How to Put on a Party Hat

TA DA!

Remember Remember the Fifth of November

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
the Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent to blow up King and Parliament.

Three score barrels were laid below to prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s mercy he was catch’d with a dark lantern and lighted match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

We had a blast celebrating Guy Fawkes Day today.  Tad thought it was a bit off-color for an Eastern Orthodox family to celebrate a basically Protestant Reformist holiday but what the hey - all in the name of History so why not.  Each of the kids created an effigy of Guy - mostly out of paper and markers but some got a bit more creative. Miriam, in fact, made a fox - not quiiiite understanding how to pronounce Guy's surname. 

I stuffed my pockets full of candy and pennies so they could bring me their Guy and beg "a penny for a Guy?"  Who needs Halloween when you can celebrate a tradition like that? After a while they got it into their heads to beg from one another as well.  By the end of  the day Betsy was carrying around two mini lunchboxes full of treats - one for the girls and one for the boys - and Miriam had handed out all the chocolate Jo-Jo cookies she'd gotten for her birthday.  As soon as Tad came home I stocked his pockets too.

Adora and Miah baked us a parkin cake and I finally bit the bullet and made Feingold approved caramel apples after fruitlessly scouring candy aisles in 4 different stores for caramels without corn syrup or artificial flavors.  I thought the caramel was fabulous - and stuck to the apples better than other recipes I've tried which just slipped off.  The kids complained about the stickiness and said they tasted too much of honey.  Ah well, it was a lot of work so if they don't ask for them again I guess I won't be too disappointed.  At any rate, I've tacked the recipe onto the end of the post for anyone who wants to try them.  I tripled it for our crew:

The actual celebration began after supper.  We started out by heading out to the driveway with some sparklers to simulate fireworks.  Then we headed inside where the kids started a fire in the fireplace - not quite the bonfire with which the Brits celebrated the day I'm sure.  Then Ben stood up and told the story of Guy Fawkes and his attempt to blow up parliament, three of the kids recited a famous poem about the day and then they all chucked their mini-Guys into the fire while chowing down on caramel apples, parkin and apple cider. After all that excitement the party moved upstairs where there was raucous dancing 'til bedtime.

Caramel Apple Recipe

Please be careful when making caramel apples, you will be working with dangerously hot, sticky, ingredients - I always put on an apron and make sure I have a closed-toed pair of shoes on when making candy. Be extra, extra careful if you have kids around. On the ingredient front, I typically go for a mild clover honey when making caramels.

6 - 8 small apples, unwaxed, cold
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 cup honey
Special equipment: candy thermometer, and lollipop sticks

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Push a lollipop or popsicle stick deep into each apple - in through the stem.
Fill a large bowl 1/2 full with ice water and set aside.
In a medium, thick-bottomed saucepan heat the cream and salt until tiny bubbles start forming where the milk touches the pan - just before a simmer. Stir in the honey. Bring the mixture to a boil. Now reduce the heat to an active simmer and cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, for about 15-20 minutes minutes or until the mixture reaches about 255-260F degrees. To stop the caramel from cooking, very, very carefully set the bottom of the saucepan in the bowl of cold water you prepared earlier - taking special care not to get any of the water in the caramel mixture. Stir until caramel begins to thicken up - you want the caramel to be thin enough that it will easily coat your apples, but not so thin that it will run right off. If the caramel thickens too much simply put the pot back over the burner for 10 seconds or so to heat it up a bit.
I tilt my sauce pan so all the caramel forms a pool on one side, and use my other hand to dunk and twirl each apple until it is thoroughly coated with caramel. Place each apple on the parchment lined baking sheets and allow the caramel to cool and set.
Makes 6 - 8 caramel apples.

101 Cookbooks http://www.101cookbooks.com/

Parade of Effigies: 

 This was Andrea's second attempt which she chose not to cut out since her first Mr. Fawkes lost his legs after suffering from severe torsal anemia.

A bit embarrassed by the whole fox incident, Miriam recreated Guy as a wee little human her second time around.

I love the black eye on Ruth's Guy.

Betsy was kind enough to outfit Nate and Miah with their Guys so they could beg for candy and pennies along with the rest of them.

JT doesn't display his artwork to the public so he opted to offer up this pose sans Guy.

Shhh...don't tell anyone but I think John Michael's might be my favorite.  He was the first to create his with match and lantern in hand.

Always the dramatic one, Ben's Guy comes complete with the dramatic pose and cardboard reinforcement for re-enactment stability.

I'm not sure what's going on with David's Guy here but it scored him lots of candy.

Philip cleverly disguised his gunpowder kegs as piles of poo...very creative!

And, last but not least the Betsy pose.  It just doesn't get much cuter than that...

Time to get Funny

As if I don't have enough to do, I've launched another blog - yes, for those of you counting, this makes three.  I've long been on the prowl for good, clean fun.  Rated G comedians are tough to find and when I find one I wanna hold on for dear life.  Anything that makes me belly laugh in the midst of my crazy days is worth its weight in internet gold.  So I've decided when I do find something that makes me laugh, I'll just throw it onto my new blog where good clean fun is one stop shopping.  I've added the Good Clean Snort to my blog list to the left so you can visit anytime.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.  Look around, watch some videos, read some jokes and have a good laugh on me.

The Turning of the Tide

Miriam celebrated her 14th birthday today. We are, as a household, rapidly moving toward teenagerdom. 2010 will be our big year with 4 of them turning 13 between January and November. There's definitely a shifting of things, a multi-layered dynamic, a maturing and growing happening here. I must say that I find it an interesting place to be - alternating between nursing, potty training, teaching phonics, travel soccer games and dropping kids off at "work". Conversations now range from uni-syllabic utterances to potty humor to the causes and idiosyncrasies of the 30 Years War - sometimes within moments. I am caught in a time warp where I can experience a myriad of ages and periods of development minute by minute. I think it's making me a better mom - certainly one with a lot more perspective on things. At any rate, this post is about Miriam - and wishing her a happy birthday. My little Girly is looking so young lady-ish and is sporting the attitude to match. Here's to the 9 years we've shared with her so far and many, many more to come! Happy Happy Birthday Girly!!

Rest in Peace, Pooka

Pooka slowly slipped away in the garage this afternoon while life went on in the house. She's been ailing for many months now - having daily accidents in the house, vomiting up any people food she was able to get ahold of and, most recently, requiring her dog food be fed to her by hand by Tad each evening. It was time.

We figure she was about 15 years old, maybe older. We adopted her right after we moved to Eldersburg a couple of years after we were married. She had previously been adopted by a family who had adopted sisters from Guatemala. One of the girls was acting out her adoption angst on the dog and thus she needed a new home. We should have seen the writing on the wall...that was to be the first of our adoptions. Actually, Alex had come to us a few years prior having been abandoned along with his siblings on a farm property close to Bucknell. Send us your abandoned, your abused, your cute and your cuddly.

When she came to us her name was Becky - which she shared with Tad's sister. Unable to call his dog by his sister's nomenclature, he dubbed her Pooka - a nickname she then shared with her "Aunt Becky". She was always a high maintenance animal. Her energy level and attention span dubbed her our ADHD dog. While Alex was content to roam the yard within the confines of our electric fence, Pooka learned to race at it with all her speed and grit her teeth while jumping through the electric charge. While Alex spent his days laying in "his" spot at the top of the stairs, Pooka roamed the house looking for trouble. Even up until a few days ago she managed to reach a plate full of food sitting on the 4 foot tall counter standing on her supposedly crippled, arthritic hips. The day Alex died, Pooka layed down in "his" spot at the top of the stairs and declared herself Queen of Everything. She ate every companion we brought home to try to fill Alex's empty spot in the family.

As soon as the first baby got to be about 6 months old Pooka learned that she now had a new best friend. From that point on, she could generally be found sitting next to the high chair waiting for the inevitable scraps to fall. As one baby turned into another, she grew bolder and decided that high chairs were intentionally designed to have the tray at her nose level - a fact she then turned to her frequent advantage, so much so that the question always begged to be asked whether the baby had eaten, not if the baby had been fed.

She didn't just eat baby food and rival dogs, though. Over the years she ate one garage door and then was working her way through its steel replacement. She ate two separate crates - one plastic, one metal. She devoured carpeting, at least two bedroom doors and a bathroom door. She once ate a remote control for the television. We tried channel surfing by squeezing her sides to no avail. All of which makes her recent inability to even pick at her own dog food a sad irony.

When our house caught on fire, she was tied to a rope in the back yard and had managed to tangle her rope around the base of the trampoline. At the point of the very loud thunder clap she was scared and stuck. A neighbor came and cut her off of the rope but she was never the same after that. She grew timid, terrified of all loud noises and even more dog aggressive. She slowed down, stayed close to us and stopped trying to run so fast and furiously. She was almost...well, calm.

And so she spent the past few years living a near normal existence. We long ago grieved the loss of Pook's real personality. Now we grieve the loss of what was left of her spunk and fire. Rest in peace, Pooka. You lived fast and furiously and ate well.

Friday Photos

Here's a few comparison photos this week to show what a difference a couple of years can make!

THEN:

NOW:THEN:

NOW: THEN:


NOW:THEN (the HAIR!):

NOW:

Friday Photo

Adora and Nehemiah have been with us for three years now! Here's Adora with the twins when they were just wee little tykes.

I'm working my way back to you, Babe...

So sorry for the long hiatus on meaningful blog posts. I owe a particular apology to Grammy in Ohio who counts on my ramblings in order to keep up with the long distance grandparenting thing. So, Grammy, I very am sorry. (Now if we could just get Grammy to get with Facebook she might not feel so out of the loop....). I have finally managed to (almost) recover from childbirth, get the baby to sleep 5-6 hours at a time at night, switched over all the Summer clothes to Winter clothes (felt so good to slide those bins back into the attic today!) and finished up our Jesse tree project - 104 ornaments went in the mail yesterday! Now it's back to blogging and homeschooling I go! In the meantime, here's a few photos of the kids to tide you over...

DOD

Hey Dad, is space made up of gravity?

Um, yes David but that's a rather advanced Physics concept.

Yeah, I thought so.

Freecycle Funny

Posted on Freecycle today:

OFFER: One Wheeled Death Machine

Sat Sep 19, 2009 1:43 pm (PDT)

Have you not severely injured yourself this summer or want to put your health insurance to the test? Then I got a unicycle for you. A unicycle mysteriously appeared in my garage. I questioned the kids, I questioned the wife, and I questioned the dog! Everyone denied any knowledge so I texted my oldest son and he said it was....... mom's. Then she remembered that a long long long long long time ago she did have one. Her dad dropped it off because he felt it was better to clutter up our garage than his basement. This is absolutely a true story.

I don't need another unicycle, believe or not I have two of my own.

So if you want to try to kill yourself or you have a child who needs a broken arm, then let me know!

DISCLAIMER: What can I say, if you don't know how to ride one, you are going to end up bruised and bleeding, but once you get the hang of it, they are a blast to ride. Not responsible for damage to one's body from attempting to ride said item or from tripping over it in the hallway. Item comes as is complete with dirt and cobwebs.

Prefer pick-up today!

Friday Photo

In preparation for Mom and Dad's 50th Anniversary party (yet to be blogged...I got a back log!) our family prepared a singing act modeled after a singing act Mom, Dad, Heidi, Beth and I had done as kids. We called ourselves Sarge and the Goldbricks as Dad had earned the name Sarge from all of his confirmation students through the years. For the original act, we all donned Dad's army fatigues and sang a few favorite tunes for the church's rendition of the old Gong Show (remember that?!). So, in honor of the big 50th, Tad and I dressed all of our children in fatigues and sang the same songs. Our original vision had JM and David sharing the same pair of pants since we were shy a few pairs. That idea fell as flat as they did every time they tried to stand up and sing but we did manage to snap this photo before we scrapped the whole deal.

Tali's Fall Jammies Line-Up

There are some small problems in coming from a large family - especially if one is a young lady and one's older sister's baby clothes were all lost in a house fire. To demonstrate this particular problem, I present to you Tali's Fall jammies line up. Let's see, we have...
Doggies... Dinosaurs... Football.... and...pirates...

where are the pirate jammies?

Oh...she's wearing them! Arrrrrrr!!

Friday Photo

This was taken in our exile year after the fire. We no longer had living room furniture so we were using a couple of mattresses for a sofa for the last few months we lived there. I just *love* this photo - it's all about being a large family. In case you can't identify the little ones, that's David with JT and JM with Ben in the middle.

Sneak Preview

Since my arrival upon Facebook I'm afraid I haven't been keeping my few faithful blog supporters up to date on life in the Crazy House. I plan very soon to blog about the birth of Natalie Faith who celebrated her 10th day of life outside the womb today by shedding her umbilical cord stub. She was born on Monday, August 31st at precisely 10:00 am. She weighed in at 8 lb, 11 oz and 19 1/2 inches long. She was born au natural without any complications and is absolutely beautiful. She will go by her middle name, Faith, as Natalie is just a little too close to Nathan and Tali to keep this mom of many from getting the names all mixed up. The full story to come but for now enjoy a few pictures!