Overheard

Zachary recently finished his Webelos badge for cub scouts. Jillian asked whether he wanted to complete his Arrow of Light and offered to help if he decided to do it. He said he would try. Jillian paraphrased Yoda's adage "do, or do not, there is no try." Since then, he committed to do it and let us know he was working on it. This morning, this happened:

Zachary: I can't play now, I'm going to do some work on my Arrow of Light.

Chayce: So now you have to do you Arrow of Light?

Zachary: No, I chose to do it.

It is great to see him choosing and taking responsibility for his commitments. 

Threshing flax

The mixer cookie whisks work for flax too!

Not recommended: picking individual flax seed pods. But, I didn't want to wait until the whole plant was dry, and the wet summer kept reviving the flax.

A few minutes in the blender left this.

Blowing it out with the saxophone lungs yielded this.

Small scale wheat threshing

It occurred to me today that our cookie wisks might do a good job of threshing a small batch of wheat, and we grew a small patch of wheat behind our spruce tree. The children broke the heads of, and it worked quite well. Now for a good way to blow off the chaff. I employed my atrophied saxophone lungs for this batch, but am lightheaded now. The children are out now gathering a second batch of wheat that grows wild behind our house and will experiment with various methods of chaff removal.

Like daddy

This morning Zachary made capes out of felt blankets for all the short wizards in the house. Once that died down, I caught Quinton modifying his cape to hold a stuffed bunny, just like daddy was wearing Lillyth in the wrap.

Going to Grandma's house

Yesterday, Zachary, Chayce, and Payge went to my parent's house. I had to do the dishes and pick the berries.

Quinton was sad that he didn't get to go, but he found a tractor and implement catalog in my dad's car and latched onto it. My dad let him have it, and Quinton has been one handed ever since.