Home is where the heart is

The last few weeks are a blurr. (I always say that but it's always true!) I have photos to share but little time for uploading and resizing! Summer is fading into early fall as the weather already is cooling. I never really felt true summer this year. Only a handful of very humid days, lots of rain, and hardly much swimming.

SCHOOLS BACK IN / BUT IT WAS NEVER REALLY OUT
Kids in the area are headed back to school, but mine never left. I'm thankful my guys still have lots of pretty days left to run and play outside and enjoy this 80 degree weather. We've been on a good "school" schedule but mostly we have been enjoying the days as they come and go. The boys are learning to tell time and refine their money counting. Charlotte decided she wants to re-read the Harry Potter series and after a summer of half finishing several books announced to me, "I just can't replace it mom, so I'm going to stop trying." So cute. :)

I like that she's allowed to half read a book and not finish it if she wants. I like that she can pick what she wants to read according to her interest. I loved reading. LOVED LOVED it. I dreaded when I was forced to read. (I don't know why but I swear The Hobbit was torture to me in the fifth grade ---my kids like it though of course!)

Mothering Magazine had a wonderful article this month starting on page 58 titled, "No More Homework." I enjoyed it and it reminded me again why we began pulling our kids from school 3 years ago.

OUTDOORS
Our garden produced some green beans which we harvested the other day and will cook tonight. Our sunflowers are getting ready to bloom (symbolically just in time for the new baby that is due any second!) Our tomatoes are growing but if we don't get some hot sunny days we'll never get fruits, as I've mentioned before we simply planted WAY too late. Even if we may never see fruit we still enjoy seeing our watermelon vines, cucumber and zucchini plants, as well as tomatoes growing. We'll start earlier next year for sure. I'm not giving up yet. It's not over until old man winter frosts us!

Our new chicks are doing very well. The kids and I made an agreement with the kittens outside who killed a couple chicks. We feed them milk every morning and they leave the chicks alone. So far it has worked! Yay! The other day I took a frozen chicken we raised and killed out of the freezer. It was from last fall so I didn't think it would be all that good anymore. I simmered it into chicken stock and cooked the meat and made soup. Actually, the chicken was SO delicious I fed the meat eaters in the house some chicken for lunch and made the rest into soup. It was fantastic! So we are going to get some meat chickens this fall and stock up for the winter. I forgot how good our home grown chickens were. We don't eat chicken if we don't raise it ourselves. (occasionally I'll buy from whole foods though. But it's $$$)

CHARLOTTE WORLD RECORD BOOK CONTESTANT! We don't get many eggs since we had a lot of our chickens killed by dogs in the early spring. But we do get a few every week. Last week Charlotte gathered eggs and she found what we believe to be the smallest chicken egg ever reportedly laid. Charlotte had me sign up on the Guinness Book of World Records website and I'm currently in the process of applying her egg. It is 1 inch long, the smallest online we found was 1 1/4 in long. There is currently no record holder for the smallest chicken egg, just the largest. Charlotte has been racking her brain for the last year and a half thinking a way of breaking or making a world record. Now she found her chance. It's cute and a lot of fun for her.

Recent simple Layla questions:
"Mom can I tell you an important question?"
"Yes?"
"How do horses sleep?"
And
"Mom can I tell you an important question?" (She always starts like this)
"Yes?"
"Do animals have babies like you do?" (I can proudly say "yes" because I give birth like all animals, in mostly seclusion and unassisted :)

BIRTH OF NEW MEMBERS
Speaking of birth... the children are REALLY excited about the impending birth of our newest family member. They ask all the time and talk about how excited they are to hold the newborn! It's made me excited and feeling very blessed. Sometimes however, I want them to just quit asking! The baby will come very soon. I'm due on the 20th but I can go over by 2 weeks easily. I'm not thinking I will this time though. My body is going to get on with this birth I feel before the 20th. But only time will tell.

Have I mentioned that Layla calls the baby a "he-she" because we don't know. Cracks us up.

THE BOYS
I feel bad I don't have much to say about the boys. They always are, and always have been "The boys." They play, rough house and make me crazy. They thrive on video games, sticks, swords, and the trampoline. Ethan and Sage are both doing great. They talk non-stop and act opinionated as this age group does. They are great kids. I'm trying to teach Sage that being right isn't important and I'm trying to get Ethan to stop bickering about things that really don't matter (especially with a 4 year old --he's awful about bickering with Layla!!)

NEXT POST
Might be a picture of baby 6

Lots of curious kids, and why we cry

QUESTIONS? QUESTIONS? QUESTIONS?
Lately the kids have asked about all kinds of interesting topics.
What is supply and demand? What is capitalism? How does reselling work? Why do we buy so much from China, why is it so cheap there? What is child labor? Fair labor? Minimum wage?

This has kept Ricky and I busy answering all sorts of interesting questions! I love how worldly homeschoolers are! Not that other children in formal education can’t also be worldly, but gosh it’s amazing how much more so homeschoolers are, and from such a young age. There is so much world out there to be aware of and so much to discover. I’m so glad they explore, ask, and ponder so much and so freely!

SOCIAL STUDIES/ OR EARTH DAY IS EVERY DAY
We did a unit study on consumerism. We watched clips from http://www.youtube.com/ of the new National Geographic special The Human Footprint. We talked about what we all can do to make our impact on Earth smaller. We also had a good conversation about how we could all take better care of our stuff so that it lasts longer, and as a result we would need to buy less new stuff. Also when we take care of things our old stuff can be used by others more effectively when we are done with it.

SLANG WORDS ~ FUNNY ETHAN
The kids asked what slang was and I gave them several examples and had them come up with some of their own. Ethan then asked, "Hey mom, isn’t slang from Uncle Doyle’s time calling a girl a plate?"

I could barely keep a straight face. It was so funny!

"Ohhh you mean a dish Ethan, yes a pretty girl was called a dish."

So cute. I remember years ago telling them about a dish being a older saying (from around Uncle Doyle’s generation) for a pretty girl. And he remembered that, sort-of. Haha.

WHY DO WE CRY?
This was one of the most interesting questions and answers I’ve researched on behalf of the kids. At first I was like 'well we just cry cause our body triggers tears to fall.' Then I said, you know what kids, we’ll go look that up. (I didn’t really want to) BUT I soon found that I never knew how interesting tears were until reading this http://www.gibbsmagazine.com/CryinLaughing.htm

First of all there are three types of tears.
Second, and totally interesting is this:

"Scientists have discovered that the emotional tears contain higher levels of manganese and the hormone prolactin"

I know about Prolactin of course, it is the hormone that is primarily associated with lactation. While it is actually secreted by the pituitary gland in both men and women, it is considered a female hormone because of it's connection with breastfeeding. Prolactin is what stimulates the production of milk (along with oxytocin which lets down the milk). It’s these feel good hormones that relaxes the mother, promotes bonding, and promotes maternal behavior. Prolaction has also been associated with not only feelings of well being but also as having a tranquilizing effect on nursing mothers and babies. So, this could also explain why we feel better after crying!

So finding out prolactin is secreted as a part of our emotional tears is very cool to learn for me!
This also explains why women tend to cry more than men. Women produce more prolaction.

From a different article online:

"...women have serum prolactin levels much higher than men. Prolactin is a hormone connected with the production of tears as well as breast milk. "Hormones may help regulate tear production and have something to do with crying frequency."
Interestingly, studies show that there is no difference in crying patterns between boys and girls up to the age of puberty. "Then, between the ages of 12 and 18," says Dr. Frey, "women develop 60 percent higher levels of prolactin than men, and they start crying nearly four times more often." "

Just fascinating!

BRAINS!

In addition, Sage knew where the pituitary gland was located when I mentioned it. Brainpop.com how do you do so much magic on my kids and teach them so much?!! :)

Also, This site is cool with a diagram of the brain, where we are learning about the parts of the brain.

JOURNAL

Charlotte wanted journal prompts and I found lots she loves here Hopefully I will get her in the habit of writing in her blog now. Today she wrote a draft on paper, but didn't finalize it or put it in her blog yet.