Yesterday we took a field trip to Franz’s bakery.  It was actually really cool.  

Health and Safety required that we all wear head coverings.  I was not even allowed to wear my wedding ring in!  You can tell Reagan is thrilled to be wearing such a cool hat.  But I can’t blame him.  I made sure no one got a picture of me in my hairnet.

Better than your Bosch

The cooling rack.
Heaven or Carb Death, depending on which camp you’re in.

Headed to the bagging area.

This amazing machine blew the bread bag up with air and then swooshed the bread right into it.  And yes, for those who are wondering, that is a real word.  From the online dictionary: 
v. swooshed, swoosh·ing, swoosh·es
1. To move with or make a rushing sound.
2. To flow or swirl copiously.
To cause to move with or make a rushing or swirling sound.

Then this machine date stamped it and twisty tied it.  Lots of fun to watch.

Fascinating Facts from Franz:
-Just before the bagging process the bread goes through a metal detector so strong it can detect tiny pieces of plastic or anything else that might have gotten in the bread.

-This Franz bakery also makes the Great Value brand bread for Walmart and the Hytop brand for Winco.  And they are different recipes.

-They make 40 loaves of bread per minute at this factory, but that’s nothing.  This factory may be the biggest in Idaho, but it is the smallest of all the Franz bakeries in the country.  In Portland they have a bakery that can turn out 240 loaves of bread per minute and there are only 6 people working in the plant! 

-When Reagan asked them what they did with all the reject bread that we saw around the plant and in these barrels:

We learned that they sell it to farmers for their animals,  they give a lot of it to the needy at food shelters, and anything that is bagged but past it’s sell by date, they sell to pig farmers.  Apparently pig farmers call the mold ‘green frosting’ for their piggies and it doesn’t hurt them to eat it. 
Good news is, none of the bread goes to waste.

At the end of the our tour they let the kids devour several loaves of cinnamon bread and everyone got their own bag of Liberty’s favorite kind of cookies!

So we made it a picnic!

Our history studies have finally brought us to Shakespeare and so the kids and I have been reading and watching children’s versions of many of his plays.  Reagan has been torn.  He can’t decide if he likes Shakespeare or not.  The lovey dovey stuff is almost more than he can handle.  Almost.  He is ten after all can’t decide whether he likes girls or not and therefore can’t decide if he likes the romance in Shakespeare or not.  He begged me not to read Romeo and Juliet after reading the somewhat minor romance scenes from Hamlet.  After reading Macbeth, which happened to be the first one we read as it was in our history book, he was totally disgusted and didn’t want to read any more from this crazy writer.  But the more we read, the more he became interested.  He and Cade (who was not nearly so emotionally torn over the stories he was hearing) begged me to keep reading a Midsummer Night’s Dream and even Julius Caesar.  They giggled as they read about the many love triangles and mistaken identities and were horrified when everyone died at the end of Hamlet.  All week they could be heard saying things like, “There’s something rotten in Denmark!” or “Get thee to a nunnery!”  Their favorite was “To be or not to be”, though.  I won’t go so far as to say they “loved” Shakespeare, but their introduction to it was a happy one. 

My reintroduction to Shakespeare was a happy one as well.  Honestly, I have not read much of him.  I was turned off by Romeo and Juliet in high school and have tended to roll my eyes a little at my husband’s fascination with the plays.  I did get Rock the complete works of Shakespeare as a wedding gift.  But we won’t talk about how much he has  (not) read the one I got him.  For me, Shakespeare was just too hard to understand.  And I did not care enough about the stories to pay the price to understand them.  But  in reading the children’s versions I enjoyed the stories for the first time and now have a desire to read the real thing.   I now understand why General Chang, the Klingon character  in Star Trek VI, screams “Cry Havoc!  And let slip the dogs of war!” when his people are assassinated.  I understood before what it meant on a basic level of course.  He meant, “I’m really mad and you’re going to pay for this, Kirk!”  And I even knew it was from Shakespeare, though not from which play.  But to have the deeper knowledge of the treachery and betrayal from Shakespeare’s story makes it so much more powerful.  Admittedly, Star Trek is not the most erudite of tv shows and it is somewhat silly that I would use it as an example for appreciating Shakespeare, but humor me.  The point is, I can’t wait to read Julius Caesar! (Or to re-watch Star Trek VI for that matter!)

And I know just the Star Trek fan to watch it with me, Mother Dearest.

Last week we spent our field trip day at Aunt Janie’s.  Here are the highlights.

When he actually took  the hay from her hand, it scared her to death and she ran away.

Aunt Janie has a knack for finding fun things for the boys to investigate.  Reagan’s collection of dead things, bones, bugs, and empty critter homes has grown by leaps and bounds since moving here.  This time she found an awesome cow spine for the boys to examine.

Trying to entice Corky to play fetch.  It wasn’t working.

The kids spent the whole afternoon chasing the chickens and then couldn’t figure out why, in the end, the chickens didn’t want to be held.  Aunt Janie had to catch this one for Levi. 
And no, that is not a fleck of dirt on my camera screen nor is it a fleck of dirt on Levi’s forehead.  It is Levi’s 16th attempt to wreck his forehead.  Nothing but a scratch this time, but it will leave ANOTHER scar, mark my words.  However, I Still cannot complain too much.  We have not yet had the pleasure of seeing the inside of an ER here in Boise and we’re going on 9 months!!. 

Look familiar?


This is a sweater that my grandmother made for me when I was Liberty’s age.  The kittens are made from real angora and they are so soft and fuzzy to the touch.  Liberty loves “kitty cats” right now, so this sweater is a favorite.  

Today at lunch Liberty was trying to take off her bandaid and asked, “Where’s the door to my bandaid?”

We have a new whiteboard on our fridge for writing nice messages to each other and this is one Levi left Rock today:

For those who need a translation: You’re Awesome.

This is how we know.

Though there are no buds on the trees yet and no robins chirping, today we were all thrilled to see the farmer plowing his field to get it ready for spring planting.  I am thrilled because that means the world will be green again soon.  But you’d have thought it was Christmas the kids were so excited.  They love to watch all the seagulls and birds that flock to the worms just turned up by the plow.  And they jump on the trampoline as high as they can to wave to the farmer and scream their hellos as he passes.  I guess there is just something exciting about a tractor no matter how old you are.   Especially when the tractor is in your back yard.

Welcome Spring!

Who needs Disneyland!

We are still alive, though the Grandmothers are beginning to doubt as they suffer from lack of grandchild pictures.  But we honestly haven’t had a lot to blog about of late.  I have almost (almost) wished that Levi would fall and break something open just so I would have something to blog about!  But to tide you over.  Here are some funnies.

The other night Cade lost a privilege and was worried he might lose another so Levi, in an attempt to help his brother with the best advice he could think of, said “Say a prayer, Dude!”

A few days ago Rock was putting Liberty in her bed for the night just as I was leaving to go shopping.  Here’s their conversation:
Libby: Can I go with Mommy?
Rock: No.
Libby: Can I go with Mommy?
Rock: No.
Libby: Can I go with Mommy?
Rock: No.
Libby: Can you say yes?

And lastly, tonight I gave the kids some jump ropes that they have been asking for and Liberty thinks hers is called a “grandpa roper”.  We aren’t going to correct her mispronunciation any time soon and I think Grandpa Roper would agree!

This year we are doing things a bit differently in our homeschool.  We had a good year last year, but we spent so much of our time doing the “have to’s” that we didn’t have any time for the “want to’s”.  I was rushing through devotionals and skimping on story times because of how much the boys were working on every day.  This was totally backwards from what I had originally intended for our school.  So we made some changes.  This year story time (reading good books and discussing them) and gospel study and character building take up a much bigger chunk of our school day.  And I am giving the boys more say in what they actually do in each of their subject areas.  This is also something I had originally intended for our homeschool, but wasn’t really happening as we tried to follow someone else’s pre-determined plan.  Now I require that they do certain subjects each day, but they get to choose for the most part what curriculum/resource they use with my ok.  Choice for the kids is such a major reason I chose to homeschool!  Everyone is happier this way. 

Here is a little snippet from school this week.

For history we’ve been learning about the Renaissance and have been studying famous people of that period.  This week it’s been Leonardo da Vinci.  He was such a fascinating man.  I had no idea.  But I should have. Yet another reason I’m homeschooling.  Did you know that he thought of contact lenses, or was the first to invent the bike chain or was the first to invent a clock with both the hour and the minute hand on it?  He designed the first snorkel, and life preserver.  Fascinating!

As we read today about his study of the eye, our history lesson morphed into a fabulous science lesson.  I LOVE it when that happens!  After reading that da Vinci would boil eyeballs in egg whites to make them hard so as to dissect them, the boys were totally hooked.  We read on to learn that he studied the pupil and the way it dilates in the dark and contracts in the light.  So the boys had to try it.  We ran to the bathroom where there was no light and they giggled and screeched with delight as they watched each other’s pupils contract when the lights came on.  We must have done it twenty times.  They made all kinds of discoveries, inferences and conclusions.  They discovered that Cade’s eyes contracted faster than the rest of us.  Why?!  They hypothesized that maybe it’s because he was the only blue eyed person. They remembered that cats eyes are tiny slits during the day but big and round at night.  They were so excited they were fairly dancing with glee.  It was so natural and simple and fun.  It was glorious. 

I found this picture of me in a stack of pictures my parents had.

This is the one we took one of Libby to compare.

I know I’ve said this before and you are undoubtedly sick of hearing it, but I LOVE having a girl.  The other day I actually had a little person pull up a chair and watch me peel potatoes, engrossed.  That has NEVER happened before.  My boys could care less what I do in the kitchen.  And this same little person actually said, “When I’m a mommy I’m going to make
po-ta-toes too.” 

This is so much fun!!!