Ephraim's 6th Birthday!

     Ephraim's birthday started out with us walking down to the bakery for a breakfast birthday donut.  He chose a cookie that had a butterfly ring on it instead.  When it's your birthday, you can have cookies for breakfast.
     Afterwards I decorated an ocean-themed cake, since he had been reading about fish and the ocean lately.

 After lunch we went to a friend's pool, and hosted his party from there. He invited three families of his friends. It was beautiful weather and the kids had a great time.

Ireland and Ephraim doing a double jump!

Straton doing a mega jump 30 feet high! (or so it seemed.)

Cannon chilling in the water.

Wells, enjoying an otter pop

Brittany trying to keep Wells happy during nap time!

Elizabeth holding Owen, while Issac watches the alligator-floaty frenzy.

Brooke keeping baby Mattie happy while Cannon looks debonair.

Singing Happy Birthday to Ephraim!

Blowing out the candles, with some help.

Otter Pops and chocolate cake break!

We saved a chunk of the cake for dinnertime, so we could have candles and presents with Sean after dinner. You can never blow out enough candles, or have too much cake, when you are six.

A new wii game from us was a hit.

As was the card that Grandpa and Grandpa McMullin sent.  Ephraim loves cards!

The next day he put together a lego kit one of his friends gave him, and wore his new birthday shirt, "Potter Cats" (which he thinks is hilarious).

Life is pretty good, when you are six, and already missing two teeth.

"Insect Hunter!"

    Ephraim has been fascinated lately with bugs.  We've checked out books at the library, dug out our old butterfly net, and watched several great youtube videos.  (In case you are interested, "Insect Hunter" videos can be viewed on line here .)

      From the Insect Hunter videos, we learned the flight habits of dragonflies.  They are often repeating a flight pattern, or "patrolling", or sitting on a grass stem "hawking" for food.  We also learned how to swoop upward from behind to catch a dragonfly in a net.

We went down to the river, and sure enough.. Ephraim caught his first dragonfly.

We also learned in the videos about checking under dead logs, so our next stop was the trail along the river, where Ephraim found a treasure trove of bugs in a dead log.

Next stop, a small creek that feeds into the river to search for water skippers.  He had a good time playing in the sand and cooling off as well.

He hunts for bugs constantly. I have to have a container in my backpack at all times, in case he finds one to bring home.  Here he is at the splash pad, but you don't see the splash pad, do you?  No, you see a child lured away into a grassy field by a bunch of Japanese beetles.

Eventually he got a couple of friends interested in helping him catch the beetles, then bringing them over to the splash pad to be drowned.

Sometimes he finds dead bugs in good shape.  This is the first bumble bee he has collected, out on our patio one morning, dead.

   Another thing we learned in the Insect Hunter videos, was how to pin an insect.  We ordered some insect pins, and Sean built a case with Styrofoam for mounting. Once you have a dead insect, they tend to curl in their legs, so you have to prop the legs in the most lifelike position possible for a few days, while they dry that way.

  I have a whole new level of respect now for insect and butterfly collections I've seen in museums. It is very detailed work!

   You know you have an insect hunger when you freezer is full of jars containing insects,  labeled with dates and locations.  Sometimes I use Tupperware containers.  The danger of that, is that if they don't get in the freezer right away, they just get put back with the other containers. So, when I opened one up to put a sandwich in it, I saw a dead grasshopper Ephraim had collected, that had not quit made it to the freezer.  That was a little shocking!

    Despite the dead bugs everywhere, I'm glad Ephraim has such a curious mind and drive to accomplish goals.  It makes the atmosphere for the whole family more lively. I'm looking forward to seeing if this little guy becomes a scientist.

Sylvia is home for a week in July!

   Sylvia was home for a week before she launched off to girls camp, and then scout camp.  What did we do?  First we picked up the kids' exhibits from the fair. Her beautiful beaded bracelt got a blue,  her bowl and 4 photos of Maya got reds.

Her epic picture of Clemenza (one of our chickens) got a blue, plus a yellow "award of merit" ribbon.

 Ephraim got all blues on his wooden stool, 4 photos of "chicken backs" and pottery bowl!

      Then we did some baking.   We had two more bakes to do from the season of the British Baking show we have been watching.  Episode 9 was themed "patisserie".  One of the contestants made "macarroons", which pop up quite often in this show, so we decided to tackle this odd looking cookie made from egg whites and ground almonds. 
      The recipe we used had them filled with a chocolate fudgy filling, which was delicious.  We learned that you need to have almonds very finely ground, and the powdered sugar finely sifted, or else you will constantly get globs clogging up your decorating tip as you squirt out the batter in circles. - We found out the hard way.   I'd do these again.

    The grand finale of the season, Episode 10, had the baker's making a "pithivier" for one of the challenges.  You have to make a rough puff pastry, then you fill it with a sweet or savory filling. We decided to try one of each. The dough was incredibly tough to roll out. I'm not sure exactly where we went wrong.. but a wrong turn indeed did happen. 

 They didn't look as puffy and flaky as they should when they came out. When we cut into them, you basically needed a sledgehammer.   The shell was so tough!
     All was not lost, the fillings were good (we used grilled brats and roasted potatoes in the savory pie, and a mix of eggs and almonds in the sweet pie - from this recipe).  We ended up scooping out the fillings, and tossing the shell in the garbage.  We are not pithivier fans!

    Along with baking, Sylvia had to do some meal cooking for her "cooking merit badge" pre-requisites at her upcoming scout camp.   She made a delicious sausage - hashbrown breakfast casserole in our new dutch oven for one of her meals. We will defiantly be using this recipe on future camping trips!

 She had lot of other pre-requisites for camp that were not as fun as cooking.  She wrote a couple of essays on environmental topics for her Environmental Science merit badge.  She went thought the house and did a safety check of each room, as well as helped put together a family evacuation duffel bag for her Emergency Preparedness merit badge.

 She gathered first aid supplies for a family and personal first aid kit for her "First Aid" merit badge class.

It was a busy week for Sylvia, but we managed to fit in a lot of computer gaming at night, as well as watching several episodes of "The Flash" on Netflix.  We will miss her while she is gone the next couple weeks.  More time to party with Ephraim!

A week without Sylv: The Ephraim Show

    With Sylvia gone, Ephraim got lots of attention.  When we went to the park, he still played with Sylvia's friends.  Freddie made him an epic leaf crown.  I thought it made him look a little like Peter Pan!

He shot off smoke bombs for days, in preparation for the 4th of July .

He helped get his fair entries ready for the Stoughton Fair.

When we went down to the fair Friday night, to see what the judges awarded the kids' projects.  Ephraim came out with three blue ribbons, one for each of his project entries!

The wooden stool he made with Sean got a blue.

The bowl he made at a local pottery shop got a blue.

And the entry we weren't sure about, his photography entry, got a blue!

 The rules said to enter a collection of "four 4x6 photos of animals".   When Ephraim went out to take pictures of our chickens, he either got pictures of their rear ends (because they were running away from him)...

or pictures of their backs (with no heads) because he wasn't centering them correctly in the photos. 

We decided to pretend he meant to shoot the photos that way, and labeled his entry  "Chicken Backs".   It got a blue!

Sylvia projects (a ceramic bowl, photography, and a beaded bracelet.) got a mix of blues and reds. She got an extra gold ribbon, an "Award of Merit", along with a blue ribbon, for this photo of hers. It is an 8x10 titled "Chicken Raptor".

After checking out the awards in the exhibit building, we moved to the animal barns.

  Sean and I enjoyed visiting with some wonderful farmers about raising wool sheep and pigs.  After Ephraim finished petting all the animals he could reach, we walked on to the carnival area.

Fast cars and motorcycles were his top picks for rides. I fear I have a speed demon on my hands.  He will likely get more tickets than Asher.

Good food was plentiful this week.  I tried out my new Dutch Oven and chimney starter.  (Both gifts for my birthday last month.)   Sean was a helpful teacher in the Jedi ways of charcoal briquettes.

We made a curried lentil soup,  and tried making naan on the lid.

Results were mixed.  We have needed more coals on everything we made this week.  Eventually it gets cooked.. but not as quickly as the recipes say they should.

The naan didn't have enough heat to cook it all the way through, so we finished the dough inside on the stove.  We kept trying.. and next decided to bake an applesauce breakfast cake with choco-chips in it.  This turned out really well, but again, needed more charcoal than we had originally planned.

We celebrated the Fourth with grilled hamburgers and a delicious new recipe for lime pound cake I found online.

It was fun to celebrate the Fourth with curious Ephraim.  He wanted to try some of the activities we had read about in the library books I got recently. They were all stories having something to do with Independence Day. So, I taught him how to sew.

He sewed a lovely t-shirt tunic for his stuffed monkey, "Lunkey".  He also wanted to know how to make butter.  Sean went to the store, bought cream, and put it in a jar to shake.  By that time, Ephraim wanted to start drawing his own versions of American flags.  That left Sean to do the hard work of cream shaking.

It turned out great.  We put the butter into the chocolate frog molds we had lying around from Sylvia's Harry Potter birthday party. We have been using butter in the shape of a frog for several days now. It's a bit stomach turning, but amusing.

  Without Sylv, our house has been less jokey and less imaginative.  Ephraim is a pretty factual guy. Sylv is a bubbly fountain, a nice break to the little man's constant monologues.   He honestly went on for almost 30 min, about dragonflies, and their eye structure,  after he caught this dragonfly. 

   We picked Sylvia up tonight from her high adventure with the scouts to Swamp Base.  (Stay tuned for her blog post about that later this week!) We've missed her!

   She has two more week long camps later this month. It looks like we are going to have to get used to having a teenager again in the house.  They come and go, and come and go, and come and go.   I'm happy with the person she is becoming.  She came back from the swamp more confident. You could see it in her eyes and posture. Sylv is going to amazing by the end of the teen years!  Then it will be Ephraim's turn to come and go. 

This week Sean and I caught a glimpse of what life would be like without a houseful of kids. We are going to have to get used to being just a stopover location for our adventurous kids, out in the world, sparkling bright like the fireworks we saw this week.