A Week, Briefly (December 5, 2022)

The tree is up.

And nobody fought or cried as we decorated it.

Yay!

The kids frequently turn off all of the regular house lights and dance by the light of the tree.

The outdoor lights aren't working.  

Boo!

But Sir Walter Scott has Monday off work, so maybe he'll troubleshoot and get them working again.

Monday

Nature Angel helped Ladybug learn a new crochet stitch and understand the pattern she was trying to follow.  How grateful I am for a patient, loving big sister and a little sister who is eager to learn.

(The project Nature Angel is teaching Ladybug about is actually Ladybug's present to Nature Angel.  But she doesn't know!!)

After Morning Meeting and our walk, we settled at the table to write thank you letters to our friend who gave us tickets to The Nativity Puppets.

This is Beowulf's card.

While they were writing and drawing, I pulled out a set of printed tree patterns for cutting and folding to make 3-D Christmas trees.  The kids watched me and were delighted, asking if they could "do it, too."

(That was my plan.)

Even though I warned them that it was fiddly work that would take patience and require them to perhaps do things over and over again, they didn't believe me, and they were stunned to find it difficult work.

There was much weeping and wailing, and I alternated between encouraging and saying they could put it away if it was too frustrating.

No one would put the project away.  

They just kept crying and cutting and groaning and folding.

When I printed the trees, I realized that preschoolers would want to join us, so I also printed several pages of simple Christmas cutting practice pages.  The Munchkin was delighted to have his own tree to cut out.  

He calls scissors "nippers." 

I love the focus on his face here as he "nips" his picture.

Perseverance won the day!

I was thoroughly fascinated by the fact that Lola took the most naturally to this project.  She worked steadily and happily the whole time.  She was first to finish all three trees, and she even turned them into ornaments for our tree!

Beowulf had a complete breakdown over the project.  Sir Walter Scott was home and held him tightly for a long time.  (I wasn't certain about whether to take that picture, and then I was uncertain again about including it here, but then . . . )

That pressure and space and love worked!  Beowulf successfully completed two trees!!

I'd collected several bread heels, and I sent them out with the toddlers to feed the chickens while I got their lunch ready.

This picture was taken for me by Baymax.  That's his finger on the right. :)

I love seeing these two little boys trying so hard to be brave!

Our afternoon project was stringing popcorn.  Our big project for the week was decorating a tree for local wildlife.  This was our first step.

While we worked, we began listening to an audio recording of  The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.  We continued listening throughout the week whenever we could.  (By Saturday night, we'd completed chapter 12.)

Tuesday

I caught these two being cute little walking partners in the morning.

Then we strung cranberries.  We didn't do long strings like we did with popcorn the previous afternoon.  Instead, we did 12-20" strings and tied them into loops.  This was far more manageable!

Such good work for fine motor skills!

In the afternoon, the kids did a drawing project with Art Hub for Kids.

Wednesday

It was not even 8:00 in the morning when I knew this was going to be a hard day.  And by the time we'd finished breakfast and Morning Meeting with tantruming toddlers, annoyed tweens, and eye-rolling teens, I knew better than to try to teach anyone how to do anything!  

We bundled everyone up, and I supervised 45 minutes of outdoor play before we loaded babies into strollers and headed out on a walk.

Brother is ever designing and re-designing his cart!

Ladybug ran kids racing all over the driveway for the entire 45 minutes!

When we got back, we dropped the babies at home to have a snack and warm up with Nature Angel and Little Princess.  The rest of us walked around the block again.

They all took turns skipping rope along the way.

We gathered pinecones as we walked, and after lunch, we coated the cones in peanut butter and birdseed.

Turning 4 has been a big turning point for The Munchkin.  He's really becoming a pre-schooler, and he stayed focused on this puzzle the entire time the rest of us were making the pinecone birdfeeders.

Once Little Princess took The Munchkin upstairs for his quiet time, we headed out to decorate a tree.

Even though we popped and strung an entire pound of popcorn, strung 3 pounds of cranberries, and turned 20 pine cones into feeders, it was almost nothing once it was on the little tree we chose to decorate.

But we put it all out with joy, and when we walked past the tree the next morning, birds and squirrels came out of the tree in abundance, so we're happy that we were able to serve our wild friends.

Just for fun. :)

Thursday

Sugar Bear is so instinctively maternal!

Library Day!  The first normal one in a long time!  We left most of the babies at home to play with the race track and Hot Wheels cars, but The Munchkin insisted he's "a big boy!"  So he came with us.  And I brought Sweet Peach, too, who, while we were walking, was grumpy because of a stuffy nose, and Little Princess was really done dealing with a grumpy infant.

Sweet Peach promptly fell sweetly asleep as soon as the van started moving, and she slept for the next 4 hours straight. :)

We got home in time to make lunch, and then we set to work making homemade baked doughnuts.

Our doughnuts rose much more than the recipe writer told us they would, and we ended up with doughnut-bottomed muffins and a giant mess in the bottom of our oven.

C'est la vie.

The doughnut-muffins were delicious!

This is what Nature Angel looks like all day and all night right now.  'Tis the season for homemade Christmas presents from our talented girl!

Friday

This was a day of epic disaster . . . and it all started out with the best of intentions!

I have only two pictures of the entire day because I cannot cope with disaster and take pictures at the same time.

But I can tell the story.

We'd never made it on our planned nature outing during the week, and I was determined that we'd do it.

Even though I'd announced this nature outing several times over during the week, Nature Angel and Little Princess were both bothered by the idea of spending the whole morning outside when they had so much to do indoors.  As Sugar Bear and The Duke had tantrumed all through Morning Meeting, we were--every one of us--on edge.  In a single moment, I dismissed the teens to do their own work at home, and we set to work getting the rest of us out the door to walk without them.

I got snacks ready. 

The teens obligingly got babies ready.

Kids kind of teetered between being helpful and difficult.

I (in what I can only call inspiration) made the kids wear bibbies and coats whether they wanted to or not.

Eventually, we had 12 kids, 6 car seats, 2 dogs, 2 leashes, 2 strollers, 1 bag of snacks, 1 Moby wrap, and one warm bottle packed in the van.  (The dogs got in by themselves, and I didn't have the energy to force them out.)

We drove off to a walking trail that is mostly paved and has several mini-loops we could take instead of the long loop.

But we didn't know it had recently been under construction; a new playground was built right next to the parking lot.

Said parking lot was covered in at least an inch and more like 2 inches of construction mud.

"We'll be fine!" I thought.  The rest of the trail was obviously clear.  We just had to get past the parking lot and wipe our boots off in the grass or on the gravel.

 

Well, 15 minutes later we were all "clear" of the mud.

But . . . 

The double stroller had lost an entire wheel unit to the mud.

All of the toddlers were crying because there was so much mud on their feet, they couldn't walk.

Sugar Bear had gotten so stuck that Brother had lifted her right out of her shoes.

Stretch had seen a man he thought was his daddy, and the only direction he would walk was toward that man.

Hats and mittens were seemingly walking away by themselves.

The kids were strung out along a quarter-mile stretch, and the kids at the head of the line were going the wrong way.

I didn't want to give up and have the morning be a bad memory.  I took a deep breath and stayed cheerful and encouraging.

I gathered everyone together, got us all going in the right direction, and we sang Christmas songs.

It was going to be good!

Then Stretch started crying inconsolably.

Really inconsolably.

Like something was really wrong, and I spent several minutes trying to ascertain the reason.  

I never found one, so I scooped him up and carried him (no mean feat considering I was already wearing Sweet Peach, and Stretch was outfitted in bulky, slippery cold weather gear.

He mostly calmed down, but then The Duke started crying the same way.

It was awful.

Holding my hand helped.

So that's what we did.

Then I had to put Stretch down, and he was mostly ok holding my hand, so we sang Christmas songs and Old MacDonald Had a Farm, and we were happy-ish for about a minute.

Then Sugar Bear saw that I was holding hands with two people that were not her, so she started a siren-style wail.

Three babies, two hands.

I handed one off to Ladybug.  That baby cried horribly while the others were happy.  Then we rotated another one to her, and the crying one to me to be calm for a bit.  

Li'l K decided he'd had enough and demanded to be carried.

The Munchkin started to whine (Really, we'd walked barely half a mile--at toddler pace!).

Kids were helping with dogs and babies every minute of the walk, and when we got the turn of the smallest loop we could take, Brother offered to run to the van, get the single stroller that I'd refused to ruin in the mud earlier, and come back to us.

I'd wanted to be the first to the van to drive out of the parking lot onto the trail and load everyone up in a relatively clean state, but as every single baby was crying except Sweet Peach, I let him gratefully go.

(This seems like a long story, but really, I'm cutting out so much!)

He ran back and forth as we kept plodding on.

I kept singing songs and carrying as many babies as I could for as long as I could before having to put them down to cry again.  Baymax tried carrying Li'l K, but as Li'l K is almost as big as Baymax, I made him walk.  Beowulf tried giving The Munchkin and Li'l K piggyback rides in turn.  Mister Man and Lola kept the dogs and tried to hold hands with or carry anyone who would let them. Ladybug carried whatever baby I handed to her.

Well . . . I tried to let everyone stop and rest at a spot where they could see the van while I ran ahead to get it. 

The older kids were happy to let me go.

The babies screamed and grabbed me.

We kept walking, Brother shuttling one child at a time, as he could.

The chain was up across the parking lot.

I couldn't have driven to them anyway.

Back through the mud.

It took another 20 minutes to pull boots off kids as they entered the van and get everyone loaded.  

Both strollers had mud several inches thick on their wheels and frames.  Brother, Beowulf, and I used our hands to pull off what chunks we could.

Ladybug, Mister Man, Baymax, and Lola fastened kids into car seats and passed out snacks.

"Can anyone think of anything good to say about this outing?" I asked.

"The food!"

"It's over!"

"We did it!"

I praised the older kids for having good attitudes and working so hard.  I pointed out how much stronger they are than they'd thought before.

Then we went home.

The teens heroically met us at the door with towels, laundry baskets, and open arms. (I'd called them in advance.)

Babies napped.

Older kids played quietly.

I spent the next 5 hours scrubbing shoes, washing gear, and cooking for the church Christmas party that I wanted to skip, but the kids wanted to attend.

We attended the party.

Then we read How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

And we went to bed.

In General

We read a few more chapters of Charlotte Doyle.

We read a Christmas book each day.

We finished our entire 16-volume Illustrated Book of Mormon Stories.

We listened to The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.

I read aloud to Nature Angel 4 times from volume 1 of The Delphian Reading Course.

I read aloud to Little Princess 2 times from Heroes of Great Britain.

Little Princess researched and wrote an essay about the astronomy behind the Star of Bethlehem.

Nature Angel worked on an original Nativity painting.

Little Princess did a lot of work on Civil Air Patrol--organizing uniform parts, contacting leaders, and studying her textbooks.

Puzzle-making, game-playing, and Lego-building filled free time hours.

Belle is waiting on the results of one blood test before she can schedule her final two interviews and submit her mission papers.

In the week to come, Sir Walter Scott flies out to Utah to meet Pixie and drive home with her because she's moving home until she leaves for Uganda.

Christmas is coming!