Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Turkeys in the Straw

On Sunday, we went to our church's annual trunk or treat.  The kids love it, but the biggest hit of the night was a bit of a surprise to me:
See that itty-bitty straw pile? The kids couldn't get enough of it.  And I'm not talking about the preschoolers, although they did climb on it a couple of times.  No, I mean the 8-12-year-old boys.  They had so much fun on such a small bit of straw, even when they had bags of candy they could be eating or light sabers they could be whacking each other with.  Straw.
 
Here Darth Vader is ready for action:

 
And Indiana Jones loves his whip.


 And our little pumpkin makes an adorable pumpkin!

Friday, October 26, 2012

Doll Cape

Today I sewed a lot.  It was a rainy day, and in between playing games with the kids, I finished Malachi's Darth Vader costume and sewed for the etsy shop.  I made a black cape to go with Malachi's costume, and I had been thinking about making doll capes but didn't have a pattern.  Mom had encouraged me to make up some holiday doll capes, and Missy had given me some faux fur from her grandma-in-law's stash, so I had been toying with the idea for a while, but today I actually did it.
I made it out of fleece and used the faux fur trim.  I am so happy with how it came out.  I've tried to make patterns before but never had such good results as this.  Since I had made a child-sized cape, I had a general idea for how to make a doll one, and I made the pattern pieces myself.  I even have plans to make a similar cape with a hood. 

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Little Roosters

This morning was the first time I've heard any of the chicks try to crow.  It's funny.  At first, their voices don't quite have it.  It sounds a lot like a teenage boy's voice cracking, except in a rooster crow.  I'm confident that these two are roosters:
We call the one on the left Puff and the one on the right Foghorn (after Foghorn Leghorn, of course). 
I'm still not sure about this black one.  I'm thinking rooster, but not positive:
The other two, Crest and Angel, are definately hens.  Here is Angel in between the two roosters:
And here is another view of Puff:

They are all doing really well.  And so are the 4 older hens.  The old girls are offically over a year old now, as of late July, and so a really full-fledged hens, not just pullets.  I figure it will be about 6 weeks or so before the new hens start laying eggs, but our older ones are doing a great job.  We had 11 eggs over 3 days, which works out to almost an egg a day per hen.  Then they had a couple of slower days, with 5 eggs over 2 days.  I'm guessing we get just under 2 dozen eggs a week right now.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Pumpkin Carving

 
The pumpkin on the left was designed by Malachi.  He drew the picture of how he thought a jack-o-lantern should look, and I carved it.  The one on the right I also carved, from a pattern booklet we have.  Lydia and Elijah picked it because it was an owl.  They aren't as impressive in the light, but at night lit up, they look really cool.

 
And, no, I didn't even cut myself this time.  (That scar is still there, as is the knot.)

Monday, October 22, 2012

Cabin

Well, we had a great weekend. But first, here is Lydia on her field trip Thursday:
 
Lydia enjoyed the pumpkin patch.

This was so funny.  The hole to look out is too high, but she really didn't care.  She kept getting behind the grim reaper and making scary "ooo" noises and saying, "I'm a Halloween!"
 
On Friday, we headed to the cabin.  We had a great weekend there, and we celebrated this little man's birthday:

We were short one kid, since one of my nieces is sick.  :(


These two were inseparable.

Elijah caught a bluegill.

My sister did the girls' hair.  Isn't it cute?

Elijah begged to include this picture.  He and Malachi loved climbing on the logs.  You can see some of the new cabin in the background.
 

 
Malachi had a great time: a birthday, cabin fun, new toys. 

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The next weekend

I've been trying to dig myself out of my massive laundry pile before we head off on our next weekend adventure.  Yes, I'm crazy like that, planning 2 camping-style weekends in a row.  We are headed to my parents' cabin on the lake for a nice long weekend.  The kids start fall break on Friday, so we're off to the lake!

We can't wait.  It's been a year since we've been, and I can't wait to see all the things Dad has done since then.  (For those that don't know, he's building a cabin there.)  The kids are ecstatic.  Elijah has been bugging  me for months about going to the cabin, but it didn't all come together until now.

I've also been trying to re-make a fake leather maternity jacket into an Indiana Jones jacket for Halloween.  Shh, don't tell the kids it was originally a maternity jacket.  Plus, I'm painting the control panel onto slick black long underwear for a Darth Vader costume.  Luckily for me, Lydia's going to be a pumpkin, and we actually have 2 pumpkin costumes already made and ready to wear.

The weather is perfect today.  The leaves are looking so pretty, the sun is shining, and it's about 70 degrees. So nice.  It should be cooler tomorrow, but as long as there's no rain, it will be good for Lydia's pumpkin patch field trip.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Camping 2012

We just returned from the big family reunion camping trip of 2012.  Every year, Nathaniel's family gets together at a state park and camps as a unit for about a weekend.  We (and several others) went on Thursday, and by Friday evening, everyone that could come had arrived.  Our site was hopping with 8 kids and 4 adults, since we had our friends with us.  Many sites have a camper and a tent or two, so that we can all fit as many people into our sites as possible.  The weather was beautiful, and we had already started loading up when it started to sprinkle this morning, so we were able to get packed up fairly well with little dampness.  The kids had a ball:
Kids on a bridge

Lydia roaring at Jake.  They were having a lot of fun playing together.

Roaring at each other.  

The boys enjoyed playing Heroica with Jake and Aunt Autumn

Grandma goes for a walk with her entourage.

My kids all love owls, so the nature center's stuffed animal corner was a hit.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Dose of Cuteness and a Loss

How's this for a dose of cuteness?
My nieces came for the weekend, and the kids had a ball together.  We didn't take many pictures, but this one was pretty darn cute.  The girls loved the chickens and spent a lot of time chasing them and having Lydia pick them up.  They also named most if not all of the unnamed ones.  I'm not sure what all the names are, but they named the black and white chick "Angel", so I kept hearing, "Angel, come here!  Come here Angel!" but it wasn't for me.

We gave Malachi his birthday present early so he could get used to riding a bike with hand brakes before we take it camping next weekend.  He is so proud of his new bike.
 
 You can't tell from the picture, but he also lost his other front tooth this week, so there's a nice gap there.
Although we had a great time and no one wanted to see the girls leave, I'm glad they left when they did.  Just a couple of hours later, Nathaniel and the kids were playing in the backyard when the neighbor's dog jumped the fence and killed Fluffy.  The kids were right there.  I was inside.  I heard Malachi crying and at first thought he was hurt, until I recognized his grief wail.  There is nothing quite like Malachi's grief wail.  It doesn't happen often, but when he cries like that, you know his heart is just broken.  The last time I heard it was the last time chickens died, in July, but this time, he actually saw it happen.  I ran outside.  Nathaniel was trying to get the dog and yelling at the kids to go inside.  Lydia and Elijah were crying, too, but you couldn't hear them over Malachi's soul-wrenching wails.  I grabbed Lydia and took Malachi's hand and got them inside.  Elijah followed, and I dumped Lydia onto his lap for them to cuddle together while I rocked Malachi.    Eventually, we found out that one of the barred rocks was killed, too.  So after a great weekend, we had a very sober evening.      

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Tie Dye

Today, the boys had early release from school, so during Lydia's nap, I let them do some tie-dying.  They had a lot of fun, and although I laid out 6 shirts, 8 socks, 1 sheet, and some fabric for them to dye, they still wanted more.  So then they had fun spraying the grass with the leftover colors:


I spent all morning setting up the consignment sale.  We've never had so much stuff.  It's really amazing the amount of clothes, toys, and furniture we got this year.  I hope we have big crowds to buy it all.