Rob is doing overtime today.  He's doing two shifts.  It is planned.  So last night I put chicken in the crockpot for lunch today so he could have a real meal before going to work.   I so hate this crockpot.  It burnt it.  It never ever should have.  I NEVER burnt stuff in my old crockpot.  I bawled when I saw it.

We were short on money last paycheck.  And I decided to shop in Forks.  As a result we are extremely short on food.  Payday isn't until Friday.  We have a ton of money in our account at the moment, but its for building not eating.   I just sobbed.

I'm still mad about it. 

I had two left over cans of Ravioli from camping and Rob went and picked up a third with money we shouldn't be spending.  We don't have time for pulling a rabbit out of the hat and making something better.

Darn it all.

Its the simple things in life that make one mad.  Its not the over the top ones.  I think I'm gonna go run around the circle like I make my kids do and see if it calms me down. 

Pant, Pant, Pant a half of one side of the house's trim done.

This is a me job.  Its a treat.  The paint job was fine, it was just quite boring, and there's two other houses within a mile with the exact same colors and the exact same modular.   I don't like looking like the Jones'.  *snicker*

I couldn't really justify redoing the whole house, but it occured to me I could do the trim a different color.  Its gonna look smashing.  And if I get really creative I might add another color inside the trim.

But for now I'm gonna sit cause its hot out there LOL

Good morning

Just a quicky blog before we take Rob to work.  Its been a quiet morning.  I slept in due to being up late with insomnia.  *growl*  But that's okay when I did fall asleep I slept hard.

School is going quite well.  The kids are thoroughly enjoying it.  I'm waiting for my popsicle sticks to come and then we're gonna start playing that game.  Today we talked about the value of a hundred which they grasped extremely quickly.  *cheers*  Tomorrow we're gonna start adding two digit numbers.  I don't anticipate any trouble with it.

The kids writing assignments have been hysterical to read.  If my scanner was plugged in I'd share them with you.  I just might cause I figure everybody needs a few giggles.   When Samuel grows up He's gonna be a Ninja.  Well that's what he said anyhow.  Do I get a prize for not giggling to his face?

Kaylin wants to be a cook, a biker and a swimmer.   Zeria wants to be a biker cause they have cool moves.  (bicycle not motorbike).   I'm enjoying this way too much.

If you have good first and second grade writing topics I'd love to hear them.  I'm always up for inspiration. 

We've done "If I had super powers."  "When I grow up."  "My favorite animal."  And a couple others I can't remember at the moment.  LOL

And we are over half way through our first Droon book.  The kids are enjoying it and Zeria declared this "the best year of school."  LOL

Good morning.

It woke up foggy this morning, but now it appears to be sunny.  I hope the fog continues to burn off.

Rob got the deck finished.  It looks nice.  The stairs to the deck aren't done as he was hoping to use the ones from our entry way, and they weren't quite tall enough. 

In the middle of the deck building the kids were crawling under the house just cause they could.  Unfortunately it created a family tragedy when they found Zeria's cat quite dead under there.  *sigh*   She was broken hearted and cried and cried and cried.

There's a couple ironys in this.  Rob and I are 98% sure its Samuel's cat--which has been missing for several months.  But umm she wouldn't buy it.  We buried it, and cuddled the kids, and moved on.   I keep praying Prince will come visit soon, and we can have a rejoicing party.  Samuel isn't a pet person and just well didn't care his cat disappeared.  We won't be getting him another one.  LOL

The good news is the two kittens we have.  Rainee is old enough for a pet, so she gets Rosey.  He's  all black.   Yes I said he.  And his name is Rosey.  Rob and I just keep snickering over that.  Zeria gets Paint.  She is black except it looks like she got dropped in a bucket of paint as she has white feet, and white on her tummy, and a bit on her face.   The name is appropriate if not original.  Letting Zeria keep Paint smoothed the rest of the ills away.   Paint is only 4.5 weeks old so it will be a bit before she can "truely" keep her, but thats okay it smoothed it over as mommy had told them we were gonna have to give Paint and Rosey away.

We have farm cats.  They aren't indoor pampered cats.   Stuff happens to them unfortunately.   But we have to have them to keep the mouse and rat population down.   Zeria just learned a little bit about life yesterday--the not so fun part.     With this death and the missing cat we're still at our 6 cats they just changed faces.     If I sound callous I'm not.  Its just living on a farm one learns a bit different perspective about animals.  They have to or go nuts.

Last week the new family did return.  I assume that means Ralph's doctrinal talk went well.   The church has had to buy new chairs.  Which amuses me a lot.  We only had 25.  There all full every week now.  *beams*   We're growing.  We've been using folding chairs for the extras.  And in the summer we do have a few fisher folk that stop by when they're in town.   The good news is the church has room to grow without needing a building project.   There's an unused Sunday school room next to our "sanctuary".  Removing the wall would be a one day project, and our building committee thought it sounded like a good idea.  I don't know when it will happen but its there if I keep inviting people.  *snicker*

The building committe btw is said tongue in cheek.   There is no organization in this church its too small.  WE all are the committee. 

I close with this giggle. This is the Princess and the Knight fighting.

Good morning

Its the weekend.  Throws confetti around and cheers wildly.   Rob always has three day weekends thanks to his working ten hour days.  I'm ready for the weekend.

Its also gorgeous outside.  I hope it stays. 

I have no plans for today myself, but I think we'll be heading into Forks to get wood for our back entryway.  Yup we will just checked with bossman.  *snort*  

We will be working on the weekend on the projects for awhile and it will be worth it, but I'm already mourning our adventures.  I love our adventures.  Ahh well, I will be greatful for the house improvements, so its all good.

I've been craving wild blackberry pie crumble.  Its kinda the end of the season, but I heard the season was running a bit late.  So after nap we decided to load the dogs & KIDS up and go see if I could find a patch.

These are not the domesticated Cascades that went wild.  These are the little tiny itty bitty fellows that are ever so wonderful if not a pain in the neck to pick.  I've been picking them every summer since I was old enough to walk.  I was my dad's "best" picker for years. 

And we hadn't gone yet this year.  My kids love picking them, and were excited.

We found one patch fairly quickly jumped out cleaned it up, and I decided we needed one more.  We all barrelled back in the car and headed up a logging road to find more.  They grow in clear-cuts, and burned out patches.  Its God's way of making sure nature breaks down the branches, stumps, etc left behind.

We headed up quite a long ways before we found a superb patch.  We actually didn't pick it out, but Jer was cranky, and I knew I still needed to bake the thing.  We had enough for one desert so I figured we should go while the kids were still enjoying themselves.  Note here in parenting.  If you do "icky" jobs and only do them as long as there fun your kids will enjoy work. 

We loaded into the car and drove up to a turn around and headed back down.  The kids counted dog heads and realized we were missing Achi our dumb black chihuahua.

We turned back to the patch we'd just left.  She wasn't there.  The kids "swore" she had been with us at that patch, but I wasn't so sure.  We headed down the road back to where we'd come from.   We were really concerned as we thought she'd try to follow us and there's a maze of roads.  We met a logger and asked him if he'd seen her about 1/2 mile from our first patch.  He said no, but if he did he'd bring her to the post office.  We got to our first patch and she jumped out of the bushes in front of the van ready to go.  

We're greatful we found her, but...umm I don't think the dogs will be going with us again, regardless of the fact they guard us from the cougars and bears.

Good morning

I slept in this morning.  I'm not sure why, just been tired.  I will have to get moving and start school

I was relooking through the Math Scope & Sequence's again to make sure my kids were as behind as I thought. 

And their not their ahead.  Go figure.  With the exception of the double digit adding/subtracting which is what we're starting to work on there at third grade level.

*cheers*  So I will relax, and believe in myself a bit more.   I like finding suprises like that.  ROFL.

Wommie gave me a excellent idea for place value games, but ironically the day I vented about them not getting they all clicked it in.   Go figure.   But I'm going to be using her game for multiplication--only changing it up.    I want my kids to learn to count in 3's, 4's, 6's, 7's, and 8's.  They can already count in 2's, 5's and 10's.  So we'll be using her popsicle stick bundle game for that--as soon as they come in the mail.  Oriental Trading company delivers quickly, so it should be Monday.

We will be rolling dice and if they get a number that they can bundle into the number we're working on (i.e. 3)  they can bundle three popsicle sticks with a rubber band.  The first kid to over a hundred will be the winner.   It's learning without pain.  LOL  

We also love counting games in the car.  So help me out you creative people.   What can you count in 3's when your driving down the road?  I know fours.  You can count horses four legs, cars four wheels, dogs four legs.   But I'm running a blank on 3's.  Silly things I conive over huh. 

Personalitys

Its funny how your kids personalitys develop.  Kaylin although she is my firstborn.  Is so her daddys daughter.  She is a low boiler.  She just putters around in the world of her own making asking very little.   She's doing third grade work--and is ahead of both Zeria and Samuel in school.   We are trying not to let Zeria and Samuel realize this, and keep praying about how to handle it.  She's the hard worker, the gracious one.  She will erupt, but you have to really tick her off.  If she gets upset she'll just go crawl in a corner with her blanket and suck her finger and cry these heart breaking tears.

She loves purses, and containers, and places to hide treasures.  She's always collecting.  Everywhere she goes she collects.  Bird feathers, bottle lids, rocks, sticks, there's gotta be something she can collect.

She's the child I thought for so long I would never have do to that whole not having a man thing.  But God gave her my beautiful bundle of joy.  And I love her.   I have to work hard to not let her get lost in the crowd of the rambunxtious Zeria, the troublemaker Sam, the whiny Jamari, and the giggly Rainee.   She got the job of the middle child, and the middle girl.

But she's precious, and today she just made me grin when I saw her.

She's not a baby anymore, she's a beautiful girl.   Even if she does make unique fashion statements most days.  *Snicker*

Good afternoon

We got up extremely early this morning and headed in to sign papers for our second.  We will be getting the money put in the bank tomorrow.  Which means you'll be seeing our "new-dos". 

Our first project is a back entry-way.  Currently you can't get out the back door unless your a monkey.  Rob isn't even willing to use the steps that are there.  They are crooked, little, and the first step is about 18 inches straight down. 

I will run to Forks tomorrow for the supplies for that.

This project gets first precedence because the "major" project is a front porch/sunroom/entryway.  We will be taking our old multi-level front porch down, and replacing it with a large sunroom/entry way.  It will have 2 French Doors and 3 sets of windows across it.   Our current entry way space is about 2x2. square.  Its useless to say the least in a family of 8.    The entry way will have a window seat the full length of the windows with cubicles underneath it for each child to store boots/hats/etc.  

And yes I'll be taking pictures as we go.

The other project is to replace our windows with vinyl.  All of the seals are broken on them which means in ability to see out of them for most of the year as they are always steamed up.  We will get a small rebate from PUD for doing this which will help.

Anyhow. 

I won  I know what we'll be listening to back & forth on our long drive to town.

For a LONG time.

These are typically $25 new for one plastic case full.  So, its was an extremely satisfactory bid to me.  And my kids will be in seventh heaven.