25 February 2019

Happy Birthday!

We celebrated 8’s birthday this weekend with a cake and playing with the cousins. Just a little party ad lots of play. We went swimming last weekend at the pool in Chadron and are trying to get up to Rapid for to go swimming up there. That seems like more than enough celebration for one little boy.
We may never actually make Rapid. There hasn’t been a lot of snow this winter just enough mixed in with lots of cold to make it hard to travel. But we’ll keep trying!

24 February 2019

The Archer

I always see pictures of beautiful women shooting bows off their horses. I see them and get very jealous. So when I saw a bow for sale the other day I made an impulse buy. It’s nothing fancy a cheap little youth archery set but I couldn’t resist the thought of teaching Rusty to let me shoot it off of him.

It was warm enough the next day to try it out. I lugged a couple of straw bales out and set the in front of a shed so we wouldn’t shoot any horses by accident. Then my new toy was stolen.

The Goblin Child was fascinated. She worked and worked until she had the basic idea down. As good as I do at least. Neither of us have figured out the aiming and that silly stuff yet πŸ˜‰ She spent quite a while practicing and was able to mostly hit the bales before she wandered off.

I even got to shoot it once or twice before other duties called.

13 February 2019

Winter Activities

There were hardly any children at the first Clover Buds meeting of the year. So we were able to sneak 8 in. He’s still a year or two too young. He stuck it out for a little while then left for Lala’s room and a computer to play on. Theo goal was to design a path to guide the little tooth brush head robots with vibrating motors to all the pants that needed pollinated. It was all about bees.

They has fun even if no plants got pollinated.

I have forced everyone kickingΒ  and screaming out the door as often as I am able. They have fun once they are out there. What could be more fun than trapping your sibling under the sled?

For Valentines day and the hundredth day of school The Goblin Child got a shirt to decorate with one hundred things. They both got shirts of course, how could I let one decorate but not the other? I only got pictures of her because he chose one hundred fingers, which meant twenty hand prints. It got messy.

 

11 February 2019

Kiwi Crates

They’ve been building up all summer. The children beg to work on them we tell them to wait until it’s not so nice outside. To wait until we aren’t so busy with other things.

Now is that time.

It’s cold and icky outside. They can only play the Tractor Game and Minecraft so much. In between they work on the Kiwi Crates. It’s a great family activity. For the rest of the family. My inability to read directions forces me to forgo this pleasure. So sad πŸ˜‰

 

10 February 2019

Girls Day Out

It seems like it has been cold forever but I know it was warm once. I know because we went out and played in it. heather brought Whitten and Brenna and Owen over and we climbed all over the hay bales and ran around out side.

Then to make a god day even better Tanna came over and she and Heather and I abandoned my poor long suffering husband with the children and went for a ride. The horses were crazed and zipping all over the place. We laughed and screamed trying to talk over the wind. Tanna found a hair ball, not from a cat but out of a cows stomach. Hard and round, like a rock but light as a feather. We inspected it carefully and showed it to the kids. They were distinctly unimpressed. Then sent it home with Tanna, its finder.

Then the cold weather moved back in and we returned to the indoors, hoping to ride again some day.

 

4 February 2019

Confidence Challenge, Scary Object Edition

It officially starts today!

A friend of mine approached me at the end of last year. She wanted to know if our other friend Ineke and I would be interested in putting on an online training course. It sounded fun to us so we all umped right in. It took a good while to plan and get everything down and working. Now, finally, it is going! Not only did it fill up, within two days!, but we also have a waiting list for the next one already.

We all do clicker training with our horses, and our dogs, and children, and husbands, and anything else we can get our hands on. Now we are working hard to teach more people about it. Jain is the tech guy, lady πŸ˜‰ she is one of the few people who’s work my very particular husband approves of! As well experienced in online training stuff. Ineke is the sweet hippy chick who is great with people as well as horses, I actually did a lot of writing for the course and am happy to be along for the ride.

If this goes well we are looking forward to doing more like it!

I am Noche, in case you were wondering who in the world those people wereΒ  πŸ˜‰Β  Who wants to use their real names online. I certainly don’t!

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25 January 2019

Toothless, 2

With only one tooth left in front after the two of them had been fighting for the middle spot the remaining one got to take over the center. She looked like a young adorable hillbilly. She wouldn’t let me take a picture and I didn’t try very hard to get one because there was no rush. I would have time. She looked so adorable.

When I Picked her up from the bus after school the next day she showed me how she could bend her tooth clear backwards. I appear to be overcoming my revulsion for wiggly teeth. Instead of gagging I noticed that was bending CLEAR backwards and there was very little holding it in. I told her just to pull it out. She said she couldn’t.

We sat on the couch that evening watching a bit of tv. Without a word she left. Disappearing for awhile. She returned tooth in hand and an even more gap toothed grin. She had done the deed.

This time the tooth fairy was very careful to remember to visit. It was probably easier to keep her wings de-iced since she was already in the neighborhood.

24 January 2019

Toothless, 1

Her front teeth have been lose since long before Christmas. Probably more like Thanksgiving. I begged her to get them out during the Christmas season so she could sing All I Want For Cwithmith Is My Two Fwont Tweeth. She refused. Christmas came and went and still the front teeth stayed.

The grown up teeth were working their way down quickly. The baby teeth were becoming sadly misshapen. they were both trying to share the middle spot, over lapping and starting to grow at odd angles. Still they refused to come out.

They wiggled and squiggled and didn’t seem to have anything holding them in, but still they stayed.

At school yesterday I stopped to say hi to her at lunch before picking up 8. She showed me how one tooth was sticking almost straight out forward. Then she tried to lick me. I covered her mouth with my hand. I pulled away and looked the other way. When I looked back she was staring at her hand held cupped in front of her face.

Looking closer, in the hand was a TOOTH! It had finally come out. Apparently when I “hit” her in the mouth. She was a celebrity. All the other kids wanted to see!! Her gum was bleeding slightly which added to the appeal.

I took the tooth from her and sent her on out to recess. That night she carefully tucked the tooth away in her special tooth pillow to wait for the tooth fairy.

The next morning she grabbed excitedly for the pillow…

To find the tooth still there! BAD tooth fairy!!

Her father thought quick and pointed out how cold it was. Maybe it was too cold for tooth fairies to fly? We ate breakfast and after she left the table he wrote a note from the tooth fairy explaining how her wings had froze up preventing her prompt arrival. We snuck them into her room then told her we heard a noise.

She came and looked and found that the tardy half frozen tooth fairy had finally arrived. The day was saved!

I didn’t hurry to get a picture because I thought I’d have time…

20 January 2019

Gaming

Cade has been bugging my poor beleaguered husband about Minecraft for quite awhile now. he is nothing if not a doting uncle and loving father so he put it on one of the computers. Then a couple of kids would squeeze in front of it and play together.

So he put it on another computer too. And made it s they could play in the same world, their little square computer people. But still more children wanted to play. So he got another computer set up.

Who knew that playing computer games was such a social event?

The kids and the cousins get together and play together, both in the same room and in the same computer world. Building things in a team effort, killing each other, supporting each other. Leaving their seats to g help the other one out when something is hard to figure out. Taking breaks form the very active screen time to go outside and climb on the bales.

I can really get behind this kind of screen time.