Staples, Colored Fire, Alarming Gnomes

I do not much wish to start off every blog post with a catalog of the injuries sustained since the last entry, but such is our time of life, apparently. Clementine had made this motley collection of dressed-up animals on the stairs. "Don't leave toys on the stairs," I said. "Someone might trip and fall," I said. Well…

…someone did. I heard the "thonk" of her head hitting the floor and knew it wasn't going to be good. Then I saw the blood all down the back of her dress and had to steel myself, as mothers do, for something quite bad indeed. It actually wasn't too bad, though. Clementine didn't even cry that much, but when I called the nurse just to see what she thought (the cut did keep bleeding for quite some time), she said, "Oh, better just bring her in." (Easy for her to say, not having to pay the $300 or whatever it always turns out to be…) But of course I didn't want to take risks with a head injury. So I took her in. The doctor, a practical and matter-of-fact man who knows us well, having treated our family since Malachi was a baby!, didn't make a fuss, but he said he thought a few staples wouldn't go amiss. They left some numbing gel on Clementine's head while she played cheerily with the finger puppets I keep in my purse for just such occasions. And then the doctor came in with what looked like just a regular staple gun and went ca-chunk, ca-chunk, ca-chunk, ca-chunk against her head, and that was that! All neat and taken care of!

Clementine was very interested in her staples and wanted me to take lots of pictures of them so she could see. They didn't bother her much. This was after we got home and gave her a bath to get all the blood off.

Once her hair was dry you could barely see them! They stayed in for about a week, and then we went back in and Dr. Duffy cut them out. Clementine didn't make a peep. All's well that ends well! Do you suppose she learned her lesson about toys on the stairs?

Some other happenings that are not injuries:

Bigs and then Littles, sleeping in the tent

We were studying Fireworks for Summer School, and one night we got out a bunch of different chemicals to make colored fire. (Sam did the honors since I'm scared to do things like that on my own.) It was really cool!

Malachi in his new suit

Goldie in a marigold crown

What it looks like the day I bring the library books home

More summer school, this time learning about building demolition (still part of the fireworks unit, but we were talking about other uses of explosives). I did our summer school units for mostly the younger kids, and they were so enthusiastic about everything, it was really fun. We studied Fireworks and also Natural Disasters, two surefire hits for this age. :)

Gus and Clementine made fireworks pictures with toilet paper tubes and paint…

…and Sam taught the older kids about color temperature and how to draw things that look hot. I loved the pictures they made!

Junie and Goldie and their friend Cora going to visit Daisy at work at Nielsen's Frozen Custard

Playground fun

Trying to reach the monkey bars (and not quite succeeding…luckily no staples necessary this time; she landed like a cat)

"Darth Gnomie," drawn for Clementine at church by Sam

Just a typical kitchen scene with little people hanging around while I cook…I love it.

A tic-tac-toe game Gus made with sticks and was very proud of

Clementine's latest iterations of gnomes have started to have eyes and mouths. The trouble is, you can't really tell which part is nose and which is smile and which is beard.

I had to ask her to clarify all the different parts, whereupon Sam made this disturbing realization of her vision:

And a pretty sky to cleanse your palate. Yay for summer!

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Edmonton with Daisy

Salt Lake City got a direct flight to Edmonton, and do you know what that means?? It means for under $200, I can go visit my friend Rachael without driving for twenty hours! It turned out that in the first week of July, Rachael's husband was going to be teaching at FSY in Calgary (he is an institute teacher). And she had one son attending the same FSY, and one son being a counselor at the same FSY. So she was going to be practically all alone at home! Well, what other conclusion could we come to? I asked Sam if he could live without me for a few days (he said he did not like to, but he would anyway, bless him) and bought a plane ticket! After much deliberation I decided to take Daisy with me, as Rachael and I wanted to do a lot of writing [we are working on another book together, which we may never finish because it's already taken us YEARS, but we can always hope] and Daisy is a very helpful editor!

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Longest Day Party

 

I can't keep up! Here this was the first day of summer and now it's practically the last! It's not exactly that I never have a free moment. It's just that when I have a free moment…I fall asleep. I'll sit down next to Clementine when she has her nap, thinking, "Ah, I have two hours of quiet and now I can get something done…" and then (IF no one needs a ride anywhere, and IF no one needs help with something, and IF no one needs to ask me 400 questions [once I set a timer for 20 minutes so I could take a short nap. And within that 20 minutes, before that timer rang, four separate kids had come in to ask me a question! Four!!!])…I end up feeling so sleepy that even if I don't lie down, I can't think straight enough to do anything useful!

Well. At any rate, these things do want recording. We like reading about them and looking at the pictures later so much! So, here was our Longest Day Party. We had cucumber sandwiches (surprisingly good, those, boring as they sound) and little upside-down puff pastry tarts which I had seen a video for somewhere and was intrigued with. You just put a little olive oil or balsamic vinegar on a sheet pan, then a fruit or vegetable and maybe some cheese or herbs, and then lay a puff pastry square on top! The toppings bake and get crispy on the pan and the pastry puffs up to assimilate them. They are quite good! We made peach-honey-basil, salami and tomato, and shallot-cheese-thyme.

The entertainment at these little parties of ours consists of…putting up the hammocks, getting in and out of the hammocks, and taking the hammocks down. Oh, we also played frisbee a little, and horseshoes. Pretty exciting!

The girls amused themselves (and others) by posing like high-fashion models. (Or at least what we think high-fashion models pose like, which is incorrect, for all I know. Sorry if we offend any high-fashion-model readers of this blog.)

Some snuggling

Some silliness (what long legs you have, Gus!)

Malachi sighting!

More leg-silliness

More models

It was weird on this day, because we'd had SUCH a hot week previous, we weren't sure if it would even be fun to do an outdoor picnic, but then a cold front blew in and it was so mild and pleasant. In fact, as the sun got lower in the sky and the wind started getting stronger, it got downright chilly! We ended up going home before it was completely dark because we were just too cold! That's pretty rare for June 21st.

All the little moths in their cocoons.

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