4th Annual Easter Egg Hunt

It is getting to be a regular tradition for us to invite friends with little kids to hunt eggs in our yard. Everyone brings some plastic eggs filled with candy, the kiddos wait inside while the dads all go out and hide them. This year we had more older siblings and so we told them that they had to help each of the littles find 3 eggs before they could start hunting for their own eggs. That worked well. The weather was a chilly 45F, but sunny.

 The grass and garden were pretty soggy, but no one seemed to mind.

 After the hunting the kiddos came in and started munching away. I was enjoying socializing and let them enjoy for awhile before encouraging them to "save some for tomorrow".

Recommended Reading: Women in WWII

I don't usually watch much TV.  Downton Abby is over now so I am back to watching things on Hulu once in awhile. Lately I have been enjoying the costumes and girl power storyline of "Agent Carter".  Thinking of Peggy's story got me wondering about the roles of female spies in WWII.  I ended up reading a bunch of books about WWII. I already talked about a couple of them here.

In the last couple weeks I read these 4 books:
1.  Women Heroes of WWII  by Kathryn Atwood -- This is a wonderful non-fiction book that tells the stories of 26 women spies in WWII.  There were so many women involved in counter intelligence work during WWII.  I had no idea the intricate webs of spy networks going on behind the scenes in occupied Europe. They were feeding information to the British and helping pilots/soldiers caught behind enemy lines escape. The book is organized by country and includes stories of women from France, Belgium, Poland, Italy, and Czech Republic.

2. Women Heroes of WWI by Kathryn Atwood -- After I read about the women in WWII, I had to get Ms. Atwood's other book and see what happened in WWI.  It was interesting to compare the situations in the 2 wars. The WWI stories are organized into stories about spies, medics, and soldiers. Yes, some of the women were soldiers! The Russians had a whole unit of women fighting.  One of their jobs was to shame the discouraged male soldiers into battle by being heroic themselves.

3. Journey to Topaz by Yoshiko Uchida-- is about Japanese internment in the US after Pearl Harbor was bombed.  I enjoyed this story because it is told through the eyes of an eleven year old girl named Yuki, and it is based on the author's own personal experiences.  I am hoping to read it with big sis A as part of our study of WWII.

4.  The All Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg -- this book is by the same gal that wrote Fried Green Tomatoes and the tone is similar. The dialogue includes fun southern and midwestern speech patterns, but BEWARE the loads of cursing.  It is not a good book to listen to in the car with children. The story follows a family of 4 girls 1 boy (like someone else I know!) during WWII.  Three of the girls become WASPs (pilots for the military). It is funny and surprising and heartfelt.  I loved it aside from the foul language.

Family Schooling Summary

Big sister A tested the engineering of the 4th little pigs' house of logs in her "fairytale engineering" class, learned about Spain in Spanish culture club, and studied roots in her botany class.

Then sadly, she had a sore throat on Tuesday-Thursday and so we took it easy at home.  I learned that I could add tea tree oil to our humidifier as sort of an herbal vaporub while they were sleeping. That seemed to help.  We also drank lots of juice with echinacea mixed in. I told all the kiddos that we needed to all be healthy on/by Friday or else I would have to cancel the Easter Egg hunt we planned for Sunday.  Positive thinking really works!

Brother M is getting to be a great helper. He LOVES making things and is always coming to me with projects that he wants to do - usually involving glue and scissors.  He and A both love entertaining baby L, who is just "so cute!". They are still on their Uno game kick too. 

Brother S has been collecting ladybugs in jars, digging for worms with brother M, and generally getting into mischief.  Also, apparently anything that is light blue in our house belongs to him -- spools of thread, pins, cars, cups... He is making a little horde. 

Baby L is as sweet and happy as can be. 

Family Schooling Summary

Co-op school gave the kiddos some homework this week. Brother M brought home this "rainbow maker" and another music toy that he made with bells. 

 Big sister A brought home her Botany notebook and an assignment to do the bean seed experiment. I remember when we did this in second grade too.  We are observing the seeds every day and documenting their progress.

Big sister A read aloud to us this week, including reading baby L a story. We are still studying WWII for history. We read Happy Birthday Molly this week.  I also called my grandma to ask her what she remembered from that time period. We talked about their Victory garden and food ration cards. She said that her mother always had a garden, but during the war they called it a Victory garden.  She told me that was when she got sprayed by a skunk! It just came running out of the corn patch and was across her feet before she realized what it was. Then it lifted its tail and sprayed her.

A. is also mastering the art of multi-tasking at a young age.  Playing Uno and doing her grammar workbook in between turns. That's my girl. 

Uno is the most popular pastime at our house now. Everyday when daddy comes home from work they are all over him to play a game or two before dinner and they play all day long with just the 2 or 3 of us.

Brothers M and S have each created little "hordes" in old animal cracker jars.  They like to carry around all their favorite trains, cars, small things and have races while sitting on their jars and scooting on the floor. 

Baby L is laughing and rolling onto her back. She is such a good baby. She has the sniffles and I have been using the nebulizer on her to make sure that she can breath easy before she goes to sleep every night. She holds the mask sometimes now, grabbing it with her two hands.  She also found her hands and comforts herself by sucking on them. 

Garden Report

This weekend it was warm enough for me to spend some time in the garden.  I cleaned all the deep litter out of the chicken coop.  It's supposed to keep them warmer to just pile more on each week instead of cleaning it out in the winter.  AND it makes a lovely manure for the garden.  I rolled it into my relatively finished compost and then spread that mixture over and into all my garden beds and around my fruit trees. 

Sad news for this week. Baby S was very quiet and so I went to see what he was up to now... He answered me by asking me to help him wash his hands and face which were black. And then I saw the huge mess behind him...

I don't usually cry when the kids break things, but baby S started to cry too when he saw my reaction. My poor little seedlings.  The front line took most of the damage, but oh my! what a mess - all over that whole corner of the basement.  Peppers and ground cherries all decimated as well as most of the cabbages.  I probably should have been more calm and thoughtful and asked questions about what he was thinking... oh well.  Luckily the weather is getting warmer and the sandbox will soon become available again. 

St Patrick's Day

For St Patrick's Day we all dressed in green and went over to play with the cousins.

We made rainbow necklaces with cheerios. The older kiddos cut out shamrocks to make a trail to a pot of "gold" (candy).  The weather was warm-ish, but windy, so we made the shamrock trail in the house.  Then baby S and JJ followed the trail to the goodies.

We ended up staying for dinner. Aunt H made some delicious fish.  Then the kiddos were playing with photobooth and snapped this cute picture together:

Family Schooling Summary

 The weather warmed up enough to melt the snow this week and everyone was anxious to get some outdoor playtime.  The chickens won't walk on the snow and seemed ecstatic to finally be out in the yard digging in the soggy dirt. Happily they are also back to laying 4 eggs a day and letting us know with lots of beautiful "egg songs".

 

Co-op school started again this week. Big sister learned about Chile and Argentina in her Spanish culture class.  I am the asst. teacher in that one so I enjoyed the lesson as well.  They learned that in South America it is warm at Christmas time and so one of their traditions is to put cotton balls on their Christmas trees.  She also had her first Botany and Engineering classes.  We read Molly's Surprise for history this week, worked on 1st grader sight words, and practiced reading.

Brother M loved his Music Makers class.  They made drums.  And in Pre-school Storytime they made Cat in The Hat hats.   He also had Joy School this week. The lessons were on Trust.  An embarassing confession though - I was buzzing around as usual on Thursday helping A do her schoolwork and baking pies while M. was at Joy School.  I looked at the clock several times, but thought I still had plenty of time.  Then I went in the kitchen to check on my baking.  I had been looking at a clock that hadn't been "sprung forward" yet!! I was about half an hour late picking him up. Luckily, he had no idea that anything was amiss and was happily playing with his Joy School friend H. 

Brother S is transitioning away from taking naps in the afternoon. He could still use one, but if I let him sleep he stays up until around 10pm.  This week he conked out in the middle of the kitchen floor while pretending to be a snake. 

I love how creative these kids are. They use their imaginations costantly-- store, hotel, and restaurant are popular games. Number 1 by far though is party planning. They wrap imaginary presents, hang banners, and make signs for daddy to follow when he gets home. (Remind you of someone?) Brothers M & S seem to really have hit their stride and play cars and trains together a lot as well. 

Baby L came down with the sniffles this week. That seems to be all it is so far, fingers crossed. She had some tummy time and is rolling over onto her back. She had her first laugh and is practicing grabbing things.

Sew Special: Cissy Dress in Blue

I have been thinking a lot about how much I enjoy sewing and gardening- and how it is important for me to have that personal "creative time". I found this cool quote in that article I recommended a few weeks back:

God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation. (Pres. Monson, In Quest of the Abundant Life)

My neighbor shared with me an article that talks along the same lines about how developing our personal talents impacts our children.  I found it very uplifting and would agree that I have seen the same things happen in my experience as well. 

Another week, another one of these Cissy doll prototypes. Making this dress 15 times has taught me a ton. I am planning to eventually put the pattern in my Etsy shop as an instant download.  I am also working on a couple other jobs for my neighbor's doll business -- it is keeping my "creative time" full and busy.

Garden Progress: Seedlings

Our friend and fellow garden enthusiast came over to give me a lesson on pruning fruit trees this weekend.  We only did 3 of the 6 trees.  I need to hurry and finish them before it gets warm. I brought in some of the cuttings from our little peach tree to see if I can force them to bloom. 

We are doing a pinterest inspired experiment with the left over end piece of a bunch of celery. We used all the celery and then I just set the end bit in a cup of water.  I am thrilled that it is actually regrowing!  I have not had much luck with growing celery from seed.

My basement grow light has been mostly a success so far. It is huge and so I still have room under it. The only bad part is that I need to get my timer working so that I don't have to remember to turn it on and off. (I finally got the timer I ordered and then realised that it is too big to share a plug with the basement freezer. I ordered and am waiting on an extension cord with ground -- yes, going to HomeDepot with 4 children still sounds too overwhelming to be worth it. 

 About time to thin the broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower.

 The lavender seeds have still not sprouted yet! I am a little worried about them even though I know that they are supposed to take a long time to germinate.

Tomatoes, peppers, ground cherries, and leeks started sprouting this week.

Family Schooling Summary

 Co-op School was cancelled due to the snow and ice. The kiddos were hugely disappointed. Luckily, there were lots of other things to look forward to this week.  Brother M had Joy School one day, free weekly readers came in the mail for A and the neighbor brought over a fun project that is just right for big sister A.  She has been popping beads together in various patterns and configurations all week. I highly recommend these, except you have to be careful to keep them out of babies' mouths.

 They just snap together - no threading strings required.  A took this picture of them.

Since my home school is registered with scholastic and I order books from them periodically, we get free packets of "Weekly Readers" newletters every so often.  I used to love these when I was a kid.  These are normally for second graders, but A has done a great job reading them aloud to me and doing the activities at the back. 

We experimented with architecture using coffee straws, toothpicks, and marshmallows for one lesson this week.

For history we are starting to read aloud the Molly books from the American Girl Company. We found that reading the Kit series was a good way to learn/discuss the Great Depression and I am hoping that Molly's story will help us discuss WWII.

We are working on some temporary sleeping arrangements until we can get the upstairs fixed up for the kids. In the meantime, A and M are sharing the top bunk and brother S is in the bottom bunk.  Leaving the crib free for baby L... yes, that is 4 kids in one small bedroom.   Here is what I saw one night when I went in to check on them. Awwh! I love that they get along so well. They are loving listening to cassettes together as they are going to sleep too.

We had our first playdate with the cousins since our hibernation. Baby S was not sure what to make of cousin E. She is so big all the sudden.

 Cousin E had a similar reaction to L.  Except that she decided to give her a nice slobbery kiss on the head in any case.

Here are the cousins enjoying dinner together at Uncle P's newly stained and finished dining room table.  The grey stain turned out great.