In the Hall

It makes me smile that at this moment this song is one of my children's favorites.  It is "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg.

Enjoy!

Observations

Here are my observations of today.

I sometimes suspect that baggers are paid by the number of bags they use. When putting away groceries this evening we came across a bag that contained one lone can of grape juice. No, not a whole 64 oz bottle, just a can of concentrate. I also found a bag that held... a nail file. One stinking nail file. It needed a whole average sized bag to itself?


On a completely unrelated note I suspect this baby believes that if it just pushes hard enough on the right side of my abdomen that it will simply make a hole there and escape. It seems to have been working on this plan for several months now. I honestly don't know how I lack a bruise there. This baby has one specific spot it keeps working on. Maybe my stomach will be extra weird shaped after the baby since it stretched the right side out very far.

Notice the deep thoughts are only occasional. This was totally random thoughts.

Play it again!

My children and I found this to be a rather impressive and humorous performance. I hope you do too.

Just a bit more

We just bought a new pencil sharpener and already had a giant collection of unsharpened pencils. The kids have been taking turns sharpening our stash.

I was in the living room and knew Phebe was messing with the pencil sharpener where I couldn't see her. I asked Victor to see what she was doing.

"Oh, she is just sharpening pencils and then using scissors to cut off the end and sharpen them again."

Oh, that's all.

It's a girl!

We still do not know what gender the baby is going to be. That hasn't stopped Phebe from deciding what sex it will be however. We just had this conversation.

Phebe: No, Caleb! It is a girl and its name is America!
Me: Well, but what should we name it if it comes out as a boy?
Phebe: It won't be a boy. I said it is a girl and we will name it America.
Me: Caleb what do you think we should name the baby if it is a boy?
Caleb: How about Captain America. That is a good boys name. Or we could just call him Captain.

Poor Phebe

Today Phebe's older siblings all went to school. For the next month it is just the two of us for a few hours each day. At the end of that month we will have a baby to keep us busier.

She plotted how she was going to sneak onto the bus.

It is raining and is very dismal.

She has requested going to a friends house.

She has demanded going to Grandma's house

She has asked to watch a movie.

She wants music on Youtube.

She wants an apple.

The kids have only been gone for an hour.

I think she is having separation issues.

Still isn't in the book

The children's organization at my church is called primary. Each week they get together and learn songs about Jesus and have lessons about His gospel. When I was in primary we had a weekly ritual that to this day made me laugh.

Each week our song leader would ask what song we would like to sing. My little class of girls asked for this song. It is called a Child's Prayer. I love this song very much.

On the other hand, one of the little boys without fail would ask for Welcome to the Jungle by Guns and Roses.

OK, that isn't the official video and it doesn't even have lyrics, but I think it is a neat performance. Plus you can see how a bow can take a beating.

That was our weekly ritual. Now every time a child requests A Child's Prayer in the back of my mind I hear Sister Hartung saying " Sorry Eric, Welcome to the Jungle is still not in the hymn book."

The gift that keeps giving.

I am really good at thinking I am prepared for Christmas and then finding out nearly too late that I have forgotten a bunch of things. So in an effort to avoid that I have already purchased a fair amount of gifts and spent part of today working on a list of things that would make nice gifts for our loved ones.

 I have two 20 something  year old bachelor brothers, Roger and Alan. I asked Phebe what she thought I should get for Roger.
Phebe: A wallet, just like mine.
Me: and what should we get for Alan?
Phebe: I think we should give him my wallet too.
Me: I see. What kind of things do you like to see in your stocking?
Phebe: My wallet. I really like my wallet.

I can tell Phebe. I can tell.

Free Lemonade!

For a year or so, my daughter Naomi has been on a crusade to run a lemonade stand. She was convinced that she was going to make tons of money. I on the other hand was convinced it was just going to be one more thing I would have to supervise without the pay off she was expecting. I was not thrilled with the prospect. 

Some years my husband and I will go out to Indianapolis for a giant game convention called GenCon. This year we decided that Victor was old enough to come along and actually enjoy himself. Victor was quite excited. Part of the deal though was that he had to raise $35 to help pay for his 4 day badge. Suddenly letting them run a lemonade stand didn't sound quite so bad. 

After a lot of mulling it over we  decided that we would offer our product for free. We put out a tip jar for those who have a burning desire to give kids money but we literally gave away many cups of lemonade completely free. 

The whole thing turned into a social experiment of sorts. It was really interesting to see how different people reacted. There was no catch, just a free cup of lemonade. 

 In the beginning I had my children commit to one full week before we would call it quits. Monday - Friday 11:30 am-1:00 pm they would stand out there pestering everyone who walked, biked, skated, or drove by. At the end of the week we would discuss whether they wanted to keep it up. 

In the end we ran the stand for approximately 6 weeks total. 

I think the lemonade stand has been a fantastic experience for learning so many life lessons. 

My family and I sat down and discussed what they learned from out summer lemonading. Here are some of what my kids said and what I have observed. 

• They learned confidence and skills for approaching strangers. ( Yes, I am well aware of "stranger danger" but I don't completely buy into the way our society handles it. Let's face facts, your whole life you will have to interact with people you don't know initially, thus they are automatically strangers. I firmly believe that teaching them appropriate methods for dealing with strangers is more valuable than terrifying them of the world.)
• Perseverance-There were stretches of time or even days when few people stopped and things were simply not as much fun, but you just keep going.
• Customer service skills. ( I would not say we have portion control down yet though.)
• Saving and investing money. Each child had a goal set for their portion of the earnings. They also decided on a specific amount they took out for reinvesting in supplies. I gave them the money initially to get started. However, once they had earned that much money I was repaid. 
• Record keeping. They were given a ledger to keep track of the earnings. The younger children needed more help tracking. Victor became very good at adding up his money and calculating how much tithing needed to come out. 
• Shopping around for better prices. They quickly realized they got far more for their money at Aldi than they did anywhere else. 
• Putting on happy face. It didn't matter how the customer reacted, you smile and tell them to have a nice day.
• Be a part of what is going on. They had to be actively engaged. Passively sitting in a chair waving a sign around does not encourage anyone to stop. 
• Team work. Each child seemed to find a little nitch in the system. 
• Focus. (Let's just say that Phebe and Caleb served more as a focus challenge than actual help.)
• Everyone gets a chance. Every person that came near was given the opportunity to accept. There was no way to tell who would stop and who wouldn't. As Caleb, age 5, said "You have to ask everybody because you can't see the ideas in their heads." 
• Charity (OK, that is probably mostly just me. We have a few children in the neighborhood who seem to lack in much parental supervision so they came to visit us 2-3 times daily in our hour and a half. The selfish part of me just wanted to hand them a cup and send them on their way, but they obviously were craving attention so I had to work seeing them as God sees them.It was a good challenge for me to have.)
• They also became far better at accepting responsibility for setting up and cleaning up the stand. 

It was interesting to see how different people reacted to our little set up. Some grin, others wave, a few seem embarrassed and won't make eye contact with you. This has been a really impressive opportunity to become better acquainted with our neighbors. 

We live right near a hospital and down the street from an ambulance station. As such we ran into interesting people like the man with a broken hand who stopped to chat for a while. Or the woman who was on the way to the hospital because her young child had stuffed a bead up her nose. We understood that the bus and emergency vehicles weren't really going to stop, but they were called to anyway. The kids were stunned when an assist coach (some kind emergency vehicle) stopped and gave them several dollars saying  " This is for all your hard work guys." That was after 3 weeks of yelling at them to stop. We had a police officer, nurses on break, men who tried to get their dogs to drink a cup. It literally is impossible to tell who will accept their offer. 

(If you were to decided to run a stand I highly recommend buying frozen cans of lemonade from Aldi. I had a surprising amount of people ask what our recipe was because it was so good.) 

I am so glad that we chose to run a lemonade stand, OK maybe I am glad I gave into my daughter's hounding. It has been a really positive experience. They are already plotting what they are going to do next year. They are also looking for suggestions for during the school year. (They want to do hot chocolate but that sounds like a logistical nightmare to me, especially with a new baby that will be here.)

I hope you had a fabulous summer. 

Over there, no, maybe over here.

I am probably doing things wrong. I try not to spend all day on it. Some days I feel like it is all I do.

I feel like I spend my day just moving things around.

I move the laundry from the basket to the washer, etc, then back to get put away.

I move the dishes around from the cupboard, to the table, washed and back away.

Toys get pulled out and put back.

Day after day. Yes, I try to mix more memory making things in with the routine. But even going on a picnic means moving things to the basket and having to put it all back in the end. So much is just move something from here to there and back again. Yes, I have the ever helpful Phebe so the messes aren't always the same.

I just wonder if I am the only one who ever feels this way. I guess that is why it is so important to work on more intellectual stimulation. It would be so very easy to get bogged down in the mundane.

I hereby declare

I hereby declare that from now on the first Thursday of every month will be Damion's birthday party at 5:30.

This declaration is decreed since Victor used a permanent marker on my dry erase calendar.

Watch out!

This cake just makes me laugh.

As you can see I pulled it from The Cake Wrecks website.

I really am not sure why one would need a horse with chainsaw arms, but I guess there might just be a time for it after all.

Let's play a game!

So last week my husband, eldest son, mother-in-law and I all went to GenCon. It is a gigantic gaming convention. Seriously the slogan is "no game left behind". So you can sign up to play all kinds of different games. Game companies from all over show up and let you demo their wares. It is a great place to people watch.

They also have  lots of different classes that they offer. Some are about what is going on in certain companies. Classes on building foam weapons for your LARP (live action role playing) character or how to make chain-mail, even techniques for painting miniatures better or writing seminars..I took a class on making sushi last year and soap making this year. Victor, Ethan and I took a Kung Fu class. There are all kinds of crazy classes you can sign up for .

This year my favorite class by far was about making education into a game. I really enjoyed the concept. Since I thought it was such an interesting way to go I wanted to share some of what I got from the class with you. Let us begin-

The end goal of making education into a game is to stop learning from being extrinsic (reward or punishment from an outside source ) to being intrinsic ( self motivated.)

In order for a game to be good it needs to have certain aspects such as, but not limited to-

• decision making
• resources that players control
• information about changes that occur after a decision is made

On the first day of class in an average classroom everyone starts with 100%, an A. However as the semester goes on, the only thing that really happens to your grade is that it drops. Be it dramatically or slightly overall it is usually lower than the starting point. The problem with this method is that as human beings we can become irrational if we think we are going to lose something. If you are going to lose your good grade, why even bother? ( I know I am not the only one who has ever behaved in this ridiculous fashion. ) 

His solution for this problem was that everyone started off at 0. You have no points. You are at level 0. By the end of the semester you have to have achieved a specific level ranking. Let's say level 50. So all of your assignments, tests, etc help you gain rank. Another important stipulation about this is that a teacher can NEVER take away your levels. He also game them progress bars to see how they were doing. 

Part of how this teacher ran things was that he gave out tokens for class participation, homework completion, writing on the board, etc. Then he presented them with a menu of things they could use the tokens for. Hint on a test, a special pin he made, painting a brick on his wall. He specified that never should a reward be that you can skip a question on a test or get out of a homework assignment on the grounds that you are failing as a teacher if your questions on assignments are skip-able. Why is that question even there if it doesn't matter? 

He also refused to accept work that wasn't correct. He would point out the mistakes and hand it back for changing. The goal is perfection, not just marking it as filled out. I also liked how he set up his homework system. He recorded his own lectures and white board work and then watching the video was the homework assignment. That way they could work on practicing in class and he would be able to answer questions and fix problems immediately as they occurred. 

He also noted that the players(or students) need to be the only one with interest in what happens to the tokens. If the teacher tries to be involved than it is no longer intrinsic to the player but is effected externally now.

Another thing he offered were "side quests" so they could earn more levels on their own voluntarily. Thereby encouraging self motivation. 

In the end everyone seemed stunned by the amount of work that would be involved in putting all this together. He did admit that it is a lot of front ended work. Instead of being just ahead of the students in your lesson planning you need to have the entire semester planned out so your students can see the end goal. 

There happened to be a man in the class how appearntly did put this into action in his own classroom and had rave reviews about it's effectiveness. Here is his website if you want more information on how it all played out. http://joncassie.com/gamifiedclassroom/ 

To sum it all up our teacher told us in the end the goal is to get children addicted to learning, to make it an intrinsic part of them and that this system greatly encourages that. 

Well, I hope this was informative, or at least interesting. I thought it was a really neat concept. 

Blech

It is not a pleasant experience to be eating grapes while you make biscuits and realize that the last grape you ate was the cherry tomato your husband just brought in and presented to you.

I like tomatoes.
I like grapes.

I do not like thinking a tomato is a grape. It does not end in a yummy way.

Posting about posting

Sometimes I do a great job updating here. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I have to go on a trip and see people I haven't seen in a while and listen to them tell me that they enjoy my blog for me to be reminded that there are a few people around that read it.

I am always impressed that most of the comments are " I really love reading the stories about your kids". Even people who don't have children seem amused. Well that always bolsters my incentive to write some more about my children and what is going on. Believe me, I have quite an awesome posted about our summer festivities planned.

I also wanted to let you know that when you stop getting Facebook as your main traffic source it is kind of surprising what websites show up. I made the mistake of clicking on one of them to see what it was once. Not doing that again. When I say mistake, I do mean mistake. It is kind of weird to read this list of websites that you have never heard but that sometimes come back and visit your blog over and over again.

That is all for the moment. I have great plans and you will be presented with them shortly. Until then, have a nice night.

Weird, that worked.

OK, so some fleas followed somebody home. I don't even own pets so my indignation at having fleas in the house was extreme. However saying " I shouldn't have to deal with this" doesn't change the fact that they are here. Luckily my husband noticed before it was a serious problem.

I am 8 months pregnant with 4 kids living here so a flea bomb was not really a desirable option. I searched around for a while and came up with a surprising answer.

Salt.

Sprinkle salt on the carpet and let it sit for 12-48 hours. It dries the bugs and the eggs up.

Salt isn't exactly expensive so I figured it was worth a shot. We have had no reported sightings since The initial sprinkling. I vacuumed that layer up, washed a ton of laundry and then put down one more layer of salt for good measure.


As with all things I can not guarantee that this will solve your problem. But it worked at my house so I am passing it along.

***

On a completely unrelated note, my husband introduced me to this internet video series called Mind Floss.

I find it entertaining and educational. I did come across two of them I was unwilling to watch. The haox one was way too visually graphic for me, ( I do not do horror or gore very well.) And the animal mating one just seemed too inappropriate. I have not watched them all though so I can not tell you about each video. Overall I find them to be well done and worth the few minutes once in a while that I sit down to watch one.

***

The book I am currently listening to is called " The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks". Gotta say I had never heard of her in my life until I got this book out. 

I guess this woman got cervical cancer when she was 30 and the doctors took a sample of the tumor. Up to that point in history they couldn't get cells to grow well but hers wouldn't stop growing. Sadly she died with 5 young children at home at the age of 31. But her cells live on. They even used them to develop the polio vaccine. It isn't the usual kind of book I read. There is some profanity and just some gross medical stuff. I can't say that I have found it completely engrossing but it is kind of interesting. A lot of book is about what happened to her family and them trying to get closure. 

***

I tackled the monstrous project of dealing with all the bins, boxes, bags of kids clothes. I threw away 5 boxes and 6 random bags, consolidating into a much smaller space. ( I am pleased.)  In the process I found a swimming suit that fit Phebe better than the one she had in her drawer. Phebe thinks clothes and in particular swimming suits are pretty glamorous. So while we waited for a friend to call to tell us to come over I cleaned up a mess and Phebe went to work putting on her new suit. When it was time to walk out the door I told her to go get clothes on and make sure she put on underwear. When we got to the friends house I stopped to check. She was wearing her swimming wear under her clothes. She did quickly point out that under her swimming suit she had put on underwear. But honestly, how could we ask her to take off a sparkly rainbow swimming suit and walk around with out it?