The Problem With Having Sisters!!

Not sure what to do with these girls. Robyn was asked out this weekend by a young man wanting to take her a play. She accepted wholeheartedly and was looking forward to it. And then on another day a different young man asked her out as well to attend the same play. (poor girl) She accepted his invitation as well. Lots of luck getting yourself out of that one!! So she comes to me with: "Mom, what am I going to do? I told them both yes and now I don't know what to do!!" Well, Robyn, this is your pickle, you figure out a way to get out of it I told her. She thinks a minute then quickly says: "Hey, do you think Christie could go with the first one I told yes, and I'll go with the 2nd?"

So, is this how it works? You can just pawn off a date to one of your sisters and everything is hunky dory?! I don't think so!

Well, long story short, she asked Christie and she said no way, I'm not taking your hand me downs, it's enough I had to take all your clothes growing up, I don't want your boys too.

As if that's not enough, it's been suggested by more than one of my girls that if a boy asks them for their phone number and they aren't interested they give him one of their sister's cell numbers!! That's a way to get out of a pickle I guess, just pass the ball to someone else and see if it works. My father called on my mother's sister Donna one night for a date, Aunt Donna was sick and couldn't go so he took my mother instead. Apparently it all worked out all right!!!

OUR Very Own Island Story Part 5~When the Flood Waters Came

And they did come!! The year our 6th child was born. Try keeping 5 kids from falling off the porch into the river when you have a tummy as big as a barn!! Actually it wasn't so bad. Just made life even more interesting. Juli and Vance Jr. had tons of fun rowing all over the yard watching the walleye and carp spawning in the waters. Sometimes they jumped so high they nearly came into the little boat!

I'm pretty sure the kids didn't do a whole lot of swinging on the swing set that summer. The little apartment/garage out back doubled as our storage overflow and whenever we needed anything from it we just hopped in the john boat and rowed over to it!!

Grocery shopping actually became easier because once they were loaded on the little john boat on the other side of the river there was no need to unload them again until we got right up to our back porch. Normally, we would pull the boat up on land and unload and carry them to the kitchen. In this way we saved a trip!

Almost looks like daddy is holding a bag of flour or sugar he retrieved from the little apartment behind the house!! It didn't take us long to develop the habit of ensuring that we had plenty of extras in our pantry while we lived here. Grocery shopping was NOT an easy task nor a fun one so I tried to make sure we were stocked up on the staples!!

Now this is what I call 'front door service!' The water in the yard area got anywhere from 3-5 feet deep depending on where you were. In this photo above the waters had receded quite a bit because the water got as high as the front porch at one point. So the little boat served us well because the pontoon couldn't drive in such shallow waters. So we went from the porch, to the john boat, row out to the pontoon and climb from the row boat into the pontoon. THAT was NOT easy considering how preggo I was with my first 10 lb. baby!!

The photo above was that of our front porch. It's a great view of the entire river that overflowed right up to our porch! One morning we woke up to find a small boat accompanied by a fisherman sitting in our front yard fishing. Just feet from our steps!! How weird is that?

Try imagining children playing on the front porch of a country home wearing life jackets!! One of the girls, I can't remember which one right now made the comment; "G, we can't even step onto the porch without putting that stupid life jacket on!" "We promise mom, we won't get off the porch!" Most likely it was Kim since she was nearer to 4-5 years old and that's probably something a child of that age would say!!

You Are Spoiling Those Kids!!!

This is what daddy says when I make all white flour bread!! But I don't really think it will spoil them. Whenever I have a very busy evening routine and I don't get my wheat flour to soaking then I have to resort to white flour to make our 'daily bread!' But who's complaining??? Certainly nobody around here!!

I take 1 C. very hot water and combine that with 1 C. milk. Add 2 T. yeast and 1/4 C. honey to liquid. Let sit for 5 minutes. To this add 2t. salt, 2 eggs, 1/2 stick melted butter, and about 7-8 C. unbleached flour. Let rise until double (about an hour) shape into loaves and let rise for 15 minutes. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Remove from loaf pans and spread with butter and place a towel over them until cool enough to slice.

Our Island Story Part 4~Crossing a Frozen River

This probably looks scarier than it really is!! Remember, our 1st objective with our family was always safety. Getting to know the river was the job of daddy and he did a fine job of it. Never did any of the children nor I encounter any danger with the frozen waters. In the beginning of the freezing periods, and at the beginning of thawing daddy would inspect the ice. He did this in several spots along each side of the river. Mainly by taking the flat bottom boat out a ways and jumping up and down in it to check the durability. Or, he would take an auger and check that way. Sometimes he would stand with one foot in the boat and the other outside the boat and stamp the ice really hard. This proved to work well to tell us the thickness of the ice. There was a time or two that he went in but grabbed himself by the boat. Having one leg inside the boat was a huge help in his safety!! And mostly, the depth of the water where he was checking wasn't usually over 5 or 6 feet deep.

In this photo it may seem things are not safe. It is true that there is open water but the path that you see in the picture below was safe and we always followed our path. When we would get heavy snows that would cover in our trail daddy would shovel it out, just as you would shovel your sidewalk!! Otherwise the boat would not slide as it needed to when our family was in it. He would put everyone in and pull the boat over the ice as you would pull a sled and wrapping the rope around his waist in case he fell through thereby giving him a way to climb out.

Here again, no matter what the river was like the children always wore their life jackets. Running water or frozen ice it didn't matter.

On Learning Geography

Emma uses our Geo Safari along with our normal globe that happens to have bigger writing on it helping her to answer the questions more quickly!!

I've always loved Geography. Ever since 5th grade when we got to learn the locations of the many countries on the map, their capitals and major cities includes. But I have found that I had forgotten so much. But in the last several years I've gotten an opportunity to learn it again. (Isn't homeschool great!) We have 2 items that are the basis of our geography curriculum. In fact, I've learned that these 2 teaching tools can pretty much stand alone. One is the ever famous GEO SAFARI and the other is the cd entitled GEOGRAPHY SONGS. I am amazed at how much fun geography actually can become to kids when they use these. Learning has never been so easy as it is these days!! And not to mention the fact that they love it! It's one subject they just pick up and do without any cajoling from me!!

Our Island Story Part 3~The Trick to Crossing a Semi Frozen River

There were those times in early winter and early spring when things would get a little tricky. Shown here are the ways we crossed when "most" of the water was still open but had some solid freezing nearer to the bank where we could safely walk. The railroad trestle to the right of the picture are what we walked on when the whole river was semi frozen during season change. Clicking on the photos will enlarge them!

Juli looks mighty lonely sitting there waiting for the other children to be loaded. Doesn't this look exciting!!

Way yonder you can see a couple of us in the boat and heading to the landing on a day where things weren't solid yet!!

Daddy preparing the 'rig' right before putting in waiting children.

WOE! Check out those ancient MOON BOOTS he's wearing!

This is where it got tricky. He would load it with kids, shove it out a ways and then hop in himself with tipping over. Our family was large enough by now that normally he would take over the older children (even though they were young!) and row back over for me and the babies! Christie and Aaron

Off they go for about a quarter mile trip to reach our van!!

Life With Dad Home

As most of you know daddy has been off work since the beginning of January due to a hand injury and isn't expected to return until the first of April. So life around here has taken on a whole new look needless to say. So what have we been up to since we've had daddy home everyday?

We have been reading to the kids mostly. It's not very often that daddy has the time to spend with them like he has now so he is really enjoying himself. Here is what we are reading and have finished.

Just David-A wonderful book we printed off the internet and bound. We finished it this week. Here is the link for it. JUST DAVID. Now we are reading the story of Gladys Alward. I found a wonderful mini unit study to go along with this online available as a free download. So far we are finding her to be a very amazing woman. Great book!

After dinner he reads a few pages of The Child's Story Bible. This is one of the best bible story books for children I have seen. The kid's are really enjoying it.

He has taken over our history lessons and reading a chapter from A Child's History of the World everyday. The kids interact so differently to him during their lesson time than they do to me. I think I'll keep him home from here on out!!

And what would the evening be without watching a couple episodes of Little House on the Prairie and having daddy read My First Little House Books over and over!! Gotta love those public libraries!! They have so many things to keep us all busy!!

He's been taking them sledding, to the indoor gym near our library to play basketball, tag, and just running off some cooped up energy, playing board games, cards, and he has been teaching us some great lessons, spiritual and temporal!! Seems this is how it should be. I'll have a hard time when he begins work again!! I wonder if I will have 'daddy withdrawals' or something!

I have a buddy to do things with now! We workout together, cook together, clean together, and do some plain ole hanging out and talking about anything and everything. Things aren't all serious though because I am one who loves a good prank and pulling some good ones on daddy as often as I can sure brings a lot of laughs! So I think that having him go off to work will definitely be a change for us all.

Walk Fit DVD's~My Review of Leslie Sansone

I love to exercise and always have. But in the last several years I've turned my attention to walking mostly. I really enjoy being outside but when winter hits I've found that as I get older I am way too much of a wimp to brave the cold!! So normally I turn to my really old Jane Fonda and Kathy Smith videos (yes, videos, that's how old they are!) for those indoor months. Well this year I found a Leslie Sansone in home walk video at the library and gave it a shot. I loved it so much that when I got to town I bought a couple to own. Here are the 2 I chose and I do them 6 days a week averaging 24 miles a week. Sometimes more, sometimes less! Dad and I normally do at least 4-7 (4 or 5 are mostly our average) miles a day depending on how we feel. They are set up in increments so it's very easy to do as many miles as you like just by clicking a mile over again. The two I have pictured here are our favorites. Leslie Sansone:Walk at Home and Walk Slim

We Love Lauri

But dislike my camera!! My other one broke and we are hoping to get a better one soon. Anyway, if you have ever used Lauri products then you will know what I'm talking about. We've used them for years. I realized that when last night the girls were playing with them and our 14 year old was saying how he remembered learning his addition and subtraction with them!! That long ago? But it's true! I've taught my youngest children basic math using the Lauri pegs. We have a full basket of lacey shapes, pegs, strings, beads, puzzles, and more. I don't pull them out all the time but when I do they get used for hours!! Perfect for quiet church play too. (Lauri will replace lost or broken puzzle pieces for only 1.oo, at least the last time I had to replace some that was the price but that was a couple years ago)

The kids have also used the shapes intended for lacing as stencils when drawing pictures. They trace the outside of them. There are many shapes too, bunnies, trains, cars, trucks, hearts, diamonds, flowers, and so many more.

They have always loved to make "birthday cakes" using the pegs as candles. This was my birthday cake last night. Don't I wish the number of pegs used was the right amount for my age!!

What's for Dinner?

Beans~Again!! Tonight we will have beans as a soup along with the bagels we all helped in making earlier today. The cinnamon rolls are for dessert. A perfect winter storm meal. We are expected to get several inches of snow so I made sure that this week we will eat some hardy meals from my 5lbs of beans we cooked up today.

Egg Bagels

4 medium eggs

2 T. yeast

8 C. flour

2 C. warm water

1/4 C. oil

1 T. salt

1 T. sugar or honey

Mix all ingredients together and knead for about 10 minutes. Place mixture in greased bowl and let rise for 20 minutes. Punch down and divide in about 20 balls and flatten. Let sit for 15 minutes. Drop bagels in boiling water for 3 minutes turning once. Place on greased sheet and brush on egg yolk. Bake at 450 for 20-25 minutes. You can put a hole in the middle if desired but as you can see I didn't. I rarely use all white (unbleached) flour but I don't make these enough to worry much about it!! Once in a while a little white won't hurt anyone!! My kids love these and most likely they will be gone by the end of the day!!

My twins made these cinnamon rolls today. They were intended for dessert but I think they are finished already!! Right when they came out of the oven the kids started on them!!

Our Island Story Part 2~Life Jackets & Safety

Safety concern was our first priority. The ages of our children were 10, 8, 5, 3, and 1 when we first moved here. Our rules no matter the season, winter, spring, summer, and fall were that the little ones HAD to wear a life jacket at all time. Even if mom and dad were outside with them they still had them on. I'm surprised their little arms didn't begin to stick straight out during those years of wearing them so much!! Our 2nd form of safety was our door locks. We designed them up high on the door where they couldn't be reached and they were locked from the inside so as to not let anybody out rather to keep people from coming in!!! If my memory serves me correctly after our 6th was born we bought one of those dead bolts that a key is needed to unlock and we put that on the inside of the door in place of the other one we had. In this way it would be more difficult for a little one to escape without being noticed which is easy to happen in a large, busy family!

We had a natural spring that was in our side yard. The pumphouse is to the left of the drain. Here daddy and Christie are gathering our drinking water. Not from the trough as it looks but from the water coming out from the ground. (click on any picture to enlarge)

Christie and Robyn are seen here playing in the snow and as you can see the river is still not frozen yet. It wouldn't matter yet as they would have been wearing them anyway.

Here Kim is posing for the camera. (they grow so fast)

In the rear is a good picture of the railroad tracks that occasionally our family would get on to cross the river during pre-freezing of the river and between the melting in spring. Quite the trick in getting 5 children, soon to be 6 across these tracks!! But always a wonderful adventure!!

Vance Jr. and Christie enjoying some time outside. One time we took the kids into the little town here and bought them an ice cream. On our way back to the house we were about to pull the boat into the dock area and Christie fell off the boat into about 6' of water I'm thinking. She had her life jacket on and ice cream cone still in hand. She plucked under the water for a second and when she popped back up she still had hold of that ice cream cone!! Must not have frightened her too badly!! It was the summer I was expecting Aaron and I was big preggo and I jumped in after her (instinct I guess) and I ended up catching the edge of the pontoon with my big ole belly and got a pretty good long scratch on me! Ouch! Those bellies are always bumping into something. She was probably almost 3 when it happened.

OUR Very Own Island Story Part 1

We have our very own Island Story. Here I am sharing some photos of the home we lived in while living on "our island." We crossed the Wolf River in Weyauwega, Wisconsin to get to it. We had 5 young children ages 10-1 when we first moved in. Our 6th child was born while living here. We enjoyed MANY adventures here. Some good, some bad!! But the adventure was a memorable one and lasted nearly 3 years. We endured spring, summer, fall, and winter on our island paradise. This is part 1 of what I hope to be many posts that I would love to share with my readers.

There was more than just our house on the island. However, ours was the only one that was 'winter proofed' and made to withstand flooding. If you look closely you can see that the home is sitting on large, steal, beams that hold it off the ground to protect it from flood waters which we got to experience the year our son was born. We nicknamed it "Big Blue." (stories and photos to come later)

One fun historical fact about this house is Al Capone used it for a hideout while running from the law. Behind the home is a garage/apartment that some of his men stayed in while here. It was also owned at one time by the Miller Brewing Company. Interesting wouldn't ya say?

Most of the time we were alone on the island. Especially when it was winter like in this photo. The other cottages were summer cottages and during nice weather there were maybe only a few others visiting their cottages off and on. In this picture right at the bottom of it you can see part of the oar of the flat bottom boat we were in. Our pontoon was taken out right before winter and we used other means of crossing the river. During semi/freezing water we crossed over the railroad trestle, walked one mile down the tracks to where we parked our cars. Quite an experience during our grocery shopping trips. And there were a few of them with a family 8.

WOW, I Now Have a 28 Year Old Daughter-Happy Birthday Juli

How is this possible? Just yesterday this sweet daughter was born. At least it seems like yesterday!! Today she is a whopping 28 years old with 2 precious baby's of her own. Juli is our firstborn. I so remember the day she was born. Wow, did I ever get a shock out of those first time labor pains. I was told it would hurt but landsakes!! All worth it though!! Why else would I have had 11 more.

Juli has always been amazing. I remember long ago when we were in our very first years of homeschooling. She was great. Every morning she was up early to get on her work and if my memory serves me correctly she would be finished with everything by 9 or 10. She loves reading and read almost everything she could get her hands on! Her grandpa used to say she was 'born old' because she was so very quick to learn and was always so helpful. Juli has always been very responsible, kind, loving, and patient with her brothers and sisters. Always ready with a kind word and helpful hand to all around her. Can anyone ask for more in a daughter. I don't think so!! She is a fabulous wife and mother, a faithful daughter of our Heavenly Father, and a wonderful blessing to our family.

Now she's all grown up!! Here she is with her husband Kelly. Juli is a great mom and wife. I'm sure Kel would agree with that!! I love watching her with her kids because I am amazed at what a wonderful mama she is. I've learned so much from this sweet girl and I'm sure I will continue to do so in the future. The younger kids are wondering why I call her my baby!! I tell them because she IS my baby. You all are, forever. Happy Birthday Juli. Love you very much!

Juli and Aubryn

Juli and Beckham