Here’s Faithy

And Kyra

And yes, they have indeed tucked blankets through the slats of the top bunk to form girly little cocoon beds. They actually do somehow sleep in these things… at least until I catch them and return them to people-land. Maybe it’s like a hammock.

And how, you may ask, did they come with this brilliant idea? How the heck should I know! The minds of small children are bizarre, inscrutable places full of curiosity and frivolity. Who knows what goes on in there. Yikes!

Here is Henry’s cuteness for the day. I got him dressed today but didn’t put any shoes on him. Apparently that was not suitable to his footwear needs, so he found something he could put on himself.

Yes, those are Faith’s red patent leather church shoes he’s wearing. Really, this child is too cute for his own good.

See Kyra’s shoes? Henry had those on first. I’m not entirely sure how she got them off of his feet without some sort of cataclysmic event. Like the orange blob? Faith insisted on being in the picture and wearing that. Why? Did you not read the previous paragraph re: children’s minds?? Especially that child!

Personally, I think Henry’s shoes kind of work with the truck. Of course, everyone knows that red patent leather shoes go with everything.

Rachel

P.S. Grandpa and Grandma (and anyone else), here are two more recent photo albums if you want to peruse. Got some halfway decent shots.

Steps for LIfe Walkathon 5/15/10

Stonehenge Road Trip 5/29/10

The kids’ baseball games on Friday we played in the pouring rain. Being a giant wimp, I spent the first half of Anika’s game in the van yakking with my buddy Lana, whose kiddos also play. About halfway through though I started to feel guilty about not watching, so I grabbed my camera and off I went. Anika had batted before I got there, so I watched the rest of the inning and her on the field and then they were up again. She was the very last kid to bat, and it was the last bat of the entire game. Here’s what she did:

Clever ducky!

Rachel

Hmmm, everything was quiet upstairs, too. Maybe I’ll just peek in her bedroom door, I thought. She was in there all alone and smiling at me so I went in to see her. Mmmmm, I love curling up with Mommy.

All week she’s been up super-early and has already had her walk with Daddy and shower before Daddy gets me and the other kids up to go read at 7:00. I hate getting up early. I’m still sleepy and then everyone gets mad at me for crying when I don’t get to sit on Daddy’s lap. Well, I get to sit on Mommy’s lap and that’s almost as nice.

Not today though! Today is Friday and we’re all sleeping in, except for Daddy who isn’t here so must be off at work already. Haha. More Mommy for me. We curled up for half an hour, all lazy-like and then Georgie found me and made me breakfast while Mommy took a shower.

After breakfast the other kids all went downstairs, but not me! I went in to go watch Mommy put on her make-up. Hehe. She wasn’t watching me though. I sneaked into her room and stole some more of her Altoids. Yummy!! I got in trouble yesterday for doing that. Also the day before. Plus the day before that and Monday. But they’re so yummy.

I went back to Mommy before she even got suspicious, but Grandma was in there talking to Mommy. I love Grandma! She picked me and put me on her lap and gave me kisses. Then she told Mommy that I had been in the Altoids again. How did she know? I was sneaky! Mommy glared at me but that was it. Does that mean I can have them?

Grandma put me back down and Mommy started doing her hair. Mommy has lots of hair. I hate it when she picks me up and her hair is on her shoulder right where I want to put my head. I point at it and Mommy moves it for me. I thought maybe I’d go see what was going on in the kitchen. Interesting things are always in there.

Still no brothers or sisters back up from downstairs yet. Darn! I moved a chair over to the counter so I could see what was up there. Hmmm, the coffee cup Mommy brought home yesterday from shopping was sitting right there. Yummy! I love coffee, but Mommy always says I can’t have it. I don’t know why. It tastes great!

Uh oh. Grandma came in looking for me. It’s like she knew I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing. Oh no! She took me back to Mommy and told her I was drinking her coffee. How does Grandma know everyhing??

Next was time for a diaper change and getting dressed. Mommy did it today. Usually Georgie does it. He gets really annoyed when he doesn’t get to do it, but I like it much better when Mommy does it. She’s not so rough. I get to wear my new clothes today. Plus she actually put on my shoes. I loooove shoes!

Grandma came in and we looked at some pictures on her camera. Some were of Brown Bear and me. Some were of my sisters and Georgie. Mommy went to go make herself some breakfast. Smells yummy. When she brought it over to the table, her plate had sausage and biscuits and eggs and gravy. Oooh, I really wanted some. I asked her for a bite, Kyra asked her for a bite, Faithy asked her for a bite, and Anika asked her for a bite. She told us all no and said to shoo. I don’t get it. I thought we were supposed to share.

The big kids were busy doing their Math and Mommy was helping them. Faith was playing a really fun game with some puzzles. I wanted to help, but when I moved the pieces Faith started yelling at me. Then Mommy yelled at me. I went to the school shelf and started looking at the books. Then I thought I’d just check to see what was in the black filing cabinet. Apparently, I’m not supposed to mess with that either.

I thought about going to find some more of Mommy’s Altoids, but when I went to go look they weren’t where I left them and I couldn’t efind them anywhere. So instead I just wandered around her bedroom until I found the phone. It doesn’t look like the other ones at home. It has a cord thing and you can’t walk away with in and put it behind the couch. I tried but it would only go as far as the end of the bed.

After awhile Mommy went downstairs to do something on her computer for a bit. Some of the other kids were upstairs and some were downstairs with her, but I looked through the window by the front door and saw some really interesting people across the street. I thought I’d just go see what they were doing so I headed on out.

I only made it about three steps before Georgie caught me. He’s really big! He was not happy. Then Mommy showed up and she was even more unhappy. Going outside without someone else, it turns out, is a really bad idea. Mommy and I had a little trip down the hall. When she got to her bedroom, she found the phone.

Now we’re back downstairs and I’m sitting right beside her on the couch. It’s kind of nice curling up with her, but I’m starting to get bored. I wonder what’s in the kitchen.

Henry

This is the whole covered Tabernacle

And here are the individual pieces:

The Golden Lampstand (left) and Table of Showbread (r) with all the bread, of course.

Sacrifice (l) and Altar of Burnt Offering (r)

Ark of the Covenant

Altar of Incense

High Priest (l) and the Bronze Laver (r)

The whole shebang minus the tent top.

I’m particularly fond of the altar of incense and the High Priest. Georgie seems to have all the pieces of the tabernacle down now, and they seem to be glued to his brain cells pretty well. So great idea, Mr. Nieman (the SS teacher)! And awesome job, Georgie!

In other news, this week I started homeschooling Georgie, Trinity, Anika, and Kyra (well, and sort of Faith). It’s going pretty well! The kids are enthusiastic and have been working hard (a couple of them have even decided to get up early and do their half hour of reading before school starts at 8:30).

We’ve been pretty close to on schedule, and I’m nearly done figuring out all the curriculum for the term. It seemed better to start and finish figuring things out as I go along then to wait until everything’s perfect, which will happen in about never. Today I made the mistake of having the kids each make a set of sea animals flash cards during science. They colored and I glued the pictures onto 3×5 cards.

Math pop quiz: 5 sets (one for each kid) of 17 flash cards, each with an animal glued to the front and facts for that animal glued to the back means Mommy gets to glue how many pieces of paper to index cards? If you guessed 170, you have won the fabulous prize of coming to be my helper next time I have a stupid idea that should be spread over a few days instead of all done at once. At least science was the last class of the day.

Anyway, here’s my cuties on their first day of school:

Today Georgie and Trinity had a blurb in history about the clothing that people wear in the desert, and it was talking about the aba, which is a long bathroby-looking thing that gets worn over your long flowy shirt, and about the head coverings, which I can’t remember the names of (bad teacher!). This seemed like a good excuse to torture my children (not that I really need an excuse, but when the opportunity presents itself…):

No, actually they were quite pleased with themselves. Georgie took the stuff off his head but left his bathrobe on until I made him remove it to go to choir practice at 7:00.

This one just made me laugh because it’s amazing how expressive Trinity can be with just her eyeballs.

Okay, well that’s it for today. Is the weekend here yet?

Rachel

Since Henry was born a year ago, though, I’ve been more in zoom mode and less in lie on the couch mode so Kyra’s hairdoing opportunities have lessened considerably. The other day she asked if she could do my hair, and I had some computer stuff to do so I just laid on the couch with my laptop and let her play all she wanted. Soon she was heading my way with armfuls of hair clippies. Hey, if two clippies are pretty, all the clippies must be ever so much more lovely! And here is my resulting ‘do:

This picture doesn’t get the back which is completely covered in clippes as well. And how many clips, bobby pins, etc. do you think were in my hair? Oh, just fifty-nine. Took me fifteen minutes to take them all out!

Rachel

I headed upstairs to go monkey around for half an hour before dinner prep needed to begin and they played together nicely downstairs. I barely heard a peep out of them! When I came back down I found a bowl with hot pink goo that had been almost entirely scraped out of it.

Me: Umm, what is this?

Georgie:  We made pudding.

Me: Pudding?

I looked around. Nothing on the stove or in the sink would indicate cooking pudding.

Me: That doesn’t look like pudding. That looks like frosting.

Trinity: No, see here’s the recipe.

Me: Umm yes, that says “icing.” Frosting is icing. You made a bowl of frosting. What did you guys put the frosting on?

Georgie: Plates. We had a tea party.

Me: Well yes, but what food did you eat off the plates?

Georgie: Frosting.

Me: What? So you just put a blob of frosting on a plate and ate it off with your fingers?

Georgie (looking completely horrified): No, Mom. Do you think we’re completely uncivilized? We used forks!

Now don’t tell me my children aren’t civilized! I’m fairly sure that my ten year old son was the instigator of a tea party consisting entirely of pink frosting for the meal. I’m really glad we put him in basketball this year.

Rachel

Faithy: Bad Georgie. Bad Georgie!

Georgie: No, not Bad Georgie. Bad Faithy. Bad Faithy!

Faithy: Hey, I’m not bad Faithy. DON’T TALK TO ME LIKE THAT!!

Faithy’s almost three. Not so much of a pushover that one….

Saturday morning my son greeted me with a smile and a piece of paper that he had “forgotten” to give me on Friday which explained how he and the girls (older two) were planning to stay up all night eating candy on Reformation Day 2008 (as opposed any other visiting ones that might not be in 2008 I guess). Apparently he and Trinity had actually done this. Anika, being somewhat wiser, did not eat candy all night and instead spent her wee hours actually sleeping.

Yes, I would have preferred to have received this information on Friday; but alas, by Saturday our only options were let them run around like maniacs on horrific sugar highs all day or lull them into a stupor by letting them watch TV all day and hoping they got tummyaches (such good parenting). By the time you have six children, the answer to any question is “whichever one makes less noise.” We opted for the latter choice.

George told them in the morning that they should quit eating candy, which of course they declined to do. Normally we would have straightened that out, but eating disgusting amounts of candy at once tends to be a self-correcting problem and this way hopefully they would remember the lesson next year.

By Sunday morning Trinity was complaining that her stomach hurt. Off and on all morning she didn’t feel well and by the time we got to church she was starting to cry in that “I’m going to throw up within five seconds” kind of way. George grabbed the closest thing he could for her to barf into, which turned out to be….. the box of remaining candy Georgie was bringing over to his friend’s house. I’m just glad it wasn’t my purse.

So Trinity will probably not make this mistake next year. Somehow I don’t think we’ve seen the end of this from Georgie though. Maybe he’ll be like my brother who once ate twelve roasted marshmallows in a row and promptly returned them on the other side of our grandparents’ Winnebago. He didn’t eat marshmallows again for years. Actually, I’m not sure he eats them now. Hehe.

Hope you had a lovely Halloween that did not involve unidentifiable stomach contents hurling your way!

Rachel

I’ve been pondering this thoughtfully, trying to come up with responses appropriate to bigger boys. Yesterday he and I had a talk about being a benevolent ruler. I don’t have a problem really with him trying to rule. I’m fairly sure that just naturally comes with that spiffy ‘y’ chromosome. God made men for dominion, and this 10-year old stuff is training for the grown-up version (that’s what I tell myself anyway). He does need to be kind in his leadership though and not just obnoxious in all the various ways he can come up with to do so.

That was the subject of our conversation this morning. I told him that every time he gets into it with one of the girls, I was going to call him over and have him go think up and do two kind, useful things for whoever he offended and then come back and tell me what he did so that he can practice leading through serving. The idea sort of has a restitutionary quality to it as well except that it’s behavioral instead of with physical items that you’ve stolen.

Anyway, he agreed that this sounded like a good idea and was very relieved to discover that this new response was not charging him a quarter every time he’s yucky to his sisters. Ha ha! Now I know your Achilles Heel, Georgie. I’ll just have to file that one away for future evil reference….

So this morning the kids were out cleaning up the mess they made in the garage, and when they were finished Georgie and the older two girls bounded up to me all excited to tell me their new plan.

Trinity: Guess what? I get to be Georgie’s slave for a week!

Anika: Yeah, and then after that it’s my turn and I get to be Georgie’s slave for a week!

Me: Oh really. And when does Georgie get to be your slave?

Georgie: What??

Me: You weren’t planning to be their slave at all? Oh, well then you get to be the slave first.

Georgie: Well that’s not happening.

Me: You shouldn’t ask them to do something you aren’t willing to do first. That’s what we were talking about this morning. Remember? Servant leadership?

Georgie: Okay, we won’t do slaves then.

Ridiculous children! Apparently it was Georgie’s idea for the girls to be slaves (which I assumed), but he was just going to have it be for a day. They opted for the extension. Ridiculous children! At least the garage is cleaner.

RAchel

Georgie’s favorite show has been Mythbusters for a couple of years now. He talks about it all the time, records every episode that airs even if he’s seen it twelve times, watches it as often as possible, and talks about Adam and Jamie (the leads) as if they are his friends.

Well, Adam and Jamie apparently have a live show that they are doing in a whole four cities, and Portland is one of them. Of course we had to take him to that. He was so excited and told us over and over that this was the best birthday present ever. The show was at the Schnitz, which is a beautiful concert hall from the ’20’s that was designed in the Italian rococo style with sort of filigree all over the walls and ceiling.

Georgie obviously listened to the entire show, but spent most of the time looking all around the building at the lovely architecture. Here he is in front of the Schnitz (the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall to you non-Portlanders who have never heard of it anyway and don’t care at all) with his Mythbusters tee shirt on:

Such a happy boy! That’s the camera strap he’s trying to strangle himself with there. Really adds to the picture, don’t you think? After we got home, I was making dinner and decided that since it was his birthday I would make him a quesadilla with no meat for dinner which apparently is a big deal in the Georgie-verse (usually they have ground turkey and jalapeno and onion in them, to which he loudly objects).

When I called him in to hand him his plate (kind of an informal night) and tell him it was plain cheese, he got a huge smile on his face and said “Oh no. You didn’t” and started laughing. Yes, the Mommy-ogre who normally forces him to eat meat can occasionally be generous. Who knew it would be that easy to make him feel special? Anyway, Happy Birthday, happy boy. May you grow in grace and the wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. I love you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news, here is a picture from today of Anika’s major event. When she came in to smile at me and tell me that look! she could turn her tooth all the way around backwards, I told her she had to pull it out or I would (I told her this after I was done grossing out). This was the result:

Nice tooth in her hand. Pretty funny listening to her talk. And if you have thirty seconds that you don’t know what to do with, you can watch this lovely video of Anika and Kyra showing off their mad kung fu skills. Such talent.