Here is the egg update that I’m sure you’ve been waiting eagerly to read.

The first six dozen eggs that I boiled all disappeared before I could make a single deviled egg.  So today I decided to try again.  I boiled almost five dozen eggs, cooled them, peeled them, and chased numerous children away from them.  It took six dinner plates to hold all of the egg halves.  I made the filling and then put it in a zip-top bag to squeeze into the egg-white shells.  As I squeezed the filling, Laura followed me and sprinkled the paprika on top.

Once it was all done, I called everyone in for “supper”.  I hadn’t planned anything else for supper, so we all just ate as many deviled eggs as we could.  Yum, yum!  What a treat to eat our fill of deviled eggs!  Only Isaac declined to have any.  Apparently he thinks he won’t like them, and no one is trying to convince him otherwise.  We honestly don’t care if he ever eats a deviled egg.

So how many eggs are left in my fridge?  So far I’ve boiled around eleven dozen, so I guess that leaves me about ten dozen or so still.  

A few days ago I found some egg-decorating kits in Meijer priced at 90% off the list price.  So for a dollar or so I picked up five packages of egg decorator things.  Now Miguel asks me almost daily if we’re going to decorate eggs.

I guess I’ll boil some more eggs soon so we can color them.

A while back I saw an idea on another blog to reassemble a complete chicken skeleton, but I wasn’t sure how I would ever acquire the whole chicken necessary for that project. So I tucked the idea away in my head for another day.

Yesterday when I had 60 live chickens staring me in the eye, I knew I had found the source for my “whole dead chicken”.

As “Eric the Executioner” worked his way through the chickens, I put in my request for one chicken to be carefully killed without breaking any of its bones. For good measure, Eric left two whole chickens for me, just in case I should need a back-up bird.

I so carefully cleaned those two birds, making sure I didn’t crack any of their tiny bones, and brought them home complete with heads and feet.

This evening I decided to go ahead and start boiling one of the birds so we could remove the meat and start salvaging the bones. Just as I had the bird sitting in the empty pot with its feet sticking out, Laura and her friends from her youth group showed up at the front door. They were doing a “bigger and better” scavanger hunt, and they asked if I was willing to give them anything bigger and better than the beautiful little teapot they were holding.

I carried my pot and bird to the door and said, “Would you trade for a chicken?” I lifted the bird up by its feet, with the head dangling and odd white feathers sticking out from odd angles. No doubt every neighbor from blocks around heard the screams as the girls recoiled at the sight of Laura’s very strange mother. When they said they didn’t want to trade my chicken for their teapot, I paused and said, “Well, would you like to stay for dinner then?” More screams. Hmmmm. So I went and put the chicken down and started hunting for something else to trade. Finally I found a large round birdcage that doesn’t really work well for our birds, and we made our trade.

Once they were gone, I went back to trying to figure out how to get the whole bird into the pot. The bird simply wouldn’t bend, and the pot wasn’t big enough. So I covered the bird with water, put the lid on as far as it would go, and the bird simmered away with its feet sticking out of the pot.

A little later the two little girls who were visiting our house came upstairs for supper. They saw the feet sticking out of the pot and asked what it was. I turned to Katie and said, “It’s a chicken. Hey, when your mother cooks her chickens, does she leave their feet sticking out of the pot or does she tuck them in?” Katie stared back at me with and then said, “Her chickens don’t have feet. She buys them at the store and they don’t have feet on them.”

Thanks to me, multiple children in the Bloomington-Normal area will have very strange dreams tonight.

Today we killed and cleaned 60 chickens. (Photos here, taken by Michael, Blaise and Luke.)

I have never been part of such a big project; and now that I have, I’m not sure I’ll be part of another one. But it was such an interesting experience, I’m certainly not sorry I did it.

Our good friends, the Rosses, invited us to share the bounty of the chickens they had been given, and I eagerly jumped at the chance. I wish you could have seen the gleam in Isaac’s eyes when he heard he would get to use his knives for a real killing job.

It was a long hard job, but it was filled with fascinating tidbits. For instance, who knew that Isaac would fall in love with the chickens and spend much of his time carrying around a hen before finally being forced to hand it over to the executioner? And who would have thought that the children would so thoroughly enjoy chasing chicken-escapees all around the farm? (I suspect they turned the chickens loose on purpose a few times just to be able to chase them down again!) And believe it or not, I found it fascinating to see exactly how a chicken’s insides are tucked inside of itself. I think the most interesting part of that was seeing the eggs still inside the hens. Oh, and of course the children were amazed at how long a chicken can still move and cluck after it is already “dead”.

At one point, Grandpa Kauffman (who volunteered to help with our project) looked up from the chicken he was cleaning and said, “Welcome to the good ol’ days.” I realized he was quite right! Maybe the folks in the “old days” didn’t kill 60 chickens at once, but they were certainly no stranger to the hard work of preparing a chicken for the pot.

No doubt the “old days” also included friends working together on projects, children playing until the sun went down, and people who slept very well at night after being out in the fresh air all day.

There was one more lesson I learned today. I have decided that the chicken in the store that’s already killed and cleaned and ready for cooking is a wonderful value!

Today we bought 21 dozen eggs.

I heard they were only fifty cents a dozen at one of the local Jewel-Osco stores. I passed the news along to my mother, so she went over to investigate. She called me to ask how many I wanted. I thought 20 dozen sounded like a good number.

This afternoon when I went to pick up the eggs, somehow there was an extra dozen, so I took that one too.

Now, what can one do with that many eggs? Lots of things!

For starters, you can tell your son to figure out exactly how many eggs are contained in 21 dozen.

Next you can fill a large pot with as many eggs as fit. Turns out I can put six dozen eggs in my largest pot. It’s interesting how long it takes to bring that many eggs to a boil.

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll make deviled eggs, which I make far too rarely for my husband’s tastes. Maybe after he has more deviled eggs than he can eat, he’ll decide it’s a good thing I don’t make them more often.

One friend suggested I have the children run egg races.

It did occur to me that at this price, one could afford to “egg” something, but I quickly put that idea out of my head. Not a nice thing to do to people!

I think I will let the children decorate some of the hard-boiled eggs. They love to paint eggs, and I didn’t offer that option to them at Easter time, since eggs are so expensive these days.

I’ll update this as I discover more ways to use up lots of eggs.

So, what would you do with 252 eggs?

Lillian is just the perfect age to start using my absolutely favorite piece of baby equipment: the baby bouncer. There are many things I’m willing to do without or to substitute for, but the baby bouncer is one of those things I never hope to have to do without.

Lillian wasn’t quite sure what to do with it at first, but by the second time she was swinging from the doorway, she figured it out. She looks so little in the doorway, hopping up and down, with her bright eyes enjoying her wonderful view.

Tonight I put her in the bouncer since she hadn’t had a chance yet today. Both Michael and I had our noses in our computers, so we weren’t really paying direct attention to Lilly. Suddenly Michael pointed out to me that Lillian was fast asleep at her post. Every now and then she would jerk a little, which would make her bounce up and down again, and then she’d doze back off and be motionless again. What a funny little girl! She hadn’t even fussed or gotten grumpy. She just fell asleep.

Yesterday was my birthday, and a very nice birthday it turned out to be.

I had begged Michael to please not make a big deal about my birthday, and I insisted that I really meant it and wouldn’t be upset if he did exactly as I requested. I was grateful that he believed me and didn’t try to surprise me with anything.

The evening before my birthday my mother took me out for coffee and dessert, and we had a wonderful time visiting uninterrupted.

Then, yesterday morning, my sister called me and said she wanted to do something special for my birthday. Her idea was to bring cinnamon rolls from my absolute favorite bakery and we could sit and have coffee and rolls. That sounded wonderful, so I encouraged her to hurry on over! I brewed a fresh pot of coffee and waited eagerly for her to arrive.

Just when Joyce got to our house, my nephew, Ben, came upstairs and offered to watch the children for a while. So all the kids ran outside to play while Joyce and I visited. What a treat to sit in the living room with coffee and a huge cinnamon roll, visiting about every little thing that we wanted to catch up on, and having a sitter running interference with the kids. What luxury!

The rest of the day was fairly ordinary, which was fine with me. Several people called to say kind things and wish me a wonderful day, so that was fun.

The last thing I did to celebrate my birthday was to bake a double-batch of cookies to take to Michael’s softball practice at 7 pm. I was delighted to hold out a tub of cookies to unsuspecting folks and say, “I’d like to wish you a very happy birthday!” The confused person would smile and reach for a cookie, and then I’d explain, “It’s my birthday!” I received many garbled, crummy happy birthday wishes as folks were munching and smiling. It couldn’t have made me happier.

So, another birthday is done. Happy Birthday!

I have a new sister-in-law.

I couldn’t be more pleased!

Isn’t she beautiful?

She is a perfect fit for my brother and our family loves her very much.

Welcome to the family, Katie!

Judah is having an identity crisis.

Sometimes when we talk to him, he insists his name is “Judah”.

But much of the time, when I call him “Judah”, he frowns at me and says, “I’m Buzz Lightyear!”

For a short time he took a break from being Buzz and decided he was “Cody”. But soon Buzz was back to his normal self.

After being gone for two days, we met up with my parents and all the children at McDonalds. When I saw Judah, he came running toward me and I exclaimed, “Hi, Judah!” He stopped in his tracks and said quietly, “I’m Buzz Lightyear.”

At church on Sunday, I went to get Judah from his Sunday School class. I was handed his class paper, and at the top was written his name: Buzz Lightyear.

Today my sister, Joyce, brought over some hand-me-down clothes for Miguel and Judah, and she had something very special for Judah: a pair of Buzz Lightyear pajamas. Judah was so pleased that he undressed right then and there so he could try on his new outfit.

Even after Judah accidentally wet his pants later, he still wore the shirt around for the rest of the day. I have no doubt that these pajamas are going to be a wonderful addition to my little space ranger.

“To infinity, and beyond!”

This weekend has been a full, exciting time for our whole family. The children spent two days at my parents’ house while Michael and I went to the homeschool convention in Peoria.
As we were leaving the children on Friday, they were all waving eagerly and hollering “Good-bye!” while jumping up and down. My dad walked us to our car and said, “Why don’t your kids cry when you leave???” (I think he’s remembering when I was a child and would pout and mope when my parents went somewhere without me.) I didn’t have a quick answer for him, but Michael and I mused about it as we were driving. Most likely it’s because our children know they’re going to have a wonderful time at Grandpa and Grandma’s house.

It’s always fun to see the photos that my mother takes when the children are at her house. She took one of a rock sculpture Isaac made with their landscaping rocks, and she took some photos of the group when they went to McDonalds for supper. But my favorite photo is this one of Amelia. Here is my mother’s comment about the photo:

Amelia practiced this over & over…helping me get it just right.
I had my camera set on “fast action” so she was actually moving at a pretty good clip when this was taken.
Such a model!

Michael and I had a wonderful time at our conference, and really enjoyed being together and learning more ways to be better parents and teachers to our children.

Last night our family was reunited and we brought our noisy, excited children home. I declared an early bedtime for all, and the house was quiet by 8 pm.

This morning Michael is staying home to finish recovering from two days surrounded by way too many people, and I’ll go to church to help in Amelia’s Sunday School class. I’m guessing we’ll enjoy today as we relax and think about the wonderful weekend we had.

We have been working so hard on school for the past three weeks or so. While it does feel good to be accomplishing so much, it is a bit exhausting and I feel like some days I never stop moving.

Miguel has started the learning-to-read program, but that takes very little time in his school day, so the rest of the day he is left to occupy himself while I care for his younger siblens and listen to his older brothers and sisters read and help them with their Math.

This morning Miguel started working on a project on the white board. I was amazed at his ability to sit for a long period of time making little dots in his design. He kept changing colors of markers and made quite a decoration of dots before finally losing interest.

Our days are so filled with many little things, it would be impossible to record all of them. But I will share two little Lilly stories with you.

This afternoon Lilly was trying to be content while I was busy in the kitchen. She had been fed and she had spent some time in the walker, and now it was time for her to sit in Isaac’s lap. As much as she loves Isaac, she just could not be happy any longer sitting with him. So I finished up what I was doing and rescued her. I carried her off to check her diaper. As I was removing her clothing to get to her diaper, I discovered a significant clue to her uneasiness. A toy train car had been deposited down the front of her overalls and was now down where the poor girl tries to sit. No wonder she couldn’t sit happily! It also turned out that she had a dirty diaper, so I took care of that, tossed the train car to one side, snapped her britches up, and walked back to the living room with a fresh baby.

Just a short time ago the children were all enjoying a cookie for a snack, and I was suprrised to see Lilly had chocolate on her face. Now, how does a 4-month-old baby get chocolate on her face? It’s NOT because she was eating a cookie. While I don’t know exactly what happened, some fingers were pointed to Miguel who claimed, “It was an accident.” Hmmmm. I wiped off poor Lilly and declared there were to be no more accidents. Thanks to Miguel, there is yet another rule on the books, and it reads, “Do not feed the baby or smear food products on said baby.”