I Can Name That Tune in Three Notes

"He-ey kids, of all the rest, these are the Books we love the BEST! We can sing them one by one. Come on kids let's have some fun! Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy..."

This is our new favorite song. And I'm not just talking the kids. I love it! They are learning the Books of the Bible in Sunday School. I learned them when I was young, but have forgotten the song over the years. So unless I sing a ditty, I can't remember the order. (It's like knowing how many days in a month - I have to sing a song). So it turns out that Holland's Sunday School teacher loaned him a tape with the song on it. We play it every morning while we're waiting for Romania's bus to come to the bus hub. It's very addicting. I still get stuck with the last few books of the Old Testament. I'm hoping that having a song will help Holland to remember them. Memory is a funny thing. He could recall a detail from a book that I couldn't remember (we had just read the book yesterday!) when I was telling a friend about it. I stumbled and said "oh they turned into something but I can't remember." And Holland piped right up (didn't even know he was following the conversation) and said "Crows. They turned into crows."

Of course, he can also remember when I owe him money (I currently owe him $10), or that he could play with a friend on Friday, or that I promised to go to Fred Meyer. But for some unknown, unexplained reason, he can't remember to pick up all the tiny pieces of radio that he hammered with a crowbar. Yes, that's right. This is our latest "experiment". Taking things apart with a crowbar. But all the environmentalists would love him because he recycled the parts to make a robot and a battery operated vehicle of some sort.

The Birder

I'm blaming this one on Holland's Sunday School teacher. He came home with tiny, tiny seeds in his pocket, wanting to plant them. So I let him get a plastic container, put dirt in it and stick it in the window. He was a little too generous with the watering. And he's a little impatient with the waiting for the seeds to sprout. But within 3 days, our house (and deck and sections of my backyard) have been turned into an environmentally friendly, bird friendly, compost-lovin' sanctuary.

Here's a rundown of what he's accomplished in the last week of school. He planted the seeds from church; he did a potato and celery experiment with dad, which are still in the window; he's taken out food scraps 5 different times to the compost bin (he actually remembered an old apple in his room and took that out!); he collected dead leaves and a couple buckets of cut grass to the compost bin; he's gathered cut limbs from our Christmas tree and hauled them on the deck; he built a bird sanctuary on the deck, filled three bird feeders, scattered corn that the squirrels are too dumb to eat and called grampa to put in his order for a platform bird feeder. We are charting the birds we see in the yard because that's what we're studying in science right now. But as is typical for Holland, we've taken our learning to the extreme. I should say he's very passionate about what he does. He was trying to create a platform feeder out of 4 different objects from the garage and wanted to tear apart my birdbath in the front yard ("because it's chipped anyways").

I did order a platform feeder with some of the money from our Charter school annual budget and we are hoping to attract some woodpeckers and some other birds that like nuts and sunflower hearts. We are learning how to identify the birds by their physical characteristics. He's now looking more closely (literally) at the birds that come in and they're staying because of his little forest project. The birds hop around on the branches and dine on the food. I can't wait to put up a more varied selection and see what flies into our yard! Here are a couple pictures (taken through a window so we didn't scare the birds off) of Holland's bird sanctuary.

Pamela's Pancakes

This morning after dropping Romania at the bus stop, we came home and I made gluten-free pancakes for Egypt and Holland. I've been using a recipe that Super Hero's gramma made when he was growing up. Of course, it used regular flour. I had tried a couple different times to make the same recipe with my own blend of gluten-free flour, but they never tasted right.

Until I found Pamela. She's come up with some magical flour blend that make things taste normal. The mix is for pancakes and waffles and I've used it for brownies, muffins and now my own buttermilk pancake recipe. As a testament to how good they are, Holland downed 8 pancakes this morning. The most he's ever eaten has been maybe 4. And the great thing is this recipe makes a ton of pancakes. The recipe on the flour bag makes probably 6-8 pancakes. And the flour is not cheap - $15 for a 4 pound bag of it. Here is a picture of the plate of pancakes that were left over. Among the three of us, we probably ate 12-13 and this is how many were left! I was told my pancakes were better than any he's ever eaten in a restaurant. *sniff, sniff*

What to post? What to post?

So I was all ready to blog about Holland starting up his projects again. Then I realized that I hadn't posted anything about some friends visiting us from California. Then in the middle of doing that, it started to snow again! This was Sunday afternoon (and it's Tuesday now). This is how long it takes me to form an idea now. Two days. I was so freaked out that it was going to stick again. I didn't hear any forecast of snow in our area. But *whew* by morning, it had all melted. The thought of being stuck in the house again made me claustrophobic.

Now that it's been over a week since Super-Hero's friends have visited, I figured I'd better post about that. Let me just start by saying that it's impossible for adults to have any kind of normal conversation with wild kids in the background. They had just stopped in town for the night and came over for dessert after setting up camp at their hotel. We hadn't seen them since we had them come visit us at the cabin. Our kids had so much fun together. This night was no different. Well, that's not true. It was different because we had 4 wild boys and a girl thrown in the mix and no lake to explore. This friend reads my blog and I'm sure she must think I'm exaggerating every time she reads about Holland's crazy experiments. Well, I couldn't have planned it any better (and I didn't!). We were upstairs so the kids could check out the rooms and the new Christmas toys. We weren't even up there 5 minutes. I looked around and realized we only had Egypt with us. The four boys had disappeared. We went downstairs and there is Holland with vinegar, baking soda and markers and colored water. He wanted to show his new friend his experiments! I couldn't believe that it happened that fast. And now, I have a witness who can testify that it actually does happen! Since then he's rebuilt the cat scratching post, made a spear to catch sturgeon at the lake (this one's a doozy - it has nails hammered in the pointy end all sticking out. You know, so the sturgeon really gets caught when he grabs on!), and several spears with foil on the end. He's had a great time using his pocketknife to whittle the ends of sticks. Only problem is I keep finding shards of wood all over the floor. Oh, I almost forgot the toothpick experiment. He emptied almost an entire box of toothpicks and was trying to make something like a blowdart gun. We will not even go there.

So, here are some pictures of our wild boys. This is the only picture of them sitting still, because it only lasted 5 minutes!

This is what they looked like the entire night.