He requested a dragon cake like his sister had a few years ago. Here's the very imperfect creature:
Birthday boy blowing out his candles:
Birthday boy's brother enjoying the cake. I made him something from my cookbook called "colonial marble", a marbled chocolate & vanilla cake.
Husband spent a few evenings after work creating this awesome gift, a pair of wooden swords & shields:
My 11 yr old reads all.the.time. When asked what he wanted for his birthday he said "books." So, we mostly just got him books!
Him & his swords. His party was great, the kids all ate lots of cake & got good & sweaty. Afterwards we walked all the kids over to the park where they ran their energy off. It was a hot & sunny & good day!
Also in May we went on a homeschool field trip to Conway Family Farms. The tour was very informative & the place is lovely but my youngest 2 had a hard time of it. They get a lot of big public school groups out there so I understand they have to have lots of rules, but all the "do nots" didn't leave much for my super active 3 yr old to do. They didn't want us to touch the dirt because they recently laid out composted manure (as if my kids haven't played in that 4.2zillion times), didn't want the kids to throw any of the thousands of pine cones that lined the land, or climb on anything. Son2 ended up throwing some pretty embarrassing tantrums, but, he was bored out of his mind so whatya gonna do. There was also an hour long line for the candle making my 11 yr old took part in. By the time we left I felt uber stressed out. But the place is pretty, they gave us all delicious goat milk ice cream, & the tour was great if you were over the age of 6 or so. ;)
Just after I snapped this picture I was asked not to let the kids stand/play here!
Son1 & Son2 got to milk a goat, that was pretty cool:
Son3 enjoying the sun:
A random recent pic. Since Husband & I have begun eating meat again after many years, we've had an entertaining time learning how the heck to prepare & eat it! I've never actually cooked much meat in my adult life since I went veg when I was 18 so I'm especially clueless. I made myself laugh when I ended up with some ground beef & just couldn't think of what on earth to do with it besides make taco meat. Then I opened my cookbook. The first recipes were all for, DUH, hamburgers! Oh yeah, that's what people do with ground beef! haha. So here we decided to try to tasty Oregon Dungeness crab. It was super delicious but we really didn't know how to get the meat out. Husband had to look it up on YouTube. It takes a lot of work to get crab meat out!
Here Husband is showing the kids the ins & outs of The Crab:
We had been fantasizing about having a bonfire in our own yard. Suburbia & giant flaming bonfires don't go well together so Husband went out & created this splendid little fire pit. :) We made s'mores. Son2 (AKA Mr. Crooked Pants) & his "smarsmellow" as he calls them.
"I like s'mores!" Dirty little backyard firepit chocolate eating baby:
June 12th was our last day of our home school year. I invited my friend Danielle & her kids to go on a hike in the forest at Tryon Creek state park to celebrate. It was super cool & time flew WAY too fast. Here is a ginormous slug & his amazing plentitude of slime. You just can't appreciate the incredible amounts of mucous flowing from this slug from a picture:
Danielle & I each had 2 kids walking and one kid in a sling on our bodies. It was extremely humid & we went up & down hills. We old ladies had to stop & pant a few times while the kids scurried all over the place. It was totally gorgeous out there!
Me & my youngest shorties. I think Son1 was hunting for bears with his stick, er, weapon, here. :p
Son1 agreed that this was way more fun than doing school work at home. ;)
Baby brother & his log:
So that was it, the end of 5th grade for Son1! I'm doing some preschool stuff with Son2 still because he loves it so much, but I'm not too structured about it because I'm just not feeling in school mode. It's summer! But I have been planning & planning & searching & list making for next year's schooling. It's quite a project! And I just can't quite figure out how to organize school work for two (my 6th grader AND preschooler) for next year. Bins, binders, folders? Anyway, I still have a lot of research & organizing to do. It's super fun, though.
So, June. June is strawberry season! We ended up picking 70lbs of strawberries from a nearby u-pick farm. It's an awesome farm- organic berries for only $1 a pound! I went out one Saturday with Husband, & one Saturday with my friend Danielle. Son2 strolling through the field:
A bucket of berries modeling in the strawberry patch:
My little helper, Son1. We washed & cut the caps off of 87665544333 strawberries. We started getting a little goofy in the kitchen & laughing hysterically about nursery rhymes.
I ended up freezing 5 lg ziplocs full, eating a bushel or 12, making strawberry cheesecake (several times, yum!), and made 29 pints of jam. This picture is called "all in a day's work" :). My jam plus some of the abundant greens Husband has grown & harvested from our gardens:
This is how a one yr old eats his toast & strawberry jam. By pouring his milk all over it.
A belly pic from 21 weeks. Wow has Baby had a growth spurt since then! I'm so much larger now. And my skin is itchy. And my pelvis is rebelling. And my tail bone aches so bad. And and and..... ;)
I snapped this picture today. Three of our 4 backyard hens, Police Man, Myrtle & Pope. Pot Pie II was feeling camera shy.
Several of these pictures I went out & took today. Here are some of our container plants, these are on our front porch. These tomato plants are looking pretty fabulous:
They've got a lot of tomatoes forming on them. Someday most of these will probably end up in Son2's belly. He's a tomato inhaling monster.
One side of our backyard. Husband has all kinds of neat stuff going on here- mizuna, kale, chard, artichokes, zucchini, jerusalem artichokes, garlic, some spinach & greens & other things I'm sure I'm forgetting, plus more container plants & a few baby maple tree volunteers. :p
Beneath the dining room window... potatoes, mint & giant hydrangea. I love our hydrangeas. I'm totally digging them up when we move.
Here are some beans, celery gone to seed, mint drying on the clothesline, & an awesome potato box Husband made, bursting with happy potato plants. Plus the tarp Husband's forever using to kill off more lawn to make space for more garden. Oh, and the cat of course, writhing around hoping I'll pet him.
This side of the house was crappy lawn & bark when we moved in 3 yrs ago. Now it's bursting with green, compost bins (bursting with something, cantaloupe maybe?), & many garden beds. There's more to the right hidden by the bolted carrots. In this area Husband's got more stuff growing than I'll be able to properly recall. Just imagine an impressive list of garden plants here & be amazed that my super cool husband created all this even though he suffers from the worst allergies I can imagine every spring. I'm so appreciative that he goes out & creates gardens for us instead of hiding in the house moaning like I think a lot of us would do if we were as sick as he!
Some amusing garden carrots:
Our own little strawberry patch was extremely productive this year! Last year it produced about a dozen berries. A very delicious dozen. ;) But then this year, it's produced dozens & dozens! The kids would go out & chow on them, & then go do the same thing all over 2 days later. I have only planted about 8 starts total out here. That's it! The magical little plants send out runners that create so many new plants in such a short time! I love it!
This all started with about 4 starts 2 yrs ago, then I added about 4 more last year... and now we have this great patch! If I knew we were going to live here for years, I'd dig up more of the front yard to make room for more runners... but as it's looking, I'll probably be digging up as many of these as a can to bring with us when we move sometime in the next year. :)
Some of our plentiful kale. Some days I open the fridge & think I'll drown in the amounts of greens Husband's got tucked away in there. We've been eating well!
Some dried mint, from our bush, for tea or cooking. It smells so good!
Another random shot from today, my reading pile. ;) We've got Storey's Guide to Raising Ducks, The Family Cow, Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats, a book called Homestead, a couple BackWoods Home magazines, a Countryside magazine, & a couple preschool activity books from the library that I'm perusing for ideas. Underneath all that is our home school binder that I'm forever adding notes to. I'm unable to read just one book at a time, I hop all over the place in my book pile.
I've done very, very little to prepare for our coming baby because we have nearly everything we could ever need saved from our last babies. But I did buy a dresser off Craigslist! The one on the far right is Baby's Dresser. And it's now full of teeny little clothes. The top 3 drawers are unisex things, the bottom drawer has a few super cute boys things but mostly piles of uber girly pink things, just in case. ;) The only other fun thing I just did in prep for the new wee family member is ordering the birth supplies we need from In His Hands! Who knew someone could get so excited while waiting for sterile gloves, giant maternity pads & plastic pillow covers to come in the mail!? Haha. I can't wait til the supplies get here so I can be even more excited. I also ordered the hemostatic herbs (to stop the hemorrhage I expect I'll have, again) I'll need just in case Baby comes before the midwives. There is one major thing left that we need to do- start thinking about names! I don't even have one iota of a name idea at this point. We asked our 3 yr old what the new baby's name is & he said "Jenny". haha! I don't know where he came up with that. He does keep telling me it's a girl, though. :p But then he also told me that there are 20 babies in my belly.
Another shot from today, my birdies. I've had the cockatiel for 14 years now, and his little girlfriend for 4 or so. He's so funny, every spring he starts singing the cockatiel mating song to her. He follows her all over the cage whistling & singing trying to impress her. Too bad she's not the same species as him! (or wait, would that be not the same breed? Hm.) She does nibble on his tongue & groom his head, so I think it's true love anyway.
This is what the kids were busy doing one night while I was desperately sleepy & trying to herd them all into bed. Hahaha. They were having way too much fun & made me laugh.
Guess what cool new goodie I purchased? A yogurt maker! I'd been wanting one for some time, then I read THIS POST over at True Vine Herbs. I was sold! Ok well I actually read a ton of online reviews as well before ordering, but it was that post that introduced the wonderful gadget to me. I love it. I can make whole milk, flavored, organic yogurt for 7cents an ounce. That includes the (organic, whole) milk & culture. The cheapest comparable yogurt I can find at a store nearby is 19cents an ounce. Woohoo! That means that each batch of yogurt (42 ounces) that I make, I spend $2.94. If I bought the comparable from the store, it would cost $7.98. AND it's delicious. How awesome is that?! I still have a lot to learn about the recipes, so far I've just been making strawberry yogurt since I have all that strawberry jam lying around.
A nice shot of the kids lying around reading together:
So, now we're on to our recent visits to a friend's house. Son2 showing me his flower, so cute!
I tried typing this out without using our friend's names & it was just too difficult & weird. So I'm going to use their real names & then ask them tomorrow if that's ok, & if it's not then I'll come back & replace them with aliases. Like Bob & Barbara. haha. I'll let them pick who gets to be Bob & who gets to be Barbara.
Our friends Brett & Brian have all kinds of cool stuff going on out at their place. I want to follow them around & take notes. I had asked them some time ago if they would be interested at all in showing us how to butcher some stuff, namely ducks since duck is my most favorite meat. ;) Since they are awesome they agreed and a few weeks ago Brian taught my husband how to butcher a goat from start to finish. I watched the butchering part but I was busy on kid duty during the actual killing. It was rough for Husband, being his 1st time doing such a thing, but I know he was grateful for the knowledge. We really want to learn how to do these kinds of things ourselves. I'm only posting one picture out of the several I took of the goat & the duck butchering because this one is pretty tame, & I don't want to enrage all the vegetarians who love posting anonymously to blogs like mine.
This is where the goat hung to bleed out, beneath the kid's tree house. Husband is engrossed in listening to Brian's instructions here. What a nice place for such a thing to happen, this green & gorgeous & natural place, as opposed to the horrible places factory farms & slaughter houses are.
The free ranging chickens were hilarious- who knew they were such carnivores?! They couldn't get enough blood & whatever else dripped or was tossed nearby during the process! It felt very natural, being surrounded by greenery & clucking chickens while we butchered. And here's a funny irony. Husband & I had several conversations about the whole thing, to process our feelings on taking the life of a food animal & how not easy it can be. And then, just after the goat process was completed, we discover the family cat positively torturing a baby squirrel on the front door step! Here we were, knowing that that goat lived a healthy & natural life outdoors with its mother, and had as quick & painless a death as we humans know how to give, yet we still had to deal with the emotions it all brought up...... and there was Mother Nature. A pet cat, very deliberately attacking & then releasing an adorable little baby squirrel. He attacked & released it so it would run just so he could joyfully pounce on it & attack again. And again. For about 2 hours before the poor thing couldn't run anymore & became boring to the cat so he finally ate it. Geez! At least we didn't do THAT to the poor goat, ha! It was all so weird, thinking about where our meats come from, analyzing how violent nature is.... Here is Son2 watching the cat chase, pounce & release the squirrel in a wood pile (no, we didn't let Son2 watch the whole thing, he just happened to follow me out to where I was taking the picture).
The next weekend we went back out for the lesson in duck butchering. I was able to take part in the whole thing because Brett so graciously watched the kids for me. It felt really empowering to know that I could do such a thing! Husband & I talk about our plans for living an ever more self reliant life in the future, & I fantasize about living this self reliant life & giving Big Agribusiness the finger because "I can do it myself, rawr!", but talking & fantasizing are totally different things than actually doing. So I was a little nervous, I thought to myself "What if I just can't stand it? What if I never want to butcher another animal as long as I live? What will become of all my self reliant talk & fantasy & blabber??" But thankfully, it all was fine. I felt pretty darn empowered. I enjoyed looking down at the nasty bruise I got on my knee after diving into some gravel to catch a particular duck & thinking "Rawr! I can catch & butcher my own duck, HA!" :P
We don't buy meats that came from a factory farm. We never will. I want to know that my animal products came from healthy & happy animals that died as humanely as possible. You don't find that in the grocery store, and you pay a premium price for it from nearby family farms (we pay $6 a pound (!) for duck from the nearest farm that raises & butchers animals to my standards & markets to the public). I would just lovelovelove to be able to raise them ourselves, so we know exactly what sort of a life they lived, exactly what sort of a death they had, AND, because we will save plenty of money on food (meat, dairy, eggs). AND on top of all that, because Husband & I want to give the big fat finger to the government who is NOT very good at ensuring we the public receive decent food! I love knowing that we can do it ourselves. That was the main lesson I learned, along with the well taught & informative instructions on butchering that Brian gave. I'm super grateful for the experience!
Son2 playing in the rain at their house:
I love this rooster. I always take pictures of him when I visit Brett. He's so regal & stands so erect & manly. He's huge.
And he's usually surrounded by his adoring women:
Unfortunately, 2 weeks after I snapped these pictures he attacked our friends' 3 yr old pretty bad, so he lives no more. Too bad. He was awesome to look at, but turned out to be a big jerk (haha, perhaps that reminds you of some men you've known in your life?).
Some more cute pictures of the kids out at their place, Son3:
More super cute Son3:
And Son3 getting eye to eye with a chicken in the grass:
One of the days we visited Brett & Brian happened to be Summer Solstice. So we enjoyed a bonfire!
Son3 enjoying the bonfire safely from a trike, hee:
Pretend you can see the awesome sunset in this picture, where all the camera picked up was black sky:
;)
Y'know, my 11 yr old WAS there during our visits. He just pointed out that there are no pictures of him. :p That's because he is a blur of activity the entire time we're out there, I barely see him! It's wonderful. I'm so glad he gets so much fun outdoor play out there.Omg. Getting this far has taken the entire day. :P It's 9:30pm now, past my bedtime! I'll have to continue tomorrow.
Good morning! :) So, to continue.....
I turned & snapped these pictures from the front seat of our van one day. This is the typical scene in the back seat. This is where we keep our noisy battery operated toys, in the car for entertainment on long trips.
This was about 60seconds after we climbed into the van. Did I not say that my 11 yr reads all.the.time?? :p It's true!
Son2 climbed into the high chair, convinced his baby brother to join him, & then begged me to take a picture. So here ya go. :)
Our 3 yr old (that would be "Son2" ;) ) drew this in his car seat just recently. He said he'd drawn a bird, & he sure did! It was so cute I had to take a picture.
Moving along into July, here Daughter is, moving out! She is a few weeks away from turning 18. For months she's been telling us about her plans to move all the way to California to live with some of her teenage friends. This was her original plan & it scared me to death! She'd be so far away, she's never lived on her own, how reliable were these friends?, and, how on Earth did she think she could support herself on a minimum wage job- IF she could even find one? And then, one day, her dad suggested that she move in with him. He was planning to move into a bigger & nicer house in early July, why shouldn't Daughter join him? And she accepted! I was so relieved. Her dad lives a couple miles down the road. He's rarely home during the week due to work, school & other obligations so Daughter would have plenty of time to ease into a more independent adult life while home alone during the week. But she'd be right nearby, and living with her responsible dad instead of a bunch of teens. ;) A good plan all around I think.
So here she is on moving day, July 3rd:
Son3 gets a lot of this kind of treatment: "C'mon baby!" and then being drug around. Here he's being drug into the moving van.
I don't think it's really hit me that my daughter *moved out*. She was often gone at work, school, or out with friends, and so far we talk so often that it doesn't feel like she's gone to live someplace else. I AM reminded by her big, empty, purple bedroom though! We have no idea what to do with the empty room. Husband of course wants to cut a hole in the roof & haul up soil to plant a garden in there, ha, and I want to raise some dairy goats in there. ;)A family from our local homeschool group threw a Fourth of July party at their house nearby. It ended up being really fun, they went all out with tons of fireworks for the kids, plus they have a play room bursting with cool toys. And turtles. And guinea pigs.
My in-laws were visiting over the weekend so we brought them along. Here they are, plus Husband, friend Brian & Son2.
Son2 had soda for the 1st time at this party. Root beer. He drank some & said, "it feels weird on my aaaahh" and stuck his tongue out while saying "aaaahh". Haha! Here's Husband & Son3 with a sparkler:
My friends Brett & Danielle & Brett's son experiencing Sparkler Joy:
Son2 & sparkler:
The set up was great. The family lined up chairs in their driveway & lawn, then let off fireworks in front for everyone to ooh & aah over. There was so much smoke & Son2 was so excited that he stayed SUPER close the whole time & nearly lost his voice completely.
A random food dehydrator shot. We order our apples in bulk from a nearby bulk foods company (Azure Standard). Once the kids have had their fill for a few weeks, the ones at the bottom start to get a little wrinkly so I slice them up & dry them. A good thing to do with overripe bananas when you're not in the mood for banana bread as well! I used a small star shaped cookie cutter on these apples. :)
And another belly shot. This one I took just yesterday, at 25 weeks along.
And to prove that there is in fact a little human in there & I did not just swallow a basket ball as many people like to tell me I look like, here are my 20 week ultrasound pictures.
The wee little profile!
If you look at where the tiny arrow is pointing, you see tiny toes:
Here is a tiny leg. This part of the ultrasound was so fun. The technician was doing some femur measurements on the baby's legs that were all curled up against its body. Suddenly it decided it needed a stretch & so strrrretched its teeny legs all the way straight out, right into my bladder. It was so cute!
This one's not as easy to make out, but on the rightish side is the baby's face looking right at you. You can see the skeleton face. :)
And here's where these pictures actually live, in the frame behind our honeymoon pictures in the living room. ;)
And that's it! I've come to the end! My 2 youngest have been sick with a cold. I let our 3 yr old watch movies yesterday since he was a sickly mess. And all my 18 mo old wanted to do was breastfeed, so I was able to get all these pictures in here & type everything up. Which I did mostly one handed while breastfeeding. :p
