Technical Difficulties

I hate technology! Well, at least I have a love hate relationship with it.

I got a new phone. Something I've been wanting for at least a year, since the power button on my old phone stopped working.

Hazzah! Right?

Except not.

Because the new phone isn't working right. For whatever reason, it thinks it's my new phone, my old phone, and Aaron's phone all rolled into one. Bad.

My texts are getting messed up. I've lost all my notes. I'm having to redownload everything I originally had which was supposedly saved on the cloud. And the biggest pet peeve of all. I cannot get my pictures off my phone. I have tried everything from hell to breakfast, but no. If I plug the phone into the computer to remove pictures manually, the computer doesn't recognize my device. If I try to do it online through icloud, or google photos etc, only a selection of my pics show up, and it's a different selection every time, and they STILL won't download onto the computer. And of course, they are supposed to automatically photo stream onto my computer, but that hasn't been working right for years now, so I don't know why the new phone would be any different.

And no, I can't blog from my phone. Blogger doesn't support my phone. Or me. Apparently.

They've done away with the Blogger App. And if I just do the web version, it crashes every time I try to upload pictures to a post.

Ugh! Don't they know I've got almost a month's worth of baby pictures to document!

I am so incredibly, utterly, completely, thoroughly, altogether frustrated.

I guess I need to go into a Sprint store...with six kids...hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah! (That's my maniacal laughter.) Right, so....

I'm sort of, kind of, maybe, potentially toying with the idea of switching over to Wordpress....that won't solve any of my phone problems....BUT, they have a mobile app, and I could at least blog from my phone. Which would at least put my pictures somewhere other than on the phone, so that when I can stand it no more and chuck my phone directly out the window, all will not be lost. :)

Anyone have any experience with Wordpress? Do you prefer it to Blogger? Why or why not?

At 3 Weeks We Venture Out

I had to. For my own sanity. I could not remain tucked in my house one moment longer watching out the window as fall passed me by. Fall is my favorite time of year, and I needed to be outside renewing my relationship with the crisp air and the changing leaves. So I begged.

Aaron loves me, I know, because he got all the kids ready for church by 10 and packed up a tasty lunch and drove us all up the canyon so we could spend a few hours with Mother Nature before he dropped Cal and I off home again and took everyone else to 1 o’clock church.

I swear he looks like the next Ralph Waldo Emerson. Haha!

Little Miss Mayhem recently lost both front teeth.

“Mama told me to make a special point to remember the best times in my life. There are so many hard things to live through, and latching on to the good times will give you strength to endure, she says. So I must remember this day. It is beautiful and it seems like the best time to live and the best place.” -Nancy Turner, These Is My Words

Feeling rejuvenated, Cal and I were able to come home and have a nice rest while everyone was at church. We went to Aaron’s parents house for dinner for the second Sunday in a row. I’m so grateful for their willingness to feed us. Besides the two Sundays, Debbie has brought over several dinners during the last few weeks, and I can’t even describe how grateful I am for it, or what a relief it is to eat delicious home cooked food without having to cook it myself. She has saved us from cereal dinners many-a-time. (And to a constantly starving breast-feeding lady, that is a HUGE deal, just the thought of cereal dinner makes me want to cry, because no matter how much cereal I stuff in my face, I know I’ll be hungry again in 10 minutes.)

Wake up slow.

Anyways, happy three weeks old Baby Cal. I’m glad I got to introduce you to fall in the canyon. I’m glad you are surrounded by a big, noisy, mess of people who love you and look out for you. You’ve got it good, kid. And we’ve got it good having you here.

Have You Got a Brook in Your Little Heart

Have you got a brook in your litter heart,
Where bashful flowers blow,
And blushing birds go down to drink,
And shadows tremble so?

And nobody knows, so still it flows,
That any book is there;
And yet your little draught of life
Is daily drunken there.

Then look out for the little brook in March,
When the rivers overflow,
And the snows come hurrying from the hills,
And bridges often go.

And later, in August it may be,
When the meadows parching lie,
Beware, lest this little brook of life
Some burning noon go dry!

-Emily Dickinson

Baby Steps

Mondays are for bread and laundry. The laundry is not exciting. But the bread…

All homemade bread takes me straight back to my childhood. But particularly this recipe, because it’s the recipe my mom made for us. I change it slightly by using half whole wheat flour and half white flour.

I used to make all our bread, before I had Adelia. But my bread making routine became more and more sporadic with every baby. One of my goals is to get back in the habit, now that Cal is here.

Today seemed as good a day as any. Besides, I needed a pick-me-up. I’ve finally felt well enough, for enough days in a row, that I’m starting to be restless. I want to leave the house. But I’m not ready to take Cal out. And anyways it still terrifies me to try taking ALL of them anywhere by me onesie. Needless to say, I’m feeling a bit trapped and a lot outnumbered. I desperately needed to accomplish something with satisfying results, and a batch of bread seemed like just the ticket.

It went well. The kids were good to do their school work at the table while I worked on the bread. And during the rising periods I was able to tackle the laundry.

It’s not much to accomplish in a day, I know. But at least it was a step in the right direction. Baby steps, I tell myself, baby steps.

2 Weeks Old

Two weeks old! We are surviving. Aaron and I are feeling a bit better. Adelia came down with a stomach bug one day last week. I had her stay on the opposite end of the house from Cal. Aaron had pity on me and stayed home from work that day.



I’ve spent a lot of time in my rocking chair, looking out the window. I’m grateful that I have something so incredibly beautiful to look at. I love where we live. Buying a house next to a corn field is one of the best choices we’ve ever made. My soul delights to look out over the fields and the majestic mountains. I feel like I have space to breath.





Cal is doing well. He is healthy, thank goodness. And he is very peaceful and mellow. He doesn’t cry much. It takes him a long time to get worked up. He eats every two or three hours. But generally goes right back to sleep afterward. So nights aren’t horrible. And his siblings adore him. Even Ruby, to my surprise. But she is very soft and careful with him. She can say Cal, and after she does she always pats him and kisses him on the head. :) 





I took some side shots of Cal in an attempt to profile him. I’m bad at facial profiling, but I’m still leaning heavily towards Type 2. He has S curves in his hairline. And big almondy shaped eyes when they are open. 

We’ve attempted some school, but not much. The highlight was probably our Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe end of unit “party”, where I let the kids pop popcorn, and eat snacks in the family room and watch the movie, while I went upstairs and fell asleep from exhaustion and a terrible headache. (Am I the only one who gets awful headaches for several weeks after having a baby? Why is that?)

This hasn’t been the best of weeks. I feel like a bump on a log.  But the nice thing is that I’ve done this enough times to know that it will get better. It will get easier. 

1 Week Old

My sweet Cal is one week old today. He’s doing fantastically. Everyone else was doing well too, until about Friday. (I think it was Friday, all the days are kind of running together.) Aaron and I have both caught colds. 

It’s not a horrible cold, but I think my body is freaking out a little, trying to decide what it’s supposed to be doing. Recovering from birth? Creating a milk supply? Healing a cold? Adjusting to sleep deprivation? Not to mention that I am STARVING. Always. 

So it’s been a tad rough. But we have had such great help from friends and family. I’m so grateful. 

He Who Comes With the Peaches

Cal Tanner Swan
Born September 4th 2016, 6:29am
7 pounds 5 ounces
20.5 inches long

It worked!  From now on canning peaches is my new go-to to induce labor. :) Ha! I'd always secretly hoped we'd have a baby over Labor Day weekend, but I never really believed we would, and I was mentally gearing up for the 12th.. The way it went down it couldn't have worked out more perfectly if I'd planned it myself. 

Saturday night Aaron and I went to be around 10:30pm feeling satisfied with  that we'd accomplished to much to get ready for the baby, and with big plans to finish up a few more things on Monday, after after a peaceful Sabbath Day. 

Ollie came in at about midnight with leg cramps. He snuggled in bed with us for a little bit while I rubbed his legs, and then took him back to his own room, sang him a few songs, and retucked him into bed. 

I had just dozed off again when I had a contraction. And it was not one I'd classify as a braxton hick, but an actual "real" contraction. My eyes popped open. 1:13am. I'd been having braxton hicks off and on all day, so I figured this was probably just a continuation inspired by being up with Ollie, and that they'd die down in a bit. I didn't wake Aaron. 

1:23am

1:33am

1:43am

I was out of bed and feeling tingly, nervous energy. The kind I always feel when it's "time". I woke up Aaron. Logically, I knew that only four contractions, and ten minutes apart at that, was not enough to say they were "consistent" and that we should head to the hospital. But my instinct knew, and I think Aaron's must've too, because he hopped out of bed and started getting dressed. We'd both decided we were going to the hospital, without having to verbalize it. 

What to do with the kids though? Especially since we didn't know if the hospital was going to admit us or not.

Being Labor Day weekend, both mine and Aaron's parents were out of town. Luckily we have awesome neighbors. We called ours across the street, who Aaron home teaches, and she came right over.

The drive to the hospital was totally clear, which was a relief, because there has been a lot of construction on that route lately. My contractions had eased up and were very short, but were now coming about every five minutes. I thought they might peter out before we got there. Also, something different, my body was shaking uncontrollably, like I was standing outside in the middle of winter with no coat on. Usually, that doesn't happen until after the birth. It wasn't painful or anything, but it did make my muscles more tense, and since my jaw was tight and chattering it was hard to talk to Aaron. 

We got to the hospital in record time, found a front row parking spot (another relief, because the hospital is also under construction), and went right up to Labor and Delivery. The receptionist who checked us in had the same birthday as me. :)   She asked a bunch of questions about my pregnancy and what number of baby this was. Then she asked how far apart my contractions were and what my pain level was. I told her my pain level was about a half. She looked confused and asked what? I told her my pain level was only about a half, in other words I wasn't feeling really any pain yet. She gave me another look, so I quickly explained, "I go fast. I'm not in pain now, but it will escalate quickly. Dr. Anderson told me to come in at any sign that I was in labor." That seemed to satisfy her. But I think it's funny that the same thing happens with every baby.  

They took me back to a room to check me. I was dilated to a 4. The nurse said that typically the policy is that they don't admit you until you're dilated to a 5, but since this was my sixth baby, and since I have a track record of progressing quickly, she was going to go call my doctor and see what he thought. She said most likely I would be staying though. And she was right. 

As soon as we knew we were being admitted, Aaron called his brother Kelly, who lives in American Fork, to see if he'd be willing to go stay with our kids. Kelly is basically a saint, and he agreed with no hesitation. I was relieved to know that our kids were going to be well taken care of, and was able to relax and focus on the event ahead. Aaron called both sets of parents, and both said they'd be heading for home in the morning, and they'd see us in the evening. (Aaron's parents were 8 hours away, and mine were 6 hours away.)

 

When I've delivered at Payson in the past, they required that I run a bag of saline through my IV before they would call the anesthesiologist to come give the epidural. For someone who progresses quickly in labor, it takes a relatively long time to drip a bag of saline through an IV, and usually by the time the anesthesiologist gets there, I'm in a bit of pain, and wondering if I'm going to end up going so quickly that I won't have time for the epidural. 

So when the nurse asked if I wanted the epidural yet, I said yes, thinking it was going to be a long process, and that by the time it actually got there, I'd be ready. Turns out they do things differently in Provo. The nurse called the anesthesiologist right away, then put in my IV, and by the time she finished doing that, the anesthesiologist was there, ready to go. Consequently, I had zero pain during labor and delivery. And I have to admit, it was pretty wonderful. In fact, it might have even been pleasant, except that I was still shaking uncontrollably. They gave me a warm blanket to wrap around me, and that helped some. 

The anesthesiologist was one of the nicest guys, especially considering that it was 3am. He was a curly, gray-haired guy whose oldest kids were around mine and Aaron's age. He was personable and friendly and talkative. He started off talking to the nurse about the BYU game, and when he found out both Aaron and I had attended BYU, we started talking about going to football games, and rivalries. Somehow that conversation turned to baseball, and the World Series, and the mormon guy who could be the MVP this year. We talked about our favorite teams and which stadiums we.d been to. The anesthesiologist was a Cubs fan and jokingly said he didn't like the Mets (my team) because they had beat the Cubs out of the running to play in the World Series in Back to Future year. That made me laugh. And I told him, better a Mets fan than a Yankees fan, to which we could both agree. :) He ahs kids and grandkids in Texas, so we talked about Texas for awhile. It made me miss all my wonderful friends who live there. Then we talkeda bout engineering degrees at BYU, and how one of his sons was trying to decide which engineering field to go into. Anyways, he stayed in there about an hour chatting with us, before they called him to go to a different room. It was a really enjoyable conversation and made the hour pass quickly. When he left the nurse commented that she'd never seen him be that chatty before. She said he's always very nice, but that that was the first time she'd seen him stay so long in a room with a patient. That made me happy, thinking that maybe he appreciated the late night company as much as we did. 

  

A little while later, I started getting a bit dizzy, and my vision was blurry. Aaron called the nurse in, and she said I was probably just laying too flat on my back. So I rolled to the side and she propped me up, and almost immediately it was better. Aaron and I tried to listen to an audio book on my Kindle to pass the time, but listening to the reader was more annoying than distracting so eventually we turned it off, and I just had Aaron talk to me. His voice is soothing, and it helped me forget about shaking so much. 

The next two times the nurse checked my progress I was only at a 4.5 and then a 5. She said my contractions has slowed down a bit, and that the baby was "bouncy" which means his head wasn't all the way engaged into the birth canal. She said they couldn't break my water until his head was all the way engaged, or else he might pull away and there was risk that the cord would wrap around his neck. She had me roll over onto my side and put something called a peanut ball in between my legs. It's big like an exercise ball, only shaped like a peanut. I'm not sure how, but it's supposed to help baby get into position. She also started a very low dose of petosin in my drip line. And since I was at a 5 and Dr. Anderson was in Payson, she was going to call him and have him be on his way. 

I felt a little bit sheepish. Here I was telling anyone who would listen about how fast my labors go, and here I was lying in a bed not making hardly any progress at all. Aaron gave me a blessing, that things would go smoothly, that the baby would come out active and well, and that I would feel a sense of peace and calm concerning the birth. 

The nurse came in with Dr. Anderson, it had been 20 minutes since she'd told me I was at a 5. She checked me again and I was at a 9.5 and completely effaced! That's the fast I've been talking about! She was surprised. Dr. Anderson broke my water, and then went to get his scrubs on. The nurse left and said she'd come check on me again in 30 minutes. Aaron and I just gave each other a look as we sat alone in the room. I've never been left alone after my water had been broken before. Usually they baby came very quickly after that, and I was wondering if Aaron was going to have to deliver him if no one was coming back for 30 minutes. 

Luckily, the nurse came back within 5 minutes, with some supplies for the delivery, and noticed that she could see the baby's head. She called Dr. Anderson in. He came in, looked at me, said, "Yep, there he is. Don't push." And turned around to get his gown and gloves on. When he turned around, Aaron and the nurse looked at each other, and both took a step closer to me, as if to put their hands out to catch the baby. Just then Dr. Anderson turned around, he hadn't put his gloves on yet, he only had time to pull his sleeves down over his hands, and catch the baby, who just slipped right out. :) I didn't even push. 

  

Cal was born at 6:29am. Which means my labor was five hours and sixteen minutes long, about the same length of time I labored with Ruby. And Cal came out squirmy and screaming! They put him up on my belly right away so I could look at him, and Aaron walked over to see him and he peed all over Aaron. I've never seen that happen before, it was so funny! And it was a lot of pee, too. Enough that they had to change the blanket on my bed.  Aaron followed Cal to the other side of the room as the nurses weighed him. After a minute Aaron said to me, "Well, he must be Cal, because he doesn't look like a Calvin." (For more in-depth about this decision, see this post.)

So here he is, my little "Late summer harvest" baby. I'm dubbing him He-Who-Comes-With-The-Peaches. :) 

Cal Tanner Swan

7 pounds 5 ounces

20.5 inches long

 

They moved us from the Labor and Delivery floor to the Mother and Baby floor, almost right away. They said that the new policy at the hospital was for Mom and Baby to stay together as much as possible. So instead of taking Cal away to bathe him, someone was going to bring all the bath stuff to our room downstairs, and bathe him in our room with us. Cool! I've never got to see any of my babies have their bathes before. Usually Aaron goes with them to the nursery to watch while I just wait around. It was fun to see. And the nurse giving him his bath was really nice and we just chatted about life, and kids, and what-not.

We checked in at home with Kelly to see how things were going. He said he had everything under control, and that Esther was bringing their two boys down and they were going to take all seven kids to our church. I told you he was a saint, and Esther too, haha! Brave souls. But seriously, I am so grateful for them for taking care of our kids. My biggest stress with each labor is always what we're going to do with the other kids while we're at the hospital, and Kelly and Esther made it so that it wasn't an issue.

Later in the afternoon, my mom and Kerry came to visit before they headed to our house to relieve Kelly and Esther. While they were there, Aaron ran home and got our kids so they could come up and meet their new baby brother.  After our kids left, Aaron's parents came to meet Cal too. So he's gotten to meet all the most important people in his life, his parents, his siblings, and both sets of grandparents. What a lucky kid.  :)

 

Cal kept doing this little groaning-moaning thing, that sounded sort of like a squeaky door hinge. All of his nurses mentioned it. They called it "singing" and were concerned that he was having trouble breathing. They did an oxygen test on him about every other time they came in. But he always passed the test with flying colors. One of the night nurses said she would feel more comfortable if the respiratory team came and had a look at him, just to make sure. I was agreeable, not because I was worried, but I figured it couldn't hurt, and then we would know for sure that all was a-okay. It was. In fact, I think the respiratory team thought we were a little silly. They took one look at his red color and said, he's fine, look at him. They did listen to him breathe for a minute, and declared that he was just a noisy baby. I was fine with that. It was fun to go for a midnight walk down the nursery and chat with the nurses. I usually don't get to leave my hospital room while I'm there.

Cal was a great sleeper. He gave us a four-and-a-half hour stretch and several two hour stretches the first night. And the nurses left us alone at night pretty much. I guess that's the advantage you get when you are on baby number six, the nurses don't feel the need to come in every hour. :)

All of our nurses were great though. I noticed that lots of them stayed in to chat with me. It was nice to have real conversations with real adults. I felt like I've been lacking adult interaction on a regular basis for such a long time, haha! It was wonderful to just chat with other women about their kids, and their grandkids, and baby names, and hobbies, and holidays. Maybe because the lady with six kids was some kind of small anomaly, but many were curious about our other kids, how old they were, what their names were, what they thought about their brother, etc. I even had one nurse, when she found out I'd had three of our kids naturally, ask what my feelings were about having a natural child birth at a hospital, and if I thought hospitals were good about creating a good experience for mothers who wanted to go natural. I told her I couldn't speak for everyone, but that all of my birth experiences natural and medicated, had been wonderful. The hospital staff has always been very supportive of my choice, either way. At any rate, my experience with the nurses and staff this go around was very friendly. I enjoyed connecting with so many different people.

 

We came home Monday afternoon to a clean house and happy kids. And dinner. My mom and Kerry are amazing. :) Kerry went home Monday night after dinner, but my mom stayed until Thursday. She is super woman, not only did she keep our house clean, entertain five wild children, and make sure my water was always full, but she made bread AND cinnamon rolls, and canned a whole bunch of peach syrup so the peaches from my tree wouldn't be wasted. I love moms. And mine is one of the best. It was sad when we had to drop her off at the train station on Thursday. I wasn't ready for her to go yet. 

But we have also had amazing friends and neighbors. People have brought us meals, hot loaves of bread, taken our kids for play dates, dropped me off lunch, written sweet cards and emails, sat by my kids in Sacrament meeting so that Aaron could take Ruby out, done my calling for me, and one wonderful friend is even taking my oldest three two mornings this week so they can do school with her kids. That is love right there. I feel very blessed to live where we do, and to be associated with the people we are.

And my sweet little Cal...so far he's a really mellow baby. He's not fussy. He eats and goes right back to sleep in about 2 hour stretches, although we've had a few 4 hour ones. Sometimes he's just awake and peaceful. He can be a little tricky to burp, but it doesn't seem to bother him if he hasn't. He wakes up slowly, a little grunt or two at a time, it takes him a long time to work up to a cry. My gut feeling is that he's probably a Type 2 like his dad and his brother Ollie. But since he's still in sleepy newborn phase, I don't want to say anything for sure. Also, I feel like it's really hard to facial profile a newborn, because they are always changing. At any rate, I'm glad he's here safe and sound.

Sanctuary: School, Life, and Peaches

School's gotten off to a good start. We aren't full steam ahead, or anything, but I feel like we are doing enough. I forgot to post "first day of school" pictures last week, when they actually started their classes as Canyon Grove. But here they are a week later, and still liking attending the charter one and a half days a week. In their Epic Day classes the kids are spending the first six weeks learning about Native Americans. They learned rain dances, crushed up herbs that the Native Americans used for healing, and built model houses that the Native Americans lived in.

At Specials Day, their favorite class continues to be Fiber Arts. They each got their own drop spindle and have been spinning wool. And coming up they'll be dyeing thread too. Adelia is especially enchanted with this entire process.

We've been doing some fun things at home too. The big boys have been spending time out in the garage with Aaron. Lincoln successfully changed his bike tire tube all by himself. And Ivan has been learning to cut things out on the scroll saw. I hope every single one of my kids learns to be as handy and resourceful as their dad is. 

And some math! There is almost never anything we do in math that is picture worthy, haha! It's not very project or activity oriented, but today Aaron suggested this activity. The kids have been learning about computer programming on code.org, and Ivan was having a bit of trouble with the degrees of an angle. Aaron had Ivan draw a triangle and then cut it into three equal parts and put it back together in a straight line, to show the a triangle's corners add up to 180 degrees. It's hard to see the white on white, but you get the idea. Hooray for dads who know cool things to do with math! 

We're still working on our Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe Unit. This week we learned about mood. To show the difference in mood we first read the paragraph where Lucy goes with Mr. Tumnes into his home for tea. The fire is glowing, everything feels warm and friendly and cozy. Then we read the paragraph when Lucy brings her siblings to meet Mr. Tumnes, but all they find is his empty cave that has been ransacked. (This paragraph was the copy work paragraph for the week.) We talked about how even though the two paragraphs were describing the same place, they both felt very different. Since we've been working on descriptive paragraphs, I had them each pick a room in the house and then pick two different moods, they were to describe the same room two times, once using one mood and once using the other. I feel like this stretched them a little bit. I had to help some, by suggesting that they use their senses, what could they see? What could they hear? What could they smell? That made the room feel one way or the other. We worked on this over several days. And will probably work on it a few more. 

Boring Room by Lincoln

There was nothing on the walls, the power was out, mom was asleep and dad was at work. It was hot and humid and no fruit was ripe. Nobody could play. It smelled like mildew. The wall is blank and colorless. I feel hot. It is all black and white. Grandma isn't here. All my robots are broken and our trees cannot be climbed.

Exciting Room by Lincoln

There were thousands of things on the walls. There was lots of power. Mom was awake and Dad was home. It was the perfect temperature. Lots of fruit was ripe. Everybody could play. It smells like lemons. The wall was full with patterns and yellow. It was very colorful. My robots were working and our trees could easily be climbed. The T.V. was on and there was cake and ice cream.

Happy by Ivan

Warm and friendly a cuddly little room with two friends. Playful, fun, and clean. A nice day outside, a nice day to play. The two friends did it every day snow or rain or wind or hot, they'd play with happy words and having fun they'd rest at night. Tell jokes in bed day by day their funness spread. Every day they'd get up and play ball and some tag and eat something sweet. Maybe a doughnut or a peach. 

Angry by Ivan

Cold, dark and thunderous.Loud, angry, and BOOMING! Fighting, biting. Hitting, spitting. No love, only hatred.  No play. People being rude. Threats everywhere. Beat up, arguing, filthy, disgusting. Fights and people beating, wrestling, unhelpful, unwilling. Punching, smashing, breaking everything they see. Bad jokes, bad talk. No play. Bad smell. War and violence everywhere. No peace. 

We had our first Poetry Tea-Time of the year! I love Poetry Tea-Time and I wanted this one to be special, so I made a very special treat. Our peaches are ready (more about that later) and I wanted to introduce my kids to one of my very favorite treats...peaches and cream! I talked it up all day. Probably too much. When it came down to it, they weren't all that impressed with peaches and cream. They said it "just tasted like peaches with milk on it." *sigh* But they did enjoy the poetry. We probably spent an hour reading poems aloud. And when I told them I needed to stop and go take care of Ruby's diaper, they continued reading to each other for awhile. 

We've done a bi of Nature Journaling as well. I haven't felt up to taking us anywhere, but the corn in the field next door has all been cut down, and the geese and the seagulls have come in droves. I felt like these provided a good source of nature that we don't see all year round, so I sent the kids outside to observe. :) 

I feel like Ivan does a particularly good job with his Nature Journal. For one, he really likes to draw, and so spends a little more time on it than the other kids. And for two, he has a way with words. Obviously, he's only 7, so his technique needs improvement, but he has a real talent for rhyme and rhythm and feeling, which are a lot harder to teach than spelling and sentence structure. I love to read the things he writes. 

"Every evening and morning the field beside our house is full of birds. Geese and seagulls and sometimes black birds. The field is yellow and black and very big! Since it was so big loys and lots and lots of birds came there to eat the worms." -Ivan

"Bright red and yellow and lots and lots of petals. Long and leafy stem. Long and twisty are the roots. Beautiful and sweet. In a group of others. In a little garden with a couple bushes big and near our house." -Ivan

The kids begged to do an art project this weel so we made Chinese Dragons using our At Home Art Studio curriculum. Here are Lincoln's and Ivan's, I couldn't find Adelia's and Ollie's for the picture.

In other happenings around our house, this happened:

Adelia decided that she wanted to play hair-dresser and use Ollie has her victim-- I mean, client. Ugh. All that cute fluffy golden hair, it'll come back, but I'll just have to wait for it. In the mean time, Ollie is sporting a nice military cut. Good thing he's darling no matter what. And I guess I should just be grateful that Del decided to cut Ollie's hair, rather than Ruby's. Things can always be worse, right?

Speaking of Rue, I can't believe that she only has a few weeks left of being my baby. Enjoy it while it lasts Baby Girl.

I love this crazy family of mine. I'm so grateful for Aaron right now. He's been really stepping it up to take care of the kids. He wrestles and plays with them when he gets home, and takes them outside to do things I can't do, like squat down in the sandbox to build a castle.

Typical post-family prayer doggie pile. Or Swan Pile as we tend to refer to it as.

Everyone wants in on the sand castle action when Daddy's building. 

It's the beginning of Labor Day Weekend, and I told Aaron we needed to really crack down and get into gear to get things ready for Cal. We only have a week or two left before he's here. We made up a meal plan and a large grocery list, and Aaron and a few kids tackled that this morning. Meanwhile I stayed home and washed baby clothes and blankets, as well as the normal laundry, so that everyone will have clothes. We got the car seat and the cradle down from the garage rack, and cleaned them off really well and set them up where they go. Aaron spent a good amount of time on the bunk beds, and I canned peaches. Oh yes....the peaches...

The above picture is not even half of them. They decided to be ripe and ready to go before Cal, so I guess the win the prize. Ha! And I cannot bare to see them go to waste. And I cannot bare to not bottle them and go an entire year with no bottled peaches. So here I sit, canning away...

Aaron posted this picture on Instagram with this caption: "Krystal is determined to can her way into labor. Which is probably a good thing because I'm not sure what I'll do with 300 peaches if the baby arrives."

In the end I got 39 quart jars of peaches. All that were on my counter are now bottled. Yippee! It feels like a good accomplishment. There are still at least as many as I've already canned still on the tree, but I can tackle those on Monday. I think I'll do BBQ sauce and Peach Lemonade Concentrate with those. 

Tomorrow is Sunday and we have agreed to take it easy and rest. No visting or home teaching. No visiting or home teachers. No inviting anyone over for dinner. Just rest. 

Then Monday we'll be back at it. Aaron has the day off, so he is going to finish the bunk beds. I am going to can more peaches. And Monday evening to celebrate being awesome, we are going to do the traditional baby belly painting that we have done with each of the kids right before they were born. We are thinking we might paint a car mat on my tummy. It'll be different than what we've done in the past, and fun. :) Then we'll be ready for Cal, whenever he decides to come. 

Oh ya, PS. Early this week I canned about 12 quarts of grape juice, but never posted about it. Our neighbor also gave us a grocery sack full of plums. I wasn't sure what to do with them, since I still have a ton of jam on my shelves. I decided to experiment and make plum juice. I got about 6 quarts of it. I'll let you know how it tastes when we open a bottle to try. 

I decided I love juicing with my steam juicer. It's easy. And since my kids and husband are juice-a-holics, I think it will come in really handy. 

Also, one of our Barred Rock chicks has started laying, except she's laying these tiny little mini-eggs. Anyone know what that's about? I guess we'll see if they get bigger with time and practice?