Life in Our World - Six for Saturday

1.  Ande and Zeph came to visit while Joe is on business.  Ande stuffed thyme, butter, and lemon between the skin and the flesh of a chicken and roasted it in the oven.  She served it with risotto.  It was incredible.  Enough so that I went back to the store to get another chicken so she can do it again.  Then with the leftovers, she made a wonderful stock and made chicken and dumplings for the next night.  Best we've ever had.

I just don't know how a baby can sleep in the positions they do without being miserable.  One minute they're swaddled
straight as a board where they can't even move, the next their cheeks rest on their knees.  They don't seem to even have
a preference.

It is really fun to watch the kids become parents.  Ande is a great mother.  She is so gentle, happy, and easy-going and Zeph responds well to that.  He is only 7 weeks old, but he sleeps through the night and eats consistently every 4 hours during the day.  He is such a content and happy little baby.  He looks at her with utter adoration and tries and tries to talk to her.  It's really sweet.

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2.  For mutual we played toilet paper dodge ball.  No matter how we split the teams, they weren't really fair until we just played the boys against the girls.  I was no help to any team I played on.  I thought I would be, I'm pretty sure I was valuable in 7th grade.  All I know is now my reaction time is way too slow.  I'd freeze whenever I saw a roll of toilet paper coming my way.  I'm sure this will be a do-again activity.  

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3.  We killed one of the steers.  Calvin and Ray had planned to do it last Saturday, but then Calvin found that the local butcher would come out and slaughter it and haul away the entrails and hide without even leaving a puddle of blood for $90.  

The hard part was getting the butchered, quartered, slippery steer out of the back of the pick-up and into the cooler on a shelf after the butchers left.  We looked like we'd wrestled a greased pig when we were done.

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4.  We had some ugly pots (fake terra cotta ones that had faded) sitting on either side of the garage door and on the picnic table out the kitchen door.  I sprayed them with outdoor spray paint and they look so pretty!  The two out by the garage are yellow with hydrangeas and the one on the picnic table is lime green with violas.  It was an inexpensive and attractive remedy.

The garden is all planted and most everything has come up.  Every time I see a new row of plants pop through the ground I think of LaGrand Richards' quote: "A seed is a dime's profit to one and a miracle to another."  And while the garden does save us money, it's so much more.  It really is a miracle that seeds germinate, grow, and produce.  I hope I never lose my wonder at that.

And in the matter of growth, the new chicks are in their ugly phase right now.  Calvin has another batch in the incubator now.  The other night we went out to candle them and see which ones had chicks growing in them.  Calvin cut a paper towel tube into a piece about six inches long.  Then he took a little flashlight and stuffed it up the tube.  We turned the lights off and he held each egg over the other end of the paper towel tube.  The concentrated light shines through the shells so we can see inside the egg and see if it is alive. 

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This is the teaching bag I've used for ten or eleven years.  I found it in the garden section at Wal-Mart.
 It's got 14 pockets for all the  do-dads you need (post it notes, pencils, pens, markers,
popsicle sticks, visual aids, scripture mastery cards, bookmarks, gum, chapstick, magnets, etc.)

  5.  This is a great time of the year to be teaching - if you do it right.  You know the kids well and they know you.  The class atmosphere is established and they're respectful and good listeners to each other.  They know each other and are willing to teach and help each other learn.  They know the routine so when you say something like "slide the room" they know exactly what it means and it only takes them a second to do it.   But the last six weeks of school also requires a lot of patience and skill to keep them learning.  There is no winging it.  Some days I'm more effective than others at this job.  One day this week was disappointing, the kids were antsy and I just couldn't keep them engaged and learning.  I was discouraged about it that afternoon.  The next morning we had a surprise visit from our area director in Seattle.  Usually we know when he's coming, but this time he just popped in.  I smiled, but inside thought, "Aye-yi-yi, this. could. be. a. disaster."  However, the kids did not disappoint.  They were incredible.  They were engaged the entire 1 1/2 hours and had the most insightful questions and answers.  Truly.  You'd have never guessed it was the end of the year or that we'd had such a helter-skelter experience the day before.  The area director was amazed at their ability to learn and teach, and at how they treated each other.  It was a good deposit after the hefty withdrawal from the day before.  

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6.  Have you tried the Tillamook Smores Ice Cream?  Well, you should! 

Ande and I finished the second season of Sherlock this week.  We made chocolate pudding dessert for the first episode, had this ice cream for the last episode, and rocked Zeph through every episode.  Pure satisfaction.