Lamb feeding photos.

 

I’m not sure words are needed here. They had fun. The got to experience lots of things. It was really, really cold. Really cold. The difference in temperature between there last week at this time and the temp today here is 90 degrees. It’s pretty incredible.

Borax.

Edited to add: Boy, the qualities of Borax must be under appreciated! I drew numbers and Laura, Lanita, and Sharilyn, your entries were randomly picked for the coupons. Congrats!

Borax and I have been good friends for a long time. I originally bought it to make my own detergent, and since then I’ve found it to be helpful in adding to the wash when clothes are especially dirty, and I even tried using it to clean my bathtub. (That one wasn’t my favorite use. But it was worth a shot.) With hard well water here, it’s been a clothes-saver.

Borax is a natural mineral from the earth. It’s the common name for sodium tetraborate. (If I can remember that long term my husband would be impressed. I’m not counting on it though.) Nothing is added to it; it’s just cleaned, dried, and boxed. It naturally softens hard water by attaching to some of the compounds and settling to the bottom of the machine – and then draining out. All that to say, I didn’t know all of this. But 20 Mule Team Borax sent me a box to try out (it’s identical to the box that I already was using…) and they also sent me three coupons to give away to my readers to try.

Want one? Leave a comment here, like this post on Facebook, and comment on my facebook page to win three chances. Three winners will be drawn at random on Thursday at noon CT.

One of those mysteries...

The kids got to see a lamb born. As far as I could see, one potentially awkward future conversation just got a whole lot easier.

I thought. The question about how the lambs came to be was next. I mentioned rams. They said Grandpa didn't have any rams out there. I assured them he must have had some sometime in the very near past. The notion of ewes simply birthing yearly without ram assistance was mentioned. The rams that recently went to market were mentioned. Mystery solved.

And so the awkward conversation came full circle. I believe I threw something in there about our goats, both male and female, and understanding dawned.

I am so not ready for this.

South Dakota days.

My dad has long made up words for old songs. The "Oh Christmas Tree" song with a line in there about green teeth instead of a green tree comes to mind from my growing up years.

Not much has changed. As "The weather outside is frightful" got it's line change yesterday, Ruby was present and listening yesterday. My four year old was singing later something about Grandma's kiss being delightful. It still has me giggling.

The high for today was -1 degrees. I wouldn't know firsthand, however. It was a balmy 70 degrees inside the house. I didn't leave it.

Pierce is getting molars. And I thought he was crabby before.

When Pierce wanted to drink my coffee, I tried to encourage him to stop whining and sign. "More. Coffee. Please." I had him signing each one, and then encouraged him to try on his own. He made a valiant attempt, and followed it up with "Amen!" both with the sign and a pretty clear shout. He got the coffee.

One dear child has taken to sighing when told to do a job. The others don't mind a bit though. Said child then had to do the jobs alone. The laundry was folded and put away without assistance from anyone. The others are all encouraging more sighing.

Ruby's been practicing saying the "ck" sound. It always comes out "t" instead. She's getting better, but tonight I had her trying to say "kitty". After giggling at her mispronunciation, Grandpa wisely suggested "cocoa" instead.

Horrible.

Sterling is a horrible looker. Horrible.

He comes to the house, upset, because he'd lost his glasses in the snow.

Perfect. I pried the rest of the story out of him.

He'd been playing in the snow, realized he was going to get snow on his glasses, so he took them off and, when he got to the house, realized his glasses weren't in his mitten any longer. With that information, my right to be upset with his failure to maintain knowledge of his glasses' whereabouts diminished, I headed outside in the snow to help him look.

He was down in the pasture, traipsing through the snow. We looked and looked and finally I asked if he was sure he lost his glasses down there.

"No. I took them off up by the barn."

Then why are we in the pasture looking?! At this point, I had fallen through the snow crust and ended up to my knees in snow multiple times. With backless shoes on, I had snow in my shoes and snow in my pants. Fun times.

We headed up to the barn and resumed our search. Upon finding nothing, I asked him exactly where he'd been standing when he took them off. "Over there." He pointed some distance from our search area. Oh good grief. How about we go over there?

We looked some more. Now a good half hour into our search, I was cold and I had more snow in my shoes than I'd care to deal with. I questioned him further. "Where did you realize you lost them?"

"Behind Grandma's car."

We decided to look there and work backwards. Many minutes later, he muttered, "I dropped them right here. They have to be somewhere."

Wait. a. minute. You know where you dropped them?!

Oh yes. He dropped them behind Grandma's car. And there they were, feet from the car, unbroken and now very snowy.

I still haven't gotten to the bottom of why we were searching in the pasture and by the barn when he knew where he was when he dropped them. I'm not sure I want to know. Next time, I'm prying for all details before I give my toes an ice bath.

I don't have a clue what I'm talking about.

I'm a big fan of language. Proper English and spelling are requirements in my home school. Last week Liberty's English had her studying possessive nouns and pronouns and I drove a point home. "Possessive pronouns never have apostrophes. Never. Ever. Ever. Do not ever, ever put an apostrophe in hers, his, ours, its... The contractions have an apostrophe but never if they are possessive."

At this point, the poor girl's eyes were glazed as she nodded, hoping that I'd quit driving the point home. She doesn't realize I'm saving her from some really important, grievous error. You know, an improper usage of "it's" in a Facebook post or some such thing. Grievous.

Two days later, as Liberty handed her report on a Missouri state park to me to be proofread, I said, "You spelled "its" without an apostrophe, Honey. It's possessive."

She looked at me in confusion. "Yes..."

"It needs an... oh good grief. Who lets me teach you these things?!"

(Just for the record, I had to fix four English grammar mistakes in proofreading this post. Two were apostrophe errors. I doubt I even caught them all at this point. I'm not cut out for this, it would seem. Or I need a nap. Or both.)

Weary travelers and a cold, frustrated momma.

You know you've been up for a long time when Ruby asks for lunch at 9:19 am.

We're in South Dakota. The drive took 10.5 hours and we stopped twice. It doesn't get much better than that with six kids. No one peed their pants and there was minimal crying - and none of it came from Pierce. They are growing up, my friends. Fast.

We were well over halfway to South Dakota and I'd been freezing the whole way because the kids were hot and sweaty and I couldn't figure out why they weren't getting the cold air that was blasting at me, when Pierce's cheeks were redder than any boy ever ought to have and I asked Liberty to adjust his vent. The poor sleeping boy looked like he was wearing an obscene amount of rouge, and his hair was wet with sweat. She opened the vent. Really?! It's 19 degrees outside, I all but have the A/C running trying to cool the back of the van for them, I'm freezing and they have the vents closed and the windows open?! Oh. my. HELLO! Liberty asked Eden about the vent further back, to which Eden replied, "Oh, I closed those because I was cold." She didn't mention that to me, who is shivering in the front, still blasting the cold air for all it was worth.

My children are no longer allowed to adjust the vents without permission.

Pierce was up in the night, trying to find me. He was in a sleeping bag with all the kids and I was in the next room over. I found him in the bathroom, feeling around on the sink and hollering for me. Talk about confusion. I thought him in a sleeping bag might be interesting. He fell asleep without fuss about 25 seconds after I laid him down. Yep, they are growing up.