Here’s Faithy

And Kyra

And yes, they have indeed tucked blankets through the slats of the top bunk to form girly little cocoon beds. They actually do somehow sleep in these things… at least until I catch them and return them to people-land. Maybe it’s like a hammock.

And how, you may ask, did they come with this brilliant idea? How the heck should I know! The minds of small children are bizarre, inscrutable places full of curiosity and frivolity. Who knows what goes on in there. Yikes!

Here is Henry’s cuteness for the day. I got him dressed today but didn’t put any shoes on him. Apparently that was not suitable to his footwear needs, so he found something he could put on himself.

Yes, those are Faith’s red patent leather church shoes he’s wearing. Really, this child is too cute for his own good.

See Kyra’s shoes? Henry had those on first. I’m not entirely sure how she got them off of his feet without some sort of cataclysmic event. Like the orange blob? Faith insisted on being in the picture and wearing that. Why? Did you not read the previous paragraph re: children’s minds?? Especially that child!

Personally, I think Henry’s shoes kind of work with the truck. Of course, everyone knows that red patent leather shoes go with everything.

Rachel

P.S. Grandpa and Grandma (and anyone else), here are two more recent photo albums if you want to peruse. Got some halfway decent shots.

Steps for LIfe Walkathon 5/15/10

Stonehenge Road Trip 5/29/10

The kids’ baseball games on Friday we played in the pouring rain. Being a giant wimp, I spent the first half of Anika’s game in the van yakking with my buddy Lana, whose kiddos also play. About halfway through though I started to feel guilty about not watching, so I grabbed my camera and off I went. Anika had batted before I got there, so I watched the rest of the inning and her on the field and then they were up again. She was the very last kid to bat, and it was the last bat of the entire game. Here’s what she did:

Clever ducky!

Rachel

This is Kyra’s first year of school (she’s five, turns six in July), and I’ve switched curriculum with her. The other kids I taught to read with TATRAS; and while it was okay, it just seemed to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r and the phonics didn’t always translate to the spelling side. Georgie didn’t pick up any reading speed until he was at least eight despite having been through all of TATRAS and several years of school. Trinity read right off the bat but was was an atrocious speller.

This year I switched everyone over to Spell to Write and Read and started Kyra off with it. I also decided to be bold and teach her cursive right from the start instead of printing. Okay, so that’s not bold like jumping from moving aircraft or engaging in hand-to-hand combat with an armed assailant, but it’s educationally bold. For me.

The basic philosophy of SWR is to skip the whole teaching them to read thing (which I loathe doing anyway because it is painfully slow and repetitive and awful) and just teach them to spell. After they hit a certain point, all the stuff that they can spell they will also be able to read and the reading will sort of organically occur.

Kyra and I have been faithfully practicing her 70 phonogram cards all year (which she only forgot two of today and she’ll have completely down by the end of next week), and guess what? It seems to be working. She’s starting to pick words off of things like the Amazon box and wants to read her readers more often. Learning cursive right away hasn’t seemed confusing with reading things in print. Here is today’s spelling test:

Awesome, huh? Go, Kyra! In case you’re trying to figure out the marking system (which I’m sure you all are), the double underlines are silent ‘e’s, and the single underlines are for double letter phonograms.

The other children have all had a marked improvement in both spelling and penmanship except for Georgie whose penmanship remains borderline terrible despite my best efforts, death threats, and blackmail. Hmmm, blackmail. Maybe I should tell him I’ll post his stuff on the blog. He’s almost to the age where parental embarrassment becomes an effective disciplinary tool. Hehe. His spelling isn’t too bad though. I guess in another year or two I should teach him to type.

In other, unrelated news that also falls under the “School” heading, I now know where the Duero River is, which until two weeks ago I had never even heard of. Yay, geography! Oh, I’m supposed to be teaching the kids school? Right. I knew that. Learning all this stuff myself is just a happy byproduct.

Rachel

Hmmm, everything was quiet upstairs, too. Maybe I’ll just peek in her bedroom door, I thought. She was in there all alone and smiling at me so I went in to see her. Mmmmm, I love curling up with Mommy.

All week she’s been up super-early and has already had her walk with Daddy and shower before Daddy gets me and the other kids up to go read at 7:00. I hate getting up early. I’m still sleepy and then everyone gets mad at me for crying when I don’t get to sit on Daddy’s lap. Well, I get to sit on Mommy’s lap and that’s almost as nice.

Not today though! Today is Friday and we’re all sleeping in, except for Daddy who isn’t here so must be off at work already. Haha. More Mommy for me. We curled up for half an hour, all lazy-like and then Georgie found me and made me breakfast while Mommy took a shower.

After breakfast the other kids all went downstairs, but not me! I went in to go watch Mommy put on her make-up. Hehe. She wasn’t watching me though. I sneaked into her room and stole some more of her Altoids. Yummy!! I got in trouble yesterday for doing that. Also the day before. Plus the day before that and Monday. But they’re so yummy.

I went back to Mommy before she even got suspicious, but Grandma was in there talking to Mommy. I love Grandma! She picked me and put me on her lap and gave me kisses. Then she told Mommy that I had been in the Altoids again. How did she know? I was sneaky! Mommy glared at me but that was it. Does that mean I can have them?

Grandma put me back down and Mommy started doing her hair. Mommy has lots of hair. I hate it when she picks me up and her hair is on her shoulder right where I want to put my head. I point at it and Mommy moves it for me. I thought maybe I’d go see what was going on in the kitchen. Interesting things are always in there.

Still no brothers or sisters back up from downstairs yet. Darn! I moved a chair over to the counter so I could see what was up there. Hmmm, the coffee cup Mommy brought home yesterday from shopping was sitting right there. Yummy! I love coffee, but Mommy always says I can’t have it. I don’t know why. It tastes great!

Uh oh. Grandma came in looking for me. It’s like she knew I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing. Oh no! She took me back to Mommy and told her I was drinking her coffee. How does Grandma know everyhing??

Next was time for a diaper change and getting dressed. Mommy did it today. Usually Georgie does it. He gets really annoyed when he doesn’t get to do it, but I like it much better when Mommy does it. She’s not so rough. I get to wear my new clothes today. Plus she actually put on my shoes. I loooove shoes!

Grandma came in and we looked at some pictures on her camera. Some were of Brown Bear and me. Some were of my sisters and Georgie. Mommy went to go make herself some breakfast. Smells yummy. When she brought it over to the table, her plate had sausage and biscuits and eggs and gravy. Oooh, I really wanted some. I asked her for a bite, Kyra asked her for a bite, Faithy asked her for a bite, and Anika asked her for a bite. She told us all no and said to shoo. I don’t get it. I thought we were supposed to share.

The big kids were busy doing their Math and Mommy was helping them. Faith was playing a really fun game with some puzzles. I wanted to help, but when I moved the pieces Faith started yelling at me. Then Mommy yelled at me. I went to the school shelf and started looking at the books. Then I thought I’d just check to see what was in the black filing cabinet. Apparently, I’m not supposed to mess with that either.

I thought about going to find some more of Mommy’s Altoids, but when I went to go look they weren’t where I left them and I couldn’t efind them anywhere. So instead I just wandered around her bedroom until I found the phone. It doesn’t look like the other ones at home. It has a cord thing and you can’t walk away with in and put it behind the couch. I tried but it would only go as far as the end of the bed.

After awhile Mommy went downstairs to do something on her computer for a bit. Some of the other kids were upstairs and some were downstairs with her, but I looked through the window by the front door and saw some really interesting people across the street. I thought I’d just go see what they were doing so I headed on out.

I only made it about three steps before Georgie caught me. He’s really big! He was not happy. Then Mommy showed up and she was even more unhappy. Going outside without someone else, it turns out, is a really bad idea. Mommy and I had a little trip down the hall. When she got to her bedroom, she found the phone.

Now we’re back downstairs and I’m sitting right beside her on the couch. It’s kind of nice curling up with her, but I’m starting to get bored. I wonder what’s in the kitchen.

Henry

Huzzah for consignment sale season! Okay, maybe not “huzzah” because that word irritates me. It always looks like it should be a palindrome (which, of course, is the nickname of Sarah Palin’s pet dromedary), but never is which I have decided to take as a personal affront. Anyway, today I got out of bed at the crack of 7am (hey, it’s a Saturday. Seven is a crack for Saturday.) and dragged my sorry self all the way down to the Expo Center with a wad of money and high hopes. Also coffee.

And… mission: success! Here’s what I bought:

Henry:

• 4 pr shorts
• 9 short sleeve shirts (5 tees, 4 church)
• 2 swimsuits and a rashguard
• 2 long sleeve shirts (maybe 3, I forgot already)
• 2 pr long pants
• 1 pr jammies
• 1 hat
• 1 pr brown tennies (soooo cute!)

Faith:

3 pr pants ‘cause she outgrew all her long pants in the last month

3 short sleeve shirts

1 shrug sweater

1 pr church sandals

Kyra:

4 short sleeve shirts

3 pr shorts

1 skirt

1 dress

1 pr brand new water sandals

1 pr brand new church shoes

Anika:

1 pr shorts

1 tank top

1 dress

1 pr pajamas

1 pr water shoes

1 pr church sandals

Trinity:

1 purple dress that she’s going to flip out about

1 swimsuit

1 pr church sandals

2 pr ballet shoes

Georgie:

2 pr shorts

2 pr swim shorts

1 very nice pair of water sandals

So, what does all that make? I have no idea. Kinda curious though. Let’s see: 1 hat, 2 pr ballet shoes, 2 pr pajamas, 4 skirts or dresses, 5 pr pants, 5 swimsuits plus a rashguard, 8 pr shoes, 10 pr shorts, and 19 shirts plus a shrug.

And how much was all that? $235. Henry is completely dressed for the summer and I’m mostly done with most of the others. Yay! The whole shebang in three hours and only a little over half my summer clothing budget. Yay! Wanna see how nerdy I am? Here’s my shopping list I took with me:

Yes, me = giant nerd, I know. But how else will I remember what I’m supposed to be getting for which member of the nerd herd?

Well, it is now 3:30 and I guess I should probably head home since I finished shopping three hours ago. Me and my laptop have been sharing some quality time at Panera. Mmmmm, French onion soup and solitude. What could be better? Actually, going home after consignment shopping is always pretty fun. It’s kind of like being Santa Claus for the day. Ciao!

Rachel

Thanks to el crappo economo, my website business started tanking in August 2008. By January I was in full web redesign mode to try to breathe new life into a dying entity. By April, we were offloading expenditures, such as the kids’ school (I started homeschooling). By June the hit was hard enough that we moved in with my parents who graciously decided that they would rather we lived with them than in our van. By July, the website was costing more in payroll than it was bringing in, so I shut it down. It was weird for about a week and then I recovered. I don’t miss it at all. Kinda miss the money though…

Most of my summer was spent trying to figure out school for this year, which now seems to be humming along rather nicely. We’re on Christmas break at the moment, but the kids generally are enjoying their studies and I like teaching. We’re doing ancient history this year and I’m thoroughly enjoying learning all of that since somehow that part sort of got skipped in both high school and college (and I took a whole year of Western Civ at Portland State! So depressing.).

Our Egypt studies were a huge hit, and Georgie has begun to develop an appreciation for ancient literature. He thought the Epic of Gilgamesh was great (it was a young person’s version that sort of glosses over that whole part with Shamhat taming Enkidu). I read the full version myself for the first time and loved it! Now we’re going through stories of Greek heroes in prep for next term’s ancient Greece studies. They keep pointing out that they’ve heard half the names and other references from Harry Potter. Brilliant!

Georgie and I have had several conversations about worldviews and how the cultures we’re learning about differ from what we believe and why we believe what we do. He’s starting to recognize this stuff in reconstituted form when he watches television now, which has prompted some interesting discussions. Bwahahaha! My evil plan to make him aware is beginning to work even at eleven years old. Awesome!

George has been working himself to oblivion trying to make up for my lack of income generating-ness. He’s doing quite a good job, too. A couple weeks ago he was off on a shoot from Tuesday until Friday in Buffalo, NY and Cleveland, OH. That was the week there was a horrible storm in that part of the county. I worried about him the whole time he was gone, and after the story I heard when he returned I felt totally justified!!!!

His outgoing flight was from here to Newark and then they took a prop plane from Newark to Buffalo. George and his business partner guy Tim sat in the front of the plane right next to the flight attendant and Tim’s a pretty chatty guy so they spent the whole flight talking to her.

About fifteen minutes before landing they hit some pretty choppy turbulence due to high wind followed by a loud BANG at which point the flight got much worse. George spent the rest of the flight trying not to have to use the barf bag but Tim noticed that all the color drained right out of the flight attendant’s face and she suddenly got very quiet. The plane felt like it was listing with the pilot fighting to correct for it.

After they disembarked, Tim had to return to the plane to retrieve a forgotten item. The flight attendant was there and furtively confided that the plane had lost an engine. As in losing one of the two engines on the plane. In a windstorm. The flight got in around 8 or 9 am. By then end of that day both the Buffalo and Chicago airports were closed due to snow and wind respectively.

But by 3pm George and Tim had finished their work in Chicago and were headed down the interstate to Cleveland. After checking into the hotel and having what George described as a “terrible dinner,” they hit the proverbial sack (or hay depending on which part of the country you are from). By this time the interstate they had driven on to get from Chicago to Cleveland was also closed due to foul weather. But wait! The fun just never stops!

Around 11pm my time I received the following phone call:

George: Hi.

Me: Hi. Isn’t it one in the morning there? And what’s that weird noise in the background?

George: We’re at the hotel. That’s the fire alarm. Everyone’s out in the hall in their pajamas.

Me: Umm, sweetie, if the fire alarm is going off in the middle of the night, don’t you think it might be a good idea to get out of the hotel?

George: No, it’s minus ten degrees and blizzard conditions out there. Besides, I think it’s a sewage leak. There’s a bunch of water down the hall. The fire department is coming. We’re on the second floor. It’s fine. Oh hey, I think the alarm finally shut off. Oh, nope it’s back.

Me: George, sewer leaks can have fumes and weird things that are flammable. I think you should go out of there. Like now!

George: I gotta go. They’re sending us all to the lobby. Bye.

Charming! So after two hours of standing in the lobby, it turned out to be someone’s fire sprinkler went off and sent water gushing down the second floor. George and Tim got moved to the third floor where they got a couple more hours of sleep before heading back to work.

The rest of their trip was uneventful although even more sleep deprived since they went to a late movie, didn’t go to bed until midnight, and then had to get up at 3:30 to catch the red eye back home. I didn’t find out about the whole airplane engine debacle until I picked George up and Tim spilled the beans. I don’t think he was planning to tell me that part at all.

Considering the fact that I was worried already and the weather got so bad while they were there that every airport and road they used got shut down within hours of them being there, it was probably good that he didn’t tell me about the airplane when it happened. Then neither of us would have gotten any sleep. And now my January plans involve reinstating our life insurance and getting on LegalZoom to set up a will.

I think that’s all for today. There is one more story from this summer that I want to write down before I forget it entirely and then I’m hoping to post with a little more regularity, so I hope you four readers feel extra special now! Stay tuned tomorrow for Georgie and the Amazing Escaping Snakes!

Rachel

9/18-9/20 @ the old Gresham Goodwill Store ~ Super Kids Resale

9/25-9/27 @ Portland Expo Center ~ Just Between Friends

9/25-9/27 on NE Sandy and 16th ~ Pass It On

10/16-10/18 @ Washington County Fairgrounds ~ Pass It On
If you sign up to sell with either of the Pass It On sales, please put my name in the Referred By box when you sign up so I get extra $$ (that would be Rachel Shubin in case you are totally daft and have forgotten).

11/14-11/15 @ Red Lion Hotel at the Quay (Vancouver) ~ KidKonsignNW
These guys have a 65% payout for consignors (as opposed to the 70% starting bracket that everyone else has); however, they are the only one that has a presale on Saturday night for consignors (usually the presale is for volunteers only) for the 50% off on Sunday.

They all have a presale the day before opening for volunteers and consignors, and that’s a good way to get the really nice stuff. Also, I think all of them are allowing first time Moms into the presale too, but you have to go check their individual websites and sign up for an entrance pass. So, can you all guess what I’m doing next weekend?

Rachel

Then last night was a lovely jolt back into reality as we got slaughtered 22 to 3 by one of the best teams in the league. Even their girls hit way out past our center fielder. Plus, their pitcher was pitching short balls that seemed to find the plate at the last moment. The first time I was up, I let three strikes whiz on by without even swinging because they looked like they were going to be balls. Duh!

Also from yesterday, now I have a beautiful two square inch purple bruise adorning my left shin right below my knee. It matches the one and a half inch bruise on the same shin just above my ankle that I got last week (and yes, I did measure both bruises, ’cause why wouldn’t you??). Apparently I need to work on catching grounders on grass. Those tend to pop up at all kinds of weird angles because the ground is uneven, and they seem particularly fond of hitting me in the left shin. At least they aren’t popping me in the eye! Since I play infield most of the grounders that come my direction are on dirt which is much smoother. Good thing too! My next ball-related purchase is going to be shin guards because hey, me = wimp. I don’t really mind having purple lumps on my legs (when I was in Jr. High I played touch football with the boys on the blacktop every lunch break for two years and had permanent scabs on both knees for that entire time), but I don’t like not being able to sleep because my leg hurts any time anything touches it. Kind of obnoxious.

Otherwise things are going pretty well around here. We’re starting to settle in nicely, and I’ve been working on school curriculum for our next term which starts next week. In addition to our usual coursework, we’re starting two new subjects, Botany and Drawing, both of which I’m pretty excited about. The Botany book is put out by Apologia and is awesome. I come from science nerd people (like sand people but without the sand and the Banthas), and Apologia’s stuff is just as in depth as any science person could hope for when teaching their nine year old. When a book explains in Chapter 1 the term binomial nomenclature including the breakdown of the Latin roots of each word, you know that the book is going to be great.

Okay, well I’m off. You guys have a lovely holiday weekend, and may your 4th of July partying be safe and include lots of nice weather.

Rachel

The side garden box

Gardening is so much more fun when your big sister helps you!

Blue-eyed Trinity Flower (also a few other things like
peppers, green onion, carrots, romaine, basil, oregano)

Anika, Super Sweet Varietal

See! We really did plant a square foot garden. Hopefully it will actually grow something (weeds don’t count).

Rachel

Small problem: our backyard is tiny. I was pretty sure this was going to be the death knell for my gardening dream, but then a bunch of my friends got all hung up on this crazy thing called Square Foot Gardening and my garden fantasy was reborn.

The idea is pretty simple. You know how all your seed packages say things on the back like “Space two inches apart in rows eighteen inches apart”? Well, instead of planting in rows, you plant in one foot squares. Instead of planting in eighteen in rows, you plant each seed two inches apart in all directions. So you can fit 36 carrots in one square foot.

You build a 4′ x 4′ box on a pedestal and then fill it with brand new gardening soil (he has some special mixture but we just bought bags). You mark off your box into 16 one foot squares and then plant one crop in each square. Since you have new soil that is separate from the rest of your yard, it doesn’t have so much in the way of weeds and is all full of nutrients plants like instead of whatever old brown stuff you have in your yard. The box dimensions make it so that you can reach to the center of the box from wherever you are around the outside.

We don’t have a decent spot for a box, but happily we already had planters all around the deck that were about 2′ x 10′ on one side and 2′ x 6 on the other. George has been planting stuff in there practically since we moved in, but he sweetly transplanted all his things elsewhere in the yard so I could take over the planters.

Last weekend we planted basil, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, green onions, lettuce, strawberries, and a sunflower before the weather decide it needed to have a 50mph windstorm. Charming! It’s been raining ever since, but hopefully we’ll be able to put in the cucumbers and snow peas plus more tomatoes and peppers shortly. The kids have been enthusiastic (well, George less so until I told him he was responsible for the strawberries), and I’m looking forward to yummy things! Yay for spring!

Rachel