WWF Homeschool

Our homeschool PE class recently started teaching wrestling. K8 is in blue striped shirt.

Our girls also wrestled.

Our wrestling coach is 84 year olds - definitely "old school". He leads the kids in calisthenics, and demonstrates how to properly roll and tumble on the mat. He can't jump over tall buildings and bullets won't bounce off him, but I think he is the real Superman.

Each pair grappled for 70 seconds. There were very few "pins", but lots of adrenaline, cheers and laughs. No injuries. Can't wait until we add boxing next year...

Hair of the Dog

Dandy with her winter coat, headed to the barbershop for dogs.

The new Dandy. I should have made one big pile of her shorn coat - it was a lot of hair.

Into the tub.

Her first bath since last May or June. 

She was so clean and smelled so good, I let her in the house for a while.

Pics from last 2 weeks

My camera was lost for almost 2 weeks, but it was found in a certain boy's dresser drawer in the basement. 

One of my favorite stores.

Another frequent place to shop - the Feed Store.

Apartment progress

Insulated the walls and ceiling of the basement apartment to help dampen noise.

Decided to drywall the mechanical room to make it look nice and help with noise control.

This is the storage room/hallway between mechanical room and the bedroom.

The full bath is entered through the storeroom/hallway. 

The bedroom is sheet rocked and ready for taping and mudding on Monday.

We were all ready for a shower and bed after finishing at 10:00 P.M. Friday. We could never have accomplished so much without the expertise and help of our friend Jayson from church. He didn't stick around for a photo, but he was a life saver!

Four new calves on the Wanch

Last week K7 and K8 took money out of their bank accounts and took the first step to becoming successful businessmen. Each wanted to take the risk of investing his money in a bull calf in the hope of making a ten-fold profit down the road. We went to a local dairy farm, and each picked out his calf and plunked down the payment.

That first night I was on my own, so I let the 3-day old calves (the black one is K7's and K8 owns the tan guy) have their last drink of fresh Momma's milk - from Darlin - after which they would have to get used to...  

...powdered milk from a bottle.

We went back to the same dairy farm a week later to pick-up two heifer calves (which cost more) for me.

All 4 calves are Jersey/Swiss crosses. While the boys intend to fatten up their bull calves as meat steers over the next 2 years, and then sell them, I plan to  raise my girls and breed them to Red to produce Dexter/Jersey cross heifers to sell to families wanting a small sized dairy cow on their homesteads. 

Later this week we need to name the girls and "band" the boys, and start halter training all of them.

Full house, again

We were visited this week by two of S's sisters, one of her brothers, and K2 was on Spring break.

They enjoyed the farm animals.

And they enjoyed going to the theater to watch both S and K6 in starring roles in the play, "Auditioning a Ghost", based on a story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame. This scene shows K6 as The Decaying Ghost. They were both great.

The make-up required extra help to put on and take off.

Aunt Laura video taped parts of the play, so K6 was able to see what the audience sees.

All good things come to an end. S saying her goodbyes to her sisters and brother as K2 heads off to open the gate.

Homeschool PE continues rain or shine

We have an 84-year old retired coach who forms up our 20+ students. He puts them in military squads and uses military commands - a man after my own heart.

He actively leads them in warm-up calisthenics, and just like in the military, we have a few who have a hard time remembering their left from their right - can you spot anyone facing the wrong direction? We played soccer this day.

When it rains, we move into the gym at the YMCA. This day we learned various routines with jump rope, and then moved into volleyball.