The Garden

We have a small patch of soil we use for our summer garden.  It's about the size of a large dining table.  I was very intimidated our first summer out here.  Everyone does a garden.  Large gardens that require hours of canning to store all their produce.  I had never gardened.  But we do now.  This will be our 6th year to put out seeds and little starter plants.  We're not very serious about it.  But it's definitely a learning opportunity for the boys and we enjoy snacking from the plants when we're out playing.  That's how much our garden grows:  it has snacking capability.  No canning/preserving required (or even possible).  I think I'd be more interested in canning if I had a canner.  But I don't want to invest in one since we don't plan to live here many more years.

Random side note:  Our local school's mascot is a can.  Serious.  Go Canners, yah?


Here is this year's official Tilling of the Garden...

Paul and Rube are taking out some grass to expand it about a foot.

Rube is using a scooping machine to load the grass into the wheelbarrow.

Then he'll wheel it to the compost pile.

Time to till, but turns out the tiller is broken.

Tada!  Fixed by MY HUSBAND.

What will we plant?  Whatever.  Tons of tomato plants come up on their own.  Green beans don't do well.  I like squash and bell peppers.  We'll see.

Just around the corner from this picture are...

some cheery daffodils.

Today

Reuben woke up before the rest of us,

and because he was hungry,

he fixed himself some breakfast.

Paul found him in the kitchen.

Enjoying grapes and chocolate sheet cake.

On my most treasured quilt.

An hour or so later,

the Bobs (2 men named Bob)

came to knock out our shower.

The dust and noise became a bit ridiculous to try to teach any lessons.

"LISTEN TO THIS SENTENCE AND TELL ME WHICH WORD IS AN ADVERB."

"WHAT?"

So we went to church and painted Italy.

When we came home for lunch, we could see down to the basement.

Then a friend showed up with a peacock in his truck.

That's it's blue neck sticking out.

Now, for my favorite part...

A friend invited the boys over to play with her daughter

for the afternoon.

Ah.

So I blog.

With the dust and vibrations of destruction in my bathroom.

Perhaps I'll go for a walk

or maybe start sewing on a skirt.

I feel kind of lost.

Time on my own.

Italy

Seven days and counting until
the grand finale of second grade.

We are ending the year with the Fall of Rome
and using fun names like  

Constantinople and Maximian and  

Barbarians and Visigoths.

Peter created a relief map of Italy.

He studied the shape of Italy,
then drew an outline of it on cardboard.

He mixed salt, flour, and water into a paste.

He glopped and slathered it around.

And added the mountain ranges.

Once the weather gets into the 70s later this week,
I'll send him outside to paint it
to help the elevation differences stand out more.

Although, we may be too busy
riding bikes, going for walks, hiking trails, and 
playing in the tree house
to get to the painting.

Just imagine if we did live by the beach.  

We'd never get any book learning done.

Seventy

Wednesday-Saturday

It will be in the seventies.

And sunny.

Ah.

Finally.

Quilts

Reuben is quite fond of our basket of quilts.

He pulls them out and lays them flat all over the living and dining rooms.

He balls them up into a huge nest to look at books or just snuggle in.

Right now he has half of them in a corner of his room that he's using for his Spy Center (along with all our couch pillows, foam bowling pins, and a vacuum hose).

At night he likes to have many of them piled on him in his little bed.

Today we played a game of  
Find the Korean.

Scroll down

Scroll some more

Wait for it

It's no use keeping the quilts nicely folded up in the basket.

But if you come to visit we'll make a grand effort.

Realistically I can make no guarantees that they'll remain that way more than 30 seconds.

But, do come for a visit.

Bumpy Paper

We've discovered something new and interesting this week.

Braille.

It started out that Peter's Bible lesson this week is about Jesus healing the blind man.

His Sunday School paper had the Braille alphabet on it.

Which led to us wondering if our librarian could get us a book written with Braille.

She did and she even had a Braille machine that she is letting us borrow.

There were no instructions, so we had to figure it out.

And we did!

6 keys and a space bar.

See the bumps on the paper?

He wants to write out his whole Bible verse in Braille, 

so we may be at this awhile.

This has also led us to get to know who Helen Keller and Louis Braille were by reading their biographies.

Bible lesson, Language lesson, History lesson, Reading Lesson.

And because it was Peter's idea, he is super motivated,

which is not an adjective that often describes him.

The Breakfast Boar

I thought you might like to see the 200-pound boars
shot/hunted/captured
(I don't know the right lingo)
by our friends.

The ones I referred to a few days ago.
That provided us with breakfast sausage.
Maybe you don't want to see them.

Jeremy (Reuben's good buddy) is on the right in orange.

Yum, yah?

The Celtic Knot

Well, the Celts tried to invade Rome today

~in our history lesson~

but alas, even though they outnumbered the Romans by thousands,

they were too disorganized and were defeated.

So we had a Celtic feast in their honor.

Even though they lost.

They still have to eat.

A feast wasn't good enough for Peter, though.  He wanted to open a Celtic restaurant, reminiscent of our Roman Popina from a while back.  So we made our menu, decorated with art, turned on Celtic dancing music, and prepared the food.  And Peter just happened to be wearing his Italian soccer jersey.

There is a real Celtic Knot pub in Evanston, Illinois

that we borrowed the name from.

Local artists donated their work to add to the ambiance.

Happy diners came to enjoy.

On the menu: roasted chicken, roasted carrots, lentil soup, bread rolls, and wine (grape juice).

No utensils but our daggers (butter knives).

Fierce Celt

Chicken bone licked clean.

How fun to eat with your hands.

Don't even try to take my chicken.

Reuben wanted to "clink", so cheers all around.

Tasty meal and fun memories.

Pig

Hunting.  Lots of people do it out here.  One of those things where I feel like I need to talk to the parents of Peter's friends so I can know that their guns and bows are securely secured before I let him go over to play at their house.

Jeremy and Sean, friends of ours in town, spent the weekend in Tennessee on a wild boar hunt.  They each caught one with their bows and brought the meat home to eat.  Jeremy and Reuben are good buddies and he gave Reuben some of the sausage they made.

The package says, "For Reuben.  Jeremy's Wild Hog Sausage"

He couldn't wait to eat it this morning.

He got it out of the fridge and put it right in the microwave,

like this is what he does every morning.

(We never have sausage.)

Paul took over the cooking 

and shaped it into patties and cooked it in the skillet.

Yum.

It tasted fine.

We ate it with homemade rolls and fruit salad.

But as I was finishing mine I started thinking about it too much.

How do they know it didn't have some funky disease?

Any disease, really?

Oh man, they're super hairy beasts.

Did hair get mixed in?

Jeremy showed us a picture of his catch and it was ugly.

Ugly.

It digests better when you turn off your brain.

Reuben was thrilled and we all got to try something new.

Two Truths

Also could be titled:

Why You Want Me To Homeschool My Kid

Because if my kid was in your kid's class
he may very well tell the truth about
1. Santa Claus
2. Sex

That's right.  We had the sex talk today.
Why?  Because he asked.
And like many topics, I want him to hear it from me first.

How much awkwardness is absent when talking about reproduction with a seven-year old compared to talking about it with a preteen?  So much.  He just wanted the facts.  Nothing was awkward or gross to him.  Just trying to figure it out.

He was reading this book for his science lesson...

and flipped to the page about reproduction.

Nice big colorful pictures.

"What are these?"
"What are those?"
"But how do the sperm get into the woman's uterus?"
"Huh."

We talked about why he was born via C-section and introduced some new vocabulary.

And back he went to his lesson on the digestive system.
More to come, I'm sure.

We've read adoption books and talked with our social worker about telling Reuben his full adoption/birth history by the time he's 12, and it's just hard to do without bringing sex into it.  Her comment was that many adoptees learn about sex at a much younger age because they have questions while trying to figure out their past.  She said 7 was a fine age to introduce the topic.  Good thing.

What do you think?  When's a good age?

3 Ring Circus

We have had a lovely week of sunshine and have spent much time outdoors.

Yesterday Reuben found some worms in the backyard and created his own 3 Ring Circus.

Here he is feeding them, he said.

I don't know what.

But he was sprinkling something and 

it looks like he gave them some leaves.

Transporting them to their next attraction...

The slide.

He made a point to tell me he was being "very careful."

Last I saw them they were all still squirming.

St. Patrick's Day

What a great holiday!  Young Patrick gets kidnapped from England and taken to Ireland.  He eventually escapes and returns home.  Later in life he goes back to Ireland as a missionary!  Here's a cute Veggie Tales clip that tells Patrick's story...




In other semi-related news...
I got my sewing machine serviced this winter and am looking forward to making and creating with cloth and thread again.  It's been about 3 years since I've made anything (that would be when Reuben joined us).  It took 2 days to clear all the Legos and things that Peter had stashed on my sewing table. 

I found some St. Patrick's Day fabric and turned it into...

What does this face need?

A napkin!

By the by... The boys are King Nero, thus the crowns.

(Still in Ancient Rome in history.)

And I made a set of 6 for some cloth-napkin using friends here in town.

These napkins were practice for some more serious sewing I hope to do. 
I found a book on making skirts at the library.

 But I'll have to learn how to put a zipper in!

And I have a sweet pink and green quilt that needs to be finished.
Maybe if our next child is a girl I'll have more motivation to work on it.
Oh yeah!

And I have fabric designated to be made into a mei tai.

This is a mei tai - one I made for a friend.
It's a Baby Carrier commonly used in Asia that we like to use too.

 Nicole (my sis-in-law) is carrying a young Gigi on her front
and I've got a Reuben on my back.

See?

Fun fun.

To the Park

When the weather is nice like this
~60 and sunny~
we head to the park.
We time it so Peter and Reuben can play with the school kids who are out at recess.
Our town park is also the school's park
so there's no problem with all of us playing together.

Here's a conversation I overhead between Peter and his good friend Brandon (who also goes to our church).

Peter- You should love your enemies.
Brandon- No.
Peter- Yes, the Bible says to love your enemies.
Brandon- No.
Peter- God wants us to love our enemies.
Brandon- No.
Peter- Okay.  I know what you can do.  You can pray for him.
Brandon- No.
Peter- You should pray for him to be nicer to you.
Brandon- No.
Peter- Okay, just a minute.

Peter runs off behind a tree for a bit.  Then he comes to me (I'm pushing Reuben on a nearby swing) and tells me about the boy who isn't being nice to Brandon and that Peter just went and prayed for him for Brandon.  I gave him a high5 and said that was a great idea.  "You're a good friend."

Perhaps Peter's spiritual foundation is getting into place to filter life through.
I pray that we continue to love him and train him in God's love so he'll be ready to face more of life.
With God as his friend.

Updates

My Shoulder - So much better.  I'm so glad.  After 4 or 5 days of anti-inflammatories I could get dressed and do my own hair.  It (the hair) was a little wild for a few days.  Cheers to Paul for getting my hair in a pony tail.  And thanks to my doctorish older brother who reassured me my arm wasn't going to fall off.  Amazingly it didn't, but I wouldn't have been surprised if it had.  It hurt.

Diploma - Not found.  And I know I have 2 copies.  Somewhere.  Paul (what a guy) did find a set of my transcripts which will fill the requirement.  Interesting note about  my transcripts... Every semester shows a 4.0 until the last one - when I started dating Paul.  Again, what a guy.

Spelling - Strangely, still a fun time for Peter.

Reuben's tummy - Stepped on by Winnie (our cat) this morning, causing him to awaken before his time.  He's completely fine, but very dramatic about it.

Blueberry Farming Overseas - Becoming more than just a random idea.  Paul is taking a class on fruit production through the extension office of a nearby university.  And last weekend, or the one before, he took our family 45 minutes north in 20 degree morning weather to a fruit farm used for educational purposes.  We toured grapevines, apple orchards, and berry patches.  Paul got to ask blueberry questions and get numbers for contacts.  Hear that?  That was me taking a deep breath.

Korean Cooking - Halted by 2 devastating flops.

A soup with tofu, bamboo shoots, green onions, some other things I can't remember, and a mystery packet of seasoning that I couldn't read because it was in Korean.  Paul liked the soup fine.  And I did for a while, but the texture of the bamboo threw me.

What a trooper.  

Hope I don't drive him away from Korean food when I'm trying to do just the opposite - get him familiar with the flavors and eventually like them.  

Crave them even.

We'll have to eat out more often.

Next came lettuce wraps, again involving ingredients I wasn't sure of because I couldn't read the packaging.
  Note to self:  Learn to read Korean.

 Egg, black mushrooms, and mystery paste (see below).

 Such adventurous boys I have.

To make the spread for the lettuce wraps

I took a spoonful from the top tub

(which I think is red pepper paste),

2 spoonfuls from the bottom tub

(I do believe is soybean paste),

stirred in some sesame seeds and sesame oil.

Sound delish?

It wasn't too bad.

But all those ingredients are staples in a Korean kitchen.

And I have gobs of extra to experiment with.

Science project, perhaps?