The First Half of May

 I felt yucky last Sunday, and I fell asleep almost immediately after church.

I didn't get the first week recorded, so now another week has passed . . . and these weeks have held so much!

I don't feel very capable of organizing it all, so I'm going to load a bunch of pictures and do my best to make sense of them as they appear . . . but now that they are uploaded, I can see that they are in random order.  There's no apparent rhyme or reason.

So let's go!

We managed to have a family photo shoot on one of the two days that all 14 of us were around.  Belle's pictures have been edited and shared with the family, and she is the cutest!  She's been at the Provo, UT Missionary Training Center (MTC) for nearly 5 days at this point, and she's so happy and cute I can hardly stand it.  We got to talk for nearly an hour today, and she did all of the talking.  The rest of us just listened, spellbound.

My favorite of her pictures!!

Pixie's pictures are crazy out of order, but  . . . She came home!

She showed me her certificate of appreciation from the school administrators.

One day in Uganda, she rappelled (not really rappelled--mostly was belayed) down a 300-foot waterfall!

When she and her fellow teacher made it back to The States via Chicago, they got so excited to see an American flag that they stopped to take pictures.  The cute customs officers thought they were tourists and tried to direct them to the wrong customs line. :)  They had to correct him, "No!  We're citizens!!  We're citizens!!"

When we finished Life of Fred: Apples, I made a list of some of the skills with which I thought the kids needed more practice.  One of those skills was telling time to 5 minutes.  We practiced outside with numbered rocks, sticks, and sidewalk chalk.

I had the kids walk around the clock counting by 5s.

And I had them draw their own clock faces and show time with long and short sticks as I called out various times.

One afternoon, Beowulf, Lola, and I planted some Alyssum seeds in one of the bare patches of "lawn."

Mister Man during hymn-singing time in Morning Meeting

I love how L'il K wore a football helmet on our walk one morning.

And then he abandoned the helmet in order to be like Brother, who loves to pose on fire hydrants.

Another day, I took the kids back outside to practice skip counting forward and backward by 2s and 5s.

I know the numbers are written as counting by ones, but we counted by 5s and then did some multiplication.

After the math, we got out our sit-upons and enjoyed the dappled shade while I read aloud from The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden. 

Baymax made me a wildflower hair tie.

In the past two weeks we've learned to identify Henbane and Creeping Charlie--both being prolific in our neighborhood.  

We read some lovely botany-related picture books:

The kids filled out a historical figure notebook page for this wonderful woman.

.

Lately, Little Mister Frog has been trying to figure out pedaling.

Kite-flying is inspiring everyone . . . even to the point of doing kite tricks.

I asked Sugar Bear what she made.

"Muffins."

"Oh!  May I have a taste?"

"No!  It' sand!!!"

More kite fun (look at his face!)

Kites go with us on all of our walks these days.

The day this kite got caught in this tree was the day the kids worked together so amazingly well to get it out.  They tried so many ways to solve the problem, including running the wagon home to bring back a ladder. 

In the long run, the ladder was unnecessary, but the kids really pulled together to save Lola's kite!

That's Little Princess' shoe!  She was running down the hill when the thorn grabbed hold of her.  Thank goodness it missed her actual foot!!

That is Super Star's hand with an engagement ring on it!  She and Mr. E. are officially engaged!!!!

Another sweet picture book we all shared some time in the past two weeks.

Some weeks ago, I put out hummingbird tracing pages and watercolor paper for the kids.  Then the days were so nice that we didn't bother staying indoors to work on them.  A rainy day came, and we settled happily down to the work of painting our outlines.

Mister Man's

Baymax working on his

Beowulf working on his

Brother's final product

Ladybug's final product

One day I let the kids fry their own eggs for dinner.  Ladybug and I cooked a pan of bacon, and I cut up some apples and made bread and butter sandwiches.  The kids took their plates outside to eat on the deck.

The cool thing is that I turned them free to make their own eggs, completely unsupervised just yesterday, and they all succeeded.  

Two carefully supervised practices, two mildly supervised practices, and one independent "test."

I'd say they can all fry eggs now.

I'm working on what should be their next cooking project . . .

Brother multiplied and manipulated numbers with these RummiKub tiles for over an hour one afternoon.

Lola got the little pool out and filled it with water all by herself.  She played for hours happily and independently.

Last Sunday we ended up waiting a long time after church for Little Princess to have a couple of interviews (temple and patriarchal blessing).  Other kids were waiting around for parents in various leadership meetings.  Eventually, they organized themselves into playing games in the foyer.  This was Down by the Banks.  

Yes, I did need to tell them to be quiet.

Yes, they did respond cooperatively.

Lola finished her hummingbird painting several days after the rest of the kids.  It's a very tropical sort of hummingbird.

Sweet storytime

And back to Pixie's return!

The first morning she was home, we dumped our school for the school we could have by listening to Pixie's stories, looking at her pictures, and seeing the treasures she brought back from Uganda, Tanzania, and Zanzibar.

Handmade toys!

A handmade bag as a present for me!

Bracelets for sisters

Such sweet dolls for little sisters

Sugar Bear loves those dollies!

We were talking about smells Pixie brought home with her from Uganda.  The Munchkin smelled the globe squishy he was playing with and said, "Smells like earth!"

We went over flower anatomy as part of botany, and the kids have been finding flowers everywhere we go, bringing them to me, and showing me their reproductive parts.

Honeysuckle flowers

Lola and Pixie . . . just soaking in each other's presence.

Mister Man draws and writes about Pokemon characters for hours every day.

While the photographer took good pictures, I took a few quick shots.  Look at my youngest 6!

And all 12 of my babies!  I am so excited for the real photographs to come back!

With the honeysuckle in bloom, the kids have been sucking nectar every day.  Every time I turn around some kid has a bunch of honeysuckle petals sticking out of his/her mouth.

Some afternoons have been very hot!

Pixie is so much fun!!!

One evening a church friend had a spur-of-the-moment birthday hang-out.  Nature Angel was able to drive herself along with Little Princess and Ladybug and have a rejuvenating evening being silly with friends.

This is Nature Angel picking up 4 babies at once.  They thought it was hilarious and asked her to do it again and again until she literally could not pick them up again.

There are lots of maple seeds all over the place--and other seeds that are similar.

We had a brief lesson about maple seeds, and we've been finding and dissecting them every day since.

The goodbyes for Belle were so heartfelt when they happened.  

At bedtime the night before for the youngest 6 . . .

I only included Baymax here, but each child had a turn for a great big bear hug!

I hugged her goodbye before she left for the airport, and Dad and the sisters above took her to the airport and said their goodbyes there.

Then she was gone!  

We know she landed safely and made it to the MTC because her uncle and a few cousins picked her up and sent us some pictures.  As I mentioned above, she told us all about her first half week in a call today, and she's the happiest we've ever seen her.

Just the other day I took Nature Angel to ScrapsKC--a recycled craft supply store.  She's been very down, not interested in her usual activities and unfocused lately.  I saw a little spark of life come back to her as she walked around the store, selecting items for purchase.  And I've seen her take some photos and work on sketches.

(I'm so glad because I am this close to taking her to a doctor for a depression screening.)

Some of her recent work:

One day during Morning Meeting I read aloud the story of Peter and some of his fellow apostles being arrested for teaching of Christ in the temple.  When I read about the angel releasing them, Beowulf exclaimed, "I can't wait to see how they show this in The Chosen!"

I let him know that The Chosen wasn't going to go beyond the gospels, and he was disappointed.  When I asked if the kids wanted to make a movie of the story themselves, there was much enthusiasm.

Mister Man made a cast list before rehearsals began.

Brother and Beowulf were the apostles, and our fireplace was the temple.  You can see the edge of the prison on the right.

The Munchkin and Li'l K were the Pharisees.  They were exceedingly enthusiastic about their lines!

After we rehearsed and performed, we watched our production 2 or 3 times.  We just reveled in our accomplishment, but the funniest was how the kids heard themselves on a recording.  Most of them said, "I don't sound like that!?!?!?" 
 They do sound like that.  But none of them believed those of us who know about the difference between what we hear in our heads and what others hear.

As I wrote above, the kids found and dissected flowers almost constantly for a week.

This is a tulip poplar flower.  (Though this picture is missing the female parts that form a cone in the middle.)  We couldn't understand how its parts worked, so we looked it up at home.  I drew pictures on the whiteboard, labeling everything until it made sense to all of the kids.

Cloth napkins make great pirate bandanas!

All too soon, we finished this delightful story.

We had a park day!

We had overnight guests for a couple of days this week because their mommy and daddy were out of town.  They did exceedingly well, and they love to sleep together even if they have their own beds.

We go on walks even in the rain.

"Mom!  I found poison ivy seeds!" yelled Lola.  All of us had to stop to look at the tiny poison ivy flower buds.  *shudder*

We remembered that the covering is a pericarp.

Toddlers in oversize raincoats . . . 😍

Library day!  (I'm really, really getting serious about not browsing the stacks--the book quality is dropping.)

A couple of weeks ago, I had the kids write questions they could find the answers to in order to write a report about a plant.  Just this last week, the kids tried to find answers.

The library books only took us so far. 

We ended up using the internet!

We read this book . . .

 . . . but we haven't written reports about her yet.

Pixie is so, so so loved.

One morning, Nature Angel came running up with a treasure!  A plant growing in a bottle!

We examined it with medium interest.

(I'd have loved to see intense interest, but I took what I got.)

Dead frogs are always interesting!

It's a storm on the ocean!!!!

I finally got over my garden-starting disappointment enough to finish preparing a single bed.   Kids asked me if they could help, and, dumping my plans to be organized, I said yes.

I literally opened my seed box and told the kids to plant in a way that made them happy.  If we're blessed, we'll have a haphazard bed of borage, petunias, spinach, carrots, poppies, and some other flowers that none of us can remember because we put the seed packets in the recycling bin.

Then Baymax asked me where he could plant a packet of sunflower seeds, so he, Brother, Beowulf, and I dug out the old strawberry bed (It was destroyed by basketball-playing kids), dug in some compost to freshen it up, and then Baymax planted the seeds.

That's Baymax in the compost pile.

Such clever boys I have!  Our wheelbarrow is in need of repairs that Sir Walter Scott is working on, so I was using a 5-gallon bucket to move dirt.  These two grabbed another bucket and the wagon to double our productivity and make transporting it easier!

And Little Mister Frog keeps working on pedaling.  Maybe if he can develop this skill, he'll be ready to potty train (I read the two skills are somewhat related).

We finished this book.  The younger kids loved it with a deep and abiding love; Nature Angel and Little Princess found it a little over the top.  It was a good read overall.  

We've begun this book:

We're 4 chapters in, and the kids are hooked. :)

We also finished Clara Dillingham Pierson's nature book Among the Meadow People, and we've begun Among the Night People.

Ladybug asked if we could start Life of Fred: Butterflies.  After taking a vote (results: 4 for/1 against/1 abstention), we completed the first two lessons.

Here is a picture of Belle's MTC district in front of one of the gorgeous murals.

That's Belle in the middle in orange and black.

Pixie and Sir Walter Scott left for Idaho today.  She'll drop him off at the SLC airport and finish the final 3-ish hours north on her own, and he'll arrive back at our airport at 7:00 pm.  We'll pick him up, and he'll be able to tuck the kids into bed tomorrow night.

It's hailing and raining so hard that all of the seeds the kids and I planted yesterday have been washed away.  

I'm starting to think that I'm not meant to garden.

On the other hand, the kids are swimming in the creek, so that's fun!

Last, but not least, I had a little teacher in-service by participating in the Free to Play Summit.  It is an early childhood education conference that focuses on Reggio-inspired teaching.  It was filled with thought-provoking activities that would really make my kids' joy in learning come to life.  I was only able to tune in to about half of the presentations (I did not pay for the lifetime access), but what I did see did a little bit of bucket-filling for my heart and mind.  

I'll be paying attention to next year's summit!