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!!!

Believe it or not! A menu - for the week of 9/22/13

Sunday

• Breakfast -  Scrambled Egg Skillet, Bagels & Cream Cheese
• Lunch - Mashed Potatoes & Hamburger Gravy, Corn, Salad
• Supper - Chicken Packets, Chips & Salsa, Brownies

Monday

• Breakfast - Egg "McMuffins"
• Snack - Peanut Butter & Bananas on Graham Crackers
• Lunch - Spaghetti & Meat Sauce, Garlic Bagels, Green Beans, Salad
• Snack - Chips & Salsa
• Supper - Leftovers

Tuesday

• Breakfast - Baked Egg Casserole, English Muffins
• Snack - Pretzel sticks & cheese cubes
• Lunch - Chicken & Rice Vegetable Soup, Bread Sticks, Cheese
• Snack - Apples & Peanut Butter
• Supper - Tater Tot Casserole, Salad, Peas

Wednesday

• Breakfast - Breakfast Burrito Casserole
• Snack - Granola Bars
• Lunch - Sandwiches
• Snack - Ice Cream Cones
• Supper - Taco Pasta Bake, Corn

Thursday

• Breakfast - Steel Cut Oats, Toast
• Snack - Cheese & Crackers
• Lunch -  Chicken Wings, Garlic Buttered Noodles, California Medley
• Snack - Cereal
• Supper - White Chicken Chili

Friday

• Breakfast - Fried Eggs, Bacon, Toast
• Snack - Pretzels & Juice
• Lunch - Leftovers
• Snack - Graham Crackers & Peanut Butter
• Supper - Cookout at W's

Saturday

• Breakfast - Overnight Blueberry Buttermilk Oven Pancake
• Lunch - Hamburgers & Toppings, French Fries
• Supper - Pizza

Flowers for Mommy

This morning, the youngest three had their piano lessons.  While Heidi was at her lesson,  I took the two boys to a thrift store to drop off some things, and while we were there we looked around to see what they had.

At the back of the store, there is a shelf of glassware.  Lincoln stopped to look, and stood there for a long time just staring at the shelves.  Finally he asked me, "Mommy, do they have any little vases?"  I pointed out a couple and he asked me which one I liked better.  Then he picked one of them up and Garrett picked up the other one and asked if they could buy them for me to put the flowers in them that they bring me from outside.

An elderly lady was at the front desk, and when she learned what the vases were for, she looked at the boys and told them that any little boys buying a vase for their mommy to put flowers in could just have them for free.  I think they made her day.  I know they made mine!

Modern day calendar

We were driving along and I heard this conversation in the seat behind me.

Lincoln, "Did you know that we use the Gregorian calendar?"

Unnamed sister, "No we don't! We use Google calendar!"

Enjoying the simple things

The temperature wasn't exactly perfect to sit around a fire tonight (notice how far away from the fire the chairs are...), but the little people around here have been scrounging up wood for a couple of days and asking if we could have a bonfire.  This morning, the first thing Garrett wanted to do was to have Todd go out and help get more wood...

Summer is over - Another year of School begins

We haven't posted much this summer- we've been too busy!  And a great summer it was!
Tamara spent her Labor Day in the traditional Erickson way - fine tuning the school schedule for the official start of our new homeschool year tomorrow.
If you've ever wondered how we schedule 7 different grades of school each day, feel free to take a look at our schedule here: Erickson Home School Schedule
This schedule is for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.  On Wednesday the oldest four have piano lessons in the morning and all of the girls have violin lessons in the afternoon, so we have a separate schedule for Wednesdays.  The three younger children have their piano lessons on Tuesday morning.  Garrett has his first lesson tomorrow so now all seven are taking Piano.
Tamara starts out with a blank schedule in 15 minute increments.  Then she fits in piano and violin practice and the subjects where two or three children are taking the same class.  She arranges classes for the younger children so she can be available to work with them.  In some cases we team up an older child with a younger one.  This year Heidi is going to be doing First Language Lessons with Garrett.  This program is very scripted so it will be easy for her to read the parent part and prompt Garrett for his part.
In addition to this daily schedule, we enter the daily assignments for each child and subject for the semester into a Program called Homeschool Tracker.  As the children finish their assignments, they check them off.  This helps everyone if they are ahead or behind in each subject.
And if you are curious about the Children's chores here is a link to that schedule: Erickson Chore Schedule  These jobs change each week.

Little Red Car

Since we've been married, we've been a one car family.  We've always lived close enough to Todd's work to make it possible for me to drop him off if I needed the van, and it has worked out well.  A few months ago, I was chatting with one of the ladies at our insurance company while I was there for some reason and told her our oldest daughter was going to be 16 in November.  She said we would be better off insuring her on a little beater car than on our family van, so we've been keeping our eyes open for one.  One of Todd's co-workers mentioned that he was selling his little 1998 VW Golf (stick shift, no air, non automatic windows...) the other day, so now for the first time in 16 1/2 years we are a 2 vehicle family.

Todd brought the car home on Monday and drove it to work yesterday and this morning.  6 of our kids had piano lessons this morning, so after I had dropped a few of them off so the rest of us could squeeze into the Golf, we picked it up to run errands in (did I mention that it gets at least twice the gas mileage as our big 15 passenger van?).  One of the errands was to go to the Driver Services office and get new license plates.  The next - to the vet to pick up medicine to treat pink eye in our cattle herd.  I left 3 kids in the car since I was going to be in there for about a minute or less... and while I was in there I heard - thud!!! squeal!!!  Yep, a pick up truck backed right into the side of our little bitty bright red car... and shoved it over a foot or so - about 5 minutes after we transferred the title to our name...  We had a couple of pretty scared little girls and a nice little dent and broken tail light on the car.  When I stopped by to show Todd, all he could do was laugh at the craziness of it.

Little brothers are pretty handy to have around...

For the past few days, Lincoln has been making paper airplanes - lots of paper airplanes.  There are scraps of paper following him around everywhere he goes.

This morning, he asked me if I thought a lot of people would buy his paper airplanes.  I didn't want to discourage him, exactly, but I told him that not many people would probably want to spend money on something they could pretty easily make by themselves...  "But what about my North/South - East/West plane?" He asked.  (He's been working on his own design and thinks it works pretty well).  I told him to keep working on them and getting them really good and then maybe someone would want to buy one.

A few minutes later, he showed me a piece of paper that he had accidentally folded to look like an ice cream cone.  Next thing I knew, he was back, exclaiming that he had already had a customer!  ... Garrett had bought his ice cream cone for $0.01...

Even the table is lonely...

Our 3 oldest girls are away for a few days - Even though we still have the four younger ones buzzing around the house and keeping it lively,we already miss the girls so much and they have only been gone for a few hours.  Since we don't want to have to throw the food to each other at the table , we thought we'd take a few leaves out of it while they are gone.

THIS is what the table looks like when all the chicks are home in the nest

This is the table missing 3 of it's chairs - doesn't it look lonely?

It has been a long time since this was the normal number of chairs around our table!

Some pictures of our trip...

... to Connor Prairie last week.  

Teeth

Lincoln lost a tooth today.  As a result, a couple of the other kids started checking their teeth to see if they had any wiggly teeth and came to have me wiggle them to see how loose they were.  Garrett came up to have me check his out and sure enough one of his bottom baby teeth is just the slightest bit wiggly.  When I made that announcement, he was very excited! The rest of the family, however broke out in a chorus of "Oh NO!" and denying that it could possibly be loose.  I don't think any of us are ready for our baby to be growing up!

Getting to know their new critters

The kids have been saving their birthday, babysitting, and any other money that heads their direction for "something".  So when these two showed up for sale on the computer, they jumped at the chance.

Unloading

Checking out the new arrivals

Thunder & Lightning

Just my size

Every girl needs a horse...

...  and their brothers need a pony...

Back in 2011, Beauty joined our farm.  The kids have really enjoyed her, but she has been getting a bit lame and the older kids don't want to ride her much in case they would hurt her.  We had Cheyenne for a little while, but she ended up being a little too ornery for us to enjoy.  We've been watching for a horse that would work well for our family.  We're hoping we found one (plus her friend)

Lightning...

... and Thunder

Making progress

Laura must be getting pretty good at driving. As we are going along I all of a sudden realized I had forgotten to be nervous.

The progress I am talking about is more mine than hers, she has been doing a great job of driving for a long time, my not getting nervous is taking a little longer

Feeling old

We were driving along tonight and talking about some of the differences between when Todd & I were growing up and now - no water bottles, no cell phones, no internet, no microwaves... When I mentioned remembering when they tried to change us over to the metric system, Laura exclaimed, "Oh, I remember reading about that in my history book..."

The auction barn

After we got our sheep sheared this spring, several of them kept getting out of the fence - I guess they could fit through it a lot easier without their wool.  Anyway, yesterday afternoon we got a call from a neighbor and some of the sheep were over in his yard... so off to the auction barn they all went.  Our pasture and yard are so quiet tonight - no sheep or lambs calling to each other.  I didn't realize how much noise they made.  Hopefully we can get sheep again sometime... we all enjoyed them.

Summer Strings

The girls started violin lessons a few months ago.  Several of the music teachers in the area get some of their students together and have a couple of months of orchestra lessons with a concert at the end of July.  Tonight was the first practice.

Memorial Day Weekend

I meant to get an after picture of the laundry room after our 5 day weekend away visiting some friends, but I forgot to do it before we started the washing machine.  The only problem was, I didn't believe the weather reports and didn't pack clothes for cold, wet weather.  We had fun anyway and only had to spend time outside in the rain if we chose to.  It made having a bonfire fun, too.

My Farmers

Not for the squeamish... Lilac giving birth to a bull calf

I hope you don't mind another video of an animal giving birth.  Lilac actually belongs to some friends of ours but has been staying on our farm.  The kids went out to check on her the other evening and happened to catch her just at the right time.  We're posting this video so our friends' children can watch their calf being born.

I'm putting in several returns since the beginning picture is pretty graphic.  So if you don't want to see it, don't scroll down.  :)

Introducing our new driver to Chicago traffic

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

HAPPY (Belated) BIRTHDAY MOMMY!!! 
From,
Laura
Abigail
Charlotte
Emily
Heidi
Lincoln
Garrett

Happy 7th Birthday, Lincoln!!

Wow, what a fun boy you are!!!  We're so glad you are part of our family.  It's fun to watch you play with your little brother.  It's hard to keep from grinning when you torment your sisters.  We enjoy listening to you explain what you've learned in the books you are learning. We love watching you grow and learn. You're a great son and we love you!!!

All Lincoln could think of that he wanted for his birthday was a stuffed animal, so it was fun to surprise him this morning with a new bicycle, since he has pretty much outgrown his old one and the only bikes the next size up that we have around here happen to be girls bikes.  Some of his sisters shared some of their stuffed animals with him.  It was fun to watch him read and enjoy each card they made for him and appreciate the second hand stuffed animals.  Later he got a card in the mail with some cash in it. He was sooo excited.  Look, Mommy!  This was all in one card!!!  I asked him what he was going to do with it and he replied that he was going to save it up until he had $60 and then buy a tarantula... I don't think so, son!!

The birthday person gets to pick the meals on their birthday.  Lunch wasn't too difficult - he wanted make your own pizzas.  For supper? - Frog legs... We were at a store yesterday that sells frozen ones, so we picked up a couple of pounds of them (I'll try cooking them, but I didn't really relish the thought of going gigging and then preparing them).  I'm going to bbq some chicken wings along with them.   He also wanted a german chocolate cheese cake - we compromised on that one - we had cheese cake for my birthday yesterday and german chocolate cake today for his.

First day of summer vacation...

The kids worked hard this year and did a great job with school.  Today was their first official day of summer vacation and every time I looked around I could find several of them curled up with books.  They've been missing their free reading time the past few weeks trying to get finished up with their school work.

As if just regular spitting wasn't enough...

Lincoln and Garrett came in the house today and immediately the house absolutely reeked of garlic.  It was so strong that I couldn't stand having them within 2 feet of me.

"What in the world have you been doing?" I asked.  "Chewing garlic leaves until our mouths foamed and then spitting the green juice." Was the reply...

Now, hours later, they about knock you over when they talk to you.

Todd laughed and laughed until he almost cried when I told him what they had been doing.

Nature's clean up crew

After the fox left, this turkey vulture came to finish up the job.  As much as we don't like sharing the chickens we have been raising for our own freezer, it is pretty amazing to watch the way God's creation works together so well.  (I actually think this particular chicken had already died for whatever reason... sometimes they just do that... heart attacks, pneumonia, injury, whatever)

When you grow up with the last name of Fox...

... you kind of end up having a fondness for the animal.  That is, at least until you look out the window and see this scene.

Breakfasting on one of the chickens that was supposed to go to the butcher next Wednesday!

I do still think they are beautiful animals.

Science yesterday....

... was watching this little guy be born.  This is the first time we've been able to watch one of our ewes lamb.  Usually they lamb out in a back pasture somewhere.  We couldn't get close up during the birth because it made the ewe nervous, but we did get the actual delivery on video.  This picture is realistic, but kind of disgusting :)

If you want to watch the birth it is on this video.  It is kind of long - the real action starts at around 1:55 (please excuse the burping boy...)

It doesn't matter what anyone is doing...

... if someone looks out the window and calls out, "__________ (Sheep or Cow) had her ____________ (Lamb or Calf), there is a mad rush for shoes, the camera, the door, the pasture.    Today it was Faline who had her calf, Lilly.

The difference between handouts and ownership...

Lincoln cracks me up.  If you give him a bag of candy, he will eat. the. whole. thing!  If you tell him he can play on the computer, he would do it for the. whole. day!

After valentines day, I stopped at a store and they had their valentines candy for 90% off.  So I picked up a heart with 3 chocolates for each of the kids, just for fun.  Lincoln's lasted for over a month.  He kept it in the refrigerator and took a nibble off of a piece every day.  I finally had to make him just finish it...

When he was getting close to the end of his math book and really didn't want to concentrate and get it done, I gave him a one day only offer.  Every problem he did he could get 1 minute of computer time.  (He later traded some of those minutes for 7 problems = getting to cook a dessert)  If he got his book done that day, he would also get 1 more hour of computer time and 1 more cooking project.  He ended up with 11 cooking projects and 2 hours and 16 minutes of computer time (Yes he spent several hours doing math that day - the extra time and cooking project were just thrown out there as a joke, I really didn't expect him to finish his book that day!!)  Anyway, he is using his computer time just like he ate his candy.  No longer does he ask me 100 or so times a day if he can play the computer (almost always to the answer of no - find something else to do, your computer time is quiet time on Saturday...)  Now he asks me occasionally if he can use some of his computer time - I usually say yes (since he definitely earned it) and he very carefully sets his timer, plays for 5 minutes and then heads off to find something else to do...  I can see his computer time stretching out for a looooonnnngggg time!

Laddy had a little lamb

The quality of this video isn't the greatest, but it gives you an idea of what Ladd puts up with all the time. Snowball follows him everywhere, sleeps beside him, and runs around crying if Ladd gets out of his sight.