Knights and Princesses

 We got out the dress up tote the other day, and Mallory dressed everyone up and busily prepared a tea (juice) party for her younger siblings. 

Oh, how I wish I was an amazing photographer.  Oh well, at least the memories are captured.  

Fish Face

 Meet Xantipus, Aliysa's new BFF

She wuvs him.

There are ninjas among us

Overheard conversation:

Zach (while trying to find shoes when going out to feed the dog): "My shoes aren't on my shoe shelf!  Oh well, Ninjas have bare feet." 

Andrew: "They don't always have bare feet"

Zach:  Yes, always!

Then, later that day the kids were playing bananagrams, and Zach ended up playing with the tiles longer than everyone else.  I looked down to see what he was spelling and saw this:

I love little boys. 

Kindness

The day after we noticed the largest amount of deer damage to our garden, one of our sweet neighbors brought over this:

Two large trash bags - one was full of spinach, and one was full of lettuce.  She had so much growing in her garden, that she was giving away extras.  I washed, cut up, and froze most of the spinach (plus made large spinach salads), and we've eaten so much lettuce!  (The two small bowls are radishes and lettuce from our garden).

Then, another neighbor called and said her raspberries were ripe and she was leaving and wasn't going to be able to pick them, so we were welcome to pick all we could.  What a treat!

So, even with what the deer have eaten, we've been very blessed.  

Thank you Kristie and Jami!

I love you deer, but...

 We've been doing this...

...all to create delicious produce to feed...

these little dears.

They come in our garden and mow it down, row by row.  Huge cucumber plants?  Munched down to nothing.  Rows of pea plants just beginning to produce well?  Decimated.  8 pepper plants?  Chewed to nothing.  Beet tops? Swiss chard?  Lettuce?  Squash plants? Gone.

They haven't touched the potato plants.  Yeay (we can buy potatoes for cheap here in good old I-Dee-ho.  Last year we bought 400 lbs of potatoes for $20.  No kidding. So having our own potatoes is nice, but not a huge money saver.)

They also haven't eaten any of the giant sunflowers.  What a crop we have of those! 

Strangely they didn't eat the green bean plants.  Or the onions for that matter.
Still!
Argh.
I think we ought to purchase a hunting license.  That way we could at least get some food for all our hard effort - healthy organic produce fed deer meat.  

  

We've put up a fishing line fence around both garden areas,

and we might purchase a couple of these:

Scarecrow Motion Activated Sprinkler

But I don't want to spend more money on our garden this year!

Anyone have some 10 foot high fencing that's just sitting around their yard?

Well, my plan to record what we did each day for a week did not go so well...I'll try again sometime in the future.  For now, I'll just start posting pictures that I am way behind on. 

A day in our life...Monday

Monday morning was a busy one.  

We start each morning with family scripture study and prayer - today we called the kids in around 7:20, because it was Jace's first day of Driver's Ed.  

Aliysa was not too happy that we called for everyone in at that time, because she has been getting up at 7:00 and jogging, actually I can't call it jogging because it is more intense than a "jog".  She warms up for a few minutes, and then runs for 1 minute with the treadmill on its fastest speed, then walks briskly for 1 minute, then repeats.  She does this for 20 minutes.  And she does it every day.  

I told her she should only do interval training 1-3 times a week, but she said she loves it, and pointed out that football players go to practice and play hard every single day, sometimes twice a day.  So, I'm leaving it up to her.  

Anyway, she's been enjoying her nice morning routine, jogging, walking outside, drinking her water, feeding the chickens, stretching out, and making and eating her own breakfast.  So, she was grumpy when Bob called her into our room (right during her jog).  I talked to her and asked what exactly she wanted to accomplish in the morning, and how long it would take.  She agreed to get up even earlier.  

Each morning we read 10 verses in the Book of Mormon.  Right now we're reading about the stripling warriors - one of our favorite stories.  Then we have family prayer and begin our "morning chores".  Here's how the routine goes:

We have 5 minutes to complete each chore.  Some chores take less time, so the kids hurry to start another chore that may take longer.  Bob times them on his watch and whistles when 5 minutes is up.  The kids have 10 seconds to be in our room (he does a short whistle when the 10 seconds is up).  Then he asks them, in order of oldest to youngest, if they completed that chore.  They get 1 point if they were there when the 10 seconds were up, and 1 point for completing the chore (quickly, cheerfully, and thoroughly).  So Bob calls out each child's name, and they answer "Yes, Yes", (or, "No, yes", or "No, no". etc.)  Bob keeps a tally sheet, one mark for each "yes".  When they get 50 points, they get a Yummy Earth Lollipop.

Here are the chores we do: scriptures (they read the Book of Mormon for 5 minutes), prayer (they have to spend the entire 5 minutes on this, not jump ahead to other chores), dressed, hair, make bed, clean bedroom, upstairs zone, trash/hamper/hangers (empty the first two, and gather all extra hangers out of their closet), farm chore, laundry (we sort all the clean laundry, fold it, and put it away.  Since we do this each morning, it really does get done in 5 minutes. Yeay!), downstairs zone.  

So, even at 5 minutes each, this routine takes almost an hour.  It has taken Bob and I a long time to be totally consistent with doing this daily.  It takes some patience, and I've had to learn to not listen to excuses.  Bob pointed out that the worst thing that happens is they might lose one point, so I don't let them say "I was hurrying to get here", etc.  If they report that a chore was finished (like cleaning their room), and it really wasn't done well, then their points go back down to zero.  

This routine has been such a nice thing for our family.  Before breakfast the whole house is cleaned up, everyone is dressed, has their hair done, the animals are fed, and the laundry done.  It is a great foundation for the day.  

Then we eat breakfast, do our kitchen jobs, brush teeth, and lately, we go outside and work in the yard for a bit.  

Anyway... back to Monday.  I was in charge of the chores because we had:

8:00 - Mallory had to be at her activity leader's home to go to day camp

8:30 - Jace had an appointment with the dermatologist for a curious mole on his back

9:00 - Jace had to be at the courthouse to register for Driver's Ed, and then he had to go straight to Driver's ed.  

We harvested our first cherry tomato!

For Family Home Evening, we went to the Lake.  It was beautiful weather and we had such a nice evening.  

 Courtney & Abby

 Mallykins

 Aliysa & Taycie.  Aliysa sat with me on the beach.  She was too sunburned from a YW floating activity to move her arms, so she didn't want to kayak, and it took all the energy I had just to go to the lake and sit.  We had fun chatting and watching our boys show off.

 Taycie loves being outside

 Jace is getting pretty good and kayaking - he was practicing his roll. 

 Abby kept declaring how brave she was to go so far out in the tube. 

 Why the swim goggles?  Best be prepared for anything!

 Bob teaching Spencer how to roll

 Oh how I love that guy.

 Yes, even when he looks like this.  We were laughing about how his hair looked when he came up from rolling.  So he gave us this look.

Andrew is such a sweet boy

Home we go, happy and ready for bed. 

And one more picture from today - Abby caring for her dearest doll - Grace.