Today's Writing Prompt

I've mentioned before that Kellen gets a daily writing prompt from Writing Fix as part of his school day. This was the prompt today, "Write about a monument you wish you could build to honor someone you know or knew. What would it be made out of?"

Kellen's response:

A person that deserves a monument is Mom. She puts up with four kids, a farm, and a part time job. It should look like her, though slightly skinnier. It would be made of titanium, and be solid, mounted on cast iron. It would stand at least 500 years.

It was all good until "slightly skinnier." Thanks Kellen, I think......

Broccoli Peek-a-boo

Wordless Wednesday

Nolan the Wise (?)

Yesterday the boys and I were out running an couple errands. We stopped at Kroger, and Kellen ran in to get the one thing we needed, while Nolan and I stayed in the car. The Salvation Army bell guy was set up and working. Nolan asked me what that was for. I explained to him that they collected money to help poor people.

Nolan: You mean people who don't have money to buy food to eat.

Me: Yes

Nolan: They should give them some fruit and seeds.

Me: Fruit and seeds to eat?

Nolan: No. Fruit to eat. Seeds to plant a garden and grow their own food.

Quite a bit of wisdom in that statement made by my five year old, I think.

Lydia Appleton future RN?

Lydia will soon be eight. Before our eyes she is starting to change from a little girl into a young lady. It is a bit scary, especially for her daddy. Beyond our fears though, it is so interesting to watch the kids grow and mature, and see their natural gifts and talents play out.

Lydia has always been a nurturer. We could almost see it from the beginning in the way she played with her dolls. Later it could be seen in the kind way she interacted with her siblings, especially the younger ones. Now we see it at many levels from her play with toys to her desire to take drinks and snacks out to Papaw and Tim while they are working. Most recently, though, we've seen it in her care for those who are hurt.

This summer Lydia started taking over the nursing duties here in the house. If someone is sick, she is ready to take them a drink, or sit with them. If one of the younger kids gets a scrape or boo boo, Lydia often beats me to the crying child, comforting soothing, and even cleaning and bandaging.

This week Papaw had an accident right after I left work. He was working on the dozer and had to bring it to a sudden stop, which sent him flying into one of the roll bars, head first. The result was a large gash to his head. I was not hear to witness this first person, but if you've ever seen someone with a cut on their head, you know the amount of blood that is involved. This was a cut that required 16 stitches and 9 staples. By all reports Papaw was a bloody gory mess when he first came up to the kids after the accident. Nolan later told Papaw that he looked like he was dead (because of all the blood.)

You might think that the sight of all that blood would make the kids panic. None of them did, but some did turn away at the sight. Lydia began tending. That is who she is.

We've been blessed with wonderful children. All with differing styles and personalities. I think, as their parents, it is important to acknowledge their strengths (and weakness) to help guide them on this path to adulthood. Perhaps Lydia will use that nurturing personality to be an nurse, maybe a teacher, maybe she will choose to be a stay at home mom, or maybe she will choose something entirely different. No matter, we will enjoy the process and watching our sweet, kind, nurturing girl become a lady.

More Fall Fun

Thursday night we all planned to go for our annual visit to the Pumpkin House. At the last minute Lydia and Nolan traveled to Ohio with my parent to visit Uncle Jake and Aunt Delilah and of course the cousins. We decided to take the other two kids anyway and we invited one of Kellen's friends.

We were surprised at how much more there was still to set up. It probably was only about half set up, but still very cool. We may return early next week to see the completed work.

Look! We found the treasure map! :)











Yesterday Kellen and I broke out the leaf blower and rakes to try to clean up the front yard. It is amazing how many leaves come down in our tiny front yard. We are chopping the leaves to use as mulch and compost, but Kellen felt cheated when I was only sweeping them up because there was no pile to play in. So, we raked everything into one pile first. Then we chopped them up.



The kids had a good time playing in the leaves. I greatly enjoyed the physical activity on a beautiful day. The asparagus will appreciate the nice cover of mulch and the compost pile will turn those leaves into some pretty soil for the rest of the garden. It was a fun and productive afternoon.

New Lambs

For the most part we allow our ram and our ewes to run together year round. Sheep cycles run with the seasons, like rut with deer. The ewes begin to cycle when the days get shorter and the weather gets cooler. Gestation is about 147 days. All that figures together to give us lambs around January of February.

Imagine our surprise when we noticed a few weeks ago that Maggie looked very close to lambing. We put her in the nursery pen and waited. Every morning Lydia goes out and checks for lambs. Last night Tim thought he heard Maggie during the night. This morning Lydia went out to check and didn't come back. Nolan went out to see what was going on. A few minutes later he ran back into the house yelling, "She had her lambs!" Then he was right back out the door. She had two little rams.

Checking the gestation chart, shows that she must have been bred in late May or early June. She had lambs still nursing then that had been born in January. I can only assume that our cool, wet spring must have caused her to cycle early. The other ewe that would have been breeding age at that time does not appear to be close to lambing though. Strange.

Recycling Field Trip

Today we traveled with a couple other families to Rumpke Recycling in Hanging Rock, Ohio to learn a little more about the recycling process. We've recycled for a long time. We started when we lived in Akron where recycling was easy. We had curbside pick up and only had to place our recyclables in blue bags and set them out with the rest of the trash. It was so easy, why wouldn't we recycle?

When we moved here about 4 years ago that easy recycling went away. They don't pick up here, and at first we had a hard time finding a place to take the stuff. We did eventually located a drop off that was convenient for Tim to drop off while driving for work. The only problem is they do not take glass. Since moving here our recycling has been mostly consistent. We save metals to scrap and get paid for. Plastics are taken to the drop off. We shred our paper and use it for chicken bedding. Cardboard we burn, but glass ends up the trash, though that may change. Rumpke takes glass. They are not close to us, but Tim drives right by there every week. They also pay for cardboard, paper, and newspaper.

Our visit to Rumpke was interesting. They are a multi-purpose facility with drop off bins and buy-back facilities for the public, general trash collection for nearby communities, and corporate recycling services. They purchase recyclables from the public or from businesses, sort them, and bale them for further processing.

The picture below is the baler. The second picture is shredded paper purchased from a company that provides shredding services to other companies. The third picture down shows cardboard that has gone through the baler. Our guide estimated that all the cardboard in the picture below would make about three bales.




This picture shows plastic products purchased from a nearby Pepsi facility. The white tubs were made to hold some sort of chemical, but the stacks to the right of that are brand new bottles and labels that had been discontinued and were no longer needed.


A couple of interesting facts we learned today:

• Bauxite Ore, the raw material for aluminum, is no longer available in the US. All raw materials for new cans must be imported.
• Making a new steel can from raw materials can take four times more energy than making a can from recycled steel.
• Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60 watt light bulb for up to 6 hours!

Recycling just makes sense to me.

Fall Fest '09

For the second year in a row, the building we use for our homeschool co-cop was not available for one of our meeting dates, and we decided to have the group to the 100 Acre Wood instead. It has been dubbed "Fall Fest."

We never did get a count of how many people came. Most of our co-op were here, and there were also several other homeschooling families that came, and one family that pulled their kids out of public school for the day. We are guessing there were close to 100 people on the farm yesterday.

Much of the group went on a nature walk and hike to the creek. We visited the animals, played games, took hay rides, and roasted two small hogs for lunch. I didn't get a lot of pictures, but here are a few. I know that some of you were happily snapping away. Can't wait to see the shots you got!

The Hogs the Night Before.

5:00 AM Lighting the Fire.

12:00 Mmmm Mmmm Good!

Donut Eating Race

Who Needs a playground?

The Kittens were very popular. Why didn't anyone take them home?

Should I be Concerned?

I am a little concerned about Nolan. I think perhaps there is something wrong with his feet, or maybe his legs. He just doesn't look right when he walks. I wish I could say that this was a one time event, but he has been doing this for weeks. For some reason though he only behaves this way in our house. Do you think I should take him to the doctor?