but you know what??? He actually cuts down trees.

Mark has been busy felling the trees that are dropping leaves into our pond and will be used as firewood the winter after next.

And check out his technique!  He is standing on a frozen pond, sawing a tree that fell in the water (but most was sticking out) and getting the wood in before the thaw that is coming tonight.  Sawing logs over liquid water is much harder because they....sink.

But to the child that thought throwing a piece of firewood out in the middle of the frozen pond... How are we going to get that piece back? The pond didn't freeze well enough to walk out there... I guess you'll be swimming for it!

You Otter Not Miss This One

Haha.

But seriously, there was an OTTER in the pond this morning.  

River otter, based on tail length.

 We have no idea what it was doing here.  We have never seen otter before.

Peeking up under the branch

Posing for one more picture before leaving.

It wasn't even scared.  It just kind swam around, curiously looking at us and then it left.  Jack tried to get in the water and swim out to it, so he had to go inside.  Kai just ran stupidly into the woods and completely missed it.

Summer Fun

This hasn't been my funnest summer, but it hasn't been my worst either.  The summer we moved and the summer we lost Grandad were much worse.  We do try to do our best around here...

The apples are getting harvested.  Those are just the fallen apples...we have three more trees full...

That sixty pound box means apple sauce, apple butter, and dried apples.

Lula has reached that "getting into everything" age and is an expert computer hacker.  The gates are up, the dogs don't get to free feed anymore, and heavy buckets line the kitchen cupboards that don't have child locks.  I no longer take her anywhere-I don't want to chase her off the top of any jungle gym or spend my library time re-shelving books (my gas tank is empty anyway).

Oh, did you think we used passwords for security purposes?

School is going quite well.  We do enough to keep us busy, but not so much that we don't have time to play.  Their play is so much more productive when they spend time learning every morning.

Abandoned science project. That spider was hard to kill-it took about seven hits.

The kids are doing so well with their swimming skills.  Mark takes them to the YMCA pool and teaches swim skills to each of them after taekwondo.  The lifeguard watched him teach for awhile and commented that he was going to use some of Mark's methods for his classes!  Fiona can now swim across the deep part of the pool, all by herself!  She is the youngest to swim in the shortest amount of time.  I think it only took Mark four sessions to teach her.  Evie can swim an entire pool length in crawl stroke and will be ready for swim team in the fall.

The girls still have to wear life jackets on the pond.  Secchi depth is like three inches and I'm not swimming anymore.  If they go down, it would be hard to find them.

I'm just hanging out, trying to stay cool and get as much done with my waning energy as I can.  This baby is not like Lula; she is quite active!  The more she moves (dances? fights?), the less energy I have.  I am 25 weeks along-only 15 left to go!

It's always a party with Lucky!

Lucky doesn't have a name yet, but we have a few favorites.  I'm in no hurry to name her.  Maybe we will wait until after she is born to choose her name!

Jack Attack

Jack got this cute little bandage at the vet yesterday.  They needed to reopen his wounds and really clean them out because raccoon spit is a very nasty thing.  What surprised me was that the vet packed Jack's wounds with raw honey instead of antibiotic ointment.  He said the ointments no longer work against the germs and that raw honey is the best antibiotic available!  Of course I've heard that in my crunchy circle, but I never expected a non-naturopath medical professional to actually use raw honey instead of Neosporin!

Jack had to stay inside resting for most of the day, which was really hard for him.  He likes to spend his days patrolling the property and laying in the sun.  We had to take him out on the leash and watch him closely to make sure he didn't chew his bandage off.  By bedtime, we knew we had to just remove the bandage instead of waiting until this morning.  Now he is back to patrolling and making sure the coyotes that woke us up at 4:00 AM aren't around anymore. 

The vet bill has put a damper on our already-tight summer budget, but we would rather have a healthy dog than a septic dog... we'll just eat beans and rice for a few weeks!

Edited to add: Okay, so, the dogs have been driving me crazy all day.  They keep barking at things and I have to go outside and yell at them to stop.  I thought it was because the coyotes were so noisy early this morning and because of the raccoon.  When our dogs experience crazy adventures, they tend to be super-sensitive to things out and about.  Especially when there are coyotes.  And let me tell you, those things were so freakin' crazy this morning we had to shut the windows and yell at the dogs.  Still they kept coming back to our room to whine. 

Finally, Mark got up to take Jack out.  He put Jack on a leash just in case he decided to take off running.  We really can't afford another vet bill this year!  Jack immediately headed down to the pond and pulled Mark right off his feet!  Mark brought him back in the house...and we've spent the rest of the day listening to barking dogs (here and next door) and calling them home.

Imagine my surprise just now when Ian ran in the house, out of breath and excited, saying, "If I told you what I just saw, you wouldn't believe me!"  While he was down at the pond looking for baby ducks, he looked across the water and saw a coyote eating a deer carcass!!!

I guess we now know what the coyotes were so excited about and why the dogs have been so crazy today.  And now that the raccoon AND the deer are gone, we only have to worry about the coyotes.

The Most Beautiful January Day

The weather report said rain, but I saw sun.  I'm so glad we went outside!

Lula in the Sky

Top Dawg Roosty

Free Range Eggs

Boy's Best Friend

Let the climbing begin!

Reptile Week in our homeschool has turned into a lot of snake play.  And begging for a pet snake.  Mark is happy to oblige.  For those who don't know, Mark had many pet snakes when Ami and Laura were little.  When we got married, he was down to three red-tailed boas that he fed home-grown rats to.  When I first started going to their house for work purposes, Laura gave me two of their rats, hoping they would find a better life.  They lived in a bird cage at my house until Mark and I got married- then they rejoined the queue.  Mark donated the snakes to the reptile man when Ian was a baby.

Emerald Tree Boa

Barefoot Panther (not a snake)

I took the kids for a short nature walk...

 ...which ended up down at the pond, naturally.  Lula got to sit on real earth for the first time:

We are still reading about the ancient Greeks and are partway through The Odyssey.  We've also watched different versions of movies based on Greek myths.  It shouldn't surprise me that sometimes the stories get mixed up:

Shane launches Odysseus and the Argonauts *grin*

Well-guarded Baby: too bad they can't retrieve sticks from her mouth!

"I've got a stick in my mouth!"

"I've got another stick in my mouth!"

Daniel, not to be outdone, also puts a stick in his mouth:

 ...and insisted it was a yummy stick, not a yucky stick:

 When the big stick got too heavy, he found a smaller stick:

 He is such a goofball.  I love his "smile" for the camera:

 But even more, I love his big blue eyes!

(It's so easy to forgive him when he looks like this)

This day is only half over and so beautiful that it is easy to forget things that are going wrong (transmission going out in the van, roof STILL leaking, possible ear infections for me) and only focus on what is good (Mark being inducted into Sons of the American Revolution, farm fresh eggs, knitting sweaters during naptime).

Saying Goodbye to Summer

We can turn anything into a hands-on lesson.  This week we are reading Aesop's Fables.  One of our favorite stories is The Ant and the Grasshopper.  Today, while preparing for the upcoming week of rain, Mark had the kids play "ants" and bring in firewood and clear the yard.

The orb weavers are out in full force, a clear sign summer is over.  One spider on the house is so close to laying her eggs, I didn't have the heart to move her so I painted around her.

We've had less than one inch of rain since July.  According to NOAA, August was the driest August on record for our state with no precipitation recorded!  Only 0.03 inches was measured for September!  We have never seen the pond so low.  The branch you see in the mud above is the same one Jack is swimming by in this post.  We call it The Deep Water Branch and non-swimmers cannot pass it without a life jacket.

The firewood that doesn't fit in the woodshed is securely covered (doesn't the paint job look nice?) and I'm sure we'll have our first fire soon.  I've started wearing my fuzzy robe and slippers all day and started shouting, "Shut the door! You're letting the cold in!" (instead of, "You're letting the flies in!").  We made it to October 20th without fire last year, but it is already only 61 degrees inside and we have poor Lula to think about!

This little sweetheart sleeps alone in her crib at night, so she gets really cold!  Last night I made her come and sleep with me for the second half of the night because her little hands felt like ice cubes!  The rest of her was nice and warm because she sleeps in an awesome baby-sized sleeping bag that my friend crocheted for her.  If only Lula would keep her hands inside!

 Mark was seriously focused on making sure everything is ready for the rain tomorrow.  He was painting ("Now I know why this was a $5000 painting job.") covering wood ("If that wood gets wet, it will soak up the water like a sponge and be worthless") making sure the left-behind boots, shoes, clothing, and jackets were brought back in the house ("It looks like the Rapture took place out there.") checking the power line ("It looks like a rat has been chewing on it-that must have been shocking.") AND trying to come up with what he was going to do for Cub Scouts tonight ("Could you make 24 flashcards for me and 6-foot lengths of rope for knot-tying?")  I know better than to get in his way when he gets like this.  I use it as a way to show my daughters what God meant when he created a helpmeet for Adam.

Jack helped by tearing a life jacket into tiny pieces.  I guess I've had it since IJ was a toddler, so I got my money's worth out of it.  But still! I do have other toddlers that could have used it!  It isn't like life jackets expire like car seats.  I just moved Lula up to the car seat I bought when IJ was a baby.  It expired a good four years ago!  Jack's other favorite job is being the chipper/shredder of sticks and other large chunks of wood.

I felt a little sad as I walked around this evening, taking pictures of autumn.  I know summer has been over for awhile, but the weather has been so nice it was easy to forget.  I normally don't like summer.  But this summer has been the best summer of my whole life (so far) so I'm sad to see it go.