Monday

“Our little girl is gaining an ounce a day”??? Do they HAVE to post that on the ticker above, I mean really, is that something that makes mothers think “aaaaawe”…I…don’t …think….so.

Patched 7 pairs of jeans, in the middle of 4 huge hampers of laundry and praying I do not set off our septic alarm like I did last Monday…whoops, got all 4 c of my goat tea down(pregnancy tea), got more weed pulling done, made three freezer meals and get to go to go hear the Mount Baker Youth Symphony Orchestra tonight, a perfect end to a perfect day.

2011 Soap Swap

It arrived! It all started three months ago when it was announced on the Soap Queen Blog that they were doing another swap. Feeling a lot more confident this year, I jumped in and made 12 bars of yummy swirled goat milk soap scented with Brambleberry’s Wake-Up Rosemary. After their six weeks of curing, I carefully wrapped each one and I sent them in. We have been sitting on pins and needles waiting for our box to arrive, silly soap people we are. It came yesterday. Some of these people are just incredible artisans. I told the children we are hereby going to bath twice a day now to sample all the soap <jk> well, I might be.

 

About a third of the soaps were made with goat milk.

 

BTW Ruth E, I could pick out the rebatches easily, maybe we ARE doing it right? The gingerleaf was a rebatch and they just threw in botanicals and color to make it pertty. Paul said it borders on a Man Soap.

 

My favorite out of the box? This one..”Energy”. It smells JUST like Smarties and I loooOoooove Smarties. It is even round. ;) It has such a wonderful aroma and a silky smooth lather.

Kittens For Sale/Free

Why not start early, right? 

 

Yesterday Bailey was huge.

 

Today Bailey is small. (I should write children’s books)

As I have mentioned in previous posts, if you contribute/condone PETA please skip this post. It all started when we noticed the toms hanging around a couple months ago. We suddenly had three large toms sleeping/marking around the garage, barn and woodshed. There was one tom in particular that was HUGE and obviously took ownership of my two female cats. He was a solid black tom and sired the last litter of kittens, giving us predominantly black cats, which aren’t the easiest to get rid of.  

 

So I did what all good, responsible cat breeders do and decided to manage my cattery and implement a selective breeding program. I had Jacob grab and load a .22 for me and then have the kids watch for the tom. The next day the kids were all excited, Lucifer(named after the cat from Cinderella) was sitting out by the guest cabin. I grabbed my raincoat, .22 and me and my big belly stealthfully snuck out to the yard and hid about 50ft of him. He sat pretty and I popped him! The crowd went wild in the house! He was dead and he was the biggest cat I have ever seen. A couple days later, Jacob told me the gray and white tabby bred Bailey and we today have beautiful, colorful kitties to prove it.

Disclaimer 5/9/11 : We live in the country. These are not *neighbors* cats, these cats are all feral…except ours. They carry disease and are either starved to death or are eaten by the coyotes. We are not going to trap and relocate and all that goofy stuff there are just too many.

The best bathtub toys…

The kids and I ran to the local farm store to get salt for our water treatment system. Now, this is the same store my eldest son drools over their ducklings. For a couple months now he has gone in and talked to the gentleman about ducks, knowing he’ll never get them…at least not in this house.

One Khaki Campbell named “Belle”

Well…eh-hem..that was, until this dark day when Mr. Aamott was throwing salt bags in my truck he told Jacob he has a couple big older ducklings that weren’t selling because they weren’t cute anymore and that is what people want…cute. “How about I sneak them in your truck?” he says. Jacob asks me and I say “no way”. So he pulled the trump card and asked if he could call Daddy. Me in my wisdom thought “go ahead, Daddy will back me up, he knows I detest ducks” Next thing I know Daddy is happily agreeing and a big box with not a couple, but seven, free ducks is plopped on Jacobs lap.  Thanks Matt.

   

One Cayuga named “Cai”

 

 

Five Blue Swedish – Orange Peel, Daffy, Ping, Theoduck Roosevelt and Donald

 

Swimming lessons

   

It all just happened so fast. I’m game for most anything, really, I feel like I am an open-minded parent when it comes to pets, but ducks?  Worthless.

The Day The Dumptruck Came…

Having a dump truck come to our house isn’t anything out of the usual, they visit at least once a year carrying some goodies. But this time, THIS time, it landed on a little boys 6th birthday. My sweet little Micah, still complete with all his teeth, skinny as a rail, more energy than a bolt of lightening, got to witness The Dumptruck…on his birthday. Miker, aka Biker, is 6 <sigh>. He is a man who knows what he wants. We have been counting down this birthday since Jan 1. He handed me a paper two weeks ago with colored drawings of his gifts, cake and birthday dinner. WOW, that’s how I like it.

 

 

Tonight we will have hotdogs roasted over an open…fireplace…with marshmallows, fruit/jello salad, a watermelon and grapes. He will have a volcano birthday cake and he wants the blue tractor/loader from Lynden Farm and Garden, art supplies and a trip to the Dollar Store. Grandma took him in and bought him new Georgia Romeos, he is one happy boy. He refuses to wear them outside and get them dirty.

What better way to start your morning than to rise and dissect a body? I realized we are heavy on studying plants, animals, rocks, trees, mushrooms and naturey type stuff(my thang), but have never formally studied the human body(not my thang). While at the Christian Heritage Conference I visited Timberdoodle and found this great kit called the Squishy Human Body by Smart Lab. We bought it, got a few books from the library and all the children have eaten it up. Micah can identify all the parts listed in the kit and give it’s basic function, we’ve only had it a week!

The Crawford, Lee and Boyd Families

This was posted on the Crawfords site this morning - “When I cry, it’s not because I’ve lost my home and all that is familiar to me.  It is mostly because I know I don’t deserve this kind of love.  And it has been a clear picture of God’s grace to sinners who don’t deserve mercy.

FEMA came by and told us that we would have government assistance available to us.  I just smiled….”thank you, but we don’t need”.  And it’s true.  The hands and feet of Christ have been more than sufficient to provide for our needs….

…May the Lord be glorified.  May all who see these stories understand what power and passion lies in the blood of those bound together in Christ.”

http://www.generationcedar.com/main/

Last week, a family with 13 children lost their home, all their possessions and finally, their father after the tornado left. Down the road several more families sat huddled in the Boyd's basement. 2 minutes later most those families’ houses were completely gone. As horrible as it all sounds, their testimony of God’s provision and deep love for them just…well… you need to read it. I encourage you to grab your children and watch each of these three quick videos documenting the destruction less than a week ago and the hope Christ gives to those who loose “everything”. One thing that sent it home for us was all the 15 pass vans tossed and crumbled like toys.

Soap Scent Ideas

So, we are working on a Squaw Creek Farm Soap, you know, the type that will get the compost, turkey stuff and goat grain from under yer nails. We are using our eggshells as an exfoliant (yes, when ground to a powder they are used regularly in soap, they do not scratch like you’d think) But what scent to use? Any ideas? All the country scents that remind me of the farm are definitely not bottled and sold. I wish I could find “Horse”, “Hay Bale”, “Goat”, “Alfalfa” or “Wet Chicken Feathers”. Alas, they haven’t caught on to those scents, but when they do, I’ll be at the head of the line. 

Brambleberry just emailed me to say they received my soap for the May 2011 Soap Swap! We are impatiently awaiting our box-o-soap.

Ready for 2011-2012!

Bring It On. The last couple years of school have definitely been getting better and easier as we streamline things little by little. Adding students is easier, picking curriculum is easier, and I hate to sound like a commercial, but the Christian Heritage Conferences has greatly influenced our family and homeschool vision over the years. We just had another great weekend there.

We drove down early Thursday afternoon so I could curriculum shop Thursday night and shop I did. Five students now runs me several hundred dollars(not close to thousands, nor will it ever be, still can’t understand why the schools get >5k for a student?!?)  and let me tell you, it was fun!  It was like a candy store, I had my list and most everything I wanted was right there, free shipping. Over the course of the year we saved, tax refund, puppies, gifts…the Lord blessed our efforts and supplied so faithfully as He has in the past. Praise be to Him.

Things I learned: For my younger children, I am their educator teaching them, most importantly, Godly character using writing, mathematics and reading to build those character qualities. For my older children I am no longer an educator, but a facilitator to their God given interests and desires in education. Having them seek out what educational desires they have. Christ is our Core Curriculum, not math, language arts, handwriting, science, history and the rest. It is real life experiences, the Hebraic methods, walking side by side that will teach my children the most valuable education God’s Word requires..the only education God requires Paul and I to give. I just realized I can not list, in a nutshell, what I learned, there is just too much. As a home educator the pressure builds over time to provide bigger/better/more, which is taking my focus off what our core curriculum should be, Christ.

We have renewed vision and purpose, we’ve gathered all our next years books and have now closed the door to the lures of *bigger and better* and are ready to teach Christ in continued sanctification by the Lord Jesus in our home. I need it just as much as my children.

On a humbling side note, Friday, we were in the parking lot teeming with white vans(let me tell you, tie a string on your antennae if you own a white van!) I was making sandwiches and Paul was organizing foot races with the children to run their energy off. An older gentleman purposefully walked toward our family and right up to my husband. Pretty soon they were laughing and Paul was introducing children, we did not know him, he just wanted to encourage us on our *big* family. “May God bless you” he said as he walked away reaching out his hand to shake Paul's and quickly walked away.

Paul stood there looking a little stunned, looked at me, looked at him, looked at me. “What’s the matter?” I said. Paul held out his hand and there was a neatly  folded $100 bill. There were so many times the Lord seemed to affirm us and give us such peace. 

I’d love to show picture’s, but again, my camera is now dead for good. It really stinks. Canon and Walmart have let me down. ;)

 Voddie Baucham is key note speaker at next years conference and I highly recommend hearing him. He is probably the preacher most listened to in our home via audio, his homepage has a great list of sermon audio downloads.