life of seven

A million pictures

This sort of should have been two posts- I know there are a million pictures up. It's hard to pick which ones, so I sort of just put all of them up. Also, you may have noticed the finished Spring Fever scarf. You know, the one I took a dozen of pictures of Cate wearing. I'm having to fight my girls over this one. I will have to knit two more, I believe, before there will be peace in the house. Everyone adores this. And fortunately it was a thoroughly enjoying knit, so making another sounds like lots of fun.

The beach this evening was magical. My husband kept saying, "This is the perfect evening. This is the best time ever." Sun setting, campfire, kids running around hunting for snails, digging, climbing tree branches, exploring, standing in the waves- it was wonderful. Already the evening air was chilly and we needed sweaters and jackets, but it only made the campfire more enjoyable. I feel like my pictures are telling the story here, so I'll just leave them to do their work.

All the knits....

Here are completed, modeled pics of Baby Fleas. Clementine has actually gotten a fair amount of use out of it already, thanks to some glorious blustery rainy days. I know I should be worried that it's only August and already sweaters have been necessary many of the days that we've been outside, but hearing that I'm missing out on 93 degree weather back home just makes me revel in this drizzle, my very favorite type of weather.

Also, I am 99% finished with that long cozy shawl/scarf/wrap thing you see there. It has been the most amazing travel project. Knit for a while, only stockinette, then change to a new color and knit some more. Keep going until it's as long as forever, rotating through colors, and when you get toward the end, put it on your lap for the coziest blanket. The nice thing about this is it's knit with fingering weight yarn, at a worsted 18st/4in gauge, which gives it the perfect amount of drape, and allows it to be huge while not being too heavy.

The great thing about being on the tail end of a knit is dreaming about what comes next. Granted, I cheat way more than I should and start new projects while working on old ones. You know what I mean...but I love when I feel like I've "earned" the right to cast on something new. Next is definitely going to be a hat. Or two. Or three. Based on our August weather, I know we are going to very soon need them.

And, for those of you wondering what we ended up eating for dinner last night...I caved and we got pizza. Haha, and in case you were wondering, those are snails crawling in and out of Jude's glass. Yes, actual snails. My kids are enamored with them, finding them crawling on bushes, in the grass, on trees...The snails are adorable in a gross sort of way.

Food Shopping in Denmark

The last few days have been a whirlwind of back to school organization and delegation. Oh, my. I've hardly been able to sit for a moment between 8 in the morning until around 6 in the evening. The unfair part about being a homeschooling mom is that you are still obligated to cook meals for everyone to eat. If our homeschool included a school cafeteria, with a chef and a clean up crew, I think my day would go much easier. As it is, we've sort of been just grabbing a piece of toast, or a couple of fried eggs, or something in that vein to eat during the day. Then sometime during the day, I sort of try to cook dinner. For one thing, it's hard to find the time to cook. In the middle of giving Evie a spelling test, I'll suddenly remember and think, "Seriously? We need to eat dinner again, tonight?"

To add to the difficulty, I have very interesting ingredients to cook with. Danish grocery stores are quite different from American ones. They are much smaller, and yet despite their small size the selection of items they carry is a little amazing, because not only can I buy food there, I can also pick up a swim suit, towels, slippers, sandals, candles, and yarn. Yes, yarn. The little grocery store by us has a yarn aisle. People after my own heart.

I tell people that I love European food, and I mean that- fresh ingredients, lack of artificial flavoring and preservatives, a bakery on every corner with the best tasting baked goods ever, amazing cheese, smoked salmon...I love all those things. But I sort of don't know what to cook my family for dinner. On the other hand, do you ever have that feeling when planning meals, and wonder, what do we ever eat? And the only answer that comes back is, "Well, I guess chicken." So far out here, I have made chicken, and spaghetti. And hamburgers. And now I'm stuck and I don't really know what else to make. Surely I need more than three meals before I go through the cycle again, and repeat? I know what else I make at home, and if you asked my kids, I make it about every other day: tacos. But I think I need to be much more familiar with Danish ingredients before I attempt tacos over here. At home, I make what my husband says is, "Swedish girl attempting Tex-mex tacos" and among the necessary ingredients are King Sooper's brand garden salsa, sour cream, corn tortillas,  cilantro, and grated cheddar (the cheese here labeled "cheddar" was what we would call back home, "American cheese slices"). I haven't spied any of those things here yet, so I will have to get creative before I attempt Mexican food. With tacos out of my meal rotation, I'm down to, what did I say? 3 meals. If it were left solely up to me, I'd just eat a slice of the best bread on the planet, spread with amazing butter, for dinner every night. And for a side, a chocolate croissant. Dessert would be an amazing strawberry tart. Okay, I guess that's a little extreme, even for me...

 These photos are really unrelated to what I just wrote about. I guess I went off on a tangent. The pictures were taken over the weekend, mostly. We are very close to the North Sea, which you can see in the beach pictures, and we also managed to visit Copenhagen on Sunday. The last photo is a finished Japan Sleeves. Oh, how I love it. I highly recommend the pattern.

Incremental Development

I have a sweet, cuddly, lovable little five year old who started his very first day of kindergarten today. The day snuck up on me, like everything does, when before my very eyes, my children grow and change and hit milestones long before I realize they are ready.

Jude was an eager little pupil, somewhat curious about what the day would hold, slightly humored at the excitement of those around him when they asked him if he was excited about his first day of school. "Should I be?" his eyes seemed to ask with mild amusement.

Let me just say here that I packed twice the schoolbooks for Jude than what I packed for the older kids. Kindergarten curriculum never seems to suffer from quantity; over the years I have realized it's the quality that often seems to be lacking. This year I decided to go with Veritas Press Phonics Museum. So you know, we don't follow classical education, which Veritas is known for, however, upon having tried many different kindergarten phonics programs, I was curious to try Veritas. I thought the songs, book suggestions, and and workbook looked like something Jude would enjoy.

The flash cards are beautiful: each letter of the alphabet is illustrated by a famous painting. A, for apple (duh), is some famous painting of an apple, that I am not classically educated enough to know the name of, nor the artist. I guess my five year old and I will learn about this together. Anyway, we read a book today about the alphabet, learned a fun alphabet song, practiced tracing lines and circles (I like this aspect of the workbook so far) and colored a suit of armor. Bad mommy; I forgot to make sure I had crayons on hand and the suit of armor had to be one color only: graphite, since the only coloring utensil we had on hand was a pencil. Jude and I looked at 26 famous paintings that all represented a letter of the alphabet. D-d-dancer is illustrated by a painting of a ballerina by Degas. So, at least on the teaching end, this is certainly more entertaining to go through than many other programs I have looked through, and tried. I have yet to see if it proves more efficient, and effective than the simple Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, a book I brought along as a back up, just in case. I can promise Veritas will be more interesting.

For math, Jude is beginning Saxon 1. You guys, I love Saxon math. I love it so much. It's magical. I know some people hate it. The thing with Saxon is that it doesn't pretend to be anything but a math book. It's not fancy. It's not innovative. But it teaches mathematical concepts, beginning with the very easiest ideas, and builds up from there, one small  idea at a time ("incremental development" is Saxon's byline), and, just as Isaiah 10:28 says, " for precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little," you can see that even the Bible endorses Saxon's teaching philosophy. You can't get a higher authority than that. And I'm only half joking when I say this. My kids go through love and hate phases with math. And who doesn't? Math is very hard work. And hard work, while extremely rewarding, is not necessarily always fun. There's really no getting around that. So, they sometimes suffer through math, sometimes flourish, and always test very well. Today Jude learned what a calendar was and wrote a 1 in his Meeting book to designate day one of school. We also counted to 30. We were supposed to discuss what mathematicians are and do. I elected to skip that conversation just then. I'm sure we can talk about it another day.

Jude and I looked at a map and learned a song about the capitals and countries of Scandinavia. I love the cd of geography songsI own. I'm determined for the kids and I to learn all of them this year. I can't remember what that curriculum is called, but just google "geography songs" and you'll find it. 

Finally, I showed Jude how to find all the twins and triplets (black notes) on the piano, and had him practicing playing one note four times in a row, then holding it down while counting to two. Jude will probably start piano lessons next summer or sometime around then, and I want to show him a few of musical concepts before he starts that.

That was Jude's first day of kindergarten. While all this was going on, the four older kids practiced piano, picked up where they had left off in their math lessons last June, did spelling tests, looked at maps, journaled, listened to poetry, and read. I managed to check in from time to time and make sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to. Also, I threw together spaghetti for dinner, kept Clementine relatively happy, and helped Truman "color" (with graphite). Our school year got off to an impressive start.

Of course I don't expect every day to go this smoothly. I know it won't; life is busy, complicated, and things so very often don't go as planned. That's okay. I'm going to keep Saxon's model in mind as I go forward in the school year, that of incremental development. Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little there a little. Oh right, that's not just Saxon; it's also in the Bible. Just remembering that every single day, putting in just a little bit of effort, not giving up, not quitting and steadily staying faithful to the task at hand is all that God is asking me to do.  

On Traveling to Denmark

 Jet lag. That's what I think of when I think of my first days of visiting another country, which would be two other times; three, counting this trip. Nothing quite so exhausting as losing a day, and a night's worth of sleep. We were talking quite incoherently up until a few hours ago, but everyone's feeling more rested now. The traveling was crazy with our seven enormous suitcases, plus several carry-ons. A  very short layover in Germany was not enough time for me to poke my head in one of the airport bakeries and grab a snack, to my disappointment. I had finally reached the land of good bread, but that would have to wait till we got to Denmark. We made it unscathed, without losing so much as a sippy cup. For a moment I thought I left a sleeping Evie on a bench at a restaurant we were just leaving, but immediately discovered she was with our close friends, who are traveling with us.

What a beautiful country. We are about an hour north west-ish of Copenhagen, and can see the North Sea from our house in the country. Oh, my. It is breath-taking. We are in a large, very quaint farmhouse. By quaint, I mean thatched roof, courtyard, plum and apple trees, chickens in the barn, kittens in the yard, cows in the field, swings on the tree branches...you get the idea. It's enough for me to ask myself, "And why don't I live here?", until I remember the nine months of the year that it's freezing cold. In the meantime, we are enjoying however many days of the year that remain of warmth and sunshine. Gorgeous weather, gorgeous land, what a gorgeous aesthetic the Danes have.

I shed some tears upon leaving- I'm such homebody, and have so many close friends and family that I interact with nearly everyday of my life, and it was hard to say good bye. However, this visit is going to be such a treasure, full of new and wonderful memories as well. 

Finished Sweater

While we're en-route to Denmark, I thought I'd show you the blocked pictures of the darling little sweater I finished. This pattern, you guys. If you have thought of making it, don't hesitate another minute and grab those needles and that yarn and cast on. you won't regret it. The enjoyment, interest, mindlessness, color, and fun factor are all at a perfect ratio for this pattern. I sewed the steeks on the machine as I always do when using super wash wool. If it's non super wash, you can forgo the securing of any kind aspect and just snip away and then stitch down the steeks to the side. You can see that in the photo- those darling little white x's, securing the steek.

Such a lovely pattern. As I said, you'll enjoy this one.

Next post will be from Denmark! 

Ready

Scandinavian sweater finished: check (it's blocked and little heart buttons are sewn on. I'll put pictures up in a coming post).

Looks like we're good for traveling to the Arctic circle. I'm scurrying around throwing random things into open suitcases, trying to remember all the last minute items I'm going to need, but we're good to go. I'll keep posting on here while we're away. I'm looking forward to taking pictures in that beautiful hazy light that I recall from our last visit to Denmark. And here's hoping a hat or two will get knitted during that long plane ride. Considering I'll have a just turned one year old on my lap it's probably  wishful thinking, but you never know. In any case, I'll be prepared for that eventuality.

See you guys later!

Nothing better to do...

...Because, in the middle of packing for an international move, my kids have nothing better to do than catch a frog (usually we only find toads), and I have nothing better to do than take a picture and blog about it. Sigh. I'll be ready by the time we have to leave tomorrow, I will...but clearly I'm a little scattered right now.

Preparations and reading

Here's a tiny, stylized sample of what it looks like when you are planning a camping trip, a homeschool year, and an international move, all in the same week. In other words, it looks nothing like this. Everything is so crazy right now. Do you see the tab on my Denmark to do list, knitting? It's all about the priorities right now. Hee hee. Gotta make sure that part of trip is thought out and ready. Jude may not have his kindergarten along, and we may forget Grace's spelling, but I'm going to have the knitting organized down to a t. Because, we all need hats, right? This is Scandinavia we're talking about!

See that lovely stack of books on top? Some new reading material for my eager readers. There is something so enticing about a beautiful new stack of books that you've not explored before. The stack was taller yesterday as Grace, Cate, Evie and I have tapped into it early and read ahead just a bit. One book you don't see here is The Bread Winner, not to be mistaken with The Breadwinner ( book I haven't read and thus can't speak of its merits, though I've heard many good things about it). I read The Bread Winner when I was growing up, and I remember finishing it and thinking it may have made it on my list of favorite books. I loved it. It was so sweet and unexpected. Grace picked it up yesterday and finished it in an afternoon. I asked her if she loved it, just loved it, and she said maybe I'd talked it up too much. She enjoyed it a lot, but maybe lower your expectations while reading this one and you'll be in for a delightful surprise.

Another fun one Cate has been reading, and I've been speed reading, is The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches. Flavia is a delightful character who is a chemistry whiz. I really enjoy chemistry (basic, basic chemistry. I'm not that smart) so this is just a fun read for me. However I haven't finished it yet to give you my full stamp of approval yet. If it's good though, I'll be very pleased to discover a new, creative mystery series for kids.

Cate and I both finished The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. She loved it and I liked it. If you're particular about such things, like I am, you'll want to edit this first, as I did, before handing it to your older child.  Several curse words and some innuendo. 

Grace sped through This Present Darkness last week and loved it. She thought it was exciting and scary and interesting and really enjoyed this. Haven't read this since I was a teen, though Cate read it a couple years ago. Remember all the spiritual warfare talks everyone at church wanted to have as a result of reading these books? They definitely open opportunities for discussion, but its also just a very fun story. Again, I recommend being familiar with the content before giving this to your older child. 

Evie has begun Betsy, Tacy, and Tib, and Gideon has started a series that takes place in Denmark during World War II.

That's what we've been reading!

Birthday Party

Happy, happy, birthday, Little Miss Clementine Merriweather Davenport. And a happy, happy birthday to my aunt, Ruth, as well. The morning Clementine was born, Ben called up my Aunt Ruthie (that's what I've called her all my life, can't bear to call her anything else) and said, "Happy Birthday, Ruth!"

She said, surprised, "Why, how nice of you to remember!" (Ben and I aren't exactly known for keeping up with birthdays...I should change that...anyway:) 

Ben said, "I thought you might like to hear that you have a brand new baby niece to share a birthday with from now on."

Well, my aunt thought that was just wonderful. I could hear her delight through Ben's side of the conversation over the phone. My dad's side of the family is very sentimental like that, in a good way. They are the kind of people that stand in the driveway waving when you leave the house till long after the car is out of sight. They are the kind that call up and sing "happy birthday" to you on the phone, and if you don't answer, leave a message of them singing it instead. They are the thoughtful sort that thinks all birthdays are deserving of breakfast in bed, no matter what the age of the birthday person.

Of course I know this since I grew up in the same town as my aunt (and the rest of her family) and was always treated very special by them on my birthday, and so many other days. I thought it was great that Clementine shared a birthday with my aunt.

This year, for her first birthday, and Clementine's being the last one year birthday I would celebrate of my children, I wanted to make sure I did something special to commemorate it. And four days before her birthday, I came up with the perfect thing: a party for Clementine, with a surprise guest of honor, her aunt.

Naturally this fell on the weekend of Grace's big concert, with a camping trip to follow in a few days, and a humungous move to Denmark after that. It made perfect sense to throw everything together like that.

I'm impulsive, and I always have been. I could blame it on my husband's influence on me (he's the same way) but I'm afraid it wouldn't be fair to do that, since I have been this way my whole entire life. If an idea occurs to me I generally just try to do it without putting much thought into the logistics of it. 

By Sunday morning, the day the party was to take place, I had done basically nothing to prepare for the party, but between my parents, my sisters, and my kids, we had transformed the yard by noon and beautiful cakes, homemade pesto, zucchini from the garden, and fresh bread were all made. We brought our couch outside, a coffee table, and thanks to Grace's concert the night before, had several bouquets of flowers with which to decorate the tables in the yard.

It was such a lovely party.

I have to say, Clementine was the perfect one year old. She did exactly what one expects a one year old to do at their first birthday party, but seldom does. She was awake and cheerful through the entire thing. She visited with people and tolerated being held by, what were to her, strangers. No, she didn't blow out her candle, but she was wide eyed and happy to stare at it in a mesmerized fashion.

She immediately grabbed the raspberries off the plate and popped them in her mouth, despite all the faces staring at her and cameras aimed at her (I've known many a baby to burst into tears at this point or be completely camera shy and just sit there, uncertain what to do). She picked at the cake and smeared frosting over herself, and plopped most of it on the ground, to the delight and entertainment of her guests. Hardly a bite was actually eaten.

Once cleaned up, she sat on Grace's lap for the opening of the gifts, and seemed to know exactly how to open them, and that we all expected her to. She tore open the paper and inspected the box to see what was inside. She appropriately appreciated each gift by hugging the stuffed animals, admiring the new dress, glancing curiously at the new duplos, and adoring the new books. One stuffed animal, a giant stuffed fish, she did not appreciate. She seemed frightened by its large eyes and mouth and pushed it away, frustrated. This, however, brought a rousing laugh out of everyone, so she continued those antics for quite some time.

In summary, the party went just how I had hoped it would, and had worried it wouldn't the night before, when I realized all the preparation that needed to be done the next day.

Clementine, my darling, I've loved every day that you have been with us, from the moment I first knew I was expecting you, to your birth, to your very first birthday, and every day in between. You bring joy and delight to all those around you and we are so privileged to have you in our family. It's been a year now, that I've enjoyed looking into the lives of my seven children. At times it's crazy, hectic, loud, messy, and disorganized, but at other times it's peaceful, cozy, fun, fascinating, educational, and comforting. I wouldn't wish for my life to be any other way than what it is right now, mothering these seven darlings every single day.