Off the record, I loved it.  I loved hearing the kids all pipe in about how they thought each other had played that day.  I loved seeing the joy on their faces when THEY talked about what they thought they had done well.  Hopefully I will post some pictures soon!

This is the third time I have read this book. I very much recommend it. It is good for people who want to laugh or think their life is bad. Trust me nothing compares to her life. I mean she has a 6 year old sister named Brianna who is scared of the tooth fairy and pees in her bed.

~Ememdabom

I have an 11 year old who won’t stop READING!  I have grounded her, I have hidden her favorite books, but she just won’t stop!

She devours books.  She lives for them really.  If she isn’t sleeping or reading, she is telling me about what she just read!  

Because of her love of reading I have decided to let her use my blog to help her with her reading.   She reads so much, and so fast that I thought if she took a break between each book to write about what she had just read, it would give her a new way to express herself.

So, Spilled Milk will be having a guest writer, my 11 eleven year old!   Though I call her Bug, she is going to be going by “Ememdabom.”

So if ya need a problem…you can borrow mine.  A girl who LOVES to read!

Bug has been talking about how she would LOVE to have a black mustang. It would be black, and she would name it “Beauty.” (I know, real original)

Squeaky heard this and couldn’t wait to chime in.  She was sooooo excited, talking about her pink Mustang that she would name “Princess.”

Funny how totally opposite two sisters can be!!

I may not have been with her this week, but I was still able to see how much she has grown up.

It was 3 months ago when Bug was told she could order chickens and keep them at a friends house.  A very generous friend, who not only was purchasing the chickens and food, was also going to care for them as she knew Bug couldn’t come over every day!  Bug spent a day researching chickens.  She made a chart with the help of her Aunt Sally, noting all the qualities she wanted her chickens to have.  She looked not only at size and color, but also personality and egg production!   She was allowed to chose 2 chickens, she decided on a Buff Orphinton and a Barred Rock.  Phew!  We thought that part was hard!

June 8th, after waiting two months, her chickens arrived.  We drove her over to meet “Penny” and “Charlotte” and when we got there we were thrilled to see they had given her two Barred Rock (after only ordering 1) so we also got to meet “Lucky.”  Lucky seemed to not be as developed as the other chicks, but seemed to be getting along.  Bug was over for a few hours, playing not only with her chicks, but ALL 21 of them!

The next morning, Tim got a heartbreaking email from our friend.  The night before 9 of the chicks had drowned!  Which included all three of Bugs chicks!  Friend immediately placed another order to replace the chicks that drowned, they would be in June 22.  Bug did ok with it, she was very disappointed, she had waited a long time for her chicks, but she was mainly sad that an animal had died.  (or in this case 9)

June 22 arrives.  Bug gets driven over to meet the chickens.  The surving chickens from the first batch have grown quite a bit.  Not so cute anymore, but getting along well.  Bug has three new chicks.  We now meet Midnight, Twilight and Honeysuckle.  She spent the entire next day with her friend and the chicks.  As the friend also has new chicks, they play with chickens all day.

The next day around dinner Tim got a phone call.  Midnight was found in the water dish under all the other chickens, she was still alive, but soaking wet and not doing too well.  We drove Bug over, she dried the chick, she sang to the chick, she fed the chick water from a medicine dropper…she would cheep a bit and flap it’s wing every now and then, but it couldn’t walk.

We were getting ready to leave their house around 11pm that night, when the mom suggested Bug just sleep over…she knew the chick wouldn’t make it through the night.  So the girls slept on the kitchen floor with the chicken.  Bug woke up in the middle of night and it had died…then, the next morning it started all over again.  Twilight was knocked into the water and soaking wet…and after a few hour she died too.  Now I know you are going “get rid of the water!!!”  That is just it, they are using a 2in diameter saucer with barely any water, and they aren’t leaving the chicks alone  with it…they just get trampled and stuck.  So now both her Barred Rock chicks died yesterday.  When I went to pick her up, she totally broke down.    I wish I had been there with her when it happened, but I wasn’t.  She had her friend with her who hugged her and was doing everything possible to help her feel better.  It’s just so much harder as they get older.  Her fish died all the time and she was sad, but not heart broken.  She never held it, or fed it from her hand, or had it pecking at the mole in her finger.    She had never seen something living one moment and dead beside her the next.  I know, all life lessons and experiences she would have someday…but why today…or even tomorrow.  Why not when she is MUCH older?

So that is why I say $#%^  (dang) chickens, and stick to having just fish for pets.

Nothing is necessarily “magical” really.  I mean, we have special cookie cutters just for the boring peanut butter and jelly sandwich they might eat everyday.  Occasionally we cook our dinner over a bonfire.   We have a canoe for days that would normally just be spent fishing off a dock, they turn into a day spent fishing from a canoe.

We make a lot of things that most people just run out to the store and purchase premade.  (don’t get me wrong…not everything is homemade!!)   We wanted froghouses for the many frogs that live in our backyard.  Squeaky and I went and bought some terracotta pots, and she painted them and we assembled them to be a frog house.  It was fun, entertaining and cost effective too!

You get the idea.

This summer however I am determined to get my fairy garden started.  I love the idea of fairies in the woods and garden.  I have been slowly collecting ideas of little items that fairies may need in order to live in our backyard.  Small table and chairs, a tea set, maybe a bridge…these were the first items to come to mind.

Then the other night, my niece was spending the night.  The kids had had a fun filled day of doing chores and cleaning up messes (this was the 2nd night of a sleepover) so after dinner I thought we needed some fun.  I gave the kids a few rules : Only natural materials, no distrubing animal habitats, a safe area (for kids and fairies) and be creative.

I showed the kids where I wanted my fairy garden to go,  and I explained how if we wanted to attract fairies to my garden the fairies would need to know they had more than one safe spot.  So the kids went about the woods collecting sticks, bark, rocks, wood chips, leaves, moss and even some little trinkets they collected. (I agreed that as long as they were not adding more trinkets to the forest floor, they could use what they found)

They worked together first deciding on a location, then started working together on the perfect fairy house in the woods.  They even made a bed of moss for the baby fairies, found acorn tops for cups and a white feather to show they were peaceful fairies!

After finishing their fairy house in the woods, I surprised them with “Barbies Thumbelina” on DVD.  They got ready for bed, as it was almost 9pm by this time and I put in the movie.  It was the perfect ending for our magical fairy evening.

First off…Bug gets 4th in the cross country race during her field day!  Way to go, Bug!!  This wasn’t just her class, it was all of 3rd grade girls!   And the race wasn’t on a track, it was over the river and through the woods. 

I was very proud of her!  (and still am as I am still writing about it!!)  

She ran the 50m dash in 9.5 seconds…seemed pretty quick to me.  They ran in multiple heats, so I have no idea if she was “the” fastest, but she was pretty darn quick!

I shouldn’t have been so shocked at her doing so well, she is pretty driven to succeed when one of her friends is good at something.  I just didn’t know she had the stamina to run so well! (especially for the cross country race)

Now for my other part of greatness yesterday. 

While I was getting sunburned watching Bug in her Track and Field Day, Buddy was at school sitting in his 5th grade social studies class taking a test.  This very test is the one two weeks ago that when I asked him to study the “why bother, I won’t get an A anyway?!”  statement came out of his mouth. 

A statement that is very unacceptable in our house.   Of course my reaction two weeks ago was “you aren’t studying to get an A.  You are studying so that you can do your very best.”   Honestly, I didn’t care if he failed the test, as long as he studied as hard as he could.  And as long as he truly did what he could to learn the curriculum.

When I got home yesterday I checked Buddy’s grade online (I LOVE his social studies teacher…he puts everything online ASAP!  You can even print off worksheets that didn’t make it home that night) and wouldn’t you know…the boy got an A!!  I hated him seeing how shocked I was at his grade, but I am hoping what he saw was how proud of him I was.

I even put it as my facebook status…which he smiled at.  Apparently if Mom puts it on facebook, she must REALLY be proud!!

It truly was a great day!

Tim giving Bug a floating heart necklace….

Just Bug…

And Tim and Bug together!

Bug looks WAY too old in this picture!!!!!