A Week, Briefly (but it felt long!) (April 17, 2023)

 This week included homemade jelly, a driver's license for Nature Angel, a trip with Beowulf to the ER, a car accident for the three teens, Belle becoming a new missionary, and two dead chickens.

And school.

We did some school.

Actually, making the homemade jelly was school.

And we did more stuff, too.

In Morning Meeting, we finished this book:

And we started this book:

We're still plugging along with daily reading from our Egermeier Bible Storybook, our Come, Follow Me studies, and our scripture recitations and hymn singing.

I decided to start Harbor and Sprout's Botany Study.  I studied it thoroughly, and I decided that we'll just work through each activity at whatever pace we need to for joy in the learning.  And I'm not making it a beginning-and-ending kind of study with official start and stop dates.  

Somewhere in the study guide is a section on foraging, and somewhere in that section is a suggestion for making dandelion jelly.  Rather than wait until we get to that section in order, I took the kids out foraging while the dandelions are abundant.

Sometimes there was more play than foraging.

And after we gathered about a quart or so of flower heads, we set to work tearing the petals from the sepals.

We continued following the instructions I found at Homestead Acres, and then I sent the kids out to play while the petals steeped.

In the meantime, Nature Angel came home with a driver's license!!!!

I read this book

several times the previous week.  This week I handed the kids historical figure narration sheets, and the kids wrote about him and stuck the sheet into their history binders.

The dandelion tea was ready, so we turned it into jelly.

It is yummy!

Like a light-textured, strong-flavored honey.

Little Princess made us homemade bread, 

and we ate the warm bread with butter and dandelion jelly.

Could there be anything more spring-y?

The kids picked dandelions all week long, and I happily started the process of making the tea and then the jam on succeeding days. 

The second batch didn't gel, but it is lovely syrup.

I lost track of the third batch--forgetting to refrigerate the tea--and it rotted.

I have more pectin and sugar, though, and should the kids feel like foraging some more, I'm ready to make more jelly!

I pulled a weed from the garden space (it's not planted yet), and it turned out to be a baby black walnut tree.  Brother was with me, and we studied and studied the seed and plant!

One of the botany projects is writing a research paper about a plant.  I introduced a few of the factual botany books I checked out from the library to the kids, explaining that I'd help them learn how to write this report, and that I wouldn't expect anything more than they are individually capable of.

They seemed a little freaked out at first, but as I showed the books to them, they shifted from freaked to excited . . . so I'm cautiously hopeful.

We also finished reading about Menes--chapter 1 in this book:

 So the kids completed another historical figure narration page about him.

One day, we talked about symmetry--bilateral and radial.  This apple blossom was perfect for describing the characteristics of each kind of symmetry.

We also completed a few more chapters in Life of Fred: Apples.

We walked every day.

This is The Munchkin blowing bubbles in the mud puddle.

This is how Lola dressed herself for a walk one day!  The hood was balanced on her puffs, and I laughed so hard as the hood jiggled and swayed as she walked along.

The teens and I completed semester I of Mystery of History Volume 2.

We also completed book one of The Landmark History of the American People.

This means they're halfway through each history book.

Poor Little Princess has signed up twice for CAP-sponsored orientation flights only to have them canceled for weather reasons!  These are necessary for the flying lessons she longs to have.  She's put on a brave face both times, but her heart is starting to break.  I'm encouraging her to look for more dates and more opportunities!   

I certainly hope she won't give up!

She did attend a 4-hour drill practice on Saturday because she wants to feel more confident about her drills.  There weren't many cadets familiar to her, but she met some cadets from neighboring companies, and that's really good for her.

Stretch was feeling attached, so Nature Angel took notes while being fiercely loved.

As the kids and I headed up to the swales to read in the sunshine, Rose Red showed us that the kittens are starting to earn their keep.  They killed a mouse!

We finally used our sit-upons!

I took a few books, and I read aloud as the kids listened from their comfy spots in the grass at the swales.

We read selections from the following:

If I'd thought to pack a lunch, we could have stayed for hours, but I didn't.

So we went home to eat.

One of the chickens was bleeding from her head because she'd been badly pecked by the other chickens.  The kids protected her until Sir Walter Scott could make a temporary shelter for her in the garage.  When she drank and ate eagerly after we separated her from the others, we hoped she would heal, but she didn't.  

At the same time, another chicken died with no warning, so both are now disposed of.

And I'm looking to buy new chicks!

Later in the day, Beowulf crashed his bike, landing on his handlebars, so that they left these marks on his abdomen:

He was in a lot of pain.  

He had no other symptoms that suggested anything dangerous, but I kept picturing those handlebars pressing into his body, tearing something important inside that would leak or bleed all night . . . so I took him to the ER.

He's perfectly fine.

(Thank goodness!)

While we were gone, the older girls and the rest of the kids watched the video of our American Rhythm show and the video of last year's show.

So fun!

The next night, the teens were quite badly shaken by being in a car accident.  It was Belle's fault, in the sense that the other car had the right of way.  All three girls say they never saw the car coming--it was just suddenly there, and there was no time to even try to avoid hitting it.  No one in either car was hurt enough to need medical attention, but our teen car is totaled.  We are properly insured, so all will be fine.

Sir Walter Scott and I stayed up half the night with the three girls, just being present as they alternately cried and expressed gratitude that it wasn't worse.

Little Princess needed ibuprofen the next day because her neck hurt, otherwise, they're all well.

Now we have to find another teen car.

Pixie has finished her semester of teaching.  She's currently packing up for a trip to Zanzibar with her group, and she will be home in less than 2 weeks.

Early Sunday morning, we headed to church to be present as Belle was set apart as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  

Me, Sir Walter Scott, Belle, and our stake president

There aren't words.

It was a sacred experience.