Penelope the brave has unfortunately lost her courage, so I am currently singing loudly so my song can accompany her in the bathroom. Sigh.
She also calls pennies "my twenty dollars!" and gets super excited.
Here's a little photo journey to capture our last month!
Havala got a homemade guitar from a Classical Conversations gift exchange with Pringles and sock in it. She loves her CC group--the friendship and the learning challenges--and is thriving. She is hoping to do concurrent enrollment next year with OU near us for her junior year.
Kel and Reka and family joined us in our family Polar Bear plunge in Hungary...and helped keep each other warm, oooh la la!
(A little photo of our granddaughter ringing in the new year with her darling daddy!)
Our version of the Polar Bear Plunge! With Spooner as our special commentator ;).
A fun quick visit from our relatives from the north! The boys talked the adults into going into the woods for a "hunt each other down" adventure. Only one shoe was lost in the skirmish and quickly recovered.
Christmas was fun! If you check out this awesome shirt from yours truly to my honey, you'll see all members of the family represented.
This man always rocks the holidays with style!
Now we know where the kids get it from... here's Zsa-man posing by the most cool advent calendar ever, from our beloved G-ma.
We love having two of our sistas home for the holidays! Pipalicious from Idaho and Tovacula (posing as a much taller person in this photo) from northern Ohio, her beloved-to-us new home. Pipaliciuos is doing well--school is a little too easy for her so she's looking into transferring, but she's enjoying the social scene and adulting.
Spooner loves his new robe and cool Percy Jackson necklace that he received from The Goob in our sibling gift exchange.
Here Papaya is trying to find one of her presents in her treasure hunt--a Buchanan father tradition that Quinn has picked up (and this year he recruited some older sibs to help which was a wise move on his part, with 10 hunts to go!). Can you see the photo bomber in this picture?
Pre-Christmas, the creativity never stops with dry erase markers. This way we capture the art without taking up room!
We had a great couple nights with Tova after her cool community choir December concert. It was pretty amazing! So much musicianship. Tova loves music, got a piano for Christmas, rounding out her home musical instruments to now have a guitar, ukelele, violin, organ, electric piano and now piano. She is working on a Masters in Play Therapy and hopes to be able to incorporate music into it. Ben is surviving his current job in Ohio--doing well, and enjoying with Tova their first home, along with their two dogs, Zoey and Zane. (You can check out some short videos of her concert at the end.)
Cleaning out the barn and winterizing the garden....double shazaam. We love riding wherever when going back and forth between Opama's (as we lovingly call our parent's property) and ours.
Liesl is growing up so so fast! She loves to read, does her math well, and has a killer smile with her missing teeth too. (She just lost another a couple nights ago.) We have a tradition of doing a tooth fairy dance--led by Daddy--to really get the tooth fairy's attention and she only had to do it twice this time to get the tooth fairy to come. She loves playing the piano and singing, too, which is such a blessing! She is super nervous at night which can be hard on her mommy who is not a night person. Thankfully, Daddy is also helping there too, although there are still nights when I will lay down near them until their nervous little minds fall asleep, sometimes after 10 pm (two hours after laying down!!). Like I said, hard...but she's cute!
Speaking of cute, here Ple-ple aka Lopey aka Pe-lope-lope-ee (as she calls herself) is wearing a darling outfit a friend found amidst her Christmas decorations. It was what her 17 year old daughter wore at Penelope's size and is SO adorable! She does love dress up, even if she can't stand having anything in her hair.
We've had a few snowy scenes to enjoy this winter so far and Maia Papaya captured one of them here.
Papaya has been enjoying her Vanguard group this semester. We do one day of heavier classes: world history, biology with labs, consumer math and an ongoing community project, involving swords, jiu-jitiszu and strategy. So fun!
Here is her viking ship that she made out of popsicle sticks and toothpicks.
Eli had fun joining in the group. He's always quick with a joke and a laugh, especially when older kids are around, although he also delights in making his little sisters laugh, too. He has been valiantly--if painstakingly--taking on his dyslexia challenges and making a lot of headway, even if he doesn't see it. Forunately, his brain is like a sponge, so he can memorize to help compensate.
Here is their boat...before we put it onto our swimming pool and lighted them with matches to see which one would last the longest.
We also made gingerbread houses this year, as a family with a St. Mikulas present and as a Vanguard group with a whole kitchen full of 16-some odd gingerbread houses!
Here's our "baby Jesus" from the Christmas pageant that escaped relatively unscathed.
Liesl's Christmas art!
Penelope sporting some more winter wear...
Apparently she learned from the last "winter wear" experiment!
Maia with her first parking job! Nice. She's excited to drive. And grow up in general, sigh. Darling girl. Her learning has really exploded this semester, but I'm so grateful that she makes time for her art, still. She has an eye for art and blesses us all with both that and her gentle feistiness. <3
Here we have the two littles after their combined project of making mac n' cheese together. So fun!
Tova's concert!
But really, this is so much for me, but you can enjoy if you'd like!
"Two books, Daddy!" as she plopped down seven books on the couch next to her smiling daddy.
Eli and Xai are downstairs playing D&D with Drew, laughing and hollaring in equal measure. Lovin' it.
We're binging all the highlights of something or other's got talent from the past fifty years...thank goodness YouTube has captured all the winners for us.
I'm budgeting.
For once.
And learning why we need to budget and how bad I am at it.
The tent is set up on the hill. It's boy's night on the hill.
Penelope took a late nap. "The Next Three Days" is out, apparently, from the watchlist for those in the house.
Tova and Ben are looking at houses near D-A-Y-T-O-N. That's right. OHIO!!!!
I got to video chat with the cutest little newborn on the planet at this given moment today.
The missionaries told us that they don't love their neighbors tonight ;) ;). (Ever played "Do You Love Your Neighbor?")
And the crowning touch? Liesl just informed me that she--on her own--used my bathroom without needing to turn the light on in my bedroom.
Life couldn't be sweeter.
Wait...yikes! We haven't shut in the chickens yet. We might have lost some to our local predators. Good thing my friend is giving us twenty new birds on Monday.
I'm not sure why that is such a magical thing, but it truly is. To have the world blanketed in frozen white brings out so much happiness and anticipation. I spent the usual long time getting the little ones ready in layers so that they would make it out. I had to really convince Liesl that I knew what I was talking about when I insisted that she not only have socks on, but that long socks--that covered the bare part of her ankle--would go a long way to making it more enjoyable for her. Sweet girl.
Eli is also complex-ly sweet and wonderful. They both remind me of that phrase "how to hug a porcupine." They are super cute and super prickly. I hope they both transition out of it before Penelope jumps into it.
Speaking of Penelope, Quinn just told me that she did a "daddy poop" and a "baby poop" today. Nice. She and Liesl also love being doggies and I had to convince her that chewing on cords was a bad thing. Yikes!
But back to the snow--there are many things I love about having Lily home, but I also just love her genuine joy of being alive and doing things! She was out there with them the whole time, drawing the older girls out, which was so good for them.
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Maia has started playing the guitar. I love the music that happens in this house! Piper and Havala play the piano; Xai and Eli are picking it up a bit. Maia is rocking her songs. I heard Havala playing the guitar. Drew and Maia have their ukeleles. Eli sings as much as he talks, dear boy.
Havala just started taking piano lessons from a "master teacher" at Ohio University on a grant from the government. I'm excited for her! She will have a recital the middle of February and she is also excited.
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Tonight Piper went to aerial silks--her second time back-- while Drew and Lily went to a new institute class. Havala and Maia tagged along, just because. I am sure they all loved being together! They drove to Columbus for it, but it seems that is the way of some of these opportunities. Tomorrow Drew and Lily will be driving with Mark to Columbus for YSA volleyball, which they are all excited about.
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We started our second week in a row going back to Vanguard today. I have really liked not overscheduling our lives. Quinn had a good idea. It is time to settle down and relax a little...not strive to fill every moment as if it was essential.
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While Havala was at her lesson today, I took Eli and Xai out to a fast food place for a meal as a reward for finishing half of a very long math book each. Shameless bribery, but I'll take it. They also get to watch some shows/movies in the afternoon if they have all of their school requirements done. Again, I'll take this route for now. It's worth it. It's just for the painful ones: piano, exercise, math and journal. Other schooling can just be inspired ;).
Tonight, Quinn and I had a more relaxing evening. We played a game where a blindfolded person shoots people around them with a nerf gun, based upon what they here. It was hilarious with the three youngest. Penelope is quite the funny target, taunting ceaselessly. We also played a fun new game called "Mantis" that Piper got for Christmas. I played "Quoridor" against Xai--winning one and losing one. Quinn and I found a new version of the old MacGyver show and watched the first episode of that together in a quiet house.
We had Hawaiian haystacks for dinner and baked potato bar for lunch, using up the last of the lecso soup I made a few days ago, the potatoes tempering the overpowering concentration of flavors in the soup. (I accidentally cooked it over night, yikes!) That offset the painful delivery of oatmeal for breakfast. We're budgeting our food significantly because we bought some SUPER cool costumes for Jane Eyre that we didn't have discretionary funds for elsewhere...so now the whole family is paying, mwa ha ha ha!
We've had a few snowy scenes to enjoy this winter so far and Maia Papaya captured one of them here.
Eli had fun joining in the group. He's always quick with a joke and a laugh, especially when older kids are around, although he also delights in making his little sisters laugh, too. He has been valiantly--if painstakingly--taking on his dyslexia challenges and making a lot of headway, even if he doesn't see it. Forunately, his brain is like a sponge, so he can memorize to help compensate.
Here is their boat...before we put it onto our swimming pool and lighted them with matches to see which one would last the longest.
We also made gingerbread houses this year, as a family with a St. Mikulas present and as a Vanguard group with a whole kitchen full of 16-some odd gingerbread houses!
Here's our "baby Jesus" from the Christmas pageant that escaped relatively unscathed.
Liesl's Christmas art!
Penelope sporting some more winter wear...
