Random Bits, Photo Essay Style

The girls helped me to plant their marigold plants in the Mary Garden last week. They were looking nice and strong, so I thought they'd be okay when we transplanted them. Caroline promptly stepped on hers as she freaked out about the chickens getting in the Mary Garden and chased them out... they look like they might still make it. We still have a bunch of Marigold seeds too, so I think I'll just plant those straight into the garden and see how they do.

Cecilia enjoys one of her favorite books...

...while Caroline works on her Year of the Priest lapbook. I won this download, and we have slowly been putting together the pieces. Content-wise, much of it is over Caroline's level, but we are concentrating on the cutting and gluing as fine motor work, and it will be nice to complete it during the Year of the Priest and then have it for future reference in a few years when she is reading.

Caroline had her baptism anniversary on Saturday... we had an evening event to attend and waited until Sunday to celebrate. Here's here baptismal candle next to the white dessert I made - a strawberry coconut trifle with whipped cream on top - yum! We still have some in the fridge... it made a huge amount!

She likes it!! Cecilia doesn't seem to care for it now... she just liked it the first night, when it was fresh!

Pope Benedict's birthday was on Friday, and we also had bratwurst (cooked German-style, boiled in beer and then browned in butter instead of cooked on the grill!) and German beer on Sunday as a late celebration. Any reason to eat bratwurst is a good reason to me! ;)

The girls were not feeling well on Monday... Caroline with allergies, and Cecilia with a fever and mild cold symptoms (so maybe Caroline's is a cold too and not allergies? so tough to tell...). We had some warm tea with honey to help soothe their throats, and Caroline suggested having areal tea party, meaning we drink the tea out of her toy tea set cups. So, we had tea and trifle.

It was wild berry Celestial Seasonings tea. We even poured it out of the little teapot that goes with the tea set!

A chicken update: They are laying lots of eggs once again. We are usually getting four or five a day again. Here's Eat, aka 'Lorpie, engaging in one of her favorite hobbies: dust-bathing.

Here's Chicken, doing the same. The way we can tell which one is Chicken is very visible in this picture: the extreme curves in her comb. Caroline sometimes calls her "wobbly-comb." It does wobble all over the place as she struts around!

Here's the one who doesn't like us: Molly. She is very difficult to catch, unlike her sister, who is picked on and very submissive to both us and the other chickens. And she is becoming anti-social with the other hens and will wander away from the rest of the flock often, even though they don't pick on her much at all lately.

We're considering getting a patio put here by the sunroom... the hens will certainly miss their dust-bathing area!

Caroline holding 'Lorpie

Cecilia likes to pet the hens but doesn't want to hold them often... when she does, she sets them down after about two seconds! She seems to like the Australorp best of all the hens, for some reason... she continues to be a pretty dumb bird. She never makes it into the coop in time to get a spot on the roost when it gets dark. The other night, I helped Chris move the chicken tractor across the yard, and she was trying to sleep on the platform next to the nesting box, because the other hens were blocking her way to the ends of the roost. Chris finally managed to drag her out and set her on the roost, where she stayed while all the others got down and went out into the yard, assuming it must be daytime now, ha ha. At least 'Lorpie stayed on the roost until we turned off the flood lights, so I guess the others filled in around her once it was dark again!

Caroline holding Sally... she is easy for Caroline to catch, but not for me!

Enjoying the swingset

Cecilia fell and skinned her knee, and every time she looked at it she would get upset. I put a butterfly bandage on it, and so I drew a butterfly on it for her. I did this for Caroline the last time she got a butterfly bandage, too - it is a big hit! And such a simple thing to do (and cheaper than buying band-aids with characters on them!).

Does anyone else's kitchen look like this every night?

And these are just the dinner dishes! The breakfast and lunch dishes had already been done! It seems like I use every inch of my counter space when preparing dinner... and I didn't think this meal was an especially complicated one, either! I enjoy cooking, but I wonder if it is normal to have to take up to 45 minutes to clean the kitchen each evening... Last night, I made spaghetti (with previously-made sauce that had been frozen, even), and bread made the day before... and the counters hardly had any dishes on them! I didn't quite know what to think!

I don't have a photo of it, but yesterday Cecilia saw a rolie-polie (sp?) bug on the driveway... she kept calling it a "walk-a-polie," ha ha! It sounds kind of like how she says guacamole: walk-a-molie.

Cecilia has had major mood swings lately... she gets upset extremely easily and is hard to comfort. It typically happens several times a day, and often it is from something Caroline did, but it can also be from a minor setback or injury, and then it just escalates. She is also having trouble napping. I would say it is because she was/is sick, but she has been acting like this for weeks and weeks (although the nap trouble started just recently, but she's having a hard time settling to sleep in the evenings for weeks now). It is almost as tiring some days as it was taking care of an infant! So, please say a prayer for us if you have a chance! I am convinced often that moms with children - especially those with more than one - need support in their homes rather than being isolated. Too bad we don't have the tight-knit communities of the past. I'd love to send my kids out to play with the other children of the village in a common play area while gardening and cooking and sewing with the other moms! :)

I have been spending some time really thinking about our homeschooling "curriculum" for K, and I am getting excited about it! It looks like lots of fun, and I am going to need to start ordering a few supplies... I need to decide exactly what we are planning to do and then map it all out roughly. Still thinking about what to do specifically for math... something basic, hands-on...