Pizza party!

Rob had the great idea to reserve one of the rooms at our community center down the street and have a pizza party with a couple of families that we used to see regularly, but have not seen so much in the last few months. We were able to surprise the kids on Monday with this fun pizza party!

The kids all had a great time playing on the playground, learning to play pool, watching a video, and just getting to spend some time together (oh yea, the pizza, juice boxes, cookies, and brownies were a hit too!). The adults all enjoyed the time of food, fellowship, and encouraging conversation.

Thank you "F" and "B" families for joining us, it was so good to spend time with you! We missed you Mrs. B, hope you are feeling better!

Life lessons

This weekend Peanut had an unfortunate encounter with one of our cats.

It seems that Peanut was left out of his cage.

The cat was just doing what cats do: hunt rodents.

Mr. M noticed that the cat had come down the stairs with Peanut in its mouth and gave chase. Miss E heard the cries for help and between the two of them they managed to rescue Peanut. However, it was too late. Though Peanut looked "ok" I could tell he was not. Mr. S and I sat and held him for a few minutes until he died. The kids took turns holding Peanut, and everyone had a good cry. Then they started talking about getting a new hamster. The big kids started asking if they could pool their money to get Mr. S a new hamster. We will give it some time (a couple of weeks?) and then let them do that if they are still interested.

This is an opportunity for learning life lessons about death, responsibility, and caring for others. This is the reason we got Peanut, though we didn't think the hard part of the lessons would be so quick in coming. Mr. S had been so diligent in caring for Peanut, making sure he had food and a clean cage (and even baths, oh my!). We had been so pleased with the care and responsibility he was taking.

rainy days

It's been raining here for about a week, hard rains with loads of wind. Thursday a tree across the street went down.

Friday was one of those days that just felt like a baking and reading day. The big kids seemed to be inspired to bake as well. Mr. M helped Miss J bake up a little batch of muffins from a mix.

Miss E helped Miss C mix up some batter of her own. I was impressed that Miss E was careful to put in little bits of everything she thought was needed to bake up a little loaf for Miss C. Miss C liked adding in some mini chocolate chips. It actually turned out OK, but more like a spongey cookie. Miss C enjoyed it well enough.

I had a great little helper making up bread for lunch. It's been about a month since I've made bread, so everyone was excited to have it for lunch. I need to get back to making it regularly.

While we waited for the bread to bake I read a bit of "The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe" to the kids. I've been reading a C.S. Lewis biography to the kids, which got us wanting to read about Narnia again. It was a great way to spend a gloomy rainy day!

experiment

Mr. S has been asking me if he can do an experiment for the last few days. This is an easy one, but always fun.

I just put "powders" in cups (flour, baking soda, baking powder, powered sugar) and gave him a liquid measuring cup filled with vinegar and let him see what the powders would do.

He thought this was great. Once he saw the results we talked about what was in the cups and how they reacted.

Starting early

Today Miss E had the job of making zucchini bread for our lunch. Of course Miss J wanted to help, as usual. However, Miss C was a new addition to the job today! She was having blanket time near the table while I was doing some chores. She quickly lost interest in her blocks when she saw all off the action happening at the table. Miss E asked if she could join them?

Set up with a bowl, spoon, flour, a measuring cup, and some spices she was one very happy girl (notice the apron?)! It was so sweet to see her "helping" her sisters make lunch, and how she is learning so early to serve her family. Her little servant's heart is such a blessing to her whole family already! Miss C is always looking for things to help with and clean up, and then clapping after she does the job. Her big sisters are setting great examples for her, they are all such blessings to us!

Shenanigans

Mr. R has turned into quite the trickster around here. The other morning I noticed a rope tied to a closet door. I followed it to find out where the other end was....

It was tied to the bathroom door. There were a couple of little brothers in there.

Fortunately those little brothers saw the humor in the situation and everyone got a good laugh.

Pulling his own...

teeth!

Mr. M has several loose teeth, and last week one of them was just about ready to come out. He had me checking it a couple of times a day to check to see if it was ready (I pull the teeth around here). It was so close, but just not quite ready one evening. I told him to work on it before bed and in the morning and maybe by the next evening it would be ready?

Well, I never had the chance to check it again! The next morning he pulled it out all by himself!