O Tammy Baum

Today we embarked on a new family tradition. Armed with heavy coats, mittens and hats, we drove out to Leverty's Traditional Trees just over the bridge in Houlton, Wisconsin. It was a crisp 25 degrees out but with sunshine and no wind, it was a doable December day in the Midwest. As kids were climbing out of the car, I was deleting a few pictures off my camera so that I'd have plenty of space for all the awesome first-ever-Lawrence-cut-your-own-Christmas-tree-experience-maybe-I'll-even-get-a-good-family-shot-for-the-Christmas-card pictures I was planning to take. Then it happened. Flash-flash-flash-nothing. The little battery image on my camera's screen went bye-bye. I couldn't believe it. Didn't it say it had at least half a battery power left? Apparently not. Thankfully, after keeping it off for about 5 minutes, I was able to squeak out a few pictures of the day.

We wandered around, hack saw in hand, trying to decide whether we'd get a Fraser Fir or a Balsam Fir (clearly we would not be choosing the exceedingly poofy, Weeble Wobble-shaped Scotch Pine) and finally the enticing aroma of the balsam fir made our decision. "Please cut only trees with tags" the sign said. Easy enough. We walked down a row of balsams scoping out the shape, fullness and height of each one. Meanwhile, the three conversant children in the family were starting to say such Christmas Vacationesque comments as "Can we just pick a tree and go? I'm freezing!" Finally, we walked back to the tree that seemed to fit all our strident criteria, looked it over once more and then Joel prepared to cut it down. It struck me as feeling a bit destructive, just cutting down a tree like that. But I got over it. So, timber, the tree falls and we hoist it onto the tarp we'd been given to drag it on back to the barn. I say, "How much is it?" Joel says, "I don't know. Where's the tag?" Awkward silence as we search for the tag. Oops. No tag. We just chopped down a tagless tree. Were there penalties for this? And Joel works with one of the daughters of the owners; how embarrassing! "What's going to happen?" Bethany asked wide-eyed as Joel and I discussed our oversight. "Oh probably nothing," we assured her, but I did feel awfully bad chopping down the wrong tree. We turned to the left and spied the original tagged tree that had first captured our attention. Oops. Wrong row. Well, we thought, as we dragged our illegal tree back to the barn, why wasn't THIS tree tagged? It's a perfectly good tree. Most of the tagless ones are shrimps they're letting grow a bit more. But this one was a nice, big tree. What gives? So, the moment of reckoning arrives. "Did you find a nice one?" a friendly tree farm worker asked. "Um. Well, yeah. But we cut down one without a tag. Sorry about that." "Oh, don't worry. No problem!" Whew. No harm, no foul. We never found out why this particular tree was on the tagless list. I'm wondering if I'll wake up in the morning and find some critter's nest in it or something. At least the cats will have fun.

After a little apple cider and some shaking, netting and strapping (of the tree), we headed back home, a successful first outing to the tree farm. On the way home, Micah said, "Jee-boo, jee-boo, HEY!" which of course means, "Jingle bells, jingle bells, HEY!" In keeping with his desire to sing Christmas tunes, I said, "Micah, can you say 'O Tannenbaum'?" (Miss Leanne, who keeps the littles when the bigger kids go to co-op on Thursdays, teaches them German and this week it was the song O Tannenbaum.) He smiles and starts saying, "O Tammy Baum, O Tammy Baum." Not sure who she is; perhaps some obscure German Christmas heroine who traversed the Black Forest saving trees from the axe. In any case, it was pretty cute and made for a lovely ending to our tree-cutting adventure.

Hoo-hahns, roller skating and tooth loosing

Just 2 days before her sixth birthday, Bethany lost her THIRD tooth! This time, it's front and center! Her top left tooth started wiggling a few weeks ago and tonight, it was hanging by a thread. She was pushing it out sideways with her tongue (totally grossing me out) and we kept saying, "Do you want us to pull it?" She kept saying, "No, it will hurt too much!" Then after about 10 minutes of wiggling it, she pulled it our herself! So, here are the pics!


































And just last Saturday, Bethany went roller skating for the first time. After only one unfortunate bonking of the head, she did a great job! We had such a fun time together roller skating and winning tickets (read: blowing money) in the Fun Zone. We were there to celebrate her friend Abbie's 7th birthday. (They even played a little Michael Jackson, which really took me back to my Skate Magic days...)









































Finally, sweet little Micah loves to put shoes on - especially my fuzzy black house shoes. One night, he kept putting them on and saying, "Hoo hahn. Hoo hahn, Mommy." I couldn't figure how he'd gotten 'hoo hahn' from 'house shoe'. Finally, it hit me: every time we get ready to go somewhere, we say, "Micah, let's get your _shoes on_." So, now, shoes are called 'hoo hahns' around here. Yeah, he's pretty stinking cute. But, here's a stumper: he calls tractors 'high yos'. Where is he getting that? Point to a tractor and say, "Micah, what's that?" and he says, "High yo." My only guess is that he has a little tractor that sings Old MacDonald Had a Farm. Maybe he's heard E-I-E-I-O so much in conjunction with that tractor that the I-O part has stuck! Who knows the mind of a toddler....

New Haircuts!

Today the girls got their annual haircut. Yes, I did say annual. I'm so bad. I just cut Bethany's bangs when she can't see anymore and let Anna and Katherine's hair do what it wants. So, I decided it was time to give them official haircuts. Even Micah got his ears lowered. The girls also got a braid, pink streaks and sparkles in their hair. (Micah passed on that offer.) So, here are the pics!

Medieval Feast

Tonight our homeschool co-op had our end of unit celebration. Because we had been studying the medieval time period, we had (what else?) a medieval feast! Micah was a knight, Katherine a princess, Anna a fairy/nymph, Bethany a peasant girl, Joel a monk and I was a peasant. We ate with our fingers, drank wassail, all the while being entertained by jesters and little girls dancing with ribbons and bells! It was crazy but fun. The point of the evening was for family and friends to come celebrate with us and see all the cool things the kids have done in our first 10 weeks of school. So we had all their projects on display: castles, salt dough maps, family crests, viking longhouses, mosaics and stained glass windows (made with tracing paper!). Bethany has had such a great time so far and we look forward to another 10 weeks of exploring the world and history. This unit will cover the Renaissance and at the end the kids will perform a Shakespearean play! Should be fun! So, here are few pictures...I hope to eventually get a slideshow together of some more....

Anna's broken wrist

At the end of July, we were at some friends' house for the evening, and sweet Anna plummeted from the monkey bars on their swing set and broke her wrist. That's the journalistic version (you know, lead with one sentence that says the kernel of the story.). Here's what really happened: we were about to go up on our friends' deck to eat some dessert, so Joel turned to Anna and Katherine and said, "Don't climb on the monkey bars while the adults are not down here to help you." Moments later, while savoring juicy morsels of strawberry pie with whipped cream, we see Anna land on the ground underneath the monkey bars and start crying. I give the Joel "the look" which means, 'I'm not dealing with her overreactive self; it's your turn' and he tromps down the stairs to give her a pretty severe reprimand for directly disobeying orders. After delivering said reprimand-and, I must add, hearing no indication from Anna that she's hurt- he leaves her to sulk and whimper through her humiliation alone and comes back up to finish his dessert. We assume that in just a few moments Anna will have bounced back from her traumatic experience and begin clambering around on the play equipment again. Not so. Soon we begin to hear wails coming from below us. At this point we start to think that perhaps something more is going on. I run down and pick her up and she starts crying about her arm hurting. We set her down in a chair, add a little ice pack and try to ascertain exactly how badly hurt she really is. Is she just being dramatic or is this real? After a good solid 5 minutes of the same high-pitched wail and few pokes on the arm that elicit an even higher pitched one, we decide that this probably calls for a trip to the ER, because, of course, this has happened on a Saturday night JUST after the after-hours clinics have all closed. So, we drop Joel and the others off at home (a 7 minute trip during which Anna falls asleep!) and I head off for the ER. I should point out that this is poor Anna's 3rd trip to the ER. The first was when she was about 6 months old and got croup so badly they felt they should see her. The second was when she fell out of my arms on Christmas day and cut her mouth on a stool leg (worst day of my life so far). And now this. You know it's not a good thing when you say, "This looks a lot like the room we were in last time," and your child says, "No, Mommy, this is a different woom. The other woom had a ladybug on the door." Next thing you know, she'll be calling the doctors by their first names and asking about their families. Anyway, so they feel it first and say, yep, it's broken; let's see how bad. Then they do an x-ray (for which, I must say, Anna is remarkably cooperative and still). It appears that both bones just above her left wrist are broken, the bigger one a little worse than the little one. They put her in a brace and a sling and tell us to come back later that next week for casting. (They like to let the swelling go down before they cast it.) So, the following Thursday she receives a bright pink (surprise, surprise) cast above the elbow. Of course, she's left-handed so everything is hard for her but she manages with great skill and aplomb. Throughout the whole process she has been brave, stoic and just very calm. The x-ray technicians are amazed at how still she sits for her x-rays and the nurse who used a small circular saw to cut off her long cast was agog at how calm she was. "I've NEVER had a kid this age sit that still while I was doing that!" So, Anna, for all the daily drama we tend to get from her is the brave warrior in times of emergency. We've been very proud of her and she is ecstatic that in just 5 days she gets her second, shorter cast removed. I'll be ecstatic, too. Bathing a kid with a cast isn't a barrel of monkeys (well, actually...) and it'll be nice that she can run in the sprinkler without worry, if we get any more days like that. I've heard people say I should keep her cast for posterity. I don't know. Won't it just be one more thing to pile up in the closet? The jury's still out on that decision. Maybe I should. It may well be the only cast she ever has...we could only be so lucky.

Edible oasis

So, we're talking about the desert this week in school and decided we should make an edible one! Brown sugar sand, Tootsie Roll/candy fruit slice palm trees, M&M water and animal cracker elephants and rhinos. The hardest part was getting the girls to actually DESIGN their oasis and not just eat it!

Oh, it's ancient history

This school year, we were invited to be a part of a homeschool co-op with some families from our church and our area. We use a history-based curriculum (which is great because I LOVE history!) and because of what the other families have done in the past year, we are starting in the medieval period. Since I didn't really want to just skip ancient history (I was obsessed with Egypt when I was a kid!), and after deciding to join the group in late July, I threw together a crash course in ancient history for the girls. We talked about archaeology, how people learned to make pottery, building the Egyptian pyramids and eventually made our way to Greece and Rome. I started off strong with some fun hands-on projects so thought I'd throw together a little slide show. (Sadly, Greece and Rome really only got coloring-sheet treatment!) A few friends asked me recently to share some of the projects I do, so I'll list materials too for those who want to know.

Since the captions are so short, here's the rundown of what you'll see:
-The archaeology project: digging random things out of a bucket of paver base (sand and rocks). Materials needed: gardening gloves, small paint brushes to "treat ancient artifacts with care" (:D), a bucket, sand, and random treasures from around the house.
-Making clay pottery. Materials needed: quick dry clay, stamps, jewels to decorate, tools to carve designs with, paint to use on the pottery after it has dried (optional), water. Note: we found real clay pretty tricky to work with. I think there may be easier to use options but haven't tried anything else yet.
-Moving blocks to build the Great Pyramid: since the Egyptian farmers who built the pyramids used a type of sled (i.e. NO WHEELS!) to move all the blocks to the pyramid site, we tried pulling a landscape stone across the yard with a winter sled. The girls found out quickly how difficult that would have been!
-Sugar-cube pyramids: They loved doing this especially since we had some friends over that day who did it with us. Just Google "sugar cube pyramid" and you'll find loads of recipes for the mortar, etc. Our pyramids only had a base of 6-7 cubes. Ten is what is usually recommended but I frankly don't want enormous sugar-cube pyramids lying around my house, nor did I want to spend my entire grocery budget on sugar cubes!

So, there you have it!

A month in the life...

Well, it's been a frightfully long time since I've updated my blog. Many apologies for that...July was a busy month with lots of people in town to visit us. First, Grandma and Granddad came up on the 4th and stayed with us for a week. We had a great time with them; the girls especially enjoyed going out on their own with Grandma and Granddad for a meal. Then our friends Josh and Hammer came to visit us. Formerly known as our 'basement dwellers', Josh and Amber lived with us for a few months one summer a few years ago. We always love having them here and hearing about what the Lord is doing in and through their lives. Following Josh and Hammer, our dear friends Ryan and Scottie stayed with us while they were here at Bethel doing two weeks of intensives. The kids LOVE hanging out with them and we enjoy some fun date nights out thanks to the guys. (And, they don't just babysit; they make homemade pizzas, ice cream sundaes-who could ask for more?) And then the big news, we were having dinner at a friend's house one evening and Anna fell from their monkey bars and broke her wrist. One trip to the ER, two x-rays and 5 days later, she was fitted with a super-cool hot pink cast! She has done really well with the frustration of having one arm in a cast during swim season. This Thursday we go back to the doctor; if after another x-ray, the arm seems to be healing well, he'll put it in a short cast, one that doesn't go above her elbow. Then she'll have it on for about 3 more weeks. And while all this was going on, our little garden has grown from strength to strength. So, I've included a picture of our harvest: so far just cherry tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes and one small carrot (we'll leave the rest of the carrots to get a bit bigger! We were just curious!). The girls are having a great time watching our plants grow so big. And finally, Joel had some fun Daddy time with the kiddos for 4 days while I went to Indiana to spend time with my girlfriends from my Cambridge prayer group (see picture at the top!). It was such an encouraging time for all of us to come together and share what's going on in our lives and to pray for and encourage one another. I'm so thankful to Joel and to everyone who helped him with the kids (Amy, Kate, Melissa, Kelsey and Amanda) for making this time possible. And I'm forever grateful for the friendship of these gals, Renee, Jill, Katie and Karla. Sadly, four others couldn't be with us this year--Caroline, Pip, Alysia and Emma--and we missed them. It would take a miracle for ALL of us to get together (I guess that's what heaven is for!) but we enjoy the times we do have. So, I conclude because it's late and I should get to bed. School starts for us this week so I need to be on my game. I hope I'll keep up here a little better than I have this summer! Till then...

Bye bye baby mullet

Well, it was time. Maybe we had a month or more before it got really embarrassing but I decided to just do it. You see, Micah, with-bless his heart-what little hair he has, was getting a baby mullet. I'm sure you're familiar with the term but just in case you aren't, the best explanation is "business in the front, party in the back." ("Oh, ri-i-i-i-ght," you nod knowingly.) So, I plopped him in front of the telly and snipped as fast as I could in between head turns as he attempted to see what I was doing. So, here is a before picture (taken last week) and an after one. Not a huge difference but a relieving one for me!

Busted

Until recently, our cats, Skimble and Tugger, were the toast of the neighborhood. Every time someone would come by and see the cats in our yard with us they would say something like, "Oh, those are your cats! They are so friendly, especially that one (Skimble). My kids love it when they come into our yard." But sadly their fan club is not far-reaching. Apparently they have been on a killing spree in neighboring yards focusing mostly on birds with even the odd cardinal amidst the list of their victims. Kind of like a Natural Born Killers feline version, leaving a path of dead feathery bodies in their wake. Well, the neighbors are, understandably, not happy about the decline in their backyard bird populations and have, nicely, asked us to do something about our roving menaces. It's not like this is a surprise to us. We've found everything from dead birds to mice to chipmunks to even rabbit legs strewn about our yard (actually mostly under the playset where they lovingly drop each carcass as an offering to us.) But I guess we didn't realize the extent of their destruction. So, as a result, they are currently under house arrest. Someone from the Invisible Fence company comes out tomorrow to give us an estimate on installing one for our cats (who knew they actually did invisible fences for cats?). We have to do something. They can't/won't stay inside all the time, certainly not with all the going in and out of our house that happens on a daily basis and within just a day or two, I'm sure, they will officially drive me crazy. Oh the shame of having a pair of serial killers living under your own roof. Perhaps we can at least contain their massacres to our back yard. Film at eleven...

Springtime in Minnesota...finally!

June in Minnesota started out a bit chilly for my taste. However, only two weeks in and we have been very busy! I put together a little slide show but first I'll explain all the things we've been up to.
First, we planted a little garden in our backyard and it has been really fun to watch our tomatoes, peppers, red cabbage, spinach and carrots grow away. As you can see, the girls and Micah really enjoyed helping get the bed ready. I did feel strange, having grown up on a ranch, having to go out and pay money for cow manure. It's like buying bottled water!
Then Bethany started what I'm sure will be a long and illustrious career as a soccer player. When I saw her head out the door one night with her shin guards, knee socks, soccer shorts, team shirt and hair pulled up in a ponytail, I was amazed at how grown up she looked. And instead of making me sigh and wish she wouldn't grow anymore, it just made me proud and excited at the privilege we have of watching these little ones become big ones. An amazing privilege indeed.
And speaking of grown up, Bethany is a kindergarten graduate! Since I homeschool Bethany, we have the flexibility to cater her education to where she is academically. At the beginning of the year, it became apparent that another year of pre-school material wasn't going to meet her where she was, so we moved ahead with kindergarten. She's an excellent reader; it's really fun to see her curled up with a book on the sofa and know that she's actually reading it now instead of just looking at the pictures! She loves school as do Anna and Katherine with whom I'm just doing pre-school workbooks and lots of reading. So to finish the school year, we organized a school presentation and invited two couples who are good friends of ours and dear to our children. Diane and Garry Lysiak and Steve and Lisa Odmark, along with their youngest, Claire, joined us for an afternoon of poem recitations, songs and of course, cupcakes! Each of the girls sang a little song on their own, Bethany recited a few poems she had memorized and then together they wrapped it all up with a VERY long song about hopping aboard a pirate ship! Then I had the opportunity to present them each with a little certificate and tell them the things we have seen them accomplish during the past year. It was very sweet time. We were so blessed to have the Lysiaks and the Odmarks share this time with us. The girls enjoyed showing them their school notebooks with all their work from the year. It was a good way to finish the year.
As we approached summer, I realized that we needed to get Micah a life jacket. So you can see him in the slide show, proudly wearing his new Cars life jacket. He really wanted to wear it around the house the day we got it, but unfortunately found that once he fell down, it was very difficult to stand back up on his own. It was pretty hysterical to watch. I videotaped it and if I ever get organized enough to get some video on my computer, I'll post a clip.
Just around the corner from our house there is a little farm where a friend of ours lived and kept some chickens for a while. She and her husband have since moved on (as have the chickens), but her grandparents, the Millers, who have lived on this farm for 60 years, are retiring to an assisted living facility. It's bittersweet for us because we love going to the Millers to look at their big vegetable garden, swing on their little swing and ride bikes on their long driveway. But they are excited to retire from farming once and for all and move to their new place. So, we went over to bid them farewell. We can't wait to go visit them in their new place!
Aunt Rosa came to visit, as she does every year usually about this time. While she was here, we went to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum with my friend Alisha and her two kids, Abbie and Ben. It is a beautiful place, way out west of the Twin Cities. We had a fun day but had to rush back for our dance recital dress rehearsal that evening. The next day the girls performed in said recital and had a great time. It was Bethany's second recital and she did tap this year. For Anna and Katherine's dancing debut, they did a sweet little ballet. As you might guess, there was a patriotic theme going... Then two days later, I had my first dance recital in 17 years! I had a great time this year taking an adult tap class and performing again was a lot of fun. We danced to James Brown's Super Bad; pretty funky! It was so fun to have Rosa here. She is one of my dearest and most faithful of friends and we have a lot of fun hanging out together.
Then in the slideshow you'll see a random picture of the girls dressing up like daddy. One time after they got out of their bath, I came up to check on them and found them in Joel's clothes! We thought they looked pretty cute...
And then there was VBS...because of our vacation this next week, we attend VBS at the south campus of our church. It's great to connect with people at the south campus but it's hard to GET to the south campus by 8.30 every morning! We've had a fun week and the girls LOVE vacation bible school every year. In the first picture they were dancing around to the Go Fish Guys and in the next picture you can see how wiped out little Micah gets from all the festivities. And just yesterday we banded together with some other kids from the neighborhood to have a lemonade stand to raise money for our VBS missions project which involves providing solar-powered radios to people in far-away lands. These radios help people connect to their local Christian radio station as well as other programs about health and agriculture. Our lemonade stand raised $58 and so far all the kids have raised over $1000. It's fun to see the kids get so excited about raising money for something like this.
Tomorrow is our last day of VBS; Mom, Sim, Caitlin and Lauren arrive mid-afternoon; we pack and clean and then leave Saturday for Cragun's, a resort on a lake in northern MN. The kids are super excited as are Joel and I. Joel's book deadline is tomorrow, so he's really glad to get that sent off and then relax a bit. With any luck in a few weeks, I'll have a slideshow of that trip!

If it looks like a kite...

...doesn't mean it will behave like a kite. Last Saturday we were planning to have a lemonade stand in our front yard. Our neighbors down the street were having garage sales and so we thought we might have a bit more traffic. However, the day turned out chilly and VERY windy. Since our other alternative was a hot chocolate stand (that's May in Minnesota for you!) and we didn't have hot chocolate or styrofoam cups, we decided (ok, I decided) it would be a good idea to make a kite and attempt to fly it. I thought, "How hard could it be to build a kite?" Really, the question SHOULD have been, "How hard is it to build a kite that actually FLIES?" The answer...well, see for yourself...
























Since the kite didn't fly very well (this was probably our most successful attempt!)...













...the girls found other more interesting uses for my little creation!

























Oh well, it was better than chasing plastic cups all over the front yard!

4 of my favorites...

Here are four of my favorite pictures of the kids in action, taken at various times over the past year...(Bethany, Katherine, Anna, Micah)