2nd installment of CA/Az Adventure!

Okay...here I am, still in Arizona, with another quiet moment. Not sure how long it will last as Nathan will arrive home any moment from the Rawhide Rodeo with my 3 Rodeo stars, who are hoping to enter the Sheep Riding Heat!

Where was I? Oh yes, last Tuesday, about to arrive in LA. Of course, I say I'll write the short version, but we all know, whenever I say that it never actually happens!

We had the expected times where babies cried and cried because they were so tired and just couldn't go to sleep and then after 2 hours of crying would finally drop off, and we'd hear the expected "I have to go to the bathroom!" or Nathan's "well, I guess we better stop for gas". We try to plan these things, but it never failed. The babies never slept for very long, but there were only a few really long stretches. We stopped at one cute little gas station just in Northern California where I took 3 kids in to the bathroom (which had an old fashioned bathtub with a giant barbie doll with weird hair in it-scary) and then Nathan came in with 2 more kids and the people started asking if we were Catholic. We don't actually get that much at home, so it took me a while to get what they were saying, then they all laughed, as they always do when we tell them we just don't have TV...it's getting a little predictable! One thing I have to say that's different is that nobody has asked us if we've seen that show...which I get from almost every stranger at home. Maybe it's because Jon & Kate aren't doing so well that people have finally stopped asking. I appreciate though, that no one here has asked me about the Duggers, because I must point out that 5 kids is NOT THE SAME THING AS 19!

Back to the road...we were all getting a bit weary from waking again before 4 and heading out, so by the time 7 pm came, we were all a little tired. The funniest memory was of Levi who suddenly couldn't stop talking. (I know what you're thinking!) We were driving over the Grapevine, with the finish in sight and I was having all those memories of all those family trips coming in over the Grapevine with Grandma and Grandpa's house in my mind, all ready for another set of adventures! Levi, on the other hand, was just having hilarious random thoughts. He just started talking "Why do they call it Fall? Does someone fall? Do you know how airplanes get up in the air? It's all about air pressure. The air pushes up under the wings and on top of them. Do you know that I just asked the Holy Spirit to come into my life? KAAAZING! WRRRRR...He's coming in right now!" He had a few other funny things, but after the Holy Spirit sound effects, I just couldn't remember the rest!

We arrived around 7:30, which is funny because it's just what time the GPS said we should arrive with no stops. I admit, there was only the one 45 min stop and all the rest were gas station or side-of-the-road stops. We pulled in to Grandma Trims and I just love that feeling, even though it isn't quite the same now that Grandpa & Grandma are no longer there. It's exciting for me that my kids get to do the same things we did-run up to the attic to make sure it's still the same, check out the banana tree to see how much it's grown since Levi chopped it to the ground 2 years ago (It was way over Nathan's head and looking healthier than ever), checking out the laundry shoot and trying to slide down it-like that's a new thing-every one of us grandkids has gotten stuck in the laundry shoot at one time or another!

My Uncle Bill & Auntie Barb were there to meet us, so we unloaded loads and loads, fed kids, put them to bed and Nathan went to Trader Joe's to buy 2-buck chuck...I mean groceries! We sure slept well that night, after 2 long days and very early mornings!

Wednesday-1st day in LA. Nathan ran all over town to buy sculpting stuff-1000 lbs of bronze and things we can get cheaper with no shipping costs. The kids relaxed and we played at Grandmas all day. That evening I took Caleb & Acacia with me and a small group of reletives to go see my cousin Colleen's final performance as she completes her Bachelors of Music (or BM!) She had to write all her own music and direct an orchestra to play her music. It was pretty amazing. Caleb & Acacia were great other than Acacia dropping a couple of smuggled in Skittles on the floor as we all heard them rattle all the way down the floor. We later met Jose, the gay friend, and learned that gay guys have some sort of gay-detecting GPS where they can tell how many other gay guys are in their direct viscinity. I won't comment on that one. Caleb & Acacia and I headed home and I turned down the opportunity to celebrate with Colleen at the Cha-Cha Lounge. It was great to see her though, and her very fun Argentine husband, Miguel.

Thursday-Aquarium Day. We met up with my cousin Kim, who is living in Virginia these days. She and her Dad and little Elianna Karis and another cousin, Ian, who is 11 and an instant hit with my kids, met us out at the Long Beach Aquarium. It was pretty amazing-although we'd done the outside last time on free shark night, and I must say, that's the best part anyway. After spending $80 and doing the tour, petting the sharks & sting rays, etc, the kid's favourite part was eating our picnic lunch outside and chasing the pigeons! We were pretty worn out by this time and we all asleep by 8:30.

Friday-Beach Day. We went out to Santa Monica Beach on Friday with ... a bunch of cousins! Actually, it was mostly Kim and Ian, but Kim's husband Nathan had just arrived, and Kim's sister, my cousin Andrea had also arrived in town. We had a fabulous time at the beach, as we always do! It was funny to see Eden act exactly like Levi did last time at her age. She went in the water for 3 seconds, fell down, cried and then parked herself in her towel and poured water from a bucket into little water things for the next 45 minutes, happy as a clam! Caleb, Acacia & Levi were thrilled with the waves and just wished we had thought to bring surf boards with us! Finally, I held Edens hand and ran ahead of the waves for a bit and she was sold. She did that very happily for a good chunk of time until she fell again and repeated the process. Charis was not thrilled with the cold water, but her cousin Elliana was just crazy about it! They couldn't keep her away-and she had a huge grin on her face and didn't care how cold it was! Elliana's only a couple of months over than Charis, so they'll be good friends, I'm sure. They're also just the same tiny size because Elliana is 1/2 Chinese and just a bit of a thing, but she's 3 months older than Charis. They're actually not all that interested in each other at this stage, but they're cute together.

Friday night my parents arrived with Bert, Tia & Jeff. With my cousin Glen also living at my grandparents, that made 15 people staying at the house-so lots of fun!

Saturday-the big day! Saturday was my Auntie Jean's 80th birthday, which was the reason for the occasion. People started arriving around 10 that morning...all kinds of people. I think there were a good 150 who showed up and they all stayed until 4 or so. At 4 the non-family left, leaving about 75 for an early Thanksgiving dinner of just the close family! These are the family parties I remembered. Tons of people, tons of food and tons of cousins and fun to be had. It was most fun for me to see my kids playing with all the cousins and friends just the same as I always did. Auntie Jean wanted a Hymn Sing in the backyard, so some other cousins were playing a guitar and cello or something-I don't think they actually formed a true group, but it worked. Too bad Colleen couldn't make it to orchestrate a real orchestra! It was wonderful to sing the old hymns together though-I was volunteered to join the "young people" to sing up front with the actual good singer and I got my kids to stand up there-oh well, everyone sang and it was a lot of fun. Did I mention the food was fabulous? It was supposed to be a little tea and they thought they should order pizza just in case there wasn't enough food-which is hilarious because there always ends up mounds and mounds! Orange scones, devonshire cream, fresh strawberry jam, Sees candies, little peanut butter-chocolate covered treats, mounds of those little sandwiches filled with smoked salmon locs, cucumber, cream cheese, etc...tarts, chocolate cake, huge fruit displays...it just went on and on! Eden ate an extraordinary amount of fruit. I'm not exactly sure how much. She just kept disappearing inside and very adorably asking any adult to pass her a stick of fruit until finally an Aunt noticed how often she was disappearing with it and let me know! Anyway, after the tea came the turkey/ham dinner and finally, after nearly 11 hours of party, we collapsed into bed, fed up and worn out, out of words and feeling like that was a party worth all those long miles of driving!

Our 5000 km driving Adventure

I thought I'd get a chance to write something on this blog before now, but you can only spend as much time in a day as you have available...so this is the first thing to go! I'll try to do a quick version of our whirlwind vacation!

We thought we'd leave on Tuesday morning, then I convinced Nathan we should get over the border the night before...then his work was mostly finished up, so I convinced him to leave Sunday night, so off we went! Our friends, Josh & Sundhya have been good enough to house-sit for us, so they're taking care of the place.

Left Sunday on the 1 pm ferry. Got through the border extremely easily considering last time we were in there for 2 hours while they checked out our story, our vehicle and everything else. This time they just had Nathan pay a $10 fee for business and we were on our way! Ate pizza, and got to my cousin Kathy's place in Mt Vernon, WA by 6:30 or so. We had a nice visit, went to bed and woke up at 3:30 because we thought the wind was going to lift the roof off the house. I don't think I've ever experienced wind like that before! We got up, packed the kids in the truck and were off before 4am! We drove all day until arriving at my Uncle Paul's in North Bend, Oregon around 3 or so. I was glad to get there that early so we could visit with my Grandfather who is now in a nursing home. When we arrived, he was in the hallway in his wheelchair and seemed happy to see us, even though I don't think he knew who we were. I had prepared myself and the kids for that as best I could, but it's still hard. I explained who we were, and he just kept saying it was so good of us to come, but never really gave us any indication that he really knew us. I had sent a slide show of our last trip to his place for the 6 weeks we spent there nearly 2 years ago, but I don't think he connected the details. Just said his mind wasn't working properly but he was sure glad we came.
The kids loved Uncle Paul & Mi Young's huge rec room and were thrilled to run around after being in the truck all day. Unfortunately we didn't get to the sand dunes-just saw them, because the babies were sleeping as we drove by and then we wanted to visit Grandpa and then get home to get settled in for dinner. We had a fabulous lamb dinner with Paul & Mi Young and were all asleep by 7:30!
On Tuesday, we woke up at 3:30 again and decided to set off to try to make it to LA by Tuesday night. It was raining like we couldn't believe! Crazy weather. I was really hoping we would get to LA than night because staying in a hotel with 5 kids is really not a lot of fun! Drove all day and finally stopped at a rest stop for a picnic lunch and a game of bocce and a lot of running and jumping and climbing in Southern California. By now, the weather was sunny & warm and beautiful...more later...the family has arrived back!

Attention Christmas Shoppers!

Here we are on a Beautiful September Sunday afternoon and I'm home with 2 babies sleeping and the other 4 family members out.

I have much to write about...and I will when I have time! Which is not now! Here are the highlights I may get to one day:
-We celebrated our 10 year anniversary
-The kids entered the Saanich Fair and won some awards
-Our 2009/2010 School year began-Caleb is in Grade 2 and Acacia is in Grade 1 and Levi is thankful that he doesn't actually have to join us if he doesn't want to!
-Nathan turned 40 and I bought him a tractor, which is very vintage and doesn't actually run yet but he's looking forward to snow for the first time in years
-Caleb entered his "Beaver Poem" in a contest and it was chosen to be published

...and Christmas is COMING

For me, the Mom of 5 kids, which I keep in 2 bedrooms, this brings many mixed emotions!

Here are some interesting statistics I've looked up because I don't want to finish organizing the storage room in order to clean out my children's bedrooms while they are out with Nathan for a few minutes.

The average number of square feet per person in America is 721 square feet. The average number per poor person in America is 439. The average number per Scott family member is 229.

I've had people send me emails lately about the average number of children people have per household in North America and how our society as we know it is in danger. It's a scary statistic, buta lesser known fact that is equally as scary (to me and other Moms) is that each child in North America has an average of 100 stuffies. Because I'm now teaching basic math, I've been able to figure out that: 5 kids x 100 stuffies= 500 stuffies. 2 small bedrooms, 5 active kids and a bizillion toys will make 1 crazy Momma!

So, people have been asking-here is my response for those who would like to know if there's anything the kids need or want for upcoming Birthdays and Christmas:

First of all, Thank you so much for loving my kids and including them in your Christmas preperations! They LOVE getting gifts from you and they look forward to Christmas and birthdays largely because of you. I know a lot of those gifts have been handmade and a lot of love and care have gone into them. Thank you for spending the time and love on those beautiful gifts. The kids really do enjoy them.

For the last couple of years, we've done something that works really well for us. Nathan and I have chosen an activity or project and requested that in lieu of gifts, if you would like to contribute, we would be grateful.

2 years ago, many of you contributed toward family outings on our California trip. We were really strapped for money that year and we would not have been able to go if it weren't for those contributions. The kids LOVED the San Diego Wild Animal Park and Rawhide, Arizona-they still talk about it and they know it was because of contributions from Christmas from family & friends.

Last year, Nathan built an amazing backyard play fort. Our indoor living space is very small, but our outdoor space is huge and we like the kids to be OUTSIDE playing. Because of your gifts, the kids have a swing-set, fort, 2 slides, and a pulley-and it's not finished yet! They literally play on it every day.

This year, the kids would really love to have their rooms re-decorated and painted. If you would consider contributing towards that instead of buying them gifts, they would LOVE IT! I've begun to decorate the boys with camoflague stuff. I would like to do the girls room in yellow & blue with kind of a tea-party theme.

Because we're homeschoolers we get money every year for things like books, educational games, school supplies, etc. We have more books than we have room for at the moment and get funding for any schoolish thing.

Clothes
-we always appreciate clothes because the kids go through them so fast.
-Clothes are good, but each kid only gets 3 drawers of a dresser and I hang all their hang-clothes in one closet so it is also limited
-The girls always seem to need plain white tights.
-The girls love dance clothes-pink leotards, pink ballet shoes, tutus-all big hits with them!
-Socks make us crazy. Because the kids sort the laundry, having 85 mismatching socks is hard for them to match up. When I buy socks, I buy packages of all white and all black so at least there are less that get thrown out because they have no match.
-I always appreciate if the kids get things that can be mixed and matched rather than a strange greenish pair of pants that only goes with one top (I apologize in advance if you're in the process of knitting a strange greenish pair of pants)
-Sweaters that look nice with most dress clothes are really appreciated.

Toys
-the kids love toys, but we do have a limited amount of space for them. Because Eden has naps in one bedroom and Charis in the other, we don't keep many toys in bedrooms. Also, the kids have to clean their own rooms, so I tend to keep most toys downstairs in a locked toy room. They get them out when they want them and put them back later when I get crazy with the amount of stuff around the house.
-we have more than enough books, dolls, toy cars, games, little toys, etc.
-we don't want a lot of tiny objects. This is not fun for me when Charis gets into it and Eden spreads it all over the floor! We have a closet jammed with board games.

-contributing toward classes at the rec center or dance is always helpful. At the moment, the boys are going to do floor-hockey and Acacia, dance.

-Family entertainment is always a good one for our large family-something we can all do together, like contributing toward a trip to the Bug Zoo, Butterfly Gardens, the Vancouver Aquarium, the Zoo, IMAX, etc. We get to go to the museum for free because we are a school.

If you do want to give an individual gift and would like suggestions, here are some ideas:

Caleb-interested in building models, drawing and wood carving. He would love a gift certificate to "B & C Shavers" or an Art store.

Acacia-has an 18" doll that she loves collecting doll clothes for. It's the same as the "American Girl" doll. She also has a Cabbage Patch doll that she would love clothes for. Jewelery box maybe.

Levi-We have a billion of the things Levi likes to play with. He'd love a camera though, so contributing to a digital camera like Caleb has would be great for him. (Caleb got his for $21 on ebay, so it's achievable!)

Eden-less is best! We also have a billion of the things Eden loves. Play-doh would be good. Not the play doh toys-we have tons, but just plain play-doh. She loves dolls, but she has enough dolls to play with. Jewelery box maybe.

Charis-lesser than less! She's a baby who gets to play with all of the things that have been passed down from 4 siblings. She's a spoiled baby! I haven't even gotten out all the baby toys we have for her because we have too many.

I hope I haven't offended any of you. We really do appreciate it when people take an interest in our kids. We haven't been very good at Thank-yous for the past few years, but we're working on that now that a couple of kids can print a little. Thank you for your patience with us as we try to figure out how to be a big family in a world of little families!

Pharoah, Pharoah...and Camp Imadene

Caleb, Acacia & Levi have arrived home after a week of family camp at Camp Imadene with Nana & Papa. The kids have come back with lots of things to tell us of stories, songs, lessons and adventures-waterskiing, rock climbing, crafts, church every day, skits & fun! Next year Caleb will be old enough to go to Junior Co-ed on his own-he missed it by 4 days this year. I can hardly believe after all the years I was a cabin leader or worker at camp that I have a boy of my own, old enough to go to camp. Puts things in a whole different perspective. Eden is especially glad to have her siblings back and is following after Acacia, learning all she can from her and enjoying being the little sister again instead of Charis' big sister only. Levi is thrilled that Eden took it upon herself to do many of his chore list while he was gone-her favourite being to empty the bathroom garbage and take it out! I will attempt to post a video of Acacia teaching Eden to sing "Pharoah, Pharoah!", and old camp favourite.

Charis is crawling!

Navy brass launch The Homecoming

Navy brass launch The Homecoming

Shared via AddThis

On 2 Year Olds

This weekend Nathan has been away at an Art show and I've been home alone with all 5...if you can use the word "alone" and "with all 5" in the same sentence. It's been a lot of fun at times and perfectly horrible at other times-namely between 5pm and 7pm. My sweet little Eden...here she is. Just look at her little face-you just want to scrunch it all up and kiss it. I believe God made 2 year olds to be the cutest thing in the world for a very good reason....

Lately she's begun a new trick after I put her to bed. She continually gets up, and very convincingly, with much expression and hand guesturing and flashing of those big eyes, she tells me she has to use the bathroom right now-but 8 out of 10 times she doesn't. Just when you believe she's lying, you give her one last trip to the bathroom and she really does go and you're glad you believed her-but does it really have to take 7 tries? How is she able to go to the toilet 7 times and produce nothing and then suddenly "Voila?"

She'll also go down for a nap and it'll be absolutely quiet in there and an hour later, she'll walk out in Acacia's bathing suit with a dress half way on and a tea cup in hand and you'll realize that she never had a nap at all-just a tea party in odd clothing.

Eden loves nothing more than water. Because she can't go swimming every day, she tries to spend much of her day washing her hands...and then her arms, and then the tap and then the mirror and then you realize the water is running and running and there's a large puddle on the floor and you're already afraid the well is going to dry up while your husband is out of town and now it's leaked under the lino.

Eden also loves toilet paper. This weekend, I went into the bathroom and found she'd unwound and wadded up in the entire roll of toilet paper and had it in the toilet. There was no water left in the toilet-it was all absorbed in the toilet paper. I was sure the well really had gone dry and then had to fish out all of the soppy toilet paper and plunge the toilet-and the plunger kept getting stuck inside out...and there was water all over the place. That time I was thankful she hadn't gone in the toilet!

Eden has no fear. She is enjoying her little train ride-on-car this weekend. I'm having flashbacks of last month when she got her tricycle up at the top of our back stairs and was about to ride it down the wooden flight of stairs which ends in concrete. My little hero, Cowboy Levi, came along just in time and with the wisdom that surpassed his 4 years, he put his arm out and stopped her just in time. Was Eden thankful that she was saved by this wonderful brother? No. She tried to bite his arm to get him out of her way. I have spent much thankful prayer over that one, and Levi mentioned that cowboys that are heros really love ice cream.

After church, we tell everyone to go and get changed into play clothes. Eden comes out with a pinker, fluffier dress with more flowers and ribbon on it! Each night when she has to get into her pajamas, she tries to put a dress on overtop. Sometimes she comes out of her room with her dress on like a backpack with just her arms through. Today she was upset that I didn't let her wear 2 dresses at once to church!

On the heart melting side, here's what she's doing:

-at bedtime, she just kisses and kisses you-finally you have to stop her because after about 25 kisses, it's time to say good night!

-she's begun to pray very earnestly, but she doesn't seem to be using words-just the sounds and it really is very well done

-she can really dance! You should see her-she always begins on her hands and knees with her head buried and comes up like a flower-just like Acacia's dance performance. She does this many times in her dance, and takes many bows.

-Nobody says "Maaa-maaaa" quite as sofly and cutely as Eden

Here she is...the face of a 2 year old...

Modelling for Len Gibbs

We had an amazing opportunity today! The photographer who took photos of Acacia with Nathan for the Homecoming sculpture was hired to also photograph 2 kids for the painter, Len Gibbs, who will be painting a picture to use as a fundraiser. Len asked the photographer if he knew of some good models and he recommended Acacia because she did so well as a model for her Dad! Today, Caleb & Acacia went down to the beach with Nathan & I and posed for Len's paintings. They were absolutely thrilled because he paid them $20 each and Nathan & I were thrilled because this is a very successful artist nearing the end of his painting career and using our kids-and he promised us a signed print! His signed prints go for $650 and his originals for around $7000-so it is an amazing honor to have him paint the kids. I don't know how much these prints will be sold for this fundraiser. Len was thrilled that the kids were so used to being photographed for art like this--as all artist's kids are-and took a whole bunch of extra photos of Acacia playing in the waves while the professional photographer took more photos of Caleb. He said he got enough work to keep himself busy for the next year, but this would probably be one of his last paintings. The funniest part for me was when this nearly 80 yr old artist was tromping through the water getting his own photos of Caleb while his feet were getting soaked! Then they suddenly got me up there as the "Navy wife looking forlorn as the ship pulls out of the harbour" and I decided that after 10 minutes, it really is harder than it looks! How do you look forlorn when your husband is trying to make you laugh and the photographer is telling you not to look like you're concentrating? Anyway, it was a lot of fun and a beautiful day and we love his work. Afterwards, Len's wife, Betty, invited us in for juice & cookies and we got to look at their art all over their walls and a book of Len's work and some huge doll houses they've built. We never know what's around the corner!

Homecoming Update...end of June

Nathan has worked on both the sailor and the little girl a bit to have it ready for a couple of photo shoots for advertising for the fundraising. The little girl does actually have a head-I'm not sure what happened to it for the photo! She'll look much better next time I update!

Nathan's also working on an eagle that he will cast in bronze in the next couple of weeks hopefully. It's an edition of 10 and he'll be thrilled to get it done as he's been working on it for a year in between other projects and hopes to take it to a show in Whiterock in July.

Charis's Firsts

Our baby girl is not such a tiny baby! On June 13th we discovered she can sit up by herself. We have no idea how long she has been able to do this, but we tried her on the bed and she was really good and sat up balancing for a good 5 minutes. Now that we know she can do it, she's been practicing and is now quite a good sitter!

We've been waiting for a tooth for weeks now as she's been a bit crankier than usual-but she was still voted 'easiest baby in the nursery' at church by the nursery staff! Today I discovered that it has finally pushed through-one little tooth on the bottom!

Visit to Aldergrove

We have ventured away on our first little holiday with 5 children under 7 1/2! We went to Aldergrove and stayed with our faboulous cousins, Glen & Christie and their 3 little girls, Lydia, Chloe & Becca. Our kids just love playing with them because they know how to play 'Narnia' really well. We did notice one difference between our kids though. Caleb asked 9 yr old Lydia about a poster she had in her room. "Who's that?" he said. "You don't know who that is? She's just the latest teen pop sensation, Hannah Montana!" Caleb didn't seem to be that impressed...but we sure thought it was funny. There was some discussion overheard about how Disney took Winnie-the-Pooh and wrecked him, but other than that, they agreed with each other on all things and even treated us to a little dramatic presentation of Cinderella similiar to how Christie and I used to put on skits for our parents a few years back! Levi, the Duke nearly decided the glass slipper fit him best and spoiled the ending, but did succumb to management from Cinderella experts, Lydia, Acacia & Chloe. We had a fantastic weekend and Levi nearly cried as we left "I'll just miss my cousins so much!" We had such fun at the zoo, the beach and then finished off with a trip to the Vancouver Aquarium to see the 8 day old baby Beluga whale.

Beaver Expedition, Homeschool Update

We have been working on a beaver study with another family. Caleb & Acacia have very excited about it. We read "Paddy the Beaver" by Thornton Burgess, got library books out and read facts about beavers, watched the beavers actually inside their dam on the BBC Planet Earth, and put together our first lap book-which is a thing you buy off the internet where you get a template for making a sort of 3-D report from a file folder (I got it from http://www.handsofachild.com/ and I was a bit leary at first but it was money well spent for the learning & enjoyment we got out of it) Our final beaver wrap-up was a visit to the famous & fabulous Neighbor Bill's place up in Ladysmith where we tromped around his amazing property and looked for signs of beavers. We could see their dam from far away but couldn't get close up-beavers are smart animals for keeping inquisitive children away! When I first told Caleb of our plans for the field trip, he said "That's what I would love to do! I never even thought of that, but I bet if I did, that would be one of my best wishes!"

The day of the expedition was HOT, but we had a marvous adventure! After a large picnic lunch under a shady tree, we tromped all around, and I'm sure people miles away could hear the excited screams of "EVIDENCE!!! I FOUND EVIDENCE!" Thank you so much, Bill & Bianca, for allowing us to come and have something to remember in the category of "There was some really great stuff we got to do even though Mom never let us go to REAL school!" Here's a poem Caleb wrote just off the top of his head-I just typed as fast as I could and didn't change anything or add anything:

The Beaver

By Caleb Scott
At the age of 7

Where you see them fall there you can find him
Where he is going you will find paw prints
He has thick fur and has a tail
But when he hacks down his trees
He’d rather use his teeth!
He builds and builds and builds
Mostly at night
So when I went looking for him
I found evidence
From the Beaver
Who came around at night
wherever we went
Marty, oh Marty
With his vision
Thinks he saw him
With those webbed feet,
He went a-swim
With a tail for a warning
Then when danger comes again,
He slaps it down again!

The End

Beginning Clay work for the Dad & little girl

Nathan's been working mostly on the Dad because they are planning to have a newspaper article in this Friday's paper for Father's Day-a push for selling bricks! I'll try to post the article when it gets in...but the last couple of articles have been 2 page spreads, so they're too large to post on the blog! Did I ever mention that every single time I've been featured in the paper, I've had to pay for it?...not that I'm comparing! Maybe that's why I keep having children-just to get a little attention!

Mid-June update on 'The Homecoming Sculpture'

Nathan has been working hard on 'The Homecoming Sculpture' and has finished sculpting the little miniature that will be cast in pewter and sold as a fundraiser for the main sculpture. He is now working on the Dad.

Sunday dinner...I love beautiful Sunday afternoons outside and then a casual Sunday dinner-because Nathan usually cooks dinner on Sundays. He's a very good chef and last Sunday he decided to make a healthy Big Salad as the main meal with a wonderful red-onion homemade dressing. Our kids are pretty adventurous, but when he poured on the dressing and everyone's eyes started to sting, they were pretty upset! Of course, we tried to pretend there was nothing unusual as they wondered what that terrible thing was that was hurting their eyes! (Caleb suggested that it might be Mr Rick cutting his hay and maybe they all had sudden hayfever!) In the end, we re-spun the salad which took off a lot of the dressing and served a lot of foccacia bread along with the salad! When I looked at the recipe later, I mentioned that I would maybe cut the amount of raw onion in half because of the kids and I would have tried it at only 1/4 of an onion instead of a half. Nathan was surprised...I guess he didn't see the 1/2 and put in the whole thing!

As of Sunday, May 24th, at the grand age of 4, Levi can now ride his bike without training wheels! He has a bit of trouble getting started, but we were all surprised when Nathan gave him his first push and he took off like a shot and rode half way up the hill! He is now working on not giving up when it's hard to start.

' The Homecoming'
To be installed around the corner from the
Tourist Info Center in Victoria's Inner
Harbour, May, 2010

Nathan with the St Michael's piece that he completed from start to finish, using his own foundry-installed May 1, 09

Acacia modelling for the little girl in 'The Homecoming'

May, 2009

Nathan has finished and installed the St Michael's piece as of the First of May! His first piece that he's completed from start to finish with his own foundry! We celebrated as a family by going out for sushi to a real restaurant-all 7 of us! We're all thrilled...and Nathan's now onto the next piece-a very publicized piece for next May, celebrating the Canadian Navy's 100th Anniversary. It's a piece called "The Homecoming" with a Sailor just home from sea and his little girl running to him with her little dog. It'll be installed right around the corner from the Inner Harbour with the Parliament Buildings in the background. Acacia has posed for the little girl, although they may put another face on her if it's finanicially beneficial! Acacia was a wonderful model though and said she didn't mind missing watching Zaboomafoo at Nana's because it was so much more important...and besides, Daddy bought her a brownie with hot chocolate, whipped cream and sprinkles, and we all heard a lot about that!

The 5 Little Scotts

Nathan has been working diligently lately on getting his foundry up & running. He is working on a piece for St Michael's which he will dedicate May 1.

Here it is...the first pour of "South Island Bronze"! He figured out how to do this mostly from reading books and a lot of sleepless nights...which is how he figures out everything in the business!