Visiting Spain

Since our Texas trip still hasn't worked out, here a picture of the kids in Spain, where Erik's travel bug is.

Yes, it's done by the same person who made Be-ah's page. So nice of him! Talking about travel bugs. Tara's BunBun II is in Peru! Our second international travel bug!

Went geocaching today, did a bunch of urban caches in Manchester, NH. What a clever hides! It's amazing how hard it can be to find a film canister in an urban setting. It was frigidly cold, so we ended up using the van to do a longer multi cache. It would have been a nice walk if the temperature had been thirty degrees higher than it was today. Brrrr!

The kids were in awe about all the tall buildings. We went into the City Hall Plaza, which was nice and warm, but they didn't allow visitors to go up to the top floor. That was a small disappointment, but at least they had the revolving door as a neat new discovery. I guess we don't get out much. Last month in Burlington, VT, the highlight was the escalators, this time it was the tall buildings and the revolving door :-)

Travel Bug Fun!

Erik's travel bug, Be-ah, a little helicopter made it to Spain. Erik gave it the mission to travel around the world and it sure is doing that now! Not only that, but the finders made a web page for it (click here) where it looks like Be-ah is flying around in Marbella, Spain. My kids were totally amazed by that. Their reactions:
Erik 'How did they make it fly????'
Kate 'Is that really Erik's Be-ah? Where is the travel bug dog tag?'
Jane 'I think they scanned it on the page'
Tara 'I know it! They took a real helicopter and painted it in the colors of Be-ah!'
Tim 'I think they did it on the computer
Cees 'I know how they did it! They used very thin strings.'

So much fun to hear all those theories, especially the one where they took a real helicopter and painted it as a travelbug :-)

One of Tara's travel bugs is in Virginia now, and on its way to the Amazon! If that works out, it will be our second out of country travel bug. Who needs school if you can do geography by geocaching? ;-)

Went to the go club again today, and actually managed to win a game. I have been on a losing streak lately, so this was nice. I guess all the studying is bad for my play, I try out new things, and they don't always work out. Oh well.

My big activity for the day was cleaning out the fridge. It's amazing the number of science experiments which were hiding in there. I hadn't dared to even open one of the vegetable drawers for months! You don't want to know how it looked in there, unlike my kids, who were all looking at it with very keen interest.

Revival

Happy to announce that I dug up Robert from the back of the fridge, and managed to revive him. Just in case you wonder about me now, I'll tell you that Robert is my sourdough starter. He has lived with us for a few years now, and I still haven't been able to kill him, although I have tried at times. This time, he had been ignored since before Sylvia's birth, and I had been kind of avoiding the whole issue by just not looking at his container, figuring that there might be too many gross science experiments growing in there.

But lo and behold, he was totally fine, if a bit sluggish. I used him for sourdough pancakes, and they came out perfectly. He is at my counter now, with fresh flour and water, ready to make sourdough bread soon.

I was very organized today, and even made barley stew in the crockpot before we went to hide a cache. Yes, I feel that I am starting to get my life under control again. At least certain aspects of it.

Last night we had nine kids, tonight we have only four. Amazing how the number of kids keeps fluctuating. The house is amazingly quiet, although that could also be because all those kids are asleep :-)

Fudge Drops

Have been wanting to make those for a week or so, and now I finally did! Not in time for this morning's homeschool club, but hey, that means there is more for our family :-) We have more kids anyway, having two extra kids here for a sleepover. So I am sure the drops will get eaten somehow.

This is not only about fudge drops, but it is also about actually being organized enough to get them baked. As opposed to planning to bake, but life getting in the way. It really is time to get pregnant again, to throw off my back on track life :-)

Had a fun homeschool club meeting, the kids had organized a valentine's day party. Any excuse for a party :-) There were all kinds of entertaining activities, yummy treats (too much sugar :-) and a magic show. A good time was had by all.

The snow wasn't too bad, just a lot and very heavy, but we got ourselves dug out in just a few hours. We have had worse storms than this.

Not only did I make fudge drops today, but I also got dinner made for 9 kids and 2 adults. Hmmmm, maybe I am ready for twins instead of just one baby :-)

Papa!

We have been doing some baby signs with Sylvia, but I hadn't been sure yet whether she was using them yet. But yesterday, she very clearly made the papa sign when we were talking about him. Not perfectly, but still very clear what she meant. I just love watching her develop and grow and do cool things like that. She is really able to communicate more and more.

Life has been hectic, as usual. Between geocaching, the go shodan challenge, cooking, baking, cleaning, grocery shopping, decluttering, and homeschooling, there just isn't much time left for writing.

We are being hit by a major snow storm, blech! I got myself stuck on our street today, the car just refused to go up in all that slush. That was after going to the dentist for the umpteenth time, not a good day. Now Sylvia has a fever, and I never got to bake the cookies for the homeschool club tomorrow, and we are supposed to get 12 to 20 inches of snow. Very heavy, very wet snow. But I got split pea soup made, and baked yummy whole wheat bread.