Farm!

For the last half of our Spring Break week, Summer and Rachel went to Youth Conference. They had a wonderful time staying up late, trimming bushes, socializing, weeding, speed dating, scraping calcium deposits off gravestones, ice skating, and dancing.

Summer was a "big sister" this year and, along with the "big brother" in their family, gave devotionals every morning and family home evening lessons every night.

One of the boys (...removed by teenage censors).

There is a farm on the Orange County Fairgrounds that had free admission this past weekend, so I thought it would be a perfect time, while my two girls who think they are too big for that kind of stuff were busy somewhere else, to take the five younger kids. We had a wonderful time!

The petting zoo was where we started and we had to visit again on the way out. It was all the kids' favorite part of the day.

This baby goat was still bottle fed.


That is a pig Kelly is petting.

They didn't have anything for the kids to feed the animals, but that didn't stop Gwen from trying. She started with her finger...

...and then the goat found her hair!




This was my view most of the day: five adorable kids looking over (or through) a fence.

Sometimes, I walked around to the other side of the pen to get a front view of an adorable kid looking over a fence.


These piglets went from taking a nap to eating in two seconds flat once they heard milk being poured in their dish
.
We watched the calves being bottle fed.

These two were trying to get the milk off each others' noses after they finished their lunch!

There was a big plastic cow to practice milking on.

Michael was really excited about throwing a hatchet.

He also found a mentor at the clay table.

Kelly made a covered wagon with horse and rider.

Michael made a cup, with help from his new friend.

Naomi made a table, all by herself.

Have you ever seen a banana flower before?

These sweet peas are for my mom :)

This looked like one pampered chicken to me!

Isn't this checkerboard bunny nifty?

If you want to see more farm animals, here they are - happy viewing!

Wow.

My necklace is being bragged about on


today.

What a compliment! Thanks Karen :)

Happy Birthday Heather

Heather is twelve...and wise enough to request having one candle in a candle holder, instead of twelve in her cake, which may not have worked well in still warm cheesecake.

Naomi liked watching her open her presents.

Stan gave her the coolest gift: an antler he found while he was working in the Sierras last week. Heather tried it on Kelly.

Here she is, lovely even when her mother gets a little crazy and turns her lilac. She is such a kind, thoughtful daughter. We feel so blessed to have her in our family :)

Happy Birthday Heather!!!

Spring Break

The kids have off school this week. We spent at least 45 minutes, if not an hour, Sunday night scheduling each of the next five days. Yesterday, Rachel packed a picnic lunch and we took off. First we went shopping for fabric for Easter skirts and an Easter tie. Better late than never, I guess. Then we took off for the hike we had planned. Unfortunately, the rain got worse, not better. We ate our sandwiches in the dollar store while strolling the aisles. Then, we went to the movie theater and ate our crackers and apples while we watched The Spy Next Door. Today, the day we planned on staying home all day, the weather is lovely.

I am putting together work samples and blogging and helping Rachel sew her skirt. Summer is babysitting. The highlight of the other kids' day seems to have been watching the piano tuner!

Jewelry

I like making jewelry and painting my toenails and baking cakes. Little bits of creativity smashed into my schedule help me keep my sanity.

I made this necklace and bracelet during Kelly's Spanish class.

Summer and Heather gave me a package of Shrinky Dinks for inkjet printers for my birthday. I had fun finding images and making little thingamabobs out of them. I think this one is my favorite. Thanks to the Graphics Fairy for all the lovely clip art she makes available. Summer introduced me to her blog. It is wonderful and addictive!

Weird Momma

The other day, my sister Sara overheard a snatch of conversation while we were on the phone and asked me if my daughter thought I was weird.

I told her ALL my daughters think I am weird.

I recounted the conversation at dinner that night and Heather was horrified. "I don't think you are weird!", she said.

I decided a poll was in order. Here is what each child said when asked if they thought I was weird.

Naomi - No.

Michael - No! (I knew he'd say that.)

Kelly - No.

Gwen - Nope.

Heather - see above

Rachel - Uhhh, yea.

Summer - Yes! But mostly in a good way.

p.s. Summer did my hair in this last picture ;)

Yesterday's post...

...was an April Fool's Day joke. Could you tell?

We also had April Fool's Day food last night.


"Cupcakes" that were really meatloaf with mashed potato frosting

"Meatloaf" made from knock off Cocoa Krispies and fruit leather

My Brilliant Idea

A while ago, I bought this nifty sprinkles container. It has 6 sections, each with a different color of jimmies.

Each section has it's own lid so that you can use one at a time without mixing the colors.

It was kind of pricey for colored sugar, but when you have little kids around, sometimes it is fun to have stuff like this in the kitchen AND I used my Michael's 40% off coupon.

Anyway, we have had fun with them while they lasted, but each color was only enough for one small batch of cookies or cupcakes, so they went fast. As you can see, we only have blue and orange left.

I didn't really want to keep buying sprinkles at that price, so when I saw this big container for much less money, I snatched it up.


I told Kelly and Michael that we could eat lunch after they were done sorting all the sprinkles into individual colors and putting them into my six section container.

I think they might try to get Mo to help.

While they are busy, I am going to go start dinner. We are having the missionaries over.

Oh, to have the energy of a three year old.

This morning, Naomi asked Kelly if she wanted to watch her "running show."

Then, I asked if I could film her.

She said, "Yes."

Wildlife

Stan was down by the Mexican border doing a survey earlier this week. I am glad he didn't run into any drug cartels.

He did find a small pile of Mexican coins in the dirt under a bush. Maybe they fell out of somebody's pocket as they napped?

He saw a leopard lizard whose tail was eight inches long (to give you an idea of how big it was),

a sidewinder with it's rattle a blur,

and a baby Flat Tailed Horned Lizard.

Weird worms...

...are worth digging for!

Summer on the Cello

Happy Pi Day!

Summer and Rachel collaborated today and made a banana coconut cream pie.

We don't need much of an excuse for dessert around here and eating pie on 3.14 was as good as any :)

Whale Watching

Each year, the homeschool school we go to has a whale watching field trip. I took Summer and Rachel about a decade ago. We didn't see whales, but we saw two or three kinds of dolphins and had a wonderful time.

About five years ago, Stan took Heather and Gwen. They didn't see whales, but they had a blast anyway and came home with what seemed like hours of video of dolphins swimming by the boat.

It was Kelly's turn, so we headed to the coast last week and I expected a lovely trip, but didn't have my hopes too high that we would see whales, but of course I was still hoping, because doesn't that spring eternally in the human heart?

Kelly was a little nervous as the boat hit the choppy water outside the harbor, but I promised her that it was safe and she calmed down, while I wondered if I should have been more honest and told her that it was 98% safe instead of 100% safe!

If you look, you can see lots of coots, two pelicans and a sea lion on the rocks we went past.

A school of common dolphins came right up to the boat and swan around and under us for a while. It was fun to watch them bowriding. I almost wanted to jump in and swim :)


And then, we saw whales! How exciting! There were two, an adult male and a juvenile gray whale. At one point, one of their tails came up all the way out of the water, dripping and shining in the sun, but of course my timing was off and my picture is kind of lame. Oh well.


Instead of a fishing boat, we went with scientists from the Ocean Institute. It was great, because they did so much teaching along the way. They collected plankton with this net...

...put it in a jar...

...and we looked at it under a microscope!

They also scooped some mud up from the ocean floor...

...rinsed it out over screens...

...and gave the kids tweezers to pick up and catalog the creatures they found.

Kelly and I had so much fun. It was great to be together and an all around amazing day.

Newsflash!

Kelly just came and quietly told me, "I forgot to tell you that I finished The Book of Mormon last night."

We are so proud of her :)

If you want your own copy, go here and scroll down to the almost bottom of the page. Or, you can read it online here.

She has been collecting them for a while.

Heather's Feathers

Can you say that ten times fast?

Stuff and Nonsense

Here's the stuff -

Heather and Gwen are in the Elementary Festival Orchestra and they had their pre-Festival concert this past week. It is kind of like a dress rehearsal. The high school orchestra also played, but Summer was hidden behind even more music stands than Heather and Gwen are, so I gave up trying to get a picture of her that night :)

We have had a cold running through the house and on the day I was sickest and also had way too much to do to even think about resting, Stan brought me some get well flowers and a muffin to cheer me up - it worked!

Mmmm!

And here's the nonsense, some Moisms -

Naomi was in the habit of sitting on my lap during family prayer and I told her when she was three, she would be big enough to kneel like her siblings. I talked about it for months and she was well prepared. She was excited about it when the time came, but the novelty has worn off and she has been trying to convince me to let her sit on my lap again for prayer. Lately, almost every time we kneel for prayer, she looks me straight in the face and says,

"I am not three anymore; I am two."

~and~

Last night for dinner, Summer made pasta Alfredo mixed with olives, red peppers and asparagus. She also baked some sweet potatos, fried some kielbasa and steamed some corn. Two thirds of the way through dinner, Michael announced, "Do you know what my favorite vegetable is? Corn!" Naomi, not wanting to be left out, asked me if I knew what HER favorite vegetable was. I said, "No, what?" She said,

"That," and pointed at the kielbasa.

It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again

I caught Naomi relaxing on the back of the couch while she watched something on the computer with Kelly and Michael. Lately, she has been reminding me of Summer when she was a toddler...

What do you think?

The Beach in the Winter

For Christmas, my parents gave Stan and me a gift card to Bed and Breakfast.com (Thanks Mom and Dad!). I found a place in Anaheim that gave us two rooms for the price of one. It was so much fun. The kids and I left after school and ate take out Chinese. Then, while we waited for Stan to get there from work, the kids played in the pool. Stan and I had one room and we put the kids in another with a stack of DVDs from the library. I like having responsible teenagers :)

The next morning, we stuffed ourselves with "Light Continental Breakfast" and headed to the beach. I love going to the beach in the winter. It is much less crowded for one thing and for another, I wouldn't want to wait all year and only go in July!

Naomi wore her new birthday sunglasses from Rachel.

They hadn't cleaned the sand that day, so there were piles of little, mostly broken shells. We had fun looking through them. Michael collected worm casings...

...and I was like a kid picking up shells.

Here are a couple of good looking birds...

...and here is a picture Summer took.

Doesn't it look cold? It wasn't too bad, but I didn't swim, anyway!