There's a new Patriot in town....

It's football camp time again! And this year, Jeffrey was included! He had a wonderful time getting to play. There were enough boys signed up for the camp that there was a team of younger boys and a team of older boys. Jeffrey loved that! Loved not being constantly hit by boys as big as his brothers!! He did great and it was fun to hear him "talking shop" w/ Michael and J&J at dinner after football. Yesterday was the scrimmage. Here's some pictures of our afternoon.
Jeffrey sportin' his duds! The first night they had pads we had to convince him that he COULDN'T sleep in them!! He got up first thing the next morning he put them on! :-)

Jeremy's and Jonathan's team scrimmaging. Jonathan is in the long black socks w/ a blue jersey.

Jeremy getting ready to hand the ball off. (In the center of the field)

Here's Jeffrey's team scrimmaging.

Here's all the boys from camp.

Jeffrey on bottom right, Michael on the top row (next to the end)

Jonathan on middle row (second from end) The one looking at the camera! He knows where his mama is!!

Jeremy is in the middle of the top row.

Jeffrey and Michael again.

Jeffrey helping clean up.

Josiah and Pop having fun after the game. I wish I could get the giggles on soundtrack!!

After the game, we went to Freddies for burgers and.....

chocolate frozen custard! Believe it or not, some of Josiah's custard actually made it into his mouth!!

And then to top the fun off, we went this morning to see Night at the Museum and were the only ones in the theatre!

Thanks, again, Pop for coming for the fun!!

Stay tuned for pictures and stories from the other part of our big day yesterday....the year-end band concert.

A Memorial Day of memories, from beginning to end

We had an incredibly full Memorial Day yesterday. I tried to post a video of J&J and I playing "God Bless America" (on the sax, trumpet and clarinet) that we're playing at the end of the year band concert on Friday of this week, but I couldn't get the video to post. You'll have to wait for that one. But before I fill you in on the juicy details of our day, I do want to be sure and thank all of our family and friends who have served (or are still serving) our country in the military! We love you all!! Thanks Papa, Uncle Mike, Tony, Wade, Dave W., Mercedes...

So onto our day....

Sunday night I emptied Jackson's food into his bowl and noticed the bag as I was throwing it in the trash.....Do you see what I see? Yeah, right there in the corner...a hole....made by RODENT TEETH!!! They're back!! And just when I was getting so comfortable going in and out of the washroom, even in the dark. I'd even given up the "flip on the light, fling the door open, wait 5 seconds" routine that I'd adopted during our previous visits by Mr. and Mrs. M.

We put out the sticky trap near Jackson's food on the floor on Sunday night and went to bed. THANKFULLY (!!!!) Michael gets up earlier than I do in the mornings. That relegates him to the job of "trap checker". The boys would love that job, but dad beats them up in the mornings. Well, he doesn't "beat them up", he gets up earlier than they do. Maybe I should take that phrase out...does CPS monitor blogs??? (Well, as you read on, you'll find out that I more concerned about ASPCA monitoring blogs......)

Man, THAT was a long rabbit trail...back to the business at hand...trapping "mousey". Michael looked in the washroom when he went in to turn on his coffee and there he was...and a big dude! We have a picture, but for the sake of younger (and more female) readers, I'll skip it. Suffice it to say, it was alive and stuck on its side and trying frantically to get off of the trap. Since Josiah was the first one up, he got the honor of being the first to see it. He LOVES that. That doesn't happen often as #4. He made an joking comment to Michael and said "Man, I wish I could shoot it with the pellet gun". Michael laughed and then said, "Sure, want to?". That my friends is what you call a silly question. Josiah made a beeline to the garage and brought out the gun while Michael grabbed the trap (while I looked away!) and took it outside. Josiah came out w/ the gun and 1 pellet. Now, that's confidence. Why should he get more than 1??!! But Michael sent him back to the garage to get some more "just in case". Turns out, he didn't need them.

Do you think this is over kill??? Is this MORE or LESS cruel than letting Mousey die on the sticky trap? Certainly MORE fun to a 7 year old.

Well, quickly all the commotion woke Jeffrey who begged for a turn on the firing squad.

You can kinda see the mouse on the trap in the grass. Not an easy shot to miss really. And neither of them did.

Well, it had already been quite a morning of excitement and it was only 6:30 AM!!!

Later in the day, we went and had lunch w/ Michael (who had to work, bummer) and went to play at Hemisfair park, one of our favorite places downtown. W

We then met up w/ some friends who were in from Arlington taking a family vacation to SA. Jim was the best man at our wedding. He and his wife have a daughter that is J&Js age and twins who are Jeffrey's age and they homeschool. Lots in common there. And it's always great to see them.

We went and had dinner on the River Walk and ate at the Rainforest Cafe.

Gotta get the Volcano cake there!!

And then went swimming at their hotel. They were staying downtown and the hotel had two pools. One on the roof that offered a beautiful view of downtown and one inside. Our seven kids mostly had the pool and hot tub to themselves. I choose to not think of it as "running everyone off", but hey, whatever! We enjoyed it!

So, about 10:00 that evening, we left the pool to head for home. Can you say super tired kiddos??!! Since Michael left his car at his office, we had to drive by and pick it up and then were preparing for a nice quiet ride home. That wasn't to be!! After Michael got his car and we pulled out the parking lot and were driving down the side street, a HUGE snake slithered rather quickly across the street. I noticed it right after we passed it and said (well, screamed is probably more like it!), "Yuck, that was a snake in the road". The boys perked up immediately, begging "Mom, turn around, turn around!! We want to see it! Please please please!!" Then they noticed that Michael stopped and became emphatic "Dad's stopped! Please mom, please go back! Please!" So, of course I did. When we got there, Michael had run over the snake w/ his front tire and he was out looking at it. In no time flat, all my boys were out looking at it. Once I saw that it was in fact TRAPPED by the wheel of his tire, no way was it coming out, no chance of it getting away and heading in my direction, I did the responsible blogger thing....I took a picture of it.....***BEWARE!!!!!REPTILE ALERT!!! REPTILE ALERT!!!

Oh, yeah, I get really confident w/ the camera when there's a 2000 lb vehicle on top of a snake! Well, this slithermeister was thrashing and striking (when the boys poked a stick at it!) and wiggling so much that it looked like he may have been able to get out. And he was BIG. Probably about 3-4 feet long and 2 inches around...and slithering very grossly!! After a few mintues of ooohing and ahhing (and Michael reassuring me that there's really NO WAY the snake can get out from under the tire!) we all got back in our cars and Michael ran over the snake, several times. It still managed to slither out of the middle of the road and over to the curb. This is what Michael saw when he got to work this morning.

You can see the places where he was run over. You can also see how disgustingly large he is. And STILL the boys don't understand why I have a solid, no way-Jose, "NO SNAKES FOR PETS!!" rule. Who in their right mind would keep such a creep on purpose??!!

Well, you can see now why our trip home wasn't quiet. Adrenaline was a-flowin'!!

We're hoping for a much quieter (and less lethal) day tomorrow!!

BTW, anyone know what kind of snake "Mr. Slithermeister" was?? Copperhead? Cottonmouth?

Crazy fun

Lemme tell you, the boys and I have really enjoyed this week at home with only "summer school" to do. Dagerath Academy summer school consists of math (1 hour for J&J, 40 min for Jeffrey and 30 for Josiah), Write Shop (for J&J), music and 1 hour of reading for everyone. Usually by 9 or 10, everyone is done (except reading which comes in the afternoon so mamma can take a nap-or read a book!) and ready to do something fun...I mean MORE fun than math!
One morning this week, Josiah found "Old Maid" cards and we had soooo much fun playing Old Maid. Lots o' laughs! Then I taught them how to play "Crazy 8s" and they took to it like...crazy. Since then, we've played hours of Crazy 8s. And many of those hours have been....
in jammies! It's true, we've spent most of our days in pjs! We HAVE gotten dressed...eventually...well we had to. The three big boys have been doing football camp at FEAST four afternoons this week. And it just wouldn't do to show up in pj pants for football camp (or for me to walk into the FEAST bookstore donning my 'jams), but I have shown up sporting a ponytail almost everyday this week. And make-up has been long gone. It's been great!

Of course, the boys were always in their pjs. Here I found them yesterday doing "live weather reports from a hurricane zone". What was actually happening is that one would hold the hose, another would take the leaf blower and blow on full power to mimic hurricane force winds and rains. Meanwhile, the "reporter" was SCREAMING (over the noise of the leaf blower) the weather report. Too funny!

Weather Channel here they come!!

Oops!

Somehow my new post today about our garden got placed below the Beach Bowling post. So, scroll on down past Beach Bowling and read about our garden~

Beach bowling

WHAT??!! You mean we're going out during the height of the swine flu...and to a bowling alley!!

Yep, ignoring this sage advice on handling swine flu, we went with people from Michael's work a couple of weeks ago to a bowling party to benefit Junior Achievement. Michael was actually just a fill-in for someone who was supposed to be on a team and then backed out at the last minute. So we all got to go. In case you can't tell, it was a beach theme. Thankfully, Michael's team didn't dress us radically like many others did. We just put on some beach-y clothes and hit the alley. The boys even got turns to bowl and did very well....even w/ no gutter guards. I'm not sure if I've ever been bowling w/ Michael, but he did very well. Surprise, surprise.

Another team even let Jeffrey (and later Josiah) fill in for one of their teammates. Michael works w/ incredibly nice people!

Cheering on a teammate.

Josiah waiting on his turn. Jeremy hoping he doesn't have to take one! :-)

Josiah even makes goggles look good!

There were all kinds of other activities going on as well during the bowling. One was a hula hoop contest. Jeffrey rushed over to participate. He did very well during the practice round and would have been a "contenda" during the real round, but he got a bad inital twirl and it hit his leg and fell to the ground right off. And once the hula hoop hits the floor, you're out.

Good try, Jeffrey!

There was also a limbo contest that Jeffrey and Josiah did. They had a fun time.

We all had a good time. We're always up for free fun!

Spring garden update

How does it look??? Not bad at all.


We've even gotten something to eat from it!! Two loverly cucumbers! We've also enjoyed lots of cilantro. We have two green tomatoes (and NO nasty green tomato worms!!) And our watermelon, green beans and peppers have blooms.

I didn't know when I bought it that asparagus takes two years to harvest, so it's growing fine, just no fruit. Hmmm, seemed like a good idea at the time!

We're also trying our hand at potatoes. I read about how you can grow them under straw w/ no tilling or digging. So, Jonathan and I worked on a potato garden.

He's watering it after it's done.

I raked up the straw after he used to sickle to cut all the tall grass to use as straw.

Even if the potatoes don't grow, at least we got the weeds "whacked" in that overgrown flower bed. **Perk of living in the country....nobody cares if your flower beds are overgrown! :-)

We also planted potatoes in soil in the middle orange tub. We're trying it both ways.

Here's Jonathan planting the potatoes in the tub. Another country perk, in the woods on our propery it wagons full of beautiful, rich soil. I just send the boys out to fill a bucket or two and voila, rich soil!

So far, the potatoes in the tub are doing well. They're sprouting, which means we had to cover the sprouts w/ more soil so they grow into potatoes. The ones in the straw are...well..rotting under the straw. No sprouting going on. But it's no big deal. Live and learn.

We also have two of our hens who are laying. Goldie for sure and Comet, we think. So we're getting two eggs a day now. We've even had two double-yolked eggs from the girls!! Two eggs/day...two cucumbers...we're well on our way to being self-sustaining! Now if we could just figure out how to get male goats to make milk......

More fish tales

You know what, there's a reason kids should have a mom AND a dad, a grandmother AND a grandfather..well there's lots, but here's one the boys really appreciate. If it was up to dear ole' ma, my boys would NEVER go fishing. I don't like putting things on a hook, I don't like untwisting fishing lines, I don't know how to actually get one in after it's been hooked, and the thought of CLEANING the fish...yuck! But guess what! My dad knows how to do ALL those things, and (as you can see from previous posts) enjoys taking the boys fishing with him. This time it was Jonathan and Jeremy's turn. They went w/ dad to Arkansas to fish on the White River. They drove up one day, spent a night in "rugged conditions"...actually J&J said the room was so small you couldn't even close the bathroom door if the toilet seat was down. But the breakfast was "awesome"...you know for J&J good food trumps good sleeping places everytime!

They caught an amazing amt. of Rainbow trout. Dad got the record for the longest, 16", but Jonathan was close behind at 15 1/2" They brought home I think 5 bags full of fish.

Their guide stopped in the middle of the day and cooked them a lunch of trout, bacon and tomato sandwiches and hush puppies.

The next day, they went to Crater of Diamonds state park to dig for diamonds. It was an ooey, gooey, muddy mess of a time. They would take a bucket of mud over to an area and rinse it through a screen, kinda like panning for gold. They said it was a lot of fun....but no diamonds. They found some quartz and some jasper and some mica. Supposedly there are people who make their living (probably not a very good one, I would imagine) just by finding diamonds in the park. After a brief stint hunting diamonds, they headed home. The bummer of it all was that the AC went out in dad's car somewhere in Arkansas. It was nice and cool in AR, but the farther south they, went the hotter it got (and the faster my dad drove!). They arrived back at mom and dad's nice a sweaty, but full of smiles and stories.

Last night, we had some of J&Js fish for supper in the form of fish tacos....yummy!!