A Week of Forts

 

This is what the living room looked like all week long.

Really.

I did have the kids clean up before lunch and before dinner, but this is what it looked like for all the rest of the daylight hours.

Sometimes it was even more fort-filled than even here.

Big kids and little kids read books, played games, and pretended to be dragons all week long.

I had to take deep breaths sometimes because the forts filled so much space that I started to feel trapped.

And by Saturday, I said the forts had to move out-of-doors for my own sanity.

I was pleased that I lasted all week.

But I killed the fort building.

They keep asking me, "How are we supposed to build forts outside?"

Never mind the fact that there are several sheets and tarps available for outside use.

Never mind the fact that there are at least 2 partially built forts in the yard.

Never mind the fact that the kids have hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of wood to use for building.

Never mind the fact that the kids have access to nails and hammers and other building tools.

"How are we supposed to build forts outside?" is still asked when someone gets bored and I suggest fort-building outside.

The kids and I finished The Bible Smuggler, and they wrote their narrations.

We started Mama's Bank Account.

We're still working on Archimedes and the Door of Science, The Story of the World vol. 1, The Ark, and The Lilac Fairy Book.

The teens and I read acts 1-4 of The Comedy of Errors and finished The Scarlet Letter.  I assigned a 1-page response paper to a quote by Hester about how Roger hurt her far more than she ever hurt him, and those are due before they go to bed tonight.

The teens keep their hands busy while they listen to me read aloud.

We didn't do anything formal for the eclipse, but we had fun feeling the air cool down (we had 89% coverage), seeing the light change, and seeing how our shadows had blurry edges.

Brother is quite stable right now, and everyone else is relaxing in the peace.

He finished Math 5 and has made a huge start on Math 6.

Kids watching something interesting on Little Princess' phone

Mister Man brushing his teeth while doing math :)

Gma and Gpa came over on Friday with pizza ingredients, and we had lunch together.  Gpa always starts something interesting, and this time it was arm wrestling.  Beowulf and Gpa had quite the match; Gpa was able to win . . . barely, he said.  A year from how, he guesses that Beowulf will win easily.

Even once Gpa was tired, the kids had a blast.

I love this picture of Lola and Baymax--she on her tiptoes, he so serious.

We had meetings with both our case manager and our FSP.  It was so nice to report very few concerns.

We're just deliciously boring right now!

I planted 50 strawberry bare-root plants.

Here are photos of some of Nature Angel's recent projects:

She has lots more, but she hasn't taken pictures of them yet.

Brother picked enough dandelions for a good big batch of dandelion jelly.

I canned 7 quarts of carrots, 5 pints of mixed berry jam (leftovers from other berry jam batches), 2 quarts of 4-berry jam, and 3 quarts of chicken stock from one of our chickens (plus a half-gallon jar going straight to the fridge for soup).

Sir Walter Scott finished butchering the last of our original chicken flock, and now we're cleaning the coop for a new batch of chicks.

The teens and I went through about 20 large bins of dance costumes and accessories.  Our house is going to be the storage place for a while, and we laughed and remembered happily for hours as we sorted, counted, and catalogued.

The teens went to a church dance while the rest of us went to Nugget's 3rd birthday party.  Even though we're not his daycare providers, our families are staying in touch, and we had a very good time celebrating him.  He climbed into my lap for a little while to talk about monster trucks with me, and my heart filled with bittersweet feelings about this precious soul who came to us as the newest of possible newborns, and left us under hard circumstances.  He and his big brother (Little Mister Frog) are thriving at their Montessori school.

At the party, my kids won several fun prizes during the games (Mom is an amazing discount shopper!), and Lola manged to take her bracelet kit to church.  Little Princess though her set-up during services was pretty funny.