Trying to Walk a Rat, Burnt Pizza, and More!

It's been cloudy all day and rainy this evening, but I am loving the temperatures. It is 67 degrees right now and the forecast says a high of 79 tomorrow. My kind of weather! The 7-day forecast is showing temperatures in the 80's the rest of the week with a 30% chance of showers nearly every day.

Austin's friend Aaron finally went home today. Before he left he said he "I may be back in a week, or two weeks, or three weeks, or four weeks, or next summer." I have a feeling he's going to be back long before next summer. He and Austin ordered some things off E-Bay that they are excited about so I'm sure he'll want to be back to play with them when they come in. Plus they have so much fun together. They've been staying up way too late though and today it finally caught up with them and they didn't get up until about 1:00 this afternoon. Austin said they slept 12 hours so that tells me how late they were up last night.

Michael was busy almost all day going places with Daddy. They started out at the laundromat early this morning (I'll explain why in a bit), then went to the grocery store, the landfill, Wal-Mart, PetSmart (more about this one in a bit as well), and then to take some groceries to a friend who is fighting cancer and unable to work right now. When he wasn't with Daddy he was pushing a stroller around the house. He told Gabe to get in and drink a bottle and then pushed him around the house.

And the trip to the laundromat? Well, Doug has been trying to help me catch up on laundry and finally decided the easiest way to do that was take it all to the laundromat and put it in the biggest washing machines he could find. When he came home with all that clean dry laundry it took very little time to get it all put away. And now we're enjoying the wonderful feeling of being caught up on laundry. . . . until tomorrow. Oh well. Sometimes it's worth it even if it doesn't last long.

And the trip to PetSmart? Amanda has been researching online how to train pet rats and decided she wanted a harness for her rats so she could walk them. So she convinced Doug (as in begged from the time he walked in the door from work Friday evening until they finally went this afternoon) to take her to PetSmart so she could buy one. We tried to put it on the calmest rat (Micki) this evening. Twice. But she didn't like it. I'm sure Amanda will go back online and get some more information on how to get a rat trained to wear a harness and keep at it until she gets it. That's just the way she is.

And now I'm laughing at myself because I just wrote a whole paragraph about training rats. Seriously? When did this happen! Sometimes real life IS stranger than fiction. I wish I had gotten a picture of it.

I did get a picture of this though. It's what happens when I get interrupted by wild kids and totally forget I put a pizza in the oven.

Thankfully we had three others so no one went hungry. And Austin actually ate part of this one just because he's goofy like that.

As for me, in between all these other fun things and lots of kids (seven daycare kids ages 6 months to 10 years, plus a couple extras just for fun) I worked on getting the menu and activity schedule and supplies ready for next week.

And now it's time to call it a day, read a few minutes and get some sleep.

Good night everybody!

Daily Adventures at Rose's House Saturday July 17, 2010

Amanda is just loving Little Red, the guinea pig. Technically this is Doug's pet, but . . . we'll see.

Don't you just hate it when vacuum cleaner belts break?

A little math practice.

Coloring pictures to go with our Bible lesson - Jeusus Baptism.

Some imaginative play.

Perler beads remain a huge favorite with the older kids.

We had a good, fun day. More adventures tomorrow.

Daily Adventures at Rose's House Thursday July 15, 2010

Some free time fun.

CJ very kindly offered to share his markers and paper with the younger kids.

Ee is for Elephant.

The Little People playset kept everyone's attention for quite a while.

We also had a lot of fun with playdough.

It was a good day.

Daily Adventures at Rose's House Thursday June 3, 2010

What a day this has been! It wasn't a bad day, just hectic.

A large number of our kids receive childcare payment assistance through the Va Department of Social Services. Because regulations and guidelines have recently changed I was on the phone a lot with social workers making sure we had everything in line. Several families here are making changes or facing decisions of one kind or another so there was a lot of sorting out of details there to deal with as well.

On top of all that we were asked several days ago whether we would consider taking a child with time consuming special needs in to live here for awhile. We said we would consider it but would need some time to think about it. Today we were called and asked if we had made a decision yet. We hadn't. So Doug and I needed to talk that over as soon as he got home from work. We decided to do it on a trial basis. Doug is concerned that the added responsibility may be too much for me with everything else we have going on. I feel confident I can do it but am willing to do it on a trial basis too ease his concerns. There are still details to work out that will effect whether or not he comes but we're willing if all works out. 

In the meantime the rest of usual activities went on around all this.

We started our morning by mixing up some pasta salad (recipe here) for dinner. Amanda took pictures while I helped the kids. Some of them were very upset when we got done and then had to wait for it too chill before eating it. I did allow some tasting however.

New pictures in our outdoor art center were greeted with enthusiasm.

And baby Heaven got lots of attention.

Amanda spent a lot of time today working on a play house for her pet rats, Micki and Amber. The younger kids enjoyed watching her. Part of the time she was talking on the phone with a friend while she worked.

Busy and fun and more fun busy-ness on the way tomorrow.

Daily Adventures at Rose's House

Today has been busy and fun.

It was a hot and humid day and when Doug came home this evening he put in our air conditioners. This is an old house and does not have central air so we use window units. He put three in downstairs and one upstairs. We may get a few more if this turns out to be a hot summer. Last summer was very cool and we really didn't need them.

This coloring activity is such a hit with this group of kids. Having the entire table covered with paper and being free to create as small or large a work of art as they want is so much fun.

We had a lot of fun playing with the number puzzles and practicing counting to 10.

And chased an ant.

Both this morning and this evening we played animal match with some of the cards from the Memory game. I hold one set of cards in my hand with a matching set laid out on the floor in front of me. Then one by one I show the kids a card and ask them to find the match, or the one that is the same. They also enjoyed just looking at and talking about the cards.

There was an impromptu game of Ring Around the Roses that made us all laugh.

And fun on the computer.

Austin and Gabe were playing with dice and drew a crowd of observers.

Kaleb enjoying some snuggles. He also loves this swing that Austin put together for him.

The kids colored in their Mommy Bird books. It's a really cute little printable book that I found here and Amanda helped me put together.

And a little building to finish off our day.

More fun coming up tomorrow.