Egg!

We were eating dinner in the back yard two days ago. We had friends over and one of them walked over to the chicken tractor and said, "You have an egg in here, you know." What?!?! Everyone went running over to the tractor and sure enough, there was an egg. We didn't think the chickens would lay until September, so we were pleasantly surprised.

Rebekah got the egg out. After we took a picture of it, she let the little guys hold it. Apparently, someone told Elijah to "look at it closely". :)

Then Rebekah put the egg on the table so she could get a bowl ready. Unfortunately, the egg was in Arianah's reach. When Rebekah tried to get the egg back from her, it fell on the table and dented.

So, we had to cook it.

I think four people got a taste of this little, tiny egg. Rebekah said it was extra tasty.

We're definitely looking forward to more eggs.

Chickens 101 and Getting to Know Your Neighbors

It looks like we're going to make as much of a farm as we can out of this 7000 sf suburban lot that we are blessed to live on. The garden is really starting to do great, now that it's actually getting warm enough to call summer. And, our most recent project is chickens. Yep, you heard me right, chickens. A month or so ago, Rebekah asked if we could have chickens (she had spent the night at Grammy's and Grammy has chickens). I told her to first call the city and see if it was OK (she did, and it is) and then ask her dad (she did, and he said OK).

After that, we had to build a chicken tractor. That was Jim's job and he did a marvelous job of it. We will need a couple of upgrades, but it's all a learning process and we are learning.

After he built the tractor, Grammy brought the chickens over. Last Monday, the kids were all excited and gathered around as we put the chickens in the tractor.

Arianah loves the chickens. Of course, Arianah loves all our animals. From the dog and cat to the lowly worm. (Every time we work in the worm composter, she wants to hold a worm.)

The next morning, the learning really started. Rebekah came upstairs first thing, looking very distressed. "Mom, the chickens are gone!" What?!?! Sure enough, Scooter, our golden retriever had broken into the tractor and let the chickens out. He even left a telltale tuft of golden fur on the torn edges of the tractor to make sure we could figure out it was him. After all, the day before, he had paid no attention to the chickens after his first cursory examination of the tractor, so we wouldn't have suspected him. Thus began a week of chicken chasing.

Rebekah and Hannah went door to door, knocking and asking neighbors if they had seen our chickens. They left fliers on the doors where no one was home. Rebekah pasted fliers up on the poles around the block. Trust me, it's not often you see a "lost chicken" sign in our neighborhood :)

To make a long story short, after much chicken chasing all over the neighborhood, many phone calls from neighbors, going from back yard to back yard, climbing trees, reaching under bushes, chasing down the street, hearing neighbors say "chickens?", "did she say chickens?", "how tall is the chicken?", throwing whiffle balls on the roof to try to scare a chicken down and much help from our neighbors, we finally retrieved Strawberry (the red chicken named because Elijah says she's red like a strawberry) on Thursday evening and Henrietta (the black chicken) on Friday evening.

So, if you're looking for a good way to get to know your neighbors, try getting some chickens and releasing them in the neighborhood. It works great. We have lived here 9 months, but we know many more neighbors now than we did a week ago.

It's All About Me

Have you ever had one of those days where you realize "it's all about me"? Seriously, I have been struggling for weeks with some things - being hurt by another person. For a while, I've spent my time knowing that since I've told that person how these things bother me or how they hurt me, that certainly that person should just change and all will be right with the world. Well, amazingly enough, that tactic wasn't working. That person hasn't changed. That's when I realized ...

It's all about me! It's not about that person. It's not about how that person can change. It's about how I change my response to said offenses. I can choose to be bothered by them over and over, but that doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere. So, instead I choose to ask God for help in responding in love. That works so much better.

Unfortunately, that ain't easy. I hate when it's all about me.

Road Trip Tips

We have been quite busy since our road trip, but I thought I would jot down some tips that worked for us in our travels … and some things that didn’t work. On this last trip, we were driving 4-7 hours every day. That’s a lot of driving. And, it’s not easy to keep 8 kids happy with that much driving.

First and foremost, I think the main reason our trip went as smoothly as it did is because we have a DVD player in the car. We aren’t big TV watchers at home. And we never use the car player if we’re just around town. But, on trips, it’s a lifesaver! I am SO thankful for it. When we’re in a beautiful area, I turn off the video so they can enjoy God’s magnificent creation. And, actually, my 4 year old was usually the first one to notice something awesome, even when the video was on. It was so cute to hear his exclamations of “Mom, look at that mountain!” or similar things J

Each child brings their own bag of toys. It’s usually a backpack. Most of the kids have a Nintendo DS or a Leapster. Those are another blessing when travelling. Then they have books, drawing materials, games, action figures, etc.

As for snacks, I can never seem to figure out how to make that work. I have had each kid bring their own snack bags so they can eat when they want, but that seems to be messier. This time I had the stash of snacks up front. So, they had to ask for snacks when they were hungry. But even that resulted in a large pile of food between the seats of the 4 year old and 6 year old and tons of snacks on the floor everywhere. We tried to do a quick clean out of trash and large chunks of snack when we stopped at hotels, but we still ended up with a huge mess in that regard.

Water worked much better. Each of us had a stainless steel water container. The kids had sippy lids on theirs, so if it fell over it didn’t spill … much. We carried a 2 gallon water container from Wal-Mart that had a large opening to fill it up and a dispenser spigot. We refilled the water container along the way. At every stop, we would refill everyone’s stainless steel container. That way everyone had water and we didn’t have to worry about thirst … unless they couldn’t find their water bottle J. This system worked really well.

We wanted to make this trip low budget and we didn’t want to eat at fast food often. We brought a cooler with food. It had sandwich makings, fruits, veggies and snack foods like hummus, artichoke dip, etc. I think another good idea would have been cold salads – pasta, potato, macaroni, etc. We also had a few stackable crates with paper plates, cups, plastic ware and dry foods – bread, snacks, chips, etc. Most of the hotels we stayed at included breakfast. But we often ate lunch and dinner on the road or in hotels.

We had to make the food relatively accessible, so we packed the car accordingly! We often ate in parking lots of the various attractions we visited. Sometimes we would just pull over and slap together a meal and jump back in the car to continue driving. A couple times we brought the food into the hotel room to have dinner if we arrived early enough. This worked really well for saving money on food. We rarely ate fast food on this trip.

This is the first time we have ever gone on a trip where we stayed in a different place every night. With 10 people in the car, we certainly didn’t want to have to bring everyone’s duffel bag into every room every night. The system I came up with worked really well. I packed each person’s clothes in a laundry basket. The laundry baskets nested inside of each other. So, I had two stacks of laundry baskets in the car. (Note to self: If other people are travelling with you, have them use the same luggage system. Throwing duffel bags and a different sized basket into the mix really messed up the system. Also, make sure guest family of 3 doesn’t pack as much luggage as our partial family of 7. You’d think I’d be used to this from her by now, but I’m not ;)

I started the trip with one duffel bag packed with PJs for each person and one outfit for the next day. I checked the internet regularly so I had an idea of what clothing we would need each day. Every morning as I packed up the car, I would pull an outfit for each person out of their laundry basket. The clothes were easy to access, because the baskets are open. We would just lift up the stack and pull clothes out of each basket. The bigger kids pulled out their own clothes. I used the same PJs a few days in a row. And, if clothes were clean after a day’s travels, I had them reuse the clothes in the morning. This saved on laundry. I packed the overnight bag in the morning so I wouldn’t have to do it at night as we pulled into a hotel parking lot, inevitably very tired. It took a while to do each morning and it would have been a daunting task after travelling all day.

One thing I forgot was a way to store dirty clothes. I think I should have started with an empty laundry basket (or two) that we could put dirties into. An alternative would be a big trash bag, but the laundry basket would have fit in with the stack and kept the dirty clothes separate from the clean without looking like an explosion in the back of the van.

There were a few things that I didn’t pack into each person’s basket. We had a separate bag with everyone’s socks and lace up shoes. That way if we found a place to hike, or if it got chilly, we just pulled out the bag of shoes and put them on. Otherwise, we wore sandals or slip on shoes during our travels. The same idea worked for jackets. If it was cold, I grabbed jackets very easily – at least in theory.

We also had a swim bag. I usually tried to get a hotel with a pool, especially if the kids had been sitting in the car for hours a day. The pool is a great way to let off steam after being strapped in all day. If we were going to swim at a hotel, I just grabbed the swim bag along with the clothing bag to bring into the hotel. And since the swimsuits were in their own bag, it didn’t matter if they were wet. We found the best way to dry swimsuits was to hang them on hangers in the closet. And since the swimsuits were in their own bag, it didn’t affect anything else if they were packed wet.

The only other tip I can think of is that we tried to fill the gas tank when it got down to half a tank. We didn’t want to be caught in the middle of nowhere low on gas. Believe me, coming from Southern California , we aren’t used to being in the middle of nowhere. It can be a long way between gas stations in other parts of the country.

Side of Beef

We ordered a side of beef from a guy we have ordered from before. He runs his cattle in the canyons near our house. So, being homeschoolers, we decide that it's not good enough just to order a side and have him deliver the final product. We have to be there every step of the way :) Field trip!

We went to the ranch along with friends of ours that are ordering the other "side of beef". The beef guy had corralled a batch of cattle, so we could choose one.

We spent some time checking out the cows (Bulls? Steers? I don't know. I'll just use the generic term "cows".) He told us what to look for in choosing a cow to slaughter.

We chose this chubby cow.

And then I had to get pictures of Arianah in her sweet new sundress, just because she looked so cute.

Jim also asked if we could keep the hide. Lessons in tanning :) So, he and some of the kids will be going back when the time comes to slaughter the cow. We dream of someday owning some land and having a farm. So, we have to take advantage of every learning opportunity we have in this city life.

Things That Make You Go Hmmmm ...

What is it about a toilet paper roll that make it so hard to put on the holder? Seriously, I am always amazed when I find this in the bathroom.

Fatherhood

I'll tell you, there are many days that I am in awe of how much God has blessed me when He gave me my husband. Today I will focus on what a great Dad he is. (Yes, I know yesterday was Father's Day, but I haven't had a quiet moment to write until today.)

When we got married, I never dreamed that we would actually be blessed with so many children. We knew we would have children, but I honestly thought 3 would probably be our limit. How blessed we are that, God has changed our hearts and gifted us with 7 children.

It takes an incredible man to be a good father to 7 children. And, through the years, God has grown Jim to be that wonderful father. First and foremost, he is a man of God. He strives to be obedient to our Creator and is a new Creation because of his openness to God. When a man is open to being molded by our Creator, he can't help but be a constantly better man. He is the leader of our home, leading us along the narrow path.

As a leader, he works very hard to support our family. And, trust me, to support a family of 9 in Southern California on a single income is no easy feat. But, with God's blessings, Jim has provided us a plentiful lifestyle. Now, with the recession, we are cutting back, like many others. And Jim is still out there working hard to make ends meet.

And, after working hard all day, he has plenty of projects around the home, too. He has built beds for our raised bed garden. He is remodeling our laundry room. He fixes all the things that break around here. We very rarely have to call a repair man. He always provides me the best of the tools I need to take care of my responsibilities.

And he loves those kids. He was right there at home with me as I delivered each one of them. Several of them he has "caught" as I delivered them. Other than diapers, he is great with the kids and has grown as a Daddy over the years. He loves to be entertained by the little ones and spend time with the big ones. He blesses me to stay home with and homeschool our children. He and I are the ones that are actually raising our children, instead of having values instilled in them by someone else for hours a day.

Since getting words out of teens is like pulling teeth, I thought I would just ask the younger set what they like about Daddy. And here is what I got:

He teaches us about flames. He teaches us stuff about Israel. He builds stuff for us like playhouses and he works really hard so we have enough money to buy lots of food. We don't use the special money to get little toys for us, we use it for food, cuz food is more important than toys. He teaches us what's right and wrong. He teaches us about God. He lets us get reservations at Jalama (camping). He lets us stay up late to have smarshmallows while we're camping. He lets us swim to the part with sand at the River. He trusts us with Uncle Taco at Shell island.

I thank God for blessing me with a wonderful man.