Absolutely the biggest surprise ever

Sat Oct 25 was our big Halloween party here. For those that don't know a small portion of my family runs a riverfront camp/cabin/floating resort. Every year we invite our favorite/best customers, have a DJ, costume contest, and dance all night (we love throwing a party). We know everyone we invite but I always do the stranger danger talk to my kids before a party (except in reverse; these people know us --but we don't know some of them very well, Etc.)

The rest of our family; my dad, mom, siblings, Etc. live in Las Vegas. We miss them an awful lot.

So the party starts at 7:30 and we are hanging out and eating. People in costumes are trickling in, there is a REALLY creepy costume that was familiar and super creepy to me but I couldn't place it. I asked Ricky where I knew that creepy thing from. He said that it is "Jigsaw" from the horror movie Saw. I have Penelope on my hip at the time and I notice after a few minutes the Saw guy is waving at Penelope from afar and she is memorized. As he turns away she waves back.


At about 8:30pm Sage is talking to my aunt in the kitchen and he looks upset. I ask him what is wrong and he won't really tell us. I did hear him say something about creepy and he looked like he might cry. Mother's intuition said, "Is it the creepy costume guy?" I just knew it was Saw guy, and I was right. So my aunt gets Sage settled in watching a movie with Layla and Penelope. The kids have a closed off room from the party + the office that is locked and they can play, sleep, or whatever if they don't feel like being at the party.


Apparently when my Aunt got Sage settled in with the girls he yold her this Saw guy was following him and the kids around, so she starts watching this guy --I had no idea she didn't tell me.


At around 9pm Obama and McCain costumes walk in. Funny as heck costumes, this couple pulls it off so well. They can barely make it to the dance hall and I snag the couple and get a picture with them. Ricky and I are going back and forth checking on kids and mingling with people. I suddenly get roped into helping to judge the costume contest. So I'm standing next to the DJ with the other judges and we are trying to make our selections and I say, "Well the Saw guy scared the crap out of Sage so he gets scariest costume as far as I'm concerned." It was agreed. Just as the DJ is getting ready to make the announcements I change spots and suddenly find myself next to Saw guy. I turn to him and say, "I just have to tell you, your costume scared the crap out of my son tonight." The person pulls the mask up very slowly; imagine my utter surprise when it was my dad inside!!!! I did a trple take and screamed so loud I can't believe no one heard me over the DJ's announcements. Then the clown standing next to me lifted up her big glasses and said hi. It was my mom!!! I looked around and finding that no one heard me freak out  I calmed down and started grabbing family members in to watch. Knowing my dad was going to get the award for scariest I was trying to get as many people as I could in my family so they could see him be awarded. I told them, "Come here, stand right here and just wait!!!" Ricky was at the private door the kids were behind keeping an eye on them and I had to practically run crowds of people over trying to get to him.


Scariest costume is announced and my dad goes to the center of the room and unveils himself; to whom the family freaks out and my aunt Sharon cries in shock. (my mom stayed hiding a while longer from everyone!)


As my dad was winning his costume award I notice I'm standing behind Obama and McCain. Something clicked in my head and as I starred at the back of McCain my eyes scanned the back of his head/hairline. I lifted up a small flap in the back of the mask gently. This was my little brother. I just knew it. I grabbed him and turned him around to me and said OMG you're my brother!! He shook his head no and I jumped up pointed and said yes! (Could you imagine how funny it would have been if I was wrong!!) Obama looked at me and I knew that had to be his wife. I don't think I've ever been so shocked in my life than this night!


I let the other family members figure it out on their own and in their own ways so they could have as much fun as I had just had. They waited a while to show others!

We took my dad back to see the kids and Sage was SO CUTE. He said, "I'm so glad that was you Grandpa." :)


So things are really kicking now. We are dancing and having fun. The kids (all of them expect Sebastian -I nursed him and he went back to sleep) are having fun at the party with us. The kids even find some friends to dance and run around with too. Suddenly I notice my aunt looking at a costumed person. I go up to her and she says, "Is it, is it him!?" I go closer to this Joker costume and look... then I say a bad word and jump up in down and hug him. It was my other little brother. The guy sitting next to him in a old man mask gets up and reveals himself too, it's my brothers friend and a very, very good friend of the family who we haven't seen in years.


Best surprise ever. Words can't even express the brilliance or surprise they had just pulled off. This will be a tough one to top. We had NO CLUE, none at all.


My dad said it was indescribable seeing us all like that, you know, without us knowing we were being watched. He said, "I feel like I saw a small window to your world. Like if I wasn't here this is what you'd be doing"


In the picture I took with Obama/McCain my parents are in the background. Awesome since I had no clue and there I was posing with my family.

Overdue update

We have had a wonderful time adjusting with a new baby. We have had a pretty easy time with a some what new homeschool schedule even if we are still working out the kinks. Being a mother of six is wonderful. I don't have time to write anymore. But I'm going to try and make time. (how does one make time? I'll just cook some up in a pot on the stove I guess?!)

We have loved every minute of our new baby in the house. He is nothing but a sweetheart. It's like we've always had him. The kids are absolutely the best kids and big brothers and sisters. My husband and I are not taking care of these children alone...we all take care of each other. Today Penelope (it's her her birthday today) took off her diaper and said, "Go more." And Sage (8) said, "You have to go potty more?" Penelope then shook her head yes and off he rushed her to the bathroom. I checked on them what seemed to be some time later and they were reading books on the potty.

I barely remember the last time I wrote. Between then and now so much has happened. Lots of adventures have been had, and learning taken place. The kids are learning lots of math without very much help at all. It amazes me still that this "unschooling" (child led learning) thing works ;)

We have a new vehicle for the whole fam (and a 4x4 for the winter). We kept the mini van but we now have an 8 passenger vehicle (an Excursion, we call it "the beast") the licence plate we got for it is KID BUS.

Charlotte has metal brackets and will get braces this month. She had a slumber party for her birthday and it was such a blast. Even her dad and I had a ball. We've been skating a couple times, to the library, to the annual pick your own pumpkin patch/hayride/maze place, to a fun play about dinosaurs, and to a conservation class about animal tracks, bones and fur.

Sage and Layla found love for yet another reading site at http://www.readingeggs.com/
(ooo, That reminds me the free trial for that just expired today.)

The kids have been studying world religions again. We have an animated dvd from netflix that while not very complete has been a starting point for conversations and intro into religion. I downloaded some basic bible stories from itunes for them too. They just love stories and history. Most children do. They have been into Greek mythology for years.

We have been baking/cooking from scratch now more than ever. Cookies, muffins, breads, soups, pies, pot pies...

Oh this is exciting for us... We also got a new dining table! (for free! from freecycle!) It did not come with any chairs, but that's ok we had some chairs. But the table very comfortably seats all eight of us! Well Sebastian isn't using his seat quite yet. :)

I hope to post of our Halloween adventures and sugar skull making! during the first week of November.

Below the kids caught a hummingbird that got into the house by mistake. Penelope is admiring him in the jar. He was not hurt and they let him go right after the photo op. Layla didn't want to be photographed that day.

We had a baby boy.

He's here...he's here....


A wonderful, lovely, sweet, cuddly, sleeps a lot, happy, not too demanding (thus far) baby boy. I knew he was a boy. I knew he was out there waiting for us to be his family. His name is Sebastian. I'm completely enamoured by his perfectly round velvety head, long fingers, soft mouth, his chin that is like daddy's, and the way he curls around and fits against my body when he sleeps in bed with me. I am in newborn love. Again.

And here is my half dozen...

Sometimes, for a moment, life seems utterly perfect and stress free.

So needless to say we have been pre occupied and I haven't been posting. I updated my blog and website with birth info and stuff. It was a fabulous unassisted birth (my fourth UC) with my husband.

Right now the kids all have a little cold and so we are stir crazy. We just started leaving the house with the newborn after being home for 2 weeks, then they get sick and we are stuck at home again! At least the weather has been nice. I've been enjoying nursing Sebastian on the porch in 70 degree weather.

Other...
Lately lots and lots of fun has been had at this website by our whole family http://www.fantasticcontraption.com/ I lost my husband for an entire day because of it. I lost myself for an entire afternoon. It's great for kids, too.

We are currently test driving many 8-9 passenger (gas hog) vehicles.

I'm already missing being pregnant, despite the fact that I've already mentioned that it's nice having my body back. Sebastian turning 3 weeks old this Saturday makes me a little sad. I want him to be a newborn for at least a year.
Labor day weekend was spent bonding with our newborn and having lots and lots of family fun...

(yes I am aware Charlotte IS my clone)

Below Layla shows off her Kitty craft


And next we need to re-establish some sort of schedule. Charlotte will turn 12, Penelope will turn 2... and falling leaves, blue jeans, sweaters, and Halloween will be upon us. Our favorite.

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

July wrapping up (and unwrapping birthday's for everyone!)

We have had a busy last several weeks. The kids had a lot of fun at drama camp despite that I had to make some complaints about inappropriate content in some songs little kids were being taught to sing and dance to. (totally teenage themed for the WRONG 6-11 age group) It was resolved graciously by the theatre however and there was no lasting damage done :)
At the end of the drama program the kids put on a performance which was just great. They worked so hard. I was just ecstatic to see them all on stage. I love theatre and always wanted to make it part of my children's lives, as it had been a important apart of mine long ago ...before babies, birth, and natural family living became my passion. The kids were supposed to go to the June camp but we waited for July because then our friends could do it with them. Next year I am strongly considering letting the kids do both camps! They had that much fun.





Penelope below is helping me make pizza dough. She's such a mess in the kitchen. She wants to constantly help to the point where I now sneak around to cook!


My parents came to town for a special event: A birthday party held for ALL of us. This was the first year of a tradition they would like to start where each summer they visit and throw our family one big birthday party. Gifts, cake, decorations, the whole thing. This way they don't have to mail packages out 8 times a year and they get to see all of us open the gifts. So without the kids knowing they decorated our home, brought in cake, and wrapped gifts and had a surprise party. We knew, kids didn't though! It was a blast!

Above is the tropical themed party with my parents and all of us.
Below is the cake, which had a "93" candle the total combined age of 7 of our birthday's, also read: 'Happy Birthday Ricky, Shauna, Sage, Ethan, Layla, Penelope.'
The unborn baby got gifts too, but "he" doesn't have a "birthday" yet :)



August should slow down a little bit. July was all about sleepovers, library events, drama camp, cousin Echo being in town, growing caterpillars and releasing them as butterflies, Etc.. Layla's birthday is coming up (party on July 31, actual birthday on Aug 1) In August we have a couple busy weekends, some playgroups, and then a new baby being born. I suspect we'll be home most of August and September. Oh I have 2 kids that need to go the dentist for small fillings in Aug, and Charlotte will be getting braces. Yikes I better get those appointments scheduled (I want those done before baby comes)!!

The excitement and anticipation of a newborn is really building around here.

Homeschool: What we do when we aren't doing anything elseWe have a new program we are trying for Sage at http://www.readingupgrade.com/ And he finally likes a reading program. (FINALLY)

And http://www.spellingtime.com/ had some great sign up package deals I'm not sure I wrote about. Charlotte is signed up now for 1 year at the rate of $59.99 She can do spelling, states, vocab and math. They are broken up into quick daily lessons and it's good quality. We are loving it. I'm thinking about getting Ethan signed up as he needs to hit the spelling lessons.

The spelling and states is great. Charlotte really likes the vocab too. The spelling is so cool because they give the kids the words, they get activities, practice, quizzes, then at the end of the week a test. The results are emailed to the parents. So it's super easy to keep up with how the child is doing with minimal effort!

My favorite Layla Question this week:
"Where do the movies go when you turn off the TV?"

Summer School

Is it really summer? Because the kids have been doing nothing but exploring their world and asking lots of questions about life, science, social studies/history, art, religion, and more. Learning all the time (unschooling/homeschooling) means summer holds the same learning power as the rest of the year. Actually I'd have to say we are much more productive learning in the warmer months of the year. The colder months seem to bring us more wasted time, dark evenings, and lazy days than spring, summer, and fall.

The kids have been enjoying weekends with dad being home. They have had many meaningful discussions. I over heard some world religion ones, mentions of physics, Albert Einstein, Issac Newton, and some other guy --the name escapes me right now. LOL.


What sparked at least some of those subjects was Charlotte enthusiastically pointing out that this months issue of Muse Magazine had pages about Leonardo Da Vinci. What tickled her though was the page number for the section about him was written backwards. "Just like his notes he wrote backwards to keep secret!"


I love being a part of their discovery and learning everyday. I didn't always think this way, but now I see that public school keeps a part of my children that I wouldn't get. Just like daycare gets a part of baby or toddler hood from children. (yes I know some people need to use the services of childcare, I'm grateful I don't though, and I have opinions about it's misuse and overuse). I never wanted my children in daycare, I always thought about how much a parent (and child) misses by not being "there" constantly throughout the day. I now feel that way about public schooling too. I see things in a different way now that I have been homeschooling for years and I now know first hand that children do learn all about interesting important things without structured, planned lessons. My children are more excited about learning then I ever was! I am so excited for them.

Layla keeps up with the good questions too:
Layla asked me, "What is under the toilet?" So she headed off a conversation about septic, waste disposal, and health. This morning she also woke up sleepy eyed and crawled into bed with me like usual and said, "Mom did I brush my teeth?" "Yes Layla you did last night." She rubbed her eyes and said, "Oh good thing, cause in my dream I was eating food."

Hahaha. She is SO good about her teeth and tries to keep them brushed very well! And she is SO funny.

dads birthday, math, garden is trying to grow, Layla questions...

We have been learning about money, going to the library (saw Dino O' Dell perform at the library last week), somewhat tending to the garden, keeping up with household chores, and the regular homeschool things.

The older kids have had many interesting and educational conversations none of which I can recall now though. Charlotte has been playing a "game" with the boys she came up with and told me to write about. It's very simply a skip counting game. Basically you just take turns skip counting as fast as you can and as high as you can by 2's, 5's, 10's, and 25's. That's great practice for them all and they seem to have fun. They came up with this all on their own after lunch one day.

The garden is going pretty good. The chickens keep scratching at it. The tomato plants are NO WHERE near what we had last year :( Both in quality and quantity. It's got me bummed out. But when you don't start planting until June what do you expect, ya know.

This week I learned that money conversion (exchange rates) is much more complicated than I ever knew. lol.

We are headed to the library for craft and story time this morning. Today is Dads birthday so we have some preparation to do before he gets home tonight. There is talk amongst the kids of balloons, party hats, streamers, and the like. Cousin Echo will be in town by tomorrow morning. We have a homeschool/Kayak playgroup planned for Thursday, and 4th of July is Friday. Dad will be home for a 3 day weekend yay!

Pictures: Penelope and Layla at the Friends of MO Midwives Picnic 2 weeks ago (They love this hat and they frequently love putting this hat on their daddy too.)



Pictures: Drawing bugs last night (like my walking stick? LOL) We all took turns teaching each other ideas about how to draw bugs.


Layla at bedtime snuggled up with me trying to drift off asks me all kinds of interesting questions, especially for a child 1 month away from turning 4. For example:
"Can you ever get out of jail?"
"Will police take some one to jail for not being in their seat belt?"
"Where does your food go if there is a baby in your tummy?"
"How does food turn into poop?"

And the more serious, "If you die in your dream you don't die fo' real, right?"
I could tell she already knew, but was just double checking.