Vitamin D

Mommy says that 10 minutes of sunshine will give you all the vitamin D that you need in a day. If that's true, I definitely got my D vitamins for the next week. I was pulling weeds around the pool fence. Daddy had everyone outside helping get the pool ready for use: vacuuming, skimming leaves off the surface, fishing the dead frog off the bottom, sweeping, weeding, and putting the ladder in. Only thing was, he decided to do all this at 1 o'clock this bright and sunny afternoon, when it was 83 degrees in the shade.

Fortunately, after we finished, we got to go swimming for the first time this year. The water was a delightful 76 degrees and felt absolutely wonderful after working in the blazing sun. Daddy sat on the edge, dangling his feet, and almost refused to get in. He said it was too cold. I think he's getting wimpy in his old age. Finally I splashed him and he came in after me. I got dunked for my efforts.

Afterward, Daddy made us an early dinner on the grill, and now we're going to go visit Grandma Siebert. Got to go!

~Megan~

This & That

There's not a lot of big news around here, just bits and pieces...

~ It's been hot. Too hot. And humid. Blech.

~ I learned to French braid my hair this week. Not quite mastered it yet, but I'm working on it.

~ Joshua was the acolyte today in church. He had a very solemn and serious attitude as he walked down the aisle. (I thought he was adorable.)

~ We have strawberries in our garden- juicy, red strawberries.

~ We are now the owners of a new used car- a red Isuzu Trooper. Now Daddy can take that to work, so the rest of us can have the van. Whoopee!

~ Amanda, Nathan, and I haven't done much writing lately- maybe because it's too hot for coffee.

~ Stella has been hunting. She's caught almost a dozen chipmunks, two moles, and several mice. She brings them to her babies to play with and tear apart.

~ The winter pool cover is off, and now Ben and Hannah can't stop asking when we can go swimming.

~ The garden is thriving. We have harvested a mountain of spinach and lettuce.

Well, that's all the news I can think of at the moment, and Mommy is suggesting all sorts of random, boring details, and there's watermelon slices waiting for me, so I shall wrap this up for today. Happy Memorial Day!

~Megan~

Battle Plans

Writing today was more hands-on than usual. At this point in the story, there is supposed to be a battle. That meant we had to figure out some battle plans. So the three of us set up Nathan's Axis and Allies pieces on our map and moved them around like they always do in movies. The tanks were catapults, the bombers stood for dragons, a soldier represented 100 infantry, and so on.

We then proceeded to have a long and very heated discussion as to the best plan. (We tried to keep it mostly in character. It's much nicer to yell at each other in character than in reality.) Finally we mostly agreed on a strategy. Nathan says it's unrealistic, because it involves 100 men charging at 300 men and winning, but he doesn't have any better ideas, so we're going with it.

Just pretend you're a starving Indian...

Nathan and I were in charge of making supper tonight. (We make dinner every Thursday, and Amanda and Joshua cook on Friday.) Nathan very much wanted potato soup, so I agreed. The soup turned out alright. The biscuits, however, were a deep shade of brown when I removed them from the oven. The texture seemed fine, so we were hopeful that we hadn't overdone them too badly. A single bite, with its burned aftertaste, changed our minds. Most of us managed to choke ours down with a heap of jelly and a lot of drama. A scene from the movie The War, also involving burned biscuits, came to mind...

"Just pretend you're a starving Indian and this is the last bite of food between you and death. And you got into a fight over it with another starving Indian and it fell into the fire and got burned."

Nathan and I decided that we'd rather give our biscuits to the neighboring tribe and let them die from eating them. Then we can take all their food.

Characters and Coffee

Nathan, Amanda, and I have finally gotten back to writing The Adventures of Regan, Jack, and Rhilin. In the last two days, we wrote 1,320 words or almost 3 pages. Nathan has been typing for us. Today he finally learned how to spell 'horses'! He usually types it as hosres, or hroses, or hores. He's also learning to put two spaces between sentences, which is the way I like it.

We've become addicted to having coffee while we write. Well, to be accurate, Nathan has milk with a bit a coffee, sugar, and cocoa and Amanda and I have coffee with a bunch of milk, sugar, and cocoa. Mommy says we're addicted to the sugar, not the coffee. She's probably right. Either way, there's something special about grabbing a mug of coffee and your siblings and gathering around the computer to tell a story, hang out with your characters, and laugh together.

Multicultural Kittens

The kittens are growing up, exploring, and getting cuter all the time. They have been exploring the out-of-doors and are just starting to take an interest in pouncing and chasing moving things. They love people, especially running to them and climbing on their laps. Their wonderful mother Stella seems to have started their hunting education already, as she has brought them a dead chipmunk and a mole in the past two days.

~

Since all our kittens are completely black, we decided to give them names meaning black in different languages. We can tell them apart though, by the shade of their fur. As they get older, their faces, sizes, and attitudes will help too.

Name: Shachor (SHAH kor)

Gender: Male

Name Origin and Meaning: Hebrew for 'black'

Distinguishing Features: lighter, slightly grayish fur

Name: Shyam (shy AM)

Gender: Male

Name Origin and Meaning: Sanskrit for 'dark and beautiful'

Distinguishing Features: darker black fur

Name: Melaenis (meh LAY niss)

Gender: Female

Name Origin and Meaning: Greek for 'black one'

Distinguishing Features: deep black poofy fur

~Megan~

Potato Character Study

I've discovered a new area of character study- watching my family eat dinner. I compared the way each person ate their whole, boiled, red potatoes.

Mommy cut hers in half and then mashed them with her fork.

Nathan just started digging out of the top of the potato, but then changed his mind and chopped off thin slices on all sides to dip in his tartar sauce.

I, Megan, cut mine in half, then in half again, and then usually in half one more time, depending on the size of the potato.

Amanda also cut hers into quarters, but then she mashed it like Mommy.

Joshua started cutting his into slices at one end and worked his way down.

Now for what exactly this all means... I haven't quite figured that out yet. Nathan's is definitely indicative of his unique attitude, and mine might show my neater, organized nature, but what about the rest? What conclusions can you draw about the character of my family by their potato-eating style?