A short walk from our back door is our very own pond, filled with turtles and who knows what else.

We've taken to walking there after dinner many nights, often with twins in the wagon and Peter on a back.

The path down the hill is lined with wildflowers.

And adorned with goldenrod.

Attention spans are short, especially when there's nowhere for the turtles to sun themselves so they're mostly just shadows in the murky water, occasionally surfacing for air.

So back up the hill we go, Andrew pulling the wagon full of (more often than not) tearful twins.

Although John Paul will usually disappear up the hill on a new path of his choosing, amidst new pine trees and tall grasses.

Disappearing into the sunset, imagining who knows what.

And planning new adventures for tomorrow.

This beauty that is creation won't get old, I can tell.

Local Wildlife, Cooking Lessons, and Brunch Plans {7QT}

--1--

It's been over a month here and the kids (mostly Elizabeth...) are STILL excited that there are cows across the road.

And I realized that I don't think they'd ever actually heard a real cow moo... You know how sweet a toddler's moo is before they've heard a real cow? Really sweet. Now that they've heard a *real* cow, their moo's are MUCH louder, more nasal, and more likely to startle me. 

--2--

In other easily-amused news, I'm still pretty excited that Andrew and John Paul found a turtle shell when they were walking in our woods a few weeks ago.

Granted, we have a million turtles in our pond, so I suppose it makes sense that they found at least one shell near the creek... But still, this is more nature than we were used to finding back in the suburbs!

Cecilia made a body for it out of construction paper and insisted in inserting it inside. Now it lives on the homeschool bookshelf, paper head and all.

But I got them to journal about it! This was before we abandoned our nature notebooks, since Cecilia's had been turned into a "flower and fairy" notebook and John Paul decided it was too much writing. Maybe next year.

--3--

If it were a Calvin & Hobbes journal, he probably would have kept with it.

Oh, Calvin & Hobbes.

I remember reading them and thinking they were really funny. I never thought it would be a good idea to try the things Calvin does. John Paul, on the other hand...

Well, let's just say I'm glad that at least he hasn't tried the trick where Calvin shaves off the front of his hair to glue onto his lip as a mustache. But he's done plenty of Calvin's other tricks... There's a reason these books keep getting hidden!

--4--

I know, I know, more wildlife!

I found this turtle when I was weeding the overgrown garden beds a couple weeks ago (got them weeded! Planted herbs! Still haven't managed to find mint anywhere, but at least the sage is established and looking good, oregano will probably do okay, rosemary will probably die in the winter, and we'll see about the peppermint and thyme). I'm glad I didn't take it to the pond because apparently it's a box turtle and doesn't swim! I haven't seen it since I weeded, though... Apparently I messed with its home!

Conveniently, right after we had our box turtle adventure, I found this book about box turtles at the library - Jan Brett, so it's beautiful and the kids (mostly Elizabeth) LOVE it! I tell you, I would read anything and everything Jan Brett has ever written. Or at least look at the pictures. 

--5--

I think we're improving on the whole naughtiness issues from a couple weeks ago!

Well, *were* improving. 

Actually thought, they didn't make a mess at all! And didn't scream when I made them get off the counter! They were just eating their pretend chocolate chips and talking about the cookies they would be eating for dessert.

There were two cookies on the counter. And they did not eat them because they were saving them for dessert.

I just... They're not even 3. I think this bodes well for self-control in the future, right? Right???

--6--

This week's cooking lesson was making scrambled eggs (okay, I think we might do more than one cooking lesson per week, because he's actually getting pretty good at cracking eggs!). Before he was ready to do it, he told me what he thought the instructions would be:

1. Take a pan and put it on the stove.

2. Turn the heat to, like, 8.

3. Crack an egg in it and just... Pile it into a lump?

I gave him slightly more detailed instructions. And everybody loved the eggs! Success :)

--7--

This last take was going to be all about homesteading plans. Then I realized that needs WAY more than one take.

See our future chicken coop? It's red, and many more experienced ladies assure me it's going to work great as a coop!

It even has a vanity and a record player so the chickens can stay pretty and do a little dancing!

Actually though, that barn is part of where we'll be hosting a Blessed Brunch! If you're in the Front Royal, Virginia area you should come - it's for all women, single and married, for some good old Catholic fellowship! We'd love to have you! October 10, and you can sign up to bring something here.

And I promise there won't be any chickens - we're not getting any until the spring!

Linking up with Kelly at This Ain't the Lyceum - Happy Friday!

Well... We Tried? {WIWS}

Our Mass routine was down to an art back before we moved - I'd take John Paul, Cecilia, and one of the twins to the 8:30 at our local parish every week, and they had gotten to the point where everybody's behavior was pretty good. And never so bad that anybody had to be taken out of church. So I figured that with my mom coming along with us, bringing all 5 kids shouldn't be too big a deal, right?

Well.

I suppose you can see where this is going.

Our new parish is beautiful, but a smaller building and a different architectural style. Which means that we have to enter the pew from the *side* instead of the center, since now it's inevitable that I'll have to take Peter out at least once during Mass. Which also means that John Paul has to throw a fit because he wants to enter the pew from the center even though it means I'll be crazy-exposed as the only parent of a young child who isn't already just camping out in the narthex in anticipation of bad behavior, since my mom and I had to take turns taking the three youngest out more times than I could count during Mass the first weekend at our parish.

It took three weeks for me to realize that we needed to be entering from the side, rather than the center, so we employed our new strategy when I took the older three to a weekday Mass with a special blessing for schoolchildren. But of course, John Paul was not a fan of the new routine, and kept arguing with me and trying to refuse to go into the pew. Which bled over into arguing with Father during the homily (not loud enough for Father to hear, but loud enough for everybody around us to hear that he doesn't want to abstain from meat on Fridays, and when he is a grown up, he will eat whatever he wants on Fridays), at which point he started plugging his ears and trying to get away from my scolding him. I picked him up and carried him out of the church screaming (like, ALL THE WAY outside), then had to run back inside for Elizabeth, who a nice old lady was helping out of the church because she started crying and trying to follow us, THEN had to go BACK in for Cecilia and my purse so that we could just leave because John Paul was having a meltdown outside and there was no redeeming the situation (although a very sweet lady asked if we needed any help when I was escorting the last child out of the building - at that point we were all a lost cause!).

Needless to say, I think it was a great way to introduce ourselves to the local homeschooling community! And yeah, I was too embarrassed by our showing to try to go to the local park meetup later that day (and also it was a million degrees out...).

The usual culprits... Can't imagine why they wouldn't be behaved perfectly!

What exactly is the point of this entire post? Well, just to officially confess that yes, we'll be tag-teaming Mass again even though I have another adult to help out. Maybe we just need more time for the kids to get comfortable with the church so they don't freak out if/when I have to take Peter out? Maybe we just need the twins to be mature enough that they don't spend the entirety of Mass fighting over who gets to sit on my lap? I don't know. But for now, I'll see you at the 7 AM, perhaps alone!

And now I present to you... What I Wore Sunday! I'm pretty sure you've seen this outfit before, but it's one of the dresses that I got to wear post-partum with Peter and it still fits great! Button-down, easy to add shape with a belt, and chilly enough (50!) yesterday morning to wear boots and a scarf!

This is the back entrance to our house - you can see the possible location for our Mary garden on the left side, the car seat we need to install in the car, and also some random tomato plants on the right! We know how to decorate, that's for sure ;)

Oh, two more things before I go for who knows how long without blogging (actually maybe not long because I have a couple of drafts almost finished!):

1. Our old house is on the market! We're taking offers until 5 today, so if you're looking for a GREAT home for kids inside the beltway in Northern Virginia (which happens to have a strawberry patch in the back yard, a swing set, and is within walking distance to a frozen yogurt place), check it out! (Or if you're just nosy and love looking at pictures of other people's houses - I totally get it, I'm the same way!)

Edit: Sold! Hooray! 

2. We're participating as a family in a fundraiser for the local pregnancy center - if you're looking for a cause to give money to, this is a great one! Our goal is $400 but if we raise over $1000 the girls and I will all walk in princess dresses :) Click over! And thank you for your support!

3. 

This. I love Virginia :)

Happy Monday! Time to go find the older kids and get John Paul back to work!

That First Homeschool Day

A few weeks ago John Paul told me he wanted to start school. Tomorrow. Two weeks earlier than I was planning on starting.

So, by golly, we started. And that first day?

Well, let's just say it's not exactly one that'll be looked back on as "the best day ever" by anyone...

There was tearing apart of brand new crayon boxes, yelling, demands to do a *different* handwriting page (first grader), requests to do *more* handwriting pages (preschooler), and many, many disappearances from the table by the only child in the family who *must* be schooled right now.

Crumpled cornflowers from our nature walk littered the table...

And my plans, which seemed so simple, turned out to be unachievable. Art? Who am I kidding?

Library, though... That one I think we can manage every week - we have a *really* good library with a *really* good children's section that Peter particularly loves, which means it's an hour a week that I don't have to be holding him...

This was the only day that Cecilia had a list of things to do. She filled up almost her entire nature journal with drawings of fairies and princesses. John Paul cut out a page to make a pretend cell phone and has since decided that he'd rather not do a nature notebook this year. Too much writing.

And that cooking lesson? It was the whole reason he wanted to start school early, but he kept refusing to do any work, so he didn't get it until the next day!

(Providentially, Dwija wrote all about using a checklist instead of a schedule right after our fiasco, so checklist + loop "scheduling" has made for a much calmer day!)

A wise woman told me that if you're doing homeschooling right, your house will probably be a wreck by the end of the day. Well, I'm not sure things went "right" but by golly, the house was a wreck! Beginning your first official year of homeschooling less than 2 weeks after moving will do that to you... 

We *did* end up doing a couple things that weren't on the schedule - IHOP was having $1 short stacks and I *really* wanted pancakes, so we took my mom and after cajoling John Paul into finishing *something* we managed to get a very healthy lunch of pancakes for everybody and iced coffee (free refills, thank you!) for me. And balloons!

And, living within minutes of the most beautiful park on free park admission day, we took advantage.

Because really, we would have been stupid not to!

My expectations for order are nonexistent. This'll be kind of like a practice year, I think - a year where I'm basically training John Paul to develop good work habits, since he's got the academics down.

Maybe a year in which everybody starts putting their shoes away? Probably not, though.

He's got this, though.

And maybe St. Clare will be our patroness? (We could clearly use St. Zita's help, too...)

But really, this is why we're doing this - because if I can't find the kids after I finish nursing the baby, they're probably out in the yard soaking each other with the hose, or off picking berries off the bushes, or chasing the cat around the yard, or climbing the apple tree, or at my mom's house reading with her...

And while we may be going through rather a lot of outfits these days, we're making memories. 

And... Learning fine motor skills?

And science. We'll call it science.

But who really cares? Their childhood just got a million times better.

And maybe, somewhere in there, we'll actually get a little homeschooling in.

Breaking Internet Silence

Well, I warned you this would probably happen, didn't I? Yup, I dropped off the face of the earth.  That's what happens when you don't have internet for weeks after moving, since phone blogging isn't great and I was single-handedly about to max out our data plan for the month...

Anyway, I could tell you all sorts of stories, like how I couldn't find Peter one day but then all of a sudden there he was, outside eating cat food! Or how I was so proud of myself for getting so much laundry done uninterrupted when I walked into the kitchen and saw Peter had opened the wood stove and was happily cramming ashes into his mouth while Mary Claire sprinkled more on his head. Or how (this seems to be a theme, doesn't it?) the twins were quiet for too long and I found them sitting on a white comforter in our bedroom, covered with blue eyeshadow. 

But then again, it's probably good that I couldn't blog, because things were rather rough, what with moving with 5 small kids who no longer have any sense of boundaries because it's a new house and therefore even if they weren't allowed to strip down and take bubble baths in the middle of the day in the OLD house, clearly they should be allowed to in the new house, right?

In any event, the twins are quite clean.

I could blog about how horrible our first official day of homeschooling was. And what a yelling jerk I've been because I think I adapt to change WAY worse than the 6-and-under crowd.

Or I could write about the fact that I thought we would be immune to any "large family" comments around here, since we're surrounded by big families and are no longer an anomaly... But the comments have been even more plentiful! Which I really don't mind, and it makes sense because people are MUCH friendlier around here. And even the pointing and laughing in the parking lot doesn't get to me because truly, if you saw a woman who looks approximately 20 years old pushing a cart with two little blonde girls in it, one hanging off the edge, a little boy trailing behind and THEN you realize there's ANOTHER baby on her back? Really, I'm practically a pack mule - we're an amusing sight!

Really, we're very happy and things are falling into place and going well and we're no longer at a horribly-messy-boxes-everywhere-going-insane sort of phase, so my sanity is definitely better. And it's so freaking beautiful out here, guys. But I have laundry to fold and a house to clean and have been at the computer for way too long...

So I'll just leave you with these pictures of my mom pulling the four youngest kids in the wagon while I made dinner. Because it's the cutest thing ever, right? Right.