Cranberry Sauce

******* Today, we made real cranberry sauce using cranberries, water and sugar. The children hate the canned cranberries that aren't perfectly jellied, but they'll eat this kind they made at home, which is pretty much the same thing. Only fresher. We were going to use a recipe for "ink" we found online using berries, but cranberries just do NOT fit the bill for that. Their juice is entirely too light.

Monsters!

Picked this book up at Michael's craft store for about $5. It has "how to" step-by-step instructions on drawing monsters. After we drew some monsters, I had the boys make and cut out their own symmetrical monsters, draw background and tape the monster down. Elf's monster has glasses because Elf got very upset thinking about how this large monster can't see people, and keeps stepping on them and killing them... *sniff* because he can't see... Well, I think I've fixed it because Emperor had some pink paper left over. Elf thinks pink is a strange colour for the monster's glasses but I assured him that NO ONE would make fun of his monster's glasses considering that the frog-monster accidentally squishes very tall trees without them. Emperor's monster must see very well (with all those eyes!) and lives in the lava.

Elf Wins!

Apparently, since Dad got his hand pictured on the blog after he won against Mom at Parcheesi, Elf is entitled to a photograph and several reader comments as well. His pieces are, of course, the green ones. Elves like green, especially if they're little woodland elves who work in the Keebler factory.

Pioneer Log House.

If the pioneers were all about seven, and had to build their log cabins out of pretzel sticks and peanut butter, not many of them would have survived the long, cold winter. This is in part because little children like to eat candy houses. How did the wicked witch in the Hansel and Gretel story ever make it through a good hailstorm? It's what I want to know. Thanks, Zimms Zoo, for this fun idea. It was too cool to wait 'till Tuesday to make.

I Deal With This a Lot.

Emperor wants all the baby things. He wears bibs constantly in the house. I've found him tucking bibs up under his shirt to bring to church. "Everyone loves babies!" he reasoned. "If I wear a bib, people will like me and forget how annoying I am." Awww. I took the bib away anyway. And, yes, I heard reports later about how "annoying" he was in church, too. He has just lost two teeth and given himself a haircut. A more recent picture would be considerably less flattering. This one is from last week.

Financial Stimulus Voucher!

We done gots ourselves a free key with this here financial stimulus voucher package, too. If the key works, it's OURS. D pointed out that since they sent the key in the mail, it's ours anyway. But look! Doesn't it look like the car place is trying to put one over on the not-so-sophisticated shopper? You know, the one who might think that he's getting some sort of bailout?

The EVIL House.

Ever sit down and talk to a missionary who serves in a faraway land? Ever hear strange stories about the power of God, and of evil? Yes, I've seen the wackos on TV claiming that God can give you gold dental fillings if Pastor Richdude touches the prayer cloth you send in with your "best gift" of $2,000 or more. No, I mean... real missionaries. People who have given up just about everything you could think of to go live somewhere just about nobody wants to live.

I've heard stories. Usually they're not as dramatic as the ones you hear ninteenth-hand about the minute the church in the US prayed, this big legion of angels scared natives away who were planning a raid on missionary settlements. And there were the exact number of angels as there were praying on the carpet at Whatever Baptist Church at 3 p.m., etc. That story's about as overused as the preaching on the frog-in-the-pot. But I've heard dramatic stories about people who really ARE demon-possessed, and the spiritual darkness you can just FEEL in some places of the world from some missionaries, and even laypeople. Go ahead and laugh.

But I have been in a place like that.

In Kearney, Missouri.

No, really. I'm not given to weird stories and claiming victory for Jesus by marching around affected buildings seven times and that kinda stuff. But one day, when I was househunting with my husband about 12 years ago, I encountered a house with something in it.

We were househunting this way: One of us would go in while the other stayed in the car or yard with our small children, Patrick and G. Then we'd switch so both of us would get a chance to look at the place without our children making silly comments or getting into the cabinets. So I went into a place with my realtor.

Have you ever just KNOWN someone was staring at you, and felt uncomfortable? Well, oh, it was odd... but there in the living room, I could FEEL something staring at me. It was as if someone were standing RIGHT IN FRONT of me and glaring. I wanted to back out, but thought I was a silly. Because stuff like that isn't real. The living room looked totally normal, but the carpeting was a bit outdated and the curtains were those old thick plastic-lined ones with the tweedy fabric on the side facing indoors. Icky, but hardly anything to freak out about.

Silly me.

Further into the house, I'm doing a little chat with myself. I mean, I REALLY like the layout. The kitchen and living areas flow around in a circle through to the TV room. You know the older houses I'm talking about like that. And then a stairway upstairs and a doorway down to the basement. Looking back, my, was everything dated. But that sort of thing really doesn't bother me so much as it does other people. In fact, it's kinda nostalgic to see those white countertops with the goldy flecks in them. You remember when that stuff was en vogue.

But the basement was ... something. I have never seen the like ever before or since. Maybe I wasn't so silly.

The walls were painted black. Skulls were drawn on the walls. There were black candles and blood drawn on the walls. Some sort of table with things on it and my mind has blocked out what on earth it was. I just remember it bothered me. The realtor was a bit uncomfortable and started to talk about a nice coat of paint and you could let your kids play down there. He was shifting funny on his feet when he said it, too.

I started thinking of getting my pastor to please walk through the house with me with the anointing oil and pray, pray, pray. I mean, no weapon formed against us can prosper and all that. It was a good price, even if it smelled vaguely of pot.

Outside, there were a couple teenagers and neighbourhood kids hanging out with their parents. They looked like normal enough people, though these parents let their children draw on their clothes and smoke. But otherwise about like anyone else. I liked the house and the neighbourhood and told D maybe we should make an offer and then call the pastor?

D hated the place. He thought I was nuts for even suggesting it. He said, you know, it isn't so much the place, because the PLACE is nice, but there are probably all kinds of people used to hanging out around here. Well, he's probably right on that one. Ok, then, on to the next house on our list...

But ever since then, our car didn't work right. We even had the GM dealership servicepeople working on the phone with National Headquarters trying to figure out what on earth was wrong. The house is evil, D tells me, and it messed up the car. I'd be inclined to agree with him though I know how SILLY that sounds. Imagine, scary house killing your car. I mean, that's silly.

But if you were there, maybe you would believe me that it's at least possible. It was very creepy. D refuses to even drive down that street EVER AGAIN because of the power he thinks that evil house has. And that was TWELVE YEARS AGO.

Now, I don't get "into" stuff like that. I've never called people over to look for ghosts or thrown up demons in a bucket or any of the really weird stuff you might be thinking about. It wasn't like I started my day just then looking for the paranormal.

Anyway...

Can I tell you about another house? This one is up the street from me. NO ONE on our street would even be paid to live there, so far as I know. It is, as my Catholic neighbour put it once, jinxed. EVERY family that has ever lived there for 40-odd years has gotten a messy divorce or one of the spouses killed themselves. OK, it's a bad place to my knowledge, but I've never been in it. I just know what people have lived in it over the last 12 years or so haven't been upstanding citizens of the community. I'm not sure that the house is jinxed, or if it's just that the house keeps going up for sale and it's a bargain... and you know, if someone just shot themselves in the house before you bought it, you'll get it for cheap.

Thoughts?

Frontier America

The American Frontier map will help us put times and places into perspective. We'll be learning about the settlers moving west, the Trail of Tears, and related notable people in this unit.

Girlie.

Sleepover!!

I don't know how he did it, but Elf actually dragged his mattress almost all the way down two sets of stairs. Since D had to work ALL night Friday, it was time for a sleepover. All five of the boys ate pizza and popcorn and stayed up watching videos. The house is totally trashed, but I was able to wrap a couple Christmas presents for the children and catch up on some friends' blogs.

Elf Speaks a Foreign Language.

This is the kind of thing I have to hear all day, every day. The very worst part is when two or three children get together and speak this language. Can you tell Elf is a little nervous and excited that he gets to tell all of you this "information?"

Because I'm High-Class.

I wrap Christmas gifts in the brown paper I find stuffed at the top of the boxes they come in. This is an "Ancient Egypt" stamping set and little book for Elf. Emperor will get a "gladiator in a box." I have also purchased a Jonathan Park CD set for Elf and Emperor just because it looked like so much fun. The little children are difficult to buy for because Woodjie throws everything or eats it, and Girlie wants to play with everything nicely, but Woodjie will take it away from her and throw it or eat it. Really. Girlie can't even have a hairbow without Woodjie chomping on it after he rips it out of her hair... The older boys want mega-expensive stuff like an entirely new game system, and that just isn't happening this year. It may be that I just hand them money and say, this much is from this set of grandparents, this is from us and this is from the other set... go buy your own gift... Yes, I am very high-class indeed. I think the masking tape just adds that je ne sais quoi... final touch sorta thing.

Aboard the Elf Express

Elf is pushing G all over the place. I think G might be just a little too big for this car he got for his third birthday. But no, it's HIS car, thank you.

The Food Groups.

This dish is one of the few Tupperware things I bought new years ago. This dish was new when Elf was a baby. I can't imagine ever relegating it to "storage;" it's just that useful and handy. Sure, it separates baby food, but even I could see myself eating from it on occasion. Since I'm a fatty, it would help with portion control, too. Can you see that all the important food groups are represented in this meal for Woodjie? (Guess what we just got finished studying in science?) Woodjie's food is on a towel because I took several pictures for a laminated book for him, and it needed a white background.

Studying Indian Civilization.

Or Native American, or Amerind, or some other entirely different name, depending on your textbook. I think it's rather like studying "White Civilization." The little I read about this matter indicates to me that just as I have little in common with the Finnish, it isn't really fair to do a unit JUST on "Indians" as a general one-month topic and leave it at that. And yet, that's just what I'm doing during this year's studies. Still, it's a month "off" our curriculum, in addition to some work we're doing on Lewis and Clark. It seems that most curriculum I've seen kinda skips over Indians entirely, or confines them to a short two-week period in November. I think it's more important than that. I also think that it's easy to demonize the white settlers as greedy when in reality, history is never so simple. We're reading about farming people and hunting people, and the fact that people living by the oceans will have a different diet than people living on the plains. And we did the obligatory noodle necklace for art. We got a very different view of the Indian peoples through our reading of the Little House series last year. It wasn't too flattering. Any ideas for short studies or games on the internet would be helpful this month.

D Wins, Finally!!

Literally, we could play the Parcheesi game for years and D would always lose every time, just by a little bit. When he won yesterday, he insisted on having this photograph taken for my blog so that all my readers will see real, substantiated photographic evidence that he won. (once, anyway...) Do you see how close the game was?

Jesse James

Elf's artwork has been featured on Casdok's Faces of Autism blog.