A Week, Briefly (Sept. 19, 2022)

 Hurrah!  My covid test was negative today!  But 3 out of 5 other family members tested positive earlier in the week, and the two that were negative definitely had something.

At first, I thought my wish for a boring week had come true because the positive test results cleared our calendar like magic.

But Nature Angel developed a truly terrible whole body rash that is requiring daily steroids to keep it under control, and we had odd baby schedules, and . . . well . . . it just felt kind of harder than I thought it all would.

But we did a lot of awesome stuff!

Monday

It's so hot!!

After our walk, snack, and some Jataka Tales, Sir Walter Scott took our youngest six to the swimming hole where they had a great time swimming and splashing and adventuring.

They came home filled with stories of wildlife sightings, and we tried to have a nature drawing session, but the computer situation here is messy, so we settled for some music appreciation--listening to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star variations in the style of Mozart.  Several of the kids wanted to keep listening, but a few of the grumpy ones wouldn't leave the room to allow the rest of us to enjoy any further, so we stopped after 4-ish minutes.  

I got a kick out of mister man's personal journal entries that he chose to share with me.

It's a journal of elements of the periodic table!

We're reading Exploring the Himalaya by Douglas O. Williams.  It's an old Landmark book that I'm reading via Internet Archive.  It's more fact than story, but something about it is compelling, and though the kids complained the first day or so, they've settled into listening intently.  We've all decided that the sherpas are the real heroes of every climb.

I ordered a used copy of A Year of Playing Skillfully after selling my copy a few years ago.  I spent several hours in the afternoon going over it and choosing some activities for which we had the supplies on hand.  As shown in the rest of the post, they were incredibly perfect for my crew, and I'm glad to have this resource back in hand.

Tuesday

After examining a tree chipper truck in great detail along our walking path and seeing a fox cross the road, we painted in the driveway.

This is Nugget's sweet, fat foot. 

We continued reading about astronomy, Jataka Tales, the Himalayas, and we finished up the first portion of Norse Tales.  We'll save parts 2 and 3 for other years.  

In the heat of the afternoon, and still without a computer that we could connect to our TV for drawing lessons, I let the kids watch 72 Dangerous Animals: Asia.  This episode covered crocodiles, tigers, langurs, and a few other animals.  Mister Man and Baymax were quite upset about the current seed for most dangerous.  I have a hunch there are going to be some intense conversations as we debate which animals are more dangerous than others.

Wednesday

Nature Angel woke me up crying as she explained that she'd fainted in the shower and was covered in a rash.  She had terrible bruises from hitting the shower frame as she fell, and I shudder every time I imagine her not waking up on her own while I slept on, unaware of her situation.

Sir Walter Scott and I jumped up to take care of her and try to better understand what happened.  

The rash is under control now, but why did she faint?  We've never figured it out.

Our morning walk included meeting a delightful tree trimmer who first gave the kids a tour of the exterior features of his truck.  Our little boys were captivated.  Then, desiring to impress them, he blew up a water bottle for us by crushing it in the vise on the flatbed.  

I love living in the Bible Belt of our country, because he looked at Ladybug's t-shirt, "God is good all of the time," and bore witness of how he was saved by Jesus.  He was a delightful young man who spoke sincerely of how he was changed for the better when he committed his life to Christ, and he looked my boys in the eyes and told them that following Jesus is the best way to be a good man.

I just enjoyed his testimony so much!

When we got home, we made tree faces.

The Munchkin made his daddy and mommy.  (That's Daddy on the left!)

Mister Man's totem pole

Faces that can be excavated are fun!

Mister Man was inspired by the knothole.

Later in the day when we had independent study, Brother asked if he could do some workbook pages instead of reading and narrating.

Yes!

I realized our "No tech before ten" rule didn't really apply to Mister Man anymore as he's nearly 11.  I showed him how to look up star names on his own, using a tablet.

Thursday

We found out our HVAC system needs to be replaced, so the day went quite wonky.  

Fortunately, we had the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies on hand, and Little Princess was in a baking sort of mood, so she kept the crew happily entertained and fed while Sir Walter Scott and I dealt with making decisions and applying for loans.  

Then, because she is constantly watching science videos, she showed us how to relight a candle simply by putting the flame of one into the streaming smoke of the blown-out one.  

It was very cool, and she did it a whole bunch of times so that everyone could see and marvel.

We did as much normal reading as we could, but with repair technicians and replacement engineers in and out of our house all day, we had to be flexible.

At least with no church activities in the evening, we could read together as usual.  I started The Golden Name Day, and we spent many minutes looking up what our name days would be.

Friday

We walked in the rain and did a nature scavenger hunt.  We took pictures of each item on our list, then I uploaded them to a local 1-hour photo place.  We ate our snack and read as usual, then we sewed little homemade books.  

My hands were utterly full with helping kids with the sewing machine, so there are no pictures of that project!

However, I did organize the kids enough to build a pendulum.

Guess what!?!?  Drilling holes in a tennis ball is harder than you think.  They're kind of self-healing!

At first, they worked together to see what the pendulum would knock over.

Eventually, though, the kids had different visions of what they wanted to do with the pendulum, so they drifted apart.  At first, Brother worked on building structures with the blocks.

Brother worked for so long on getting these blocks to stack and stay.  There was a whole lot of practical physics going on.

But eventually, Brother completely took over the pendulum and building, and the rest of the kids found other things to do.  

Mister Man worked on manga drawings

Brother expanded and expanded the use of the pendulum!

We took a break from pendulum experimenting to make our nature books.  Each kid got pictures to glue in, and then I posted the list on the TV so they could copy into their books.

They are setting up a course that includes the tennis ball pushing a toy train which travels until it hits a large marble that starts a chain reaction of falling blocks.  It worked very well!

The pendulum play consumed Brother for two days.  Other kids only got to play if he allowed them.  

So, it didn't work out how I hoped, but it worked out very well for Brother!

I'll be looking for some other weights the kids can use, so there can be pendulums to go around!

It was on Friday night that I started feeling sick.  I made dinner, handed off responsibility to Sir Walter Scott, and crashed into bed.  I got up long enough to watch The Great British Baking Show with the kids, but my heart was not in it.

Saturday

I got up to make breakfast and realized I was still not ok.  Back to bed for me while Sir Walter Scott took the kids to soccer.

Brother and Mister Man had their gardening apprenticeship in the afternoon.  For the rest of us it was an utterly quiet day.

I alternated sleeping with trying to get things done.  Finally, I gave in,  handed Belle a minimal grocery list, and scheduled my covid test.

Which takes us to where this post began.