After a few slow sap weeks it warmed up and we were inundated, and life got a little busy. :) But when it's nice out we don't mind playing outside while we boil.
And drawing all over the driveway with chalk.
We collected 15 gallons of sap over two days; our biggest run of the season. Of course, it coincided with the FFA strawberries coming in so I was boiling late one evening and trying to make jam at the same time because the fridge was too full of sap to store strawberries and it's a wonder I didn't mess up something.
Sunshine, tractors, and "cowboots". Miri goose took a while to recover from her illness and laid around a lot (on the porch, the couch) and napped more than once.
Biography day prep- Cadence was reading and taking notes, I was trying to figure out how to sew "the American Costume" aka Bloomers.
As far as sewing quality goes it's pretty slap-dash, dress up grade work, but it gets the idea across (sort of historically accurate-ish) and she looks cute!
Third grade learns about pioneers and Cadence really wanted to invite her class to see how we make syrup since the process hasn't really changed.
She was so excited for them to come, and I think they were all duly impressed with real maple syrup.
I have a tendency to try and do to many things at once, so after the 3rd graders came I made ice cream for Chemistry. We were discussing thermochemistry, and freezing ice cream involves heat transfer, and therefore it was educational. Also, thermo is boring and it helped keep us all awake. :) One of my students brought a tank of helium in, so we had a helium break as well.
When Cadence was in Kindergarten, Perrin was tiny and some of the other moms made her Sunday school class t-shirts from one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish for Dr. Suess day. Miri was excited for her turn to wear it. 😊
Mr. Perrin likes to play in the sink.
The girls got invited to the Choir benefit that just so happened to be the same night as potluck. So Perrin got to go play at Abel's house.... except that he was not happy to be left behind by his sisters. And Bob put the wrong socks on him. He screamed all the way there, all the way in to the house (and then I didn't realize his boot had fallen off and ohmygoodness that was a problem), and thankfully, finally, he saw their toys and decided he was ok with being at Abel's house. bleah. Three is infinitely more terrible than two.
There was much argument discussion and grand planning of our jazz coffee house table theme, so I finally just decided to do something simple that didn't require paper mache mountains and/or more than minimal purchases. Scrabble it was.
Great minds think alike, Kelly and crew had the same idea. 😂 Maybe next year we'll do the paper mache fantasy mountain...
Perrin did sort of ok. He's not great at sitting quietly right now though.
I helped in the kitchen while they passed out desserts and when I was done Mr. Buster was in the hallway playing with the tractors Grandma brought him. "Grandma doesn't need those!"
Warm afternoons call for bubbles! (They wanted the hose, but it's not quite warm enough for that. Crazy kids.)
Perrin's new bubble leaf blower works really well and they went through a lot of bubble solution.
Unfortunately, super warm weather means cloudy sap and an end to sap season. Good thing we have a gator to help us haul our buckets back to the house. 😁
Shorts, cow boots.
And swings!
We had cherry pie and quiche for Pi day. :)
Cecily is in scholastic bowl this year and really enjoying it. (Which I love, because, I too, enjoy scholastic bowl.) They hosted the conference meet and I finally got to go watch. She got a couple of toss-ups and knew some of the bonus questions. I was helping run concessions during the only match they won. I have to restrain myself from regaling them all with my scholastic bowl memories.... 😁
Poor little boy, when you stay up too late and wake up too early....
Cecily got her braces off!! She had a couple of appointments pretty close together to measure for retainers and things. The first one Perrin must have thought I said "McDonald's" and not "Orthodontist" because he was not happy to be there and threw an absolute fit. And there's always someone I know in the waiting room so this time Shelly K. got to witness our general chaos. Ha. He did settle down, but then threw another fit when we got home and there were no french fries and ketchup (hence why I think he thought McDonalds?). Anyway.
Two weeks later when we went back, we were very careful not to mention "Dontist" OR "Donald's" and he was a perfect angel in the waiting room. We watched storm coverage on the weather channel and ate snacks and read books.
No more braces! Two years went really fast. Just in time for Emmy to need them. 😋
We made it to biography day! She kept herself on schedule and was pretty well prepared. Meet Amelia Bloomer, founder, editor, and contributor to "The Lily," America's first newspaper for women and popularizer of the "American Costume," aka Bloomers. 😊
So far we've done a suffragette, a prima ballerina, and a suffragette, who will Miri choose??
The sky looked weird this morning from all the dust in the atmosphere and storms were predicted right about when school got out. Well. The buses had pulled away from the GS and Perrin and I were waiting in line to pick up Cadence and Miri and the tornado sirens went off. The teachers pulled all the kids back into the school, which left us (me) panicking in the van. Cadence's class came back out when the sirens went off and her teacher graciously found Miri for us and by then the district sent a text that the older kids were sheltering at the middle school so we went home. They ate snacks in the basement while I followed the weather on my phone...
The sirens went off a second time for rotation that was closer than the first time, so it was 4 o'clock before I was able to go get Cecily and Emmy. They didn't seem to be too bothered, the school is probably safer in a tornado than our house, and they weren't obsessively watching the radar like I was. Bob had to go to the shelters at work too, so we all had stories to tell at supper. I don't like weather.
Otherwise we've had Elder Conference meetings, and Family hymn sing, and contractor meetings, and doctor appointments....
Our current FAQ's are about if/when/where/what we are building. And the answer is I don't really know. ha. Initial bids were very high, so for a while we looked into building a quonset hut to live in for a few years. But the cost to make a shed livable for several years is about half the cost of a house, and by the time we'd pay for a shed and then save up enough for a house, most of our kids would be grown and flown. So we're back to trying to build a house, just maybe not all of it finished out. I can live on plywood. We'll see I guess. One of the builders we talked to last summer showed us a graph of 'home builder emotions' and it was all up and down but trending up.... So far you could describe my home building emotions with a damped sine wave.
Also, I've got what appears to be a most probably benign pleomorphic adenoma in my parotid gland and that has meant several doctor appointments, sonogram, CT scan, and a needle biopsy. Pretty sure I almost passed out mid biopsy, a most unpleasant sensation. *sigh* I'll probably need to get it surgically removed at some point this year. So much money. And time. Anyway.
Blessings.
