Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day was interesting.

Our stake, every year, has a nice program and breakfast for Memorial Day. They serve fruit and bagels, have a speaker, sing all the theme songs to each branch of the military and have all the military personnel in attendance stand up. Then they play TAPS. All that is sandwiched in a VERY professional posting and retiring of the colors. Sometimes they do the ceremonial folding of the flag, with explanation (for us non-military types). All in all a VERY good way to spend Memorial Day. The only thing that would make it better is if Dad could be there to honor.


But this year I'm looking through different eyes.



The girls had no idea what was going on. For some strange reason they didn't have school on the day after church. Mom and Dad wake them up early, don't feed them breakfast, drag them to the place where you get baptized, don't let them get enough food, stand out in the freezing cold, and don't let them talk or play. Oh, and people use a lot of unfamiliar words like Memorial, honor, serve, respectful, patriotism, and military. There is this cool thing where the army men march in a straight line and carry flags, though.


In other news...



All the kids worked VERY hard walking behind Dad and the tiller picking up rocks that he dug up and loading and dumping wheelbarrow loads of good black dirt. They were spurred on by random breaks where we had otter pops, lunch, juice and other treats or rode bikes. They worked hard ALL day long and got very tired and very sore. We even got to plant a couple rows of our 1200 strawberries.


All the kids, that is, except Ryah. She was in one of her moods. She even put herself in time-out, skipped lunch and sat around for most of the day with a scowl on her face. Poor girl. She (luckily) doesn't do those type of fits very often any more.


Other than that it was an extremely productive day. And very rewarding to those who worked hard (we can already taste the strawberries).

Then tuesday Keith took a day off so we could get a spot prepared for the garden (I know, we are REALLY late). Murphy stepped in and the tiller broke. It needs to be replaced and we are on a time crunch so we hired our tractor friend to come and till. In 2 hours he tilled twice the ground we spent all day monday (and a couple previous days) trying to prepare. He'll come again today for another 2 hours and spread and till in the black dirt.


It is really true.

You can buy anything in this world for money.


Except maybe the satisfaction of tired muscles and a job well done.


And to end, some pictures from our camping trip on friday and yard for your enjoyment (sorry for the formatting, I don't have time right now to weed through the HTML and fix them)



Elijah helping to pack for our camping trip to Zion's Camp. Yes, we had to buy a few more sleeping bags. :)

Elijah LOVED the boat and water and I'm surprised he didn't fall in.

There really is a boat big enough to hold us all. We didn't go very far, very fast, or very straight until Dad took over the paddling.

Alina "playing" with the campfire. I don't think they have ever been around open fire before. They kept wanting to put things in it--including themselves. I'm surprised we didn't have anyone get burned.

Elijah and Caleb enjoying the top bunk. We slept in the leader's cabin and had a blast.

Miriam and Kristina cleaning up after a fun night.

Anastasia building her own campsite. The pinecones were tents, the fern leaves were trees and though you can't see it, she even had a little fire with sticks.

She also likes to pose.

Not to be outdone Ryah did her own playing in the dirt. Everyone got VERY dirty. That means the camping (or at least the fun having) was successful.

We found a nest amidst our (very healthy) weeds growing in our pile of rich black dirt. Four blue and brown speckled eggs. I can't seem to catch the mother with the camera. Everytime I get close enough to possibly catch a glimpse (or snap a picture) she hops away through the weeds. So I'm not sure what kind of bird she is. The fig trees and lingon berries that we still need to plant.
The tractor, our pile of logs (a job for another day/ season) and our piles of dirt. Can't see the dirt? Look for the bright green, healthy, pile of weeds.
The part that the tractor tilled. The garden will go here. Our burn pile is in the middle... also a job for another day. This year's garden will be relatively small but next year we hope to have all this planted.
The strawberry patch. If you look closely you can see the trees we planted. These are pear trees. (Cherry, apple, and plum are to the right and back a little ways). The trees are 15 feet apart, just to give you an idea of the size. All the trees are finally planted.

As a side note the neighbor stopped on his way to work and commented about our orchard. We are the only house on the street that isn't beautifully landscaped so I guess they all keep track of our progress.

Dabbling

I already posted the "doctored" photos of Kristina. These are some that I also played around with. I've got a wedding someone wants me to take pictures at in a couple of days and I'm very nervous!! I've never done that before. So I'm practicing and looking at lots of pictures others took to get ideas.

My all time favorite picture. Elijah set up the shot himself while I was putting camera stuff away after Kristina's shoot. I wish I could have put something more vintage looking than just the plain ol' white stool. But I like it anyway.

Kristina

I finally had some time (when Kristina was cooperating) to take her birthday/ baptism pictures. But first......

Kristina turned 9 on May 9. Since we were on a time crunch we spent most of the day planting trees. We took breaks every so often and she opened presents during that time. She got some nice presents from her host family in California. and a BIKE. She is sooooo excited about that bike. She asks me each night to wake her up early so she can ride her bike and she rides it after her chore at night as much as she can.


Keith bought her ice cream cake (I ran out of time to finish her Barbie cake-- got it baked but couldn't get back to get it decorated ) which EVERYONE loved. (sorry about the funny colors and the blown cake on the picture-- we found out later the camera was still set for portraits with the extra lights-- I'm still learning)

She was baptized on May 10, one day after her birthday. A lot of people came. Brother Olsen, who speaks Russian, gave the talk on baptism and did it both in Russian and English. Elder Frandsen, one of the missionaries who taught Kristina gave the talk on the Holy Ghost. Of course, Dad baptized her.

She didn't want her picture taken in the jumpsuit so we couldn't get the tradional shot. For some reason Anastasia didn't want to join us for the group shot. (Don't mind the bright green tights or everyone's scary hair.)

Anyway, here are some quick shots of Kristina for her birthday in her baptism dress.

Just two minutes

You would think that two minutes wouldn't be that long.

Last night at dinner (after all the hubbub of homework and chores) everyone was talking to me all at once (not necessarily an uncommon occurance) and I was very tired. So I challenged everyone to NOT talk to me for 2 minutes. They couldn't do it. The longest anyone could go was about 30 seconds. I kept "restarting the clock" everytime someone talked to me. They even kept reminding each other NOT to talk to me, but they still couldn't do it. I finally gave up. I guess that is the benefit of being Mom to a large family.... you always have someone's hand to hold, plenty of hugs and kisses AND always someone that needs you. It is nice to be needed!

Make that 2 emergency trips to the dentist

Miriam was holding a ribbon in her mouth (haven't we taught you NOT to do that!?!?!?) and Alina wanted it. To make a long story short... it was a baby tooth (thank goodness) and no bone damage this time AND no stitches (insert a great shout of praise from Miriam), but it was sore for a long while.

First Day of School

With some trepidation I sent the girls to school today. They were really nervous but excited. Kristina kept saying "I no go." and then almost without taking a breath, "what my teacher?" I drove them (well, everyone) and we started at Anastasia's classroom. She was hesitant but still did everything the teacher asked her to. Then we went to Alina's. She promptly buried her head in my jacket but then let me leave. Kristina had the hardest time. She kept saying "I no go." Her teacher had recorded some Russian off the comptuer to play for her ("welcome to class, we hope you like it here"). I helped her to her desk and she cried a little and asked if I could stay. I asked the teacher and then sat behind her. He had her start a little string picture. I figured I had better get out soon or I was going to have 2 bored little kids on my hands.
When I went to pick them up at 11:10 they were all bursting with stories to tell me. "Funny!" said Alina (meaning *fun*). They want to go back tomorrow and stay all day (they won't stay all day, yet). When we were going to the car we met a friend who offered to take a pciture of them on their first day. Bad me! Didn't even think about it. So I took some more when we got home:

Evidence of Children--- volume 1

I saw this done on this blog cornishadoptionjourney today and I thought it was a good idea (since I'm not creative enough to come up with this on our own. We get a lot of questions about the adjustments we have had to make adding 4 more children to our lives. This post is about the physical adjustments. You might be surprised at how little we had to "adjust" physically, at least in the general living space. I didn't do any cleaning before this I took these pictures, so this is the real us.

We already had this table and all these chairs, although the chairs were scattered everywhere around the house. And since we moved into this house we have had all the leaves actually in the table. The only difference is I can't store my sewing machine and current sewing project on one end. :)

You might ask why we had this big monstrous doll house when we only had one girl. Now I would answer, "because we had 4 other girls coming." :) For the record, the boys play with it, too.

The chapter, teen and adult books. The blue row is Hardy Boys books. The next row down is Nancy Drew, Series of Unfortunate Events, Little House on the Prairie and others. Ect, ect. Never at a loss for something to read... Unless you are Caleb who has read every one of these books about 5 times.

I would like to use the excuse of getting more children to buy more books, but the truth is WE DON'T HAVE ROOM FOR ANY MORE BOOKS (I have to keep telling myself that).

The younger kid books. I got lucky and the mystery chore person had to sort the books today so it was nice and neat. See, there is some space in there that I could put a few books. NO, NO, NO, no more books. Chant it with me.

The two little boxes on top that you can barely see are full of small board books and coloring books/workbooks.

Muffins for a mob. Truth is I always made this many muffins. Difference is we go through them quicker, now. We do need to build up our food storage for 10 people rather than 6. We are working on that one. However, we have always been ones to use our food storage and buy in bulk so this hasn't been much of an adjustment.

Everyone has a place to put their cup for the day. As you can see we need to work on this. Whose is that orange cup?!?! And where are everyone else's cups?!?! Mom's cup is the one in the back, with it's own coaster. Dad keeps his on top of the fridge where he is sure no one else will drink out of it. :)


Moby the massive mover. Can you see the water spouting from the top!?!?!?!?


The three young kids' bikes. Two in the walkway where people can trip over them and one behind the Moby Mover waiting to be squished. The older kids' bikes are kind of buried in the garage. It is getting summer now, we'll have to dig them out (and, yes, probably add a few more).

Our game closet. What you don't see to the left is a shelf full of buckets of puzzles and card games. To be fair the top shelf is big bandages and other medical supplies, extra toilet paper and shampoo/ conditioner stashes for upstairs bathrooms and the bottom "shelf" (the floor) is food storage candles, and some Chrismas decorations. And there are also a couple of adult games there too, but they are on the bottom of the stacks, evidence that they don't get used much.

Boy toothbrushes.

And girl toothbrushes, have to have 2 holders.

This one hasn't even been touched, yet. This is our photo album shelf. It contains our pre-marriage albums, family albums and kid albums up to the first 4. We'll have to figure out SOMETHING when I get around to actually making albums for the girls. But I like to have them out because they LOVE to look at them.


Short toy shelves with too big toys on top. Each bucket is labelled with what goes in it (theoretically) and a picture for those who can't read yet.

The tall toy shelves. The toys that we are trying to "detach" ourselves from so we can give them away as well as the ones that have their own bucket that doesn't fit on the shelves, are on the top.

The latest hotspot project. We have been trying to figure out what to do with shoes, coats, and backpacks since we brought home the girls. So this is a work in progress. These are the shoe buckets: little "drawers" that fold out and in, from Ikea. Black for boys and white for girls. Everyone's has a label with their name on it... except where Ryah or Elijah pulled them off. They are only about 4 inches deep and work great in holding the shoes. They aren't so great and going out into the family room and getting the shoes to put in them, however. Anyone know of something that will do that?!?!?! ;). Notice the wrapping paper container it is in need of help and a new home, but you can't do everything at once, can you?!?!?!

How we contain markers, pens, pencils, scissors, crayons and glue. This is a rare occurance, usually there is at least one drawer missing because someone is using them to draw, somewhere. And usually there is at least 2 drawers that won't close all the way because there are too many things in it. And you will note the side that is supposed to be nice and neat notebooks. Once in a century it is nice and neat and JUST notebooks. :)

Our medicine shelves. Most of the medicines are kid medicines but there are a couple of them that are for us. Notice Jonas gets his own little box, labelled and everything... he's the pill-er of our family. And don't ask why there is one basket labelled "medicine" and LOTS of medicine not in a basket labelled "medicine..." I won't be able to answer you. I guess this little project has pointed out to me places I need to organize better.

A drawer full of kid cups and school lunch containers. The cups are supposed to be stacked up, kitchen chore person got a little lazy

The biggest changes are in the bedrooms... but that is a post for another day. And I should try to do a post about adjustments in other ways, too, but that is a little bit harder to show in pictures.