The Smithsonian Institution's recipe for genius and leadership:
(1) children should spend a great deal of time with loving, educationally minded parents;
(2) children should be allowed a lot of free exploration; and
(3) children should have little to no association with peers outside of family and relatives.
---H. McCurdy, "The Childhood Pattern of Genius"
Wow, how the time flies
!!! I got just
a 
little behind here. So this post will be my attempt to catch you up on a few happenings here on the hill :) Our TURKEY DAY was wonderful!! Unfortunately Grandma and Grandpa S. weren't able to make due to Grandma being ill. She so lovingly declined our invitation to prevent her wee grandbabies from becoming ill. Thank you. So our TURKEY DAY consisted of Me, my Beloved, and all of our 7 children!! The table was full of goodies!
! A HUGE THANK YOU 
goes out
to 
Grand ma S.'s boss who so kindly thought of our family when he ordered the beautiful, grain fed, natural, fresh turkeys. This beautiful bird weighed in at 17 pounds and should have taken 5 hours or so to cook. We (being the intelligent family that we are) decided it would be best to prepare the side dishes closer to the time the bird 
would be d
one! Makes sense
right? Well the bird outsmarted us. After just 3 hours of cooking it was done!! My Beloved checked it with a meat thermometer in several places (none of us could believe it was done!) and long behold the entire bird was done!! Imagine the panic here when we realiz ed we had nothing 
done to go
with it!! So like mad men
we peeled potatoes, made wild rice, carmelized apples, sweet potatoes and squash, green beans, rolls, etc. Thankfully it all got done and the turkey was still warm. We all sat down and enjoyed the meal. Although the gravy just wasn't right (that's because Grandma wasn't here and I just cannot make gravy!!) Something new we did this year was to create a Thanksgiving tablecloth. Everyone drew something on it. It was alot of fun and it will be cool to pull it out again next Thanksgiving. Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Talk to you soon!
Okay Bub, I want the polar bear. It is amazing!!
If you are a guest reading this go check out my brother's creations!! You will want one trust me!! Here is the website. http://www.whiteforestbears.com/
HAPPY SHOPPING!!
In need of some computer repairs? This guy is amazing!!
And if your lucky enough to snag him and his partner for your repair needs...bye bye worries :)
Sunday morning at church while trying to keep twin toddler's quiet quietly preparing to hear God's Word we hear instead from the woman behind us...
OH!! (while she's waving her hands in pure excitement) Your the family with 50 kids!!! :)
Love,
What does a family of nine do in a suburban on a 40 minute drive to keep sane? We play "I went to the zoo...". Here is what we saw :)
I went to the zoo and I saw
an aardvark, a baboons butt, a carabou, a donkey, an emu, a fawn, a giraffe, a hippo, an iguana, a joey, a kangaroo, a lion, a moose, a newt, an octopus and a quail!!
Keeping sane in such a large family requires teamwork. The other day I had too many commitments in a very short amount of time. By 11:30a.m. I was running about a half hour behind, hadn't had anything to eat, had a hungry nursling and 2 hungry toddlers (which means alot of crying) and to top it off I broke a very important piece of machinery. As I left the house AGAIN to run my last errand for the morning I was on the verge of tears!! On my way home I was thinking of everything that still needed to be done. While I was gone my WONDERFUL teenage children cleaned the house and started lunch!! Instant feeling of relief. Then the rest of the day I enjoyed faces like these:
hee hee :)
Snuggles :)
Is there a MICHIGAN game today?
Sister K and her snow creation!
Bubby performing a kickflip!
Life is SO good!!
