What a beautiful mess

You know that old country song. . ."What a beautiful mess, what a beautiful mess I'm in. . ."  Well, that went through my mind today as I was cleaning up after lunch.  We certainly do have a lot of messes around here that's for sure.  That's one of the things about homeschooling; you eat home more, you play at home more, you just ARE home more and all that equals more messes.  But, I wouldn't have it any other way.  Someday I am going to miss these messes. 


Here we are doing art.  It can get kind of messy.  On this particular day, we were making gardens on paper plates.  It was actually a project from our History Book.  We were making gardens like Babur the Tiger's Garden of Scattered Flowers in India.

 

Here are the finished products.  The kids played with their animals in the gardens for about a week when I was tired of having them in my kitchen.

 

More animal homes.  Kate was delighted that they were on her level.  Because she can be so destructive to their creations, Grant calls her "Dewey the Hun".  He remembers the Huns attacking people in our history lessons.

 One of the messiest areas of my life:  The chicks!  I make the kids put on Kenneth's old T-shirts to try to keep chick droppings off their clothes.. 

Arianna with Buffy and Exclamation Point

 

They love to play with these little chicks!

Happy Grant with Polka Dots and Puffy

Kate can say Chicks!  For quite a while she has tried to say chicken and gets the ch sound, but not the whole word.  Well, she can really say chicks.  It is so cute and she loves to go out and see them, too!

Catch up, Part 2 {March}

Here we go- March!  We were able to make a trip to the temple in Oklahoma City this month.  It was so nice to go to the temple.  We are just shy of 200 miles from the temple and with this brood of children it is a production to make the trip, but I am so glad we did.  We took a couple of toll roads to get there and the concept was interesting to the kids.  Within the couple of weeks after that they built roads with their Magna Tiles and charged each other a toll to cross.  I love to hear the children play; they are hilarious the things they come up with.  They have been making elaborate homes for their little animals and having the time of their lives.  Oh, to be a child again!
I also had a root canal in March.  I have been putting it off for a really long time.  I have never had a whole lot of dental work done in my life.  Only one cavity I can remember, and that was half-way into my marriage.  So, the thought of a root canal was scary!   I knew I had a crack in a tooth and we had tried to fix it with a filling, but it didn't take care of the problem.  I kept thinking it would get better, but it got to the point where I couldn't eat or drink anything without pain.  I would try to keep everything on the opposite side of my mouth, but it wasn't always possible.  Boy, am I glad I finally got it done!  The recover time was not bad at all and after just a week all the tenderness was even gone.  Even during the recovery time it was still better than what I had been dealing with before that.  I must say, this whole experience has taught me to have more empathy for people who hate going to the dentist.  I never understood it before. 
Here are the pictures of this month I have missed sharing in previous posts:

Kate catching the cleaning spirit!

The kids happy for spring and enjoying decorating the driveway

Grant's line-up

Kate loves dump truck rides!

Arianna loves to give them!

Emma's first real cooking experience.  The kids found a kids' cookbook and wanted to make the vegetable soup.  She felt so proud of herself. 

Kate is always at the refrigerator whenever I open it- like a vulture!  She grabbed right ahold of the celery stalk I had pulled out to use for dinner!  Funny girl!

Emma woke up late on this particular morning and so ate breakfast later than the rest of us.  Kate thought it was round two and begged to have Emma get her up and feed her some.  I love those piggies!

Sweet baby!

 

She loves pioneer cereal.  Gotta love that string of drool!

The road Grant set up.  Notice the Monopoly money for the tolls.

Emma's house for her animals.

Grant's house for Little Lion (One of these days I will do a full post on that little animal- he's Grant's favorite)

Arianna's home

Emma's two horses' home.

 

Catch up, Part 1 {February}

I thought that February and March was supposed to be a slower time of the year?  Well, not for me.  I have felt as busy as ever;  I never felt a slow-down.  It's been busy, but good.  The children are learning so much and Kate is growing up so fast.  Here are some of our February adventures:

Emma our faithful chicken caretaker.  Unless it is single digits out there, she is out there to take care of those chickens.  She is awesome!

Every Tuesday is laundry day.  They decided to dress Kate up while sorting through the laundry.

Valentine's Day breakfast.  (By the way, I will not do this again!  It was way harder than it was worth!!!! Most of them were more burnt than this one.)

Valentine's Day lunch.  It's a party!  Whenever we do a spread like this the kids think it is a party.  The heart-shaped cheese slices were so much fun.  I WILL do that again!

 We had planned to have pork tenderloin for dinner, but the day got away with me and it wasn't until a couple of hours before dinner that I realized the recipe I had had in mind was a crockpot meal, so I whipped up Thai chicken noodle salad.  An old favorite that we hadn't had in a while.  We had cheesecake with raspberry sauce for dessert and it was good. 

The girls dressed Kate up to dance with them.

 

Happy, pretty princess!

Kate loves to go outside and see the chickens.

Kate will often bring us our shoes to indicate she wants to go outside.

Here dad, let's go!!

The kids, especially Emma, is obsessed with this game called Aggravation.  I had the game as a child and really loved it.  Kenneth happened to find it at a thrift store and got it on a whim, having no idea it was an old favorite of mine. 

Kate out with the chickens.

Kenneth took a trip to Adelaide, Australia the end of February.  The flight was long, but it was interesting for him to see a new place in the world and Kenneth and his team had a productive time.  The kids and I missed him, but did just fine at home.  We even made a trip to the dentist so the big kids could have their teeth cleaned.  They all did such a great job.  I never imagined I could take all four of them to the dentist by myself before.  They really are growing up!

Beans, beans!

I got myself into a mess again.  I got some big idea that I should can some beans.  Not green beans, but dry beans- pinto, black, garbanzo, great northern.  For a while I have been cooking beans from dry to use whenever I want beans.  I would do a batch and freeze them for when I needed them so that it was almost as easy as opening a can.  The problem was, I like to freeze them on a rimmed baking sheet first and then transfer them into baggies so that I could take out what a needed and not have a large mass of beans in a bag.  It was just getting too complicated.  So, I looked online, talked to my sisters-in-law who have done this before and looked in my Blue Ball Book of Canning.  I decided to soak the beans over night before canning them.  I looked to see how many pounds I would need to fill the canner and even had Kenneth double check my math.  Well, it ended up not being a canner full, but 4 plus canners full!!!!!  Oy vey! 
So, the project overtook my kitchen for the next week.  I ended up with this:

This was minus 2 pints that cracked and a quart that didn't seal.

 

In addition, I still had more pinto beans and made crockpot refried beans which fed us for lunch and dinner and I froze 3 quart bags full.  Looks like I am set for a while!

I enlisted the help of the children to move the project along and they were truly a big help (Unlike the many other times when their 'help' is not really help). 
I only took a picture of Arianna helping, so here she is:


I think the entire project ended up being a success.  It really was a blessing in disguise, because I don't know when I would have gotten around to canning so many beans and now I have so many that I can just grab and go.  Every evening when I tuck the kids in bed, the girls (mostly Emma, but sometimes Arianna) like to tell me their favorite part of the day.  On that day, both of them said canning beans! (and playing outside).  In fact, round two, they all volunteered to help again!  They were so proud of themselves when they were able to tell Dad what they had done when he came home from work. 
So, for those of you interested, you have to pressure can beans.  I also discovered that the overnight soak was unnecessary.  The canner full that I did without soaking came out perfectly soft.  I am actually worried the overnight soak ones are going to be too soft.  Oh well.  Live and learn.  Want to know what else makes we feel good?  If we ever lost power, did not have a good water source for cooking, we have jars of food waiting and ready to be eaten.  No water or heat source needed!

Science Friday

We made streamers on Friday to find out what would happen to them in the wind, and when there is no wind, and when we create wind by running!  The kids loved it!  I really should do these 'experiments' every Friday.  They love it and I love to see them happy.

Just look at that happy guy!

He is risen!

I teach art each Wednesday to 5 children (3 of my own).  I wanted to do something meaningful today and I had the idea to do this.  The children had fun decorating to show it is spring.  Happy Eastertime!

New Chicks and Spring

I have so much to show you all about our life, but this is an easy post I can post tonight, so this is what you get for now.  It's spring time and to celebrate we bought more chicks this week.  What can I say?  I guess 7 birds isn't enough for us!  They are so adorable.  The kids really like having babies again.  One of the birds we brought home did not handle the move well and died the morning after we brought her home.  The store was nice and replaced her.  We brought home: 2 Rhode Island Red chicks (we already have 2 grown hens of this variety), 2 Buff Orphington chicks, a Silver-laced Wyandotte, and an Americauna (we also have 2 of these already).  Next week we get 2 Barred Rocks (My favorite!)  They are fun.  Here are pictures of the wee ones and our wee ones with them:

Here they are when we first brought them home.

Kate loves them!!  She even tries to say, "chick".  Not surprising since she already tried to say "chicken" already.

We love chicks!

Just not when they poop!  Grant named this one Polka Dots.

Emma snuggling several babies

Arianna snuggling Buffy

So soft and sweet.

Look at that little face!

So much fun!  Doesn't it make you want chicks, too?!

On Wednesday the weather was nice and I told the kids we were going on a hunt to find evidences of Spring.  It was so much fun!  They really got into it and had so much fun uncovering the new green shoots that wanted to be coming alive, but were buried beneath last years dead blooms and stalks and the piles of fall leaves that had collected. 


Welcome Spring!

We found green!

Kate liked to watch the ladybugs

Cleaning out the dead debris!  Grant loves to use the dump truck to haul stuff back to the compost pile.