Not the First Day, But a Great Day!

Hopers, 8                         Noodle, 12

It's the first day of....something!  Well, it's not really the first day of school this year.  It's not these kiddo's first day of their respective "grades".  It's not the first day of fall (boy isn't that a long way off for us Florida girls!).  I suppose I could say it's the first day of sitting down in front of books and papers and learning things from them for the month of August.

But that just sounds silly.

So here's the story.  As of the end of March this year, we decided to exit the public school system.  These two lovelies were begging for it.  Our family was needing it.  The timing was right for it.  Hey, when it's time to go, why wait, right?

I immediately started them on the next grade levels.  Hopers went from 2nd grade material to 3rd grade work.  Noodle went from 6th grade to 7th.  I wasn't about to buy curriculum for just a couple of months of school.  We thoroughly enjoyed soaking in these learning materials straight through the summer, punctuated by long periods of learning directly from life (our favorite kind of school) by trying new things, traveling, exploring nature, gardening, sewing, cooking, visiting friends and well...you know....doing.

So here we are in August, still...doing, learning and living.  But it's August, and I always take a "first day" photo of my girls on the front steps because I'm a creature of habit!

I just don't have a name for it.

Cheers to not having a name for it! (and bare feet too!)

Keeping Kittens Alive, and Other Things to Do Today

About a month ago, a new addition occurred in the chicken coop.

No, it's not more chickens.

This new addition came when my dearest husband decided to bring home a darling little pop-up camper, given to him by a generous friend.  The cost of the camper?

A kitten.

(Cue dramatic music)

What happens when your husband wants to get rid of the rats in his barn and then visits friends with a cat that had kittens.

Let's pause for a moment and surface to reality here people.

1. Two out of four people in my household are allergic to cats.
2. My husband has always declared he hates cats.
3. Our precious, beloved doggy, Poppy, loves cats..........for dinner.

Who, me? I'd never hurt a fly!

And so, based on these three facts alone, normal, sane people would just accept life as it is.  Harmonious and cat-less.  Who needs to complicate things, right?  I can think of a fistful of reasons as to why I'm not a complicated person, but the fact that I now have a cat, a dog, 31 chickens, 2 snakes and 2 kids under my care doesn't plead the case very well.  (We ate the pigs and sold the goats!) Not to mention, I would've never guessed my husband would be the one to instigate this latest bout of insanity.  

Meet Sherlock.

Ha! I laugh in the face of danger!

Sherlock currently lives in the chicken coop.  His favorite activities include hiding from the chickens and then springing out suddenly upon a hen, only to get pecked in the face.  He's learning quickly who's the boss.

Trapped between Mary Poppins and Florence Nightingale!

The goal is to have Sherlock one day be an Ultra Rat Killing Machine in the barn (otherwise known as a barn cat) while having a healthy respect for our feathered, egg-producing friends out there.  At first, he only stayed in the chick brooder, a screened cage in the coop that allowed him and the chickens to get used to each other visually. We are slowly allowing him more freedom.  At night, he has free roam of the coop, and I have even found him snuggled up, sleeping, with a broody hen in a nest box.

Sherlock hiding.  Little does he know, Shirley the Rhode Island Red is stalking HIM!

The true test of whether or not we can keep a cat comes down to Poppy. Her sweet, humanity-loving demeanor turns into wide-eyed insanity whenever she encounters any animal trespassing on her property.  Heck, it doesn't even have to be her property.  (Remind me sometime to tell you the story of why we don't bring her to the beach anymore......seagulls!!)

Squirrel?!?

So now we are smack dab in the middle of trying to train an old dog new tricks.  Like, don't eat the kitten, Poppy, or you'll cause a bunch of little girls to cry for weeks.  I have to give her some credit.  She's actually doing really well so far.  No kitten murder to report.  

We have introductory sessions between them.  "Poppy, this is Sherlock.  Sherlock, this is Poppy.  We like you both.  Please be nice to each other."  I light candles and play soft music while serving them tea in the parlor.  They talk about the weather and avoid eye contact.

Actually, we've been doing a very slow, daily move toward togetherness.  We hold the kitten and have the dog sit or lay down.  We pet them both and tell Poppy calmly and sweetly about 8 million times that she is a good girl.  This seems to be working.  They sniff each other. They roll their eyes.  No one gets too excited.  Today, I let Poppy watch as Sherlock walked around in the barn.  She chose to stay where she was for the vigorous belly scratch she was receiving.

Sherlock was glad.

I was glad.

Then I was sneezing.

Sigh...Can't wait to do it again tomorrow!

Snow Day: Surviving the Winter Storm of 2014

Yes, we live in Florida, and yes, today is a Snow Day. As in, it's Wednesday and schools are closed and mass panic is setting in. Agghhhhhh!!!!


We had fun playing with the bit of snow that did fall this morning.
 

The azaleas are rather confused right now.  It was 72 on Monday.

 

 
 

My garden seems to be suffering through being frozen alright.

 

 

 

The girls enjoyed throwing snow balls at anyone walking by.

 

Now for some hot chocolate and a movie (Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2).

  Hopefully we'll survive this Winter Storm of 2014!

Bert and Ernie

An interesting phenomenon has happened around our little homestead.

It's called Farm Animal Multiplication.

When a family can go from having a few little chickens hanging around, to an absurd number of chickens, to a sudden influx of all kinds of other creatures showing up--F.A.M. has occurred.

It happens.  I've seen it.  A totally documented phenomenon.

Bert and Ernie, the goats, recently joined us.

Perhaps they'll stay for a while.

Spring Break Kids, Chicks and The Egg

We had a big day today. It was the first day of Spring Break (Monday). We had 11 kids from the neighborhood and beyond come and play at our house, including Noodle, Hopers, Tobi, Tabi, Jeremy, Micah, et al. The kids had a blast playing hide and seek, building a fort in the barn, holding chicks, riding bikes around the yard, playing tag, doing Tinikling (a Philippino dance), and generally eating everything in sight like a plague of locusts.

Meanwhile, Victoria, our only fully adult hen who has been holding out on us laid her first egg!

It's little (she's a Bantam chicken) and blue-green colored (she's an Easter Egger breed) but we couldn't be more excited about it.

And in other news, the chicks are 4 weeks old now.  We have moved them to a large dog cage inside the chicken pen.  The other chickens don't like the presence of these intruders, so it will be a while before we can let them all freely mingle together.

Here's the role call, with how they looked a month ago when they were born and how they look today:





Uno

 

Smoky



Penny

 

Nugget





Checkers

We still don't know who's a boy and who's a girl, but it was too hard to hold off naming them. We tried to pick either/or type names, except Penny, which probably guarantees we'll have a rooster out of that one.

We're praying hard that they'll all be hens, and in 16 more weeks, we'll be cheerfully showing off their first eggs!!

Soccer: It's the New Thing

With the new year, new things are happening!  The good kind of new, not the scary, one-day-we'll-all-look-back-on-this-and-laugh-because-it-was-a-mistake, kind of new. At least I hope not.

But I digress.

My daughters are playing soccer.  There.  Good new, right? Yeah. They're having a blast, so yeah, good. Noodle was pretty nervous when she got to her first practice and realized she was the only girl on her team.  She got over it quickly.  Hopers is just happy to be running around an open space, kicking things.

Here they are, just before their first games. Incidentally, both girls had their first games at the exact same time on two fields right next to each other. And because their daddy was at work, he asked me to take video of their games. And how does a mother accomplish this? By standing in between the two fields and spinning back and forth, of course. Here is a sample of my awesome videography. 

(I'm especially fond of pondering the differences between 5-6 year-old soccer techniques and 8-11 soccer techniques.)

Camping, Airplanes, and Kids Going MIA

Memorial Day Weekend:  The Let's Do Something Weekend.  The Go Somewhere Weekend.  The Remembering Weekend.  We did.  We went.  We remembered.

To start off, the girls and I, along with my Mom and the Fearsome Four, decided to go and visit Paw Paw and Snookie in Pensacola.  In order not to trouble my grandparents too much, we camped in their yard.  It was great to see them and I'm still kicking myself for not taking a picture of them.

However, I was fully reminded as to why we Floridians don't go camping in the summer.

It was hot.  Stinkin', buggy, 100 degree hot.  We had to find some things to do other than sit around and sweat during the day.

Saturday, we went to Pensacola Beach.

It was Tate's first time seeing the beach.  A first beach trip is a momentous occasion!  He loved it.  He let us swim him around out in the water.  He enjoyed digging in the sand.

It was still hot, but at least we could get wet!  The water was perfectly clear of any seaweed or jellyfish.  Though, we did see a big fish.  Possibly a barracuda.  It was in a hurry to leave us, so I couldn't say for sure.

Next to us, there was a middle-eastern family with two young boys.  The boys had life jackets on all day.  After lunch, I looked over to see a commotion going on with the parents and some other people.  There was an empty life jacket sitting next to their blanket.  A woman helping them ran up to us and asked if we had seen the little boy.  He was missing.  Everyone along the beach began searching for him.  All I could think about was that empty life jacket laying there as I scanned the blue-green water.  The mother tearfully held her chest and called for him, running down the sand.   The father stood in the water, beating it with his fists and pulling his hair. 

For about 15 minutes, everyone was holding their breath, until someone found the little guy in the bathrooms.  Mom and I were so relieved, we had to take a moment to wipe our tears and breathe deep.  He wasn't kidnapped.  He hadn't drowned.  He just didn't tell his parents where he went.  The happy day could go on.  (At least for most of us, anyway.  I'm sure that little guy was in a heap of trouble!)

That evening, we ate dinner with Paw Paw and Snookie and then tried to hit the hay.  Between the roach joining me in my bed in the camper, Tobi and Tabi's dogs barking every hour on the hour, Teegan's asthma coughing, and everyone needing to go to pee (which made the dogs bark), I remembered why I needed to bring my own tent next time.  I also considered sneaking off to a hotel.

The next day, we went to the National Naval Aviation Museum.  If you know anything about Pensacola, you know there's a Navy Base there.  This museum is on the grounds of the base, and it ain't no rinky-dink operation.  It was definitely the high point of our weekend.

Arguably, it was also the low point, but I'll get to that in a minute.

This place is awesome.  The kids loved it. Teegan's first question about the place was, can I touch an airplane?  Boy, can you....  Everything is touchable, rideable, get-in-able.  Teegan was in airplane heaven.  But not just airplanes.  There are helicopters, jets, hot air balloons, air craft carrier decks, blimps, and space stations from throughout history.

There are also lots of detailed models of different aircraft carriers.  One of them had a fun "Where's Waldo" type of scavenger hunt to do.  Can you find the sailor who is seasick?  There's a little guy throwing up over the side.  Can you find the man feeding the ship's dog?  Can you find the cook peeling potatoes?  That kind of thing.

My pictures are slightly misleading.  Somehow, it looks like we were the only ones there, but in reality, the place was slammed.  Everybody and their grandfather was there. It was Memorial Day Weekend.  The museum is FREE.  And it's a hundred degrees outside.  What would you be doing?

But the museum is also really big, too, so we had plenty of room to roam.

This machine gun thingy rotated as the kids cranked the wheel.

Every nook and cranny had something to see or climb on.

The floor tiles were made like an aircraft carrier landing strip.  The kids pretended to be airplanes landing and taking off for a while.

After, we drove over to Fort Barrancas for a picnic lunch (a historical site also on the base).   We had to do a quick height check, just to make sure everyone is still growing!

Left to right:  Noodle (age 10), Tobi (8), Hopers (6), Tabi (6), Teegan (4), Tate (2)

We were planning on going to the zoo after lunch but instead decided to go back to the museum to finish our tour.  That's how much we like the place.  There was an entire second building that we hadn't explored.

Back at the museum, the kids ran around fighting over who got to be first to sit in each cockpit.  Things spiraled downward to the point where Hopers and Tabi went MIA.  Mom had to call security, probably replaying yesterday's beach event with the missing boy over again in her mind.  I didn't get the chance to wonder if my daughter and sister had been kidnapped, because I was outside in the parking lot, waiting for a locksmith. (Remember that low point of the weekend I mentioned?)  I had locked my keys in the car, knowing it the moment my door snapped shut with an internal "Nooooooooooooo!!!!"

Sixty dollars later, I had my keys just as Mom came out of the museum hauling six cranky kids behind her.  Once again, no one had been kidnapped (or drowned), but I'm pretty sure there was a bit of prankster-style hiding going on in an airplane cockpit by two little girls who shall remain nameless.

The next morning, we sweated our way back through packing up a campsite, bid our goodbyes to Paw Paw and Snookie, and hit the road for home.

Just News and Stuff

We have so much to catch up on, where do I start?  If I start with one of the kids, the other one will complain, "That's no fair!"  Gosh I haven't heard that phrase very much have I? (insert sarcastic tone)  If I start with myself, that might seem prideful and a bit "Me Me Me," so I'd better start with Seth.

Seth

He's great.  He's out hunting turkeys right now with his brother Mark. 

His current projects are working at the fire department, working for EMS, fixing rafters in the barn, playing horseshoes in the barn, and next weekend, he'll be cutting down The Giant Dead Tree (I think there's a blog post to come about that) with my dad in our front yard.

Noodle

Back in February, I told you all about her upcoming surgery.  Well, she had her surgery on March 13th.  The surgeon seemed a little less optimistic about her recovering her full hearing abilities after getting in there and seeing the reality of the damage.  Her eardrum had been liquified by the tube and the tube was floating around in there.  She's still healing.  We are currently waiting for the skin grafts to fully take, the packing to dissolve, and praying for great results.  Right now, she's pretty deaf in that ear and the other ear is currently clogged up too.  On the up-side, she got to miss school for an extra week before Spring Break and not do any of the class work.

In other Noodle news, 4th grade is going superbly for Noodle as she continues to make all A's and a B.  They took their BIG field trip last Friday to St. Augustine, which Noodle was rather nervous about, but had an awesome time.  It was her first time being out of town without parents or grandparents.  They went to the alligator farm, the old school house, the fort, the trolley ride, and had dinner on St. George Street.

Her current projects include homework, drawing, reading, knitting, and playing The Settlers of Catan boardgame.



Hopers

This happy girl is having a wonderful Spring with all her school activities and friend opportunities.  She recently visited Wakulla Springs, as I wrote about here, and the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab in Panacea.  She is growing like a weed (currently the tallest kid in her class) and does everything with boundless energy.

Her current projects include helping Mama cook, using her imagination with friends, riding her bike, and snuggling.

Me

I have been gardening like a mad woman for the past month or two.  I can't help myself.  The yard is like a drug and I need to get out there for my next fix!  (Why am I sitting at the computer? Oh yeah, the blog... Focus, girl!!)  In addition to the two peach trees, three apple trees, five pecan trees, and the blackberry patches that were already here when we moved in, I have added even more food:  A satsuma (mandarin orange), another peach tree, a loquat tree, and two blueberry bushes.  And that's just the more permanent fixtures.  I dug up a second garden patch and now have okra, tomatoes, bell pepper, and basil planted from seed.

In other news, I recently picked up a job.  Not only do I like blogging (almost as much as I like gardening), but now I'm going to get paid to blog.  Woohoo!  I'm now the blog writer for the super awesome Michelle Lawson Photography company based in South Florida.  Head over there and check out my first post on April 8th.

Hey! I'm Leaving!!

Alrighty.  If you haven't heard me blab enough yet about China, just wait, because I'm about to spend the next two weeks blabbing about China.  Yup.  We're going one more time, in just a few days, to get Tate, and I'm going to blab as much as possible. Mom is going (she has to, since she's the one doing the adopting).  Dad is staying home (he has to, because someone has to watch the kids).  Seth is staying (once again, that kid thing).  And I'm going.  Yipeeee!! Can you tell I'm excited?  I'm excited.

In honor of the tradition set forth in previous years (last time), I will now visually disect the travels that we are about to set upon.



 We begin in Tallahassee, Florida.  Thank goodness.  I'd hate to have to begin somewhere else.

We will fly on some tiny puddle jumper with four or five other people to a real airport.  Atlanta!

From there, we will fly for an ungodly amount of time (14 hours and 45 minutes) over the top of the world where by the end I will be ready to chew my right arm off in exchange for a first class seat.

We will arrive in Seoul, South Korea.

I found it interesting that North Korea shows no roads or terrain on Google Maps.  But I digress...

We will get on another plane and fly to Beijing, China.  Yay! Finally!  We will spend only one night in Beijing this time.

This day, we will get on a.....train!  A super fast bullet train.  We will reach Jinan, the capital of the Shandong province.  It will take only a few hours.  This is where Tate's orphanage is, so they will bring him to us later in the afternoon.

After about a week, we will fly, with Tate, down to the southern city of Guangzhou (say it with me, "GWONG-DJOH").  This is where the U.S. consulate is in China, so no matter where you adopt your child from in this country, you have to come here to finish the process.  My family has always stayed on Shamian Island while in Guangzhou for many reasons, but this year, we won't be able to.  It is a very small island, and one of the major hotels is closed for renovations, causing the other one to be fully booked.  So, we will be staying in the city.  We will still visit Shamian Island, though because we have to take Tate to the government clinic for his visa physical and visa photo.

Two weeks will have passed.  We'll be ready to get home!  A nice flight from Guangzhou to Seoul will begin our departure.

From Seoul, back over the top of the world.  Oh how I hate this flight.

Back to Atlanta....

And then home again home again, jiggity-jig.  (Note: I will not actually do a jig at this point, as I will probably need to be carried off the plane and into my bed.)

See you soon!