| Not the Gosselin bunch. (Sorry, if you were expecting them.) Nope. Around here it's just me and my Kate, and then 8 others, including Weston and our other 4, plus 3 more kiddos thrown in there.  |
| Jiles (2), Ezra (5), Savannah (6), Kate (7), Timmy (8), Shirley (9), Spencer (8) (missing Miss Zoe (4 mo.), who was taking a nap) |
Weston and I have had 8 kids for the last 6 days.
Some friends of our just had their 11th child. Their baby was a month early (at 8 lbs 8 oz) and needs to be in the NICU for awhile because his lungs aren't yet fully developed. So we are watching their 3 kids that go to school with our kids while they are still with their baby.
It's been fun pretending that they are all ours. I've always wanted a big family.
It has been fun, and busy, and a bit crazy at times.
Definitely never boring.
Including making lunches for a third of the school everyday
(our school only has 18 students),
(our school only has 18 students),
and the tooth fairy visiting 3 times to 3 different kids in only two nights.
(One of the visits was to Shirley, who told me that the tooth fairy always brings her a dollar. I told her that she might want to wait until she was back at home to put her tooth under her pillow. She put it under her pillow at our house that night anyway. The tooth fairy brought her a quarter. Man, what a cheapskate that tooth fairy is to us!)
The kids pretty much play like crazy outside most of the time.
One day they searched for caterpillars forever. There were lots and lots and lots in the haystack.
They are the kinds that turn into moths, though, and not butterflies. Darn it.
They found like 68 or something like that. They made them a nice home.
Bath time is interesting with 8 little ones. The water gets really good and brown, and cold, by the time the last child leaves it. Jiles likes to bathe (and sleep and just about everything else) with his cowboy hat on.
Playgrounds are pretty far and few between around here, so we improvise. It is a bit slobbered on, being that it is a cow feeder and all, but it is nothing that can't be washed off by nice cold dirty bath water.
The above picture is of Savannah. She is 6 years old and is so cute. She is so happy and loves to laugh and loves babies and loves to dress up and fix her hair. Unfortunately, she also gets "distracted by scissors", as she likes to put it. Notice the bangs here, and we shall compare them with a picture a little farther down. Also notice her teeth.
Jiles likes to study gross things, like cow scat, up close.
Dreamy Kate.
Down by the banks where the hanky panks
to wash off the slobber from that cow feeder jank.
Singing oop op flip flip
twiddly dee
and kerrr plop.
So, basically, they play outside until those bugs come out that make things look all magical (like in the picture below)...
...and until the sun gets really low in the sky...
...and then drops altogether and it's dinner time, then bath time, then cram in piano practice and homework, then bed time.
Oh yeah, and sometimes, like last Saturday, we get random flocks of a thousand sheep going down our road.
It's always fun to pretend that it is our very own parade, just a lot quieter.
Pretty much all you can hear are the padding of feet and the occasional bell.
Peruvian sheep herders are always with the sheep, living off not much more than potatoes and onions (we had 5 over for dinner last year - 3 men and 2 of their wives, who didn't speak a lick of English and cleaned my whole kitchen after dinner).
Wooly bums.
Alright, enough of the sheep.
Back to the kids.
The youngest of all...
Bedtime is fun entertaining. After everyone is in jammies and has their teeth brushed, Weston takes the 4 boys into the boys' room and reads Eragon to them, and I take the 4 girls into the girls' room and we pick out what they are going to wear, and paint their nails, and put their hair in rag curlers. Savannah, the 6-year-old, is most into all of this, and her sister, Shirley, is next (they are 2 of 6 sisters). Zoe usually kicks in her crib and Kate usually reads Charlotte's Web on her bed while the rest of us go through her clothes to figure out what they are going to wear the next day. It is fun.
Oh, and remember Savannah's teeth and hair before?
Bangs to her eye brows and one tooth on the bottom missing?
Well here she is now...
....after the scissor "distraction", and a quarter richer.
And here are the curls the morning after sleeping with the rags in all night...
8.
It has pretty much been a party.
7 comments:
While that looks amazing and eventful, I am exhausted just reading about all of your adventures with Kate plus 8! My goodness! Savannah and her hair and teeth brought a smile to my face and those rag curlers are amazing and the caterpillar moths were crazy! Wow! Love it all.
wow what a party! hey what r u using for the girls curly hair. do you wrap them in cloth it looks like. hey email me or message me on my post. i would like to try that with my hair.
Yowza, you and Weston are such brave souls.
The sheep remind me of the Trailing of the Sheep Festival in Sun Valley that they have every October. They do a parade almost exactly like the one you got, except they have street cleaners bringing up the rear.:-)
Why is it that kids that play outdoors the most never seem to have on shoes? That is the case in our house too. When it's not freezing my kids are always outside catch bugs, playing in water and so on....it looks painful to never have shoes on but they seem to prefer it. I dont understand. Your kids look pretty happy without their shoes on too.
So awesome...
Wow, thank goodness they could all go outside and play most of the time! They would all go crazy at my house, since I only have a slice of lawn in the backyard...and no hay barns, streams, or improvised jungle gyms! My kids would die of happiness if they got to come spend a week with you!!! You are too much fun:)
You guys are awesome, generous and amazing! I could do that for a day or two - and even if the kids are good, it's always a relief to just have my own kids afterwards! fun times and GREAT pictures! (as always!)
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