This Message is Approved by Emily.

Every night, those who are fated to sleep in the same room as Emily must suffer through the unimaginable torture of her jokes. Her humor is not confined to evening hours, and you can often witness an anguished victim writhing on the floor as Emily delivers her vocal poison. Today, however, an unprecedented event occured        Emily made up a good joke.

"What did the rope do when it was reading the newspaper*?"

˙dǝǝls oʇ ɟɟo (pǝppou) pǝʇʇouʞ ʇı"

*Newspaper (archaic)  [nooz-pey-per, nyooz-, noos-, nyoos-]
 Multiple sheets of paper containing news and advertisments.  Usually published on a regular basis, (daily, weekly, monthly, ect.) and delivered to towns near the publishing facility. 

Note: Newspapers have become almost obsolete, due to the rapid rise in the use of electronic versions of this category of media.

Due to the pressure from the usual postess, I have been compelled to sign this post. She apparently didn't want anyone to think she wrote this.        Laura.

Edited to post an additional joke by Emily
"There was a family of rungs.  When Mrs Rung told her little boy to clean his room, what was his response?

ɹǝppɐʃ ʇı op ʃʃ,I

Just keeping her humble...

Laura had her first CLEP test today.  She chose a subject she is very comfortable with for this first test - Analyzing and Interpreting Literature - she has spent many hours of her life reading so she is pretty familiar with a lot of books and she did well on the test.  When we walked into the house after getting home, a few of the kids ran to ask her how she did.  "I got 76 out of 80..." she told them.  One of her sisters ran to announce to the others, "Laura got four wrong!!!"

(Edited to add more to the story) - Heidi tried to console Laura - "Four wrong?  I guess it's good that you didn't get any more wrong than that" and proceeded to give Laura a sympathetic hug.  "How many questions were there?" "80?" "Oh, you got four wrong out of eighty?  I guess that's not so bad!"

Roots and wings

I was going over the schedule for the rest of the week and it hit me... The quote I've seen so often... The one I completely understand but really don't like... The one that says "The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence."


So often I wish I could just stop the clock and keep things just like they are. Keep the kids at the ages and stages they are in. Keep them in our care forever (or as long as our time on earth lasts). I know that isn't possible, but I just love having all of our kids around.


At the same time, we are constantly preparing our kids to fly, even as we are wishing we could keep them in our nest. Laura will be 16 this year. We've been taking her back and forth to drivers ed while hardly being able to take in how few years we have left with her living under our roof. I will be taking her to a nearby University this week to start on a series of CLEP (College level examination program) to begin working towards her degree.


Charlotte will enter her teenage years this December - bringing us up to 3 teenagers in the house. Several of the kids have birthdays around this time of year, and maybe that is what made it hit me so hard this evening.


While we wish we could just stop time, on the other hand it is so fun to see them growing and developing... to see their personalities coming out... to watch them learn who they are... Really, I wouldn't want to miss these days of them growing older and growing closer to their independence, but I also just want to hold onto them, just the way they are... It is such a crazy thing. It is such an automatic progression. You keep on moving onwards even while you wish time could just stand still. It's hard to explain...

Menu for the week of 10/13/13

Sunday

• Breakfast -  Skillet Potatoes & Scrambled Eggs, Toast
• Lunch - Beef Roast, Baked Potatoes, Gravy, Green Beans, Salad
• Supper - ?

Monday

• Breakfast - Scrambled Eggs, Toast
• Snack - Goldfish
• Lunch - Beef Pot Pie
• Snack - Apples
• Supper - Baked Chicken, Rice-a-Roni, Corn

Tuesday

• Breakfast - Scrambled Eggs, Toast
• Snack - Granola Bars
• Lunch - Sandwiches, Chips & Salsa
• Snack - Apples
• Supper - Leftovers

Wednesday

• Breakfast - Baked Oatmeal, Toast
• Snack - Cheese Dip & Pretzels
• Lunch - Antipasto Salad, Pita Chips, Hummus
• Supper - Creamy Chicken & Wild Rice Soup, Crackers, Cheese

Thursday

• Breakfast - Overnight Oven Pancake or Buttermilk Pancakes, Sausage Links
• Snack - Cheese & Crackers
• Lunch - Leftovers 
• Snack - Apple Crisp & Ice Cream
• Supper - Lasagna, Sourdough Bread, Green Beans, Salad

Friday

• Breakfast - Breakfast Egg Casserole, Toast
• Snack - Celery & Peanut Butter Dip
• Lunch - Hamburgers, Buns, Toppings, Chips & Chip Dip
• Snack -  Apples & Dip
• Supper - Chicken Caesar Wraps, Popcorn,

Saturday

• Breakfast - Baked Omelet Roll, Toast 
• Lunch - Leftovers or Baked Potatoes & Toppings
• Supper - Chili & Cornbread

Much easier to remember!

One of the math programs we use is on the computer and requires the kids to sign in with a log in name and password.  I was recording the sign in information on the computer for each of the kids in case they forgot them when Laura came past me.  She saw what I was doing and picked up the piece of paper I had listed them on.  "Just a minute, I changed my password."   She grabbed a pencil and started scribbling. When she finished writing, she had crossed off her old password that the math program had generated, (APPLEKEY) and written down the password she had changed it to.  (entschlossenheit).  "I kept forgetting APPLEKEY," she said...

Shoes? Who needs shoes?

Garrett has more shoes than any of the other kids.  And the reason?

Several weeks ago, we were headed to violin lessons and he announced that he had forgotten his shoes. Now, getting out the door to violin lessons can be pretty crazy.  We spend the morning at piano lessons, get home just in time to eat a quick bite of lunch, put all of the violins and lesson books in the van and then head back out the door to drive 1/2 hour to violin lessons by 1:00. So really, I was just surprised that we had gone that long without forgetting someone's shoes.  I really didn't want him to have to go into any public restrooms, barefoot, so I picked up a pair of flip flops for $1.50 - no big deal.

Fast forward to the following lesson day.  We got out of the house and into the van.  Someone had the presence of mind to ask him if he had his shoes.  Nope, was the answer.  So a couple of us headed back into the house.  A sister, to get his shoes, and me to get something else we had forgotten.  I spied his shoes on my way in and picked them up, then mentioned to the sister who had come in that I had them and had put them on the island (thinking that she understood that I meant for her to pick them up and head back to the van).  She thought I meant I was bringing them and she headed back to the van without them.  We got to the town where violin lessons were and guess what... Garrett had no shoes... Again, I ran into Dollar General and picked up a pair of flip flops for under $3...  Again, no big deal (except for the comment Garrett made to one of his sisters... "I forgot my shoes so I could get new flip flops again!")  After the lecture he got, I figured that wouldn't be happening again.  And it hadn't... for several weeks...

Yesterday Todd & Garrett were taking a nap and I didn't have the heart to wake them up, they were both snoring so beautifully, I mean, sleeping so well.  So I let them sleep until we had five minutes left to get out the door in order to make it to gospel meeting in time.  So, you can imagine the rush of the 9 of us getting out the door (the rush isn't all that uncommon).  We got down the road a little ways, and, yep, you guessed it - no shoes in the van for Garrett (This time it wasn't intentional.  He went from being in a deep sleep to sitting in the van in about 5 minutes)...  All we could scrounge up in the van was one lone sandal in Lincoln's size.  So... do we let him go to meeting barefoot? Or do we try to find a pair of shoes?  There was an Alco right next door to where the meeting was, and we had about 8 minutes to spare, so I ran in to see what I could find.  No $1.50 flip flops there!  He didn't really need shoes, so $49, $39, $29 and even $19 shoes seemed a little extravagant for the shoe forgetting little boy.  Finally I spied a pair of gym shoes in his size for $10 on clearance.  We walked into meeting with about 1 minute to spare!

Lincoln was pretty happy with the whole thing. We also got a package of boy socks out of the deal. (See this post for details)

Happy 14th Birthday, Abigail!!!

We love you!!!

Random thought

We sold a calf yesterday and her mom has been wandering around the pasture ever since calling and calling and calling for her baby... 

Of all the things that farm life has introduced me to, I think that is about the hardest thing for me to handle.  I've been splattered with all sorts of animal stuff, kicked, chased by a rooster, run at by a bull, had my feet stepped on, been out in the middle of the night getting escapees back in the pasture, been out in the middle of the night in the rain during calving, and all kinds of other things - all of those things, to me, just go with the wonderful privilege of living in the country.  But hearing the desperation in the calling of the mamas when their babies are missing is almost more than I can take.

If you are the youngest...

... in a family with 7 kids, the bottom of your feet might look like this!

As in a lot of families, laundry is a huge part of keeping up the house here.  Socks have always been hard to keep up with.  Several years ago, I started putting a dot on all of the kids clothing according to where they fell in the line up.  As they grew out of something and it was handed down to the next child in line, I just added a dot.  I haven't really had to dot the boys clothes - because they don't particularly like to wear their sisters' hand me downs... but I buy the same socks for them as I do for their sisters (shhhhh... don't tell them, but the boys socks in their size that they carry at our local store are really thick and make their shoes too tight, so I've just kept buying socks for them from the section that I buy their sisters' socks from)... So, Garrett gets 7 dots on his socks. (And no, his socks don't look like this all of the time - these happen to be a brand new, just out of the package pair... most of his white socks are a grubby shade of brown after they've been on his feet for a few minutes)  (Lincoln was reading over my shoulder while I was typing this and his comment was... "You COULD just buy us bigger shoes!!")

It's birthday season around here again. Happy 11th Birthday, Emily

Happy Birthday to our Emily Jane.  We love you!!!