Skate

Ollie and Aaron

I love to ice skate. I haven't been in ages (like since before Aaron and I got married). So when Aaron's sister Stacey called us up and invited us to come ice-skating with them for FHE, I knew we had to make it work.

There are so many things that I enjoy but don't do because I have little kids. Because of this, I miss out on a lot of things that would fill my bucket and make me a happier human and therefore a better mom. Getting out of my house is huge. Physical activity is huge. It has been gloomy and miserable outside lately, and I really, really needed this ice-skating adventure.

We ended up trading our two kids who can't skate (Rue and Cal) for two of Aaron's nephews who are staying at Aaron's mom's house and are Lincoln and Ivan's ages. So we still took six kids to the ice rink, but all six of them could skate. :) It was a good trade. And we had a blast.

Stacey, Sam, and Ollie

Jeremiah, Luke, Zac, Sam, and Ollie

Sam, Stacey, and Aaron

Lincoln and Zac

Claire and Adelia

Adelia was a champ on the ice. She caught on so quickly, I was amazed. Must be all the roller-blading she does out in the driveway. She had a good time pushing her younger cousin Claire, and playing tag with the older boys.

Just Winging It

I ate snow for breakfast the other morning. Why? Because our ice maker is broken (has been since about Thanksgiving) and I forgot to buy a bag of ice while I was at the store the day before. And because I'm sick to death of cereal. (I switched over to eating smoothies for breakfast about two years ago. I've never been much of a hot breakfast person.) So I woke up, came downstairs, mixed my favorite smoothie (banana, peanut butter, honey, milk, cocoa) and remembered, no ice. I looked out the window at all the fresh, new snow that got dumped on us overnight and found the solution to my problem.

I finally finished painting the closet in the little boys' room. It was supposed to be a Saturday job, and took me about a month and a half, but no big. It's done now. I just need to make a trip to IKEA for those square bin things, and then organize, organize, organize.

I'm in a "get rid of it" mood. Maybe it's January, or maybe it's because I have a two year old who spreads all our possessions from hell to breakfast, I don't know. But I do know that I am tired, oh so tired, of our house looking like we stuck everything in a giant blender and turned it before securing the lid. And I've got it in my mind that somehow, finishing this closet is going to help remedy the situation.

Lincoln, Ivan, and Adelia started up piano lessons again at the beginning of January. (Their teacher had a baby at the same time we had Cal, So she's taken the last several months off.) I'm trying something new this go around. I'm paying them to practice. My kids are constantly begging for money. I haven't found a method I like for paying them to do their chores. Because #1 There are some jobs that I feel they have to do just because they live here. So it's "extra" jobs that I would be willing to pay them for, but #2 I haven't found a way to organize it so that they do their because-you -live-here jobs first and consistently before they get to do extra jobs to earn money. In theory it sounds like it should be easy enough to sort out, but in real life it isn't working for me.

But I want them to have experiences with money so they can learn how to save it, how to spend it, and so they can have practice at calculating and paying their tithing. So, I'm paying them $0.25 a day for practicing. That's $1.50 a week they have the potential of earning. (I don't pay them for Sunday, if they want to play the piano on Sunday they can get blessings as payment.) I know it's not a huge amount. But it's enough to facilitate my objective. And the kids have been loving it! I won't say that I never have to remind them to practice, I still do. But the battle over practicing has been all but eliminated. If they don't practice one day, I don't pitch a fit. I just simply subtract a quarter. I pay weekly on Saturdays. I guess that means I'm all about bribing. OH WELL. If at the end of this my kids reach adulthood able to play the piano and serve other people because of it, then it is a bribe well worth it's weight in quarters.

Michelle, Kylee, Shelley, Taylor, Jen, Kristie

I've been playing volleyball on Wednesday nights in the Spanish Fork City League. It's been a wonderful outlet to say that least. Our team started in the A League, but we lost a lot of games, and so when the Rec people drew up the brackets for tournament play, they bumped us down to the B League, and we ended up getting 2nd place in the tournament. Which means free T-shirt!!! Woot woot.

I'm sad Spanish Fork League is over, but Springville City League just started up on Thursday nights, and I'm on a team with some of these ladies and a few others, and we're having a blast. I sure do love me some volleyball.

We went on a field trip to the Bean Museum with our homeschool group. I couldn't pass up this opportunity to photograph these 10 Swans together. Haha! I love the Bean, we need to go Nature Journaling there more often. Especially when it's cold and dreary outside.

Rue sporting her boots and pjs fashion trend at Lincoln's game.

Lincoln's basketball season has started. Which means that we spend at least one night a week sitting on the bleachers during dinner time. More often than I'd like to admit, we grab a Little Caesars pizza and call it dinner. In fact, last week we had the early 5:00pm game. So I dropped Linc off, ran and grabbed a pizza and an order of breadsticks and came back with all the kids to watch and eat. Aaron was supposed to meet us there at 5:30 when he got off work. About half way through the game, I looked up to see him walking in with a pizza and a thing of breadsticks, haha! Oops. I guess we should coordinate our "easy dinner" efforts a little better.

We also had the opportunity to buy tickets to the final dress rehearsal of Mary Poppins, put on by BYU. We took just the older kids and made a special night of it. The play was great. It was also THREE hours long, we didn't get home until 11. It was fun to be out with just the bigger kids, we don't get to do that very often. They were well behaved, and I didn't have to carry any of them. All five of us really enjoyed the play.

I've been working on some fine motor skills with Ollie. I haven't been as gung-ho about doing full-fledged preschool with him as I probably should be. But he already knows his shapes and colors, he can count to 20, and he knows the majority of the letters in the alphabet and what sound they make. I feel like he's benefiting from hanging around his older siblings, and also from just having time to play and use his imagination. Plus, I don't have the prep-time to whip out awesome preschool lesson plans and activities like I did when Lincoln and Ivan were little. 

I remember long ago sitting at homeschool park day, and listening to the moms with older kids say how they never did preschool or Kindergarten with their younger ones because they didn't need to. Their younger kids picked up everything they needed from the older ones. At the time, I couldn't fathom that, because I didn't have any older kids, and I didn't know how it worked. It's interesting to see things now from the flipped perspective. That doesn't mean that I don't or shouldn't do anything with Ollie ever. It's just different. He's there when the big kids are practicing their addition facts out loud. He's there when I show Lincoln something on a map. He listens when his siblings read aloud, or memorize poems. He asks questions, and we answer them. He's learning a ton. It's just more organic than it was when there were no older kids. 

And this one....I feel so peaceful when she's asleep. Ha! No, I love her dearly. But she is busy, busy, busy, and won't take no for an answer. (I wonder where she gets that from? Not.)  She's really started talking up a storm. She uses new words every day, and I love it. I love when kids start talking. It's a hoot. Shegets so cranky if we stay cooped up all day, but on the flip side she's so happy when we go somewhere; especially if she can run and play and climb and jump. So we've been hitting up library story time, and the new indoor play ground at the mall a couple times a week. She loves going to nursery at church. The nursery music leader is my friend, and she says that Rue is so funny during singing time. She doesn't sing, but she does do all the actions. And she makes sure all the other kids are sitting in their chairs where they are supposed to be. And if one of the other kids doesn't want to give back one of the props when it's time, Ruby will glare at them and point at them until they do. Haha! Oh man, I'm raising a mini-monarch. But she's pretty dang cute.

Cal has found his tongue. It's awesome. He's trying really hard to figure out how to roll from his tummy to his back. He still hates to be on his tummy. He keeps grabbing at food when we're eating. I'm debating whether it's time to start some solids with him. Ugh. I hate starting solids. It's so messy. I usually avoid it as long as humanly possible. But I've never seen a kid as interested in food as this one seems to be. I let him suck a bit of butternut squash soup off of my finger the other night at dinner. And Aaron has given him little bits of mashed potato. Both went down well, no gagging or anything like that...so maybe he is ready.

Speaking of food. Look at these beautiful made-from-scratch-rolls. I'll be honest, 9 times out of 10 my rolls taste pretty darn fantastic....but they are usually abnormally shaped. Different sizes, or bumpy or what not. But yesterday....oh.....they were perfection. Sometimes it's the little things that make your whole day, ya know?

20 Chapter Book Challenge 2017

All I ever want to do when it's cold and snowy outside, is curl up and read. Since I can't, I can at least encourage my kids to do it! Lincoln and Ivan had a great time with this last year, and asked to do it again. So here is our 20 Chapter Book Challenge 2017!

It works like this, they kids each pick 20 books that I approve of (I have to approve to make sure they are on their reading level, and so that they pick a larger variety than just fantasy and graphic novel. I also want to make sure there are a couple non-fiction items in there as well) and do a book review of each. Last year we did their book review orally. They didn't love that, so this year we're trying something new called "Notebooking". (I'll do another post about that later.) When they finish all 20 books, I will buy them a book of their choosing.

Adelia is still debating whether or not she wants to participate this year, but here are Lincoln's and Ivan's approved lists. (Lincoln is still thinking up 2 more books) I find a lot of the books we choose to read off of the Bravewriter's Arrow book list. :)

Lincoln's List
o Pinocchio
o The World of Pooh
o The Wind in the Willows
o True Stories of the First World War
o Sarah Plain and Tall
o Hidden Figures (young reader version)
o The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906
o A Single Shard
o The Liberation of Gabriel King
o In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson
o Detectives in Togas
o A Long Way From Chicago
o Johnny Tremain
o Rush Revere and the Star-spangled  banner
o Percy Jackson The Last Olympian
o Bomb
o Robinson Crusoe
o Rush Revere and the Presidency

Ivan's List
o Geronimo Stilton: Space Mice: The Underwater Planet
o Andrew Lost On Earth
o Andrew Lost With the Bats
o Mrs. Piggle Wiggle
o The Family Under the Bridge
o The Water Horse
o Charlotte’s Web
o 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (for young readers)
o The Whipping Boy
o George’s Marvelous Medicine
o The BFG
o The Sign of the Beaver
o Who Was Sacajawea
o Who Were the Wright Brothers
o Holes
o Midnight for Charlie Bone
o Charlie Bone and the Time Twister (Counts for 2)
o Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Counts for 2)

Free Time and the Internal Debate

Yesterday I peeked into the older boys' room and found them crouched on the floor intently taking turns flashing light back and forth at each other and scribbling into little notebooks. They were sending each other messages in Morse Code, and they kept at it for hours. At lunch Linc mentioned that he was starting to memorize certain words in Morse Code and could send them to Ivan without having to look them up on the key chart first. 

Ollie proudly presents me with a finished water color painting. "Tell me about this." I say, "What is it?" 

"I haven't decided yet." Is his answer.

"Well," I say, "the colors sort of remind me of sunflowers."

"No." He decides. "This (the big brown section on the bottom) is the beehive, and these (the brown dots) are the bees. They are flying around to the flowers (yellow) to try and such up the nectar. The flowers are hiding in the grass."  

Ivan shows me a picture he's drawn of fireworks and says, "What do you think of my poem?" On the back of this picture he's written:

Crack, Bang, Zoom, Foom, Boom!

Look at all the colors in the sky.

Don't you see how they fly?

Making sounds that hurt your ears

People fear them too.

Is one of those people you?

Sit right down and take your seat.

Make it fun, and make it great. 

Adelia is writing a book. It's about a lost fox. She explained to me that she wants to be the author AND the illustrator. But also she wants it to be a chapter book. :) She's started piano recently, and I am delighted by how much she loves it. Her favorite part is the "Noodling around" she gets to do as part of her assignment each week. That basically means she gets to play around on the piano and compose her own songs. She tells me when she grows up she either wants to be an engineer or a dance teacher, but hasn't decided yet. She keeps asking me when she'll be old enough to baby-sit Cal.

We finished memorizing our first Shakespeare piece clear back in October, but due to a whole string of craziness, I'm just getting around to documenting and delivering the promised candy bars to the kids. :)

As I sit here observing how differently each of my kids chooses to spend his/her free time, and as I consider how differently Aaron and I choose to spend ours, and as I read stories about famous mathematicians who have almost zero formal education, who can barely string together a coherent English sentence on paper, but who persevere an change the world of mathmatics; and as I hear stories about people who have a "disorder" that in this day and age they'd be medicated for without question, but who weren't medicated, and now own successful businesses revolving around those strengths....as I hear and read and see these things, I have to question a little bit our society's obsession with getting a "well rounded education.".

Stop.

Before you start throwing tomatoes in my general direction.....YES. I agree, there are a few things that everyone needs to learn. I believe everyone should learn how to read. I believe everyone should be able to communicate through writing. And I believe that we need to be able to manipulate numbers to a certain extent. Life skills, etc.

But sometimes it boggles my mind, how intensely focused we/I can become on making sure our child knows EVERYTHING, is exposed to EVERYTHING, needs to test well in EVERYTHING. Straight A's and all that. What if our children are supposed to be the Ramanujan's of the world? He had "almost no formal training in pure mathematics" yet somehow he "made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions". God provides a way. He has a plan. I know this. So why do I continually find myself caught in this trap that I need to provide ALL for every one of my six children?

Maybe Ramanujan is an extreme example. But I think there is value in considering his story. I carry so much stress around with me all the time about my children's education. If I'm doing enough, if I'm ruining their lives. (And I seem to be able to find evidence that I AM ruining their lives, no matter what choices I make. Everything has pros and cons, and we can't see or predict the outcome of everything.)

I do firmly believe in teaching my kids HOW to learn, and to help them develop a love of learning. And in isolation, I can tell myself that's all I need. Morse Code, multiplication, marbles.....are all the same to the extent that you learn how to learn by learning and mastering them.  It doesn't matter which vehicle you learn how to learn in, as long as you acquire the skill of learning how to learn, then when you need a particular knowledge, you'll know how to go about getting it. And if you don't ever need a particular piece of knowledge, well, then what's the point of having it?

I know these things, and believe them to my very core......except for when I falter and stutter and doubt myself while putting them to practice.

But I watch my kids and I am happy with what they choose to learn in their free time. I can honestly say I think it's time well spent. So why is it so hard to make that the fulcrum of our education? Why is it so hard to let go, and to trust?

More of Ivan's art:

Questions About Popular Books

My friend Brookie has a reading/writing blog, and on it today she answered some questions about book popularity. I thought it sounded fun, so I'm going to answer the same questions here.

1. A POPULAR BOOK OR SERIES THAT YOU DIDN'T LIKE:

-The Louis Lowery books, I liked The Giver a lot, but the others were sort of meh.
-Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, wanted to love it, but hated it
-Six of Crows, started it but didn't finish, it was a bit dark
-The Light Between Oceans, wanted to love it, but didn't.
-Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, boring
-Fault in Our Stars, hated
-The Green Ember, too slow
-The Night Circus, still can't put my finger on exactly why I didn't enjoy that one, but I didn't
-The Selection, started out ok, but by book 3 I was rolling my eyes WAY too much

2. A POPULAR BOOK OR SERIES THAT EVERYONE ELSE SEEMS TO HATE BUT YOU LOVE:

-Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
-Go Set a Watchman
-Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

3. A LOVE TRIANGLE WHERE THE MAIN CHARACTER ENDED UP WITH THE WRONG PERSON OR AND  OTP (ONE TRUE PAIRING) THAT YOU DON’T LIKE:

Still mad about Katniss and Peta....but I totally understand how that needed to be. I don't read many love triangle books, because I hate love triangles, and find that by the end I usually hate all the people involved in them.....
-The girl with blue hair and the angel in Daughter of Smoke and Bone
-The couple in Night Circus

4. A POPULAR BOOK GENRE THAT YOU HARDLY REACH FOR:

-young adult anything
-self help

5. A POPULAR OR BELOVED CHARACTER THAT YOU DO NOT LIKE:

-Princess Buttercup, or basically any of the Princess Bride characters
-America Singer

6. A POPULAR AUTHOR THAT YOU CAN’T SEEM TO GET IN TO:

-John Green
-Nicholas Sparks
-Jane Austen
-Amy Tan
-Kate Morton

7. A POPULAR BOOK TROPE THAT YOU’RE TIRED OF SEEING:

-Love triangles
-Cancer death stories.

8. A POPULAR SERIES THAT YOU HAVE NO INTEREST IN READING:

-Twilight
-Matched
-Maze Runner

9. THE SAYING GOES, “THE BOOK IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN THE MOVIE,” BUT WHAT MOVIE OR T.V. SHOW ADAPTATION DO YOU PREFER MORE THAN THE BOOK?

Ninety-nine percent of the time I tend to agree with the above statement. But there are a couple.....

-Phantom of the Opera
-Pride and Prejudice (because the movie version is shorter, not because I particularly love either one)
-Possibly Sherlock Holmes. I love the Conan Doyle stories, but I REALLY like a lot of the movie and TV spin offs from it.
-The Theory of Everything. Love that movie so much more than A Brief History of Time, the Stephen Hawking book.

Four Months Old, T1 or T2?

My Cal Buggy is four months old. He weighs 14.5 lbs, sleeps mostly through the night, spits up like crazy, is still unsure about baths, slobber/drool everywhere, rolls from back to front, hates tummy time, loves to suck his fingers, always grinning and jabbering, smiles with his whole body, and is not in a hurry to be on a predictable schedule. He's pretty chill and happy most of the time.

I love this little baldy-head. He's been a light in the middle of a dark place for the last several months.

I'm still trying to determine his Type. I'm reeeeaaaaaallllly leaning towards Type 1. But I still can't say so definitely for sure. If he is a T1 his secondary is a 2. If he is a T2 then his secondary is a 1. Whatever his Type may be, this kid is friendly, happy, and chill. I'm a lucky mama to have him.

Christmas Break

We had a fantastic Christmas Break, it was a little slice of heaven. I'm not ready for it to be over. In fact, given the opportunity, I might just grab my family and jump into a time machine and go back to the days where Aaron and I owned a farm and the whole family worked it together every day.  It was really nice not to be on anybody's schedule except our own. It was so nice to have Aaron home for a whole week. (His company gives him the week between Christmas and New Years as paid vacation.) Even though we all took turns being sick, I felt like we had the space to be sick, weren't missing anything by taking a few days to rest and relax and heal up.

Besides sledding with cousins, we spent some time at the church gym riding scooters, jumping rope, shooting hoops, and trying out Ivan's Ripstick. I took Lincoln, Adelia, Ollie, and Rue to see the new Disney movie, Moana. (Ivan was sick that day, so Aaron and Cal stayed home with him.) It was a cute movie, and we've been jamming out to the soundtrack every since. Tropical island music makes it feel warmer outside than it really is. Cal started rolling over from back to front. We weaved scarves on Adelia's new loom, took my pressure canner for a test run, and shoveled and shoveled and shoveled the driveway.

We got a ton of snow. It just kept coming and coming and coming. Ruby is fascinated by making footprints in the snow. She kept sneaking out into the backyard. Every time I look out the window, there she is making more footprints. This wouldn't be a problem if she'd remember to put on a coat. But she doesn't. So I have to go out there and haul her in, half frozen, and put her coat on. She throws a huge fit every time. Funny girl.

All the siblings cheering on Cal as he shows them his new rolling over trick.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand of course we started a new project! I gave Aaron a drill for Christmas, and I needed to make sure he had ample opportunity to test it out. :P Also, I really, really, really, need to use the vertical space in our closets more efficiently. So, Aaron is making cubbies! Yay! It's all up now, I just need to paint it. 

Here's the closet "Before"

And a couple of "in the middles" 

 Luckily, we were all reasonably healthy by New Years, so we were able to go up to Hooper and celebrate with my family. All three of my brothers and their families came over. I sure do enjoy spending time with them. We ate a delicious smoked ham, and other yummy food, and played Loaded Questions while the kids watched a movie. Since we all have little kids, the brothers left before the actual New Year, and I went to bed. But Aaron and the three older kids and Gramma Tam and Papa Kerry all stayed up until midnight.

Next morning we got to go to Kyle and Kelsey's ward for Logan's baby blessing. It was a really beautiful blessing, Kyle did a great job. Logan's full name is Stewart Logan Lemmon, he is named after my dad and after Kyle (in our family the oldest son passes down the name Stewart alternating bewteen first and middle name every generation. So Logan is Stewart Logan, Kyle is Kyle Stewart, my dad is Stewart Ross, his dad was Grover Stewart, etc.all the way back to the House of Stewart in Scotland.) Logan was blessed to remember his heritage, and to look to the many priesthood holders on both sides of his lineage for examples and guidance. It really was a beautifully worded blessing.