Family Pictures

Heather at Silverline Photography is brilliant. We are painful to work with but somehow she managed to get us all of these pictures without the bagfull of marshmallows to bribe the kids, showing in any of them. It was a miracle. I was too lazy to edit the album so every last shot is included (which means all 25 million of of me with my eyes closed. I know Amy, its so annoying) but whatever.

Rad.

In case anyone needed proof that Timmy did some rock'in out in college, here's the link (this is for Tracie). Thank you Jordan.

Rockstar

Quotification

Jane had a drink of water and said,
"Well that went down to my bladder fast."

She effortlessly applied our lesson from yesterday on the digestive system...

At our devotional this morning I started with a story from the childhood of George Albert Smith. The story was about a rotten egg and Jane interrupted me by saying, "This George guy is weird, I can tell already."

We hopped in the car this morning to go over to Tracie's but the battery was dead. We've had the nastiest weather- crazy cold, snowy, windy so we couldn't walk over either. Charlie, in frustration says, "Who is doing this? (making the weather so unbearable) Is it Satan?"

Besides moving...

We've been nurturing our little avocado plant we started from an avocado nut.

 Look at these big, lush leaves already.

This is from Theodore's funeral.

 After a lesson on the water cycle, we started this evaporation experiment. Just a jar of salty water and some dark colored paper and a few days.

The only good thing about moving out is the abundance of cardboard boxes which translate into hours of   playing adventures. Don't ask me why all four of them plus a pillow and Scarlet's prized possession dolly are all stuffed in one box. Looks like torture to me. They even had the lid over them for a while. Needless to say, Charlie came out kind of sweaty :0)

Fascination

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

My idea of a fun friday night is watching these RSA videos. It was hard to pick two for my blog because they are all good. Just the drawing is satisfying. Thanks Naomi. 

The Secret Powers of Time

Tricks. Treats.

Fishies

Ya Uncle Roy. Impressive.

All I want is...

Its been fun thinking about my dream house over the past year (hence my small accumulation of house pics posted here) but now that our house is sold and its actually time to choose the next one, it proves to be a precarious process. Is it really too much to ask for a small wooded acreage with a long winding drive way, garage, workshop, and situated by a creek or pond, not too far out of town, with a charming old farmhouse that is in new condition and large enough for homeschool but not too big, with a greenhouse and barn and wood burning stove and high ceilings and lots of built in bookshelves? My parents have deserted us- well our house sold on such short notice that they couldn't have known- but nevertheless, they are on the other side of the world, literally, and we've needed them endlessly since they left. My dad gave me three pages of notes to study on his way to the airport and my mom gave me me needed peptalks on house shopping and design, and after that Tim and I were on our own (well I guess thats not all true, we did still have Tobin our brilliant and thorough advisor). But, the learning curve has been significantly steep which has been good for us. Dragging kids around house shopping was fun the first 25 times, but things went down hill since and the next thing I knew I was passing Mr Big bars around the car!! I will never recover from that. Anyways, we have found several acreages we like and made several offers but nothing has panned out for us yet. Its really emotionally draining. My heart can't take the excitement followed by the breaking much longer. I am trying to not care so much, what's a house anyway? At the end of the day its just a house. Right? But then I realize its where I spend 22 hours of my day and where most of kids' memories will be located. Then my heart gets attached again, followed by the torturous waiting and then nothing. 

Teacher Teacher

Charlie made this cool bouquet of apples for his teacher.

You need a small, wide mouthed jar (I found the perfect one at the BB), the all you have to do is put the pencils (not the eraser end) in the core of the apple (go in the bottom, not the stem side). Tie a ribbon on and VOILA.

Falling for festive frolicks

Our annual fall leaves pile. I guess this is our last one since we are moving.

Holy smokes, fun dad.

I made my first circle skirt- the fabric is cut out like a donut. You are supposed to be able to make 3 skirts in an hour... This one took me four. I did add some extras, but still.

The good news is that Jane really likes it. Its comfy and twirly :0) And yes, the lace, elastic and fabric and felt was all found at the good old BB.

Quotes

Today I heard Jane and Charlie deliberating whether it's a "pop-belly" pig or a "hot-belly" pig.

I'm never going to clear that one up.

Randoms

We get a big basket of books from the library weekly and go through them. I am always so surprised at how many books from our stack we read once and put in the "not reading this one again" pile. We like these two from our current batch of books so I thought we'd share since its sometimes hard to find good ones.

 Our first and only pumpkin from our first garden. Isn't it a cutie.

Every kid should do this once in their life. It was so fun to pop eggs into this bottle. We've been getting into science experiments lately.

We turned this egg into rubber with vinegar. It makes the shell soft.

I found this picture on my camera.

Theodore was all tucked into Jane's coat before a walk.

 Found this one on my camera too- a lemur, beaver, and squirrel displayed artistically by my pretty books.

 This one magically appeared on my camera too. Excellent presentation skills.

We roasted chestnuts. Checked it off our bucket list.

O.K. don't laugh at this picture- apparently it was the best Charlie could do. We have made about 12 batches of homemade gummy bears. They are a cinch and the consistency is identical to a real gummy bear. Here's the recipe:

Homemade Gummy Bears

- 1/3 C water in pot.

- Add 2 packets of unflavored gelatin. Mix and let it sit for a minute to absorb the water.

-Add small Jello pack. Mix. Wait 10 minutes.

-Put pot on medium heat for 3-4 min.  Stir until dissolved and becomes a liquid.

-Pour into measuring cup to pour into molds.

-Let molds sit for 3-5 minutes.

-Put in freezer for 10-15 minutes.

-Dust with cornstarch or flour before eating so they don't stick to each other. 

Some Call Her...

Skilly, Scoola, Scooby, Garwetta, Louly Lou, Scoopy, Skitchy, Skillet-Billet, Scarletta, Scooletta, Scootcher etc.

Some things about Scarlet (Charlie spells it "Sgorlit"). She really loves to dance and she wants everyone to be include in everything. So if she is dancing, she isn't satisfied until everyone in the room is dancing. Lately its all about her baby and I love this stage of baby girls. She carries her baby around everywhere she goes. She feeds it, changes it, and snuggles it etc. She's not afraid of anything! She goes down big slides by herself and unlike Jacob, she has no worries about heights. She is so happy to be pushed on the swings. She loves to reply to the other kids, un-uhhh (in an attitude voice). Just last week she started bringing piles of books to me to read to her- this was an exciting milestone for me. LOVE her.