One night while Caleb and Owen were  sleeping, some goblins sneaked into the dark dungeon ‘s cave and grabbed Deirdre and sneaked away. When Caleb and Owen woke up, they forgot about Dierdre because they heard noises outside the cave. They poked there heads out of the cave and saw two orcs talking to each other. So they both picked up a rock each, and knocked the orcs out with them, and stabbed them dead with there own weapons. Then they set off to look for Deidre. As They went along, They saw a house that had a sign near it that said ‘Eat free candy Here and sometimes gain powers.’ So they went up to the candy shop and knocked on the door. A little rabbit poked his head out the window and asked them what kind of candy they wanted. (Caleb and Owen were very young, so a talking rabbit didn’t seem strange to them.)Owen said, “We don’t want any candy, little rabbit. (witch was not quite true) “We just want to find our sister Dierdre.” The little rabbit, seeming to know a lot, replied, “You won’t find Deirdre, she will just turn up sometime. One thing you should know, my boy, is that not all goblins are bad.”

“So  what?  We’re going home!” said Owen and he started to walk away. “You don’t have a home!” the little rabbit yelled after them. “So what, we’ll build one!” Owen yelled back. And the next day they set out in search for something to cut trees down with. While the were walking along, they came to the town the orcs chased them out of. The only building that was left standing was a tavern, witch the orcs didn’t want to destroy because it had lots of food in it. So Owen and Caleb Walked right in and made themselves at home.

Maybe even a year later, Owen and Caleb decided to go out and fight the orcs. They had found some weapons lying around the tavern, and they set off in the direction of spider mountain. While they were walking along, Some goblins jumped out of the trees and started whacking Owen and Caleb on the feet with there hammers (The Goblins that we made are very small.)

Pick what answers you think are right, and at the bottom of the quiz the right answers, and explanations why, are given.

1. Which of these is one of my chores right now?

(a) Cleaning the steps
(b) Cleaning the kitchen
(c) Washing breakfast dishes
(d) Drying breakfast dishes
(e) Drying lunch dishes

2. What is my favorite chore? (note: some of these aren’t actually my chores)

(a) Drying breakfast dishes
(b) Drying lunch dishes
(c) Washing lunch dishes
(d) Washing breakfast dishes
(e) Cleaning the upstairs hallway

3. What are my favorite animals besides chickens?

(a) cats and ducks
(b) dogs and cats
(c) hamsters and mice
(d) horses and ponies
(e) birds (not chickens) and goats

4. What’s my favorite game to play with my brothers Owen and Caleb?

(a) Little Kids Adventure
(b) Legos
(c) Paper games
(d) Animal Game
(e) Playing a wolf-guy game

5. Who’s my favorite brother?

(a) Owen
(b) Caleb
(c) Arlie
(d) Lachlan
(e) Collin

6.Which of these things would I most want to do?

(a) Go to the moon
(b) Fly in an airplane
(c) Going up to the hill across the road
(d) Go to mars
(e) Learn how to ride a bike

7. Which one of these would I turn into if I could:

(a) A mouse
(b) A rabbit
(c) A chicken
(d) A horse
(e) A cat

8. What are my favorite colors?

(a) Red and orange
(b) Yellow and green
(c) Pink and purple
(d) Blue and green
(e) Yellow and orange

9. What is my favorite thing to do each day?

(a) Read comics
(b) Practice learning how to juggle
(c) Reading books
(d) Play games inside
(e) Play games outside

10. What kind of tree do I know the name and look of that Cadie taught me?

(a) Oak tree
(b) Pine tree
(c) Fir tree
(d) Elm tree
(e) All of the above

11. What is my favorite book series?

(a) Horrible Harry
(b) The Zack Files
(c) Jigsaw Jones
(d) The Magic Treehouse
(e) The Boxcar Children

12. What are my favorite of the books that Mom read me?

(a) Little House series – The Laura Years
(b) Little House series – The Caroline Years
(c) Little House series – The Charlotte Years
(d) Little House series – The Martha Years
(e) Little House series – The Rose Years

13. What is my middle name?

(a) Leigh
(b) Anne
(c) Joy
(d) Jane
(e) Jael

14. What are my two favorite foods?

(a) Hamburgers and hot dogs
(b) Sloppy Joes and hot dogs
(c) Pizza and hamburgers
(d) Macaroni and cheese and macaroni and chick-peas
(e) Ziti and lasagna

15. What do I most want to learn to do?

(a) Learn to cook
(b) Be able to dig well
(c) Ride my bike
(d) Brush out my hair on my own
(e) Learn to sew

16. If I could go to any planet, which planet would I go to?

(a) The moon
(b) Mars
(c) Venus
(d) Saturn
(e) Jupiter

—-ANSWERS:—–

1. (c) Washing breakfast dishes is the one that’s my chore.

2. (e) It’s my favorite chore because it’s the easiest and least boring.

3. (a) They’re my favorite because they’re not big, mean and scary. I like ducks only if they’re friendly, because I don’t remember any of our ducks that were friendly, and I think I’d like them. I like cats because they’re different than dogs–dogs seem scary and mean, and big. However cats seem small, and nice and friendly.

4. (d) I like Animal Game because sometimes there’s Animal Tournaments and Owen usually controls them and makes them funny. Animal Tournaments is where different stuffed animals fight–mine, Owen, and Caleb’s stuffed animals. We only play it sometimes, but it’s really fun when we do.

5. (c) Arlie’s my favorite brother probably because he’s never home usually, and he doesn’t bug me very much, and so I like him better than everybody else, because everybody else bugs me.

6. (c) Because it’s nice up there, and I’d like to go up and see what it’s like. And because there’s this mysterious thing that we think is a tent that I’d like to see close up.

7. (b) I’d like to be a rabbit because rabbits can talk animal language, go underground, hop along the fields and because they always look so nice.

8. (d) It’s hard to explain, ‘cuz I don’t know how to explain why blue and green are my favorite colors, but they just are.

9. (e) Because we have lots of good toys for playing certain games that I want to play outside, and because I like going outside.

10. (d) I forget quite how it happened, why Cadie was telling me how elm trees look, but one time–I don’t know where we were–she was telling me that elm trees have this stuff that looks sort of like green stuff growing along it, and they usually widen out at the top. And then one time when we were coming home from something, we were having a contest who could see the most elm trees. I can’t remember who won.

11. (a) Well here’s a comment on them: They’re not horrible books, they’re funny books! I like them because Horrible Harry does lots of funny things. The guy in the book who’s Harry’s friend is not horrible, is just nice. And there’s a person in the book called Song Lee, and Harry’s in love with her ever since in kindergarten Song Lee gave him something horrible, and that made him happy because he loves horrible things.

12. (d) There’s one thing that I hate about the Martha years! The author didn’t make the series long enough!! I don’t really know why I like it better than the other ones, I just liked it. Martha Morse was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s great-grandmother, and she was Rose’s great-great-grandmother.

13. (e) Anne and Leigh are Titi and Cadie’s middle names. And I was thinking of saying James as one of the choices but that was a boy’s middle name, Cadie said, but that’s one of my brother’s middle names.

14. (b) I just really like sloppy joes and hot dogs, I don’t know why! (Not together, they’re just two meals that I like.)

15. (c) Because my brothers are always riding their bikes and I can only ride a tricycle. Just why I can’t ride a bike is because I can’t balance–it’s no fair! I’d like to ride a bike because it looks really fun.

16. (a) I think I’d just like to explore the moon. I wouldn’t like to go to the moon, but it was one thing that came up with me to think of, so I thought that the moon I’d probably like to more than the others.

Episode 1 Once upon a time there where two little boys named Owen and Caleb. Owen was the eldest, and Caleb was the younger of the two.  Owen was quite strong especially for only the age of six. He could out wrestle any little boy in the town. Caleb was quite intelligent for the age of 3 and he was really interested in his dads job as a black smith. Their mother was a Spell caster and she was about to have another baby when the orcs ( who had been conquering the humans) made a full fledge attack at the town (witch was known for its mighty warriors.) Their dad went to A different town for help, but on the way he got gobbled up by an enferned scroy hardhead. Typical. (scroy hardheads are nice, smart beasts. They are the size of an average room, they are smarter than humans. They only eat kodo beasts unless they are enferned. Enferning is what things called fernys do to most animals (fernys are orcish like creatures that come back to life when they die.) Enferning makes the victim nasty, evil, reckless, rash, extra big, and pretty much insane.)

Then their mother had her baby just as the orcs broke the towns’ barricades. Once She healed herself, she gave her spell book and her baby (Dierdre) to Owen and Caleb and told them to run to the nearest cave. Little Owen and Caleb scurried out their secret passage that led to the base of eye patch Mountain, and then they went into a cave. That cave happened to be populated by (Mischief  making)  Dark dungeons. Dark dungeons, as I called them when I was about six, are large, furry, eight-foot tall human shaped beasts. And ‘Mischief’ making ones are ones that ran away from there kingdom when they were babies. And as I was saying, Owen and Caleb entered the cave, put Deirdre down on a pile of clothes and fell asleep (for they were quite tired, being little kids.)

And then, in the middle of the night, a dark dungeon tip-toed out of the darkness and placed a huge bag of meat, bread, cheese, and a glob of mushed up mix of them all for Deirdre beside Owen. When They woke up, they thought the food was food there mom packed for them. So they gobbled down the food not in the least bit disturbed. The End! (of Episode 1)

Don’t worry! That was only Episode 1 of book 1. Later it gets more interesting.

I thought and thought while I dried dishes and finally I got an idea! There are a lot of trees in the secret garden and I told Caleb that we should go and look for some good trees there. Caleb agreed, of course, and quite soon we had found the right tree. It had three LARGE trunks starting from almost the bottom of the tree. First, I made a ladder with some spare wood I was allowed to use….

Then, I started on the floor. First, I nailed a two-by-four on one side of the two front trunks. Then, I nailed a two-by-four on the other side. After that I could start on the floor. It’s very simple: just keep placing one board going across from the two two-by-fours and keep nailing it in until the floor is finished.

Then I started on the wall….

Uh-oh! I couldn’t build the wall any more ’cause of that big branch!

So I decided to leave the wall alone and put a board at the other side so that later I could make a ceiling.

I stopped making the fort for a while becuase I didn’t know what to do. I asked Lachlan if he could chain saw it but then he told me a simpler way.
He told me to nail a long two-by-four on the part of wall that was already there and nail more wall on to it. (There’s a picture above^.)

I thought it would help support weight if I made a two-by-four going down from the bottom of the floor to down where the branches split, so i wedged it it firmly and nailed it in. (^)

For a little while I was trying to make a jail but that didn’t work out. (You can see me pounding a “jail bar” up there ^.)

Well, there’s my my fort with my silly little sister in it! I also made a roof with chicken feed bags sewn together (by me.) As you could see, all these pictures are from different times because it took so long for me to do this post. Actually, I think I started this post TWO YEARS from this sentence I’m writing now! Nobody’s perfect. Remember that, buddy.

Waah, I can’t play with the chickens, it’s wintertime–it’s too cold out! There’s one chicken that’s so dumb that she always be’s nice to me. And I call her Blackbeard. That same chicken used to peck out my eyeballs! (Not really peck out my eyeballs, she just always tried to. But now she doesn’t do that.) And whenever I want Blackbeard to jump on my back, I just bend down, and she just “hups” right on my back! But I shouldn’t really do that because my brother Evan who feeds the chickens, then she always jumps on his back and he doesn’t like that.

She wasn’t as dumb as Fireflame, she wasn’t really that dumb, I just called her that because of pecking my eye and flying onto people’s backs.

Fireflame, a chicken who’s a goofy chicken who always stands still and stares, died of something–I don’t know what. That’s the one that I was holding in the picture on my page. Fireflame was my favorite of the younger ones. Fireflame I liked feeding out of my hands, but there’s only ONE reason why I didn’t: whenever you got her some feed out of your hands, she’d get a hold of your hand under the feed, and tug, and the feed would spill, and she would keep tugging and tugging and tugging until I made her stop.

Click on the little photos for a slightly larger view.

There’s a red chicken that always picked on the other chickens, but then when I taught him his lesson he stopped doing that, and after that he got butchered. I call his punishment the “shuffles”, because that’s basically like putting your arm under the chicken and holding him so that he doesn’t escape, and moving my arms up and down under his wings.

Another chicken, Orangehead, a friendly hen–but I switched to calling her Buttercup, because my brother Owen always called her that, and he’s talked so much about her that I got in the mood of calling her Buttercup–that chicken, she’s smart for a chicken but she does NOT like getting picked up. She always goes, “bra-a-ak, bra-a-k,” whenever you pick her up.

The black rooster, a king of all of our chickens that we have, is SO heavy. Because when it came to the butchering time, we almost butchered him but my brother Teman said “No, don’t butcher him” so we didn’t. Because he was such a nice rooster.

A rooster that I call Polish, because he’s a Polish rooster, is a boy rooster but he always LOOKED like a girl rooster–girl chicken [she laughs when she realizes she said 'girl rooster'] to me. And I think the king black rooster thinks the same, because he always picks on the other rooster that’s not a polish one, but he never ever picks on the Polish one, hum de dum. And Evan said that he thought the black rooster thought that Polish was a girl rooster. Not girl rooster, girl chicken!

Evan right now is going out to feed the chickens!

Back in the fall, in 2008, I always put on my pink chicken coat, went out to the chickens, and I always put my arms around the chickens and kept them warm. The Polish one of course was always best at sleeping! He would tuck his head into his feathers, and act like he was sleeping. Then I would breathe on him for a while, he would wake up and look at me, and then tuck his head back into his feathers. (‘Sleepyhead and lazybones…’ That’s from a song. But he is a sleepyhead!)

There’s a white chicken that I call Dovehead. Whenever I manage to catch her and make her sit down, she looked like a dove, so I decided to call her ‘Dovehead’. But if I lift her up, she will actually make noise, she will squawk and squawk. She’s not a friendly chicken but Cadie says she IS smart.

A chicken that got the habit of beating other chickens up from the chickens I gave shuffles to, took the habit from that guy, but whenever he saw me he would be quicker than the guy I gave shuffles to, and was completely gone, so I couldn’t catch him. (I didn’t give him a name, I think he’s too bad to give a name anyway, tee-hee!)

All of our chickens, after the rooster mates the hen or if a hen finds some feathers lying around, they eat the feathers! I don’t know why!

We have a banty rooster that if you sneak up and touch him, he will run away. But he does not like getting touched at all. But oh, I don’t know why he does it, maybe it’s just a habit or his foot got hurt somehow–he doesn’t have a lump on his foot–but he was just standing there, and his foot li-i-ifts up. I don’t know why he does it, maybe he’s staring off into space! Heehee.

An older chicken that I named Percher, just started lazing around the perches all day, so I started giving her food up there, and then every day, she would wake up, and wait for me to come, and give her some feed out of my hand! But, waah, until butchering came and she got butchered.

That chicken that’s standing on the bin loves to eat out of my hand, and there’s another one too that loves to eat out of my hand, but she’s not in that picture.

Percher thought she was the queen because she always pecked out of my hand, and she pecked any other chicken that came close to eat out of my hand. And I was like, “Percher….can’t you at least share?” But I still loved her. Percher was my favorite of the older chickens.

The night before butchering, I went up to the chickens, and told them (even though they don’t know human language…) I told them, “Tomorrow, some of you are going to get butchered.” And how they understood me–two of them escaped when it came butchering time! And matter of fact, one of them I named Bossy and the other one of them I named Smiley. Smiley because one day I kind of saw a smile looking down at me on her face. The one I called Bossy, after butchering had passed, and the chickens started to perch, she would just peck the other chickens. And that’s all she would do. But then one day, I was going to the house because I thought someone called me, when I heard a, “Brauwk-bur! Brauwk-brauwk-brauwk!” And then I ran back up into the chicken-coop, got into the addition, and then looked up into the place where all of them sleep. And there on the feed bin, was standing Bossy! She was there, I don’t know but I think she had gotten pecked on down.

Smiley was always going over to the part of the feeder where the pullets and cockerels [young hens and roosters] were. And I kept pushing the pullets and cockerels to the other end, and she’d come to that end, and I’d push them to the other end, back and forth. And she’d peck them when she was over there.

There was a chicken that I named Wise-eye. That she always had these eyes that made me call her that. She always seemed like a good chicken, until, one night….I realized that she was pecking on the other chickens. Peck, peck! I thought I didn’t like her anymore, because she did it alllll the time. But then, hoo hoo! When butchering time came, she had to get butchered, and I was like yay! (I wasn’t yay about Percher getting butchered and I wasn’t yay about a different chicken dying, which I’m just about to talk about.) There was this chicken that my brother Caleb named Blackhead. She was a smart, good chicken that was friendly. And she always stayed near the black rooster, and she laid these brown eggs. (She wasn’t an Araucana like all the rest of them are.) And she always loved to eat out of my hand, peck-peck-peck-peck-peck. And it didn’t hurt when she pecked up the food, but the black rooster always got some of my hand, and that hurt. The black rooster always hung out with me. And the black rooster was happy, until butchering day came! His friend Blackhead had to get butchered, boo-hoo-hoo-hoo! (Teman didn’t know that she was a friendly hen.)

After Blackhead got butchered, the two younger roosters that got saved, their hen, Clueless, got nabbed by the black rooster and started being a replacement for Blackhead. Clueless the hen was always laying an egg every day, only one–in the fall, and in the winter when it was warmer in the winter, but she stopped.

There’s this rooster that we called Ooster–it’s an older rooster, that we found out something was festering on his back when we butchered him. Well, when he didn’t get picked on, I was scared of him, but I wasn’t scared of the black rooster. But since the black rooster hung out with me, I felt safe. The black rooster would chase away Ooster. And then when Ooster got picked on, he started getting picked on too much, so he went out of the fence, and one day he bristled up at me when I was bringing him some corn and started to run at me, so I ran back into the house. (Ooster was getting more and more pompous in the beginning, and then he beat the black rooster, who was the King, at cockfighting, and he decided he wasn’t King anymore and Ooster was. Evan fed the chickens late, and Ooster started getting Evan (trying to attack him). So Evan threw a rock at Ooster’s leg, and the chickens started all beating up on him. So he flew out of the fence. )

So when butchering time came, I found out why he was always being so mean, because they told me he had something festering on his back. So we didn’t turn him into meat. So I figured out why he bristled at me and ran at me, when I was trying to feed him corn.

That’s basically all of the chickens, and I’m done for today. Maybe I’ll write more about them a different day.

As the day progressed it slowly became evident what this was all about. Later on, Deirdre came into our room while I was in there, holding some sort of paper in her hands, and then stopped suddenly. “Drat!” she said with emphatic pronunciation, and exited the room. I thought either she didn’t like it that I had the radio on, with Christmas music playing–she doesn’t take much notice of it for the most part, but she hates a particular Christmas song so much it might’ve been connected with that–or she didn’t like it that I was in the room, which is the distinct impression I got. I left the room soon after. I noticed there was a pile of markers near the computer chair, as if she was stashing them there temporarily, to be used shortly.

Some time afterward, when I had come back upstairs, I noticed that the “No Boys or Grls Allowed” sign was on our door, this time with the “ulowd” corrected to “allowed”. I opened the door without really thinking, and came upon Deirdre crouched down working on some piece of paper, which she quickly tried to shield when I came in.

I went to do something on the computer in the hallway. Shortly thereafter Deirdre, on her way to the bathroom, came by and told me to “better not go rummaging around under my mattress pad”. Because, she explained, she was working on something that was “a secret from everyone.” I assured her that I certainly wouldn’t go rummaging around under her mattress pad. She gave a little sigh as if I didn’t understand, and said, “What I mean is, I’m hiding it there, and it’s a secret from everyone, so don’t go rummaging around.” I again told her I wouldn’t, but she attepted to explain a third time, telling me that it wasn’t a mattress pad on her bed–just one somewhere in the room, so don’t go rummaging around anywhere in the room.

Deirdre has been enjoying making cards for various occasions lately. She made at least 5 cards for two cousin’s birthdays recently, the number increased by the fact that due to weather conditions we didn’t go to the planned event at which they would have been given. So, instead of going and giving them, she just kept making more of them, especially for the girl cousin who is her age. She also made a “Merry Christmas” card for “Grandma and everybody” and another one for “Grandpa and everybody” which she gave to them at the Christmas party get-together at Grandma’s house. With this disclosure that it was a “secret to everyone!” (I suppose I just didn’t get it when I saw the sign) and the fact that it was Christmas tomorrow, I realized she must be making more Christmas signs or cards.

Later on in the day, when I was making supper, Dad commented to me “There’s a sign on your door that says ‘No Boys or Girls Allowed’!!”

“I know,” I said. “She’s working on something that’s ‘a secret for everyone’.”

Dad laughed. “I had to open up the door and peek and see what monster was behind it!”

“No, Dad,” I heard Deirdre’s voice piping up from the living room. “You’re a boy, so you can’t go in there.”

“I’m not a boy! I’m a dad!”

“You’re a boy, Dad, and it’s No boys or girls allowed.”

“You won’t be able to go to bed at night!”

“Yes I will be able to,” she calmly refuted.

“No, because it says no girls allowed, and you’re a girl!”

“I can go in.”

“Oh then if you get to go in and you’re a girl, I get to go in because I’m a boy!”

“Not one boy allowed. That’s that.”

“Not one girl allowed–that’s that!”

“You’re right Dad, you can go in–because I’m done working on it in there.”

“I think you’re a midget,” Dad declared, as if that explained everything.

“You better hurry up and go in there, Dad, because pretty soon it will say ‘No Dads allowed!” Deirdre called out.

“Ohh, I can’t read that word. I’d just write on it ‘No Deirdre’s allowed!’”

That is something how the coversation went–I can’t remember the entirety. Deirdre is used to and understands Dad being silly; and she always responds in a reproving manner which makes him laugh and doesn’t discourage him in the slightest. It is funny sometimes to hear her rejoinders to him.

Dad added his own list of “No”‘s to the sign, including ‘No Midgets’, ‘No Monsters’, and ‘No Ugly People–and That Means You!!!’ When I came up at bedtime, Dad’s words were scribbled out, all except for ‘No Monsters’. Beside that was written in Deirdre’s scrawl: “And No Dads. No Bad Dads. No Bad No Bad!”

The next day when we got up, Deirdre stopped by the door and started busily erasing on the sign. Thinking she was doing this because she no longer intended her words to be in effect, I asked her why she didn’t just take the sign down. “No, I’m just erasing this,” she said, and then I saw the scribbled-out patch over the words ‘No Girls’ which she was erasing. “I scribbled it out last night so you and Titi could go to bed.” Now she was un-scribbling it to make it in effect again.

The graffiti wars on the sign continued into this morning. Dad chuckled when he saw the sign and Deirdre’s addition to it. He bent over and wrote: “All handsome men allowed” and “Only _good_ dads allowed–that’s _me_!” Then he went downstairs and goaded Deirdre to see what he had written on it. She came up the stairs putting on airs of huffiness. I read it to her, (evincing laughter from Dad) in case she couldn’t read Dad’s handwriting, and she promptly began erasing it (evincing more laughter from Dad).

—
This reminds me of a different incident I wrote down in the “Gardening Journal” (which not only has gardening and weather information about each day, but since the recordings are written by me usually, often other random information about something that happened that day, continued into the next entry or written in microscopic print in the margins when I can’t fit it in the allotted space . . .) about a year ago, in January 2007–it isn’t directly related but this occurence brought it to my mind anyway.

Deirdre got it into her head that she wanted to make a “Surprise” for Dad. With my help, she wrote, “Dad, do you want a surprise? If you do, come up to the girls’ room” and taped it on the bookshelf in the living room.

“What is the surprise going to be?” I asked her.

“I don’t know.”

She was still thinking up that part. “Maybe I could buy him a camera,” she told Arlie. “I have tons of money.” (At this point in her life Deirdre was very high-reaching with her ideas of things she was going to buy Mom and Dad. She whispered to me one night how she wanted to buy Dad a new printer and a new light, and Mom a beautiful dress, among other things.) I gave her the idea of booby-trapping the door, with little stuffed animals on top. She was most agreeable to this plan (Deirdre and I are related, after all). We found some of her little stuffed animals that we could balance on top of the door. When Dad came home from grocery shopping, she tried to tell him about her surprise: “Dad, I have a surprise for you!” Dad was getting an orange and didn’t know what Deirdre was trying to tell him. “Am I looking at it?”

“Yuh-hea!” she said uncertainly.

“Deirdre, show him your piece of paper!” I reminded her.

“Oh yeah!” She dashed off to show him and came running back excitedly with Dad following (only a few miles behind But he came up gamely, with all the little kids–Owen on down–rushing after and cackling. Dad started to open the door and looked up as two of the stuffed animals, probably the little sheep, fell to the floor. “Yup, I sure am surprised!” he said. Deirdre was gleeful and laughing–all of the little kids were enjoying themselves. It probably would’ve turned into something more like today if he had been retired then, as he is now.

Today, it was a sunny day out and the chicken got out to enjoy the sunshine just like people do. The little chicken got out where the wheelbarrow was missing. (Ed: A up-turned wheelbarrow was put by a portion of the fence that is broken down to prevent escapees, but apparently it was missing.) I heard some “buk-buk-buk”ings, and some I thought were in the chicken fence, one in the out of the chicken fence. (I thought like three were in the fence and three were out of the fence.) I was looking around for the one that was out of the chicken fence, then I finally saw it in Mom’s garden. A chicken! Then I said, “Bad chicken!”

It was digging in Mom’s garden so I thought it was gonna lay some EGGS there. So I thought it was a she but then I said he after that so then it WAS a he…so…I just got jumbled up. As soon as Cadie told me that when she was outside she said “Wait it IS a he so why did you think it was laying eggs?” The chicken was on the stump that Temmy’s truck backs into, and went over near to the fence. Then as soon as Cadie got on her shoes and sweaters she went outside and chased it into the fence. Actually she didn’t really chase it in, it flew into the fence its own way. Then I shut the fence and Cadie locked it. The end, heh heh. Why’s I said ‘heh heh’ is because usually at the end of a story they don’t say “the end”, so, “heh heh”! At least most books I read.

One day, me and Owen were washing dishes and bored. And we started thinking up technology things. First, I said, “Why is there the sprayer? Why don’t you just use the faucet to rinse?” And Owen said, “The sprayer is for, is like a longer faucet” and he demonstrated for me, if a pot was on a chair next to you—because it couldn’t fit on your counter—you could use a sprayer to fill it up and soak it. And then I started thinking about an extendable faucet. Then Owen started thinking about a car with jet-packs under it, so it could fly over lakes, and there could be roads going straight into lakes. And I thought of invisible glass bridges that when you stepped on them they transported you to the other side. Now I’ll just start talking about some other inventions, because I’m losing track of which order we thought them up in.

There was also an automatic greenhouse, we called it—you just needed to set a time of day and set dials and tell the machine if you wanted some things or not. And then in would automatically, if you told it that you wanted it, give your plants some plant food and water it at a set time of time. Owen also made up a freezer, that you put something like, for example, pie filling into it, and you hear it powering up very loud, and then it conveyor-belts it out, completely frozen. I made up an oven, that cook things in 2 seconds. So you set the dial of how hot you want to cook it, and you can just put a slab of defrosted meat in without any dish, and then like I said, set it to how hot you want it to be, get your hot mitts, and then when you turn back, it’s already done cooking. If you’re not fast enough to get your hot mitts it just goes “Ding!” when it’s done. And it automatically puts dishes under it, because it has dishes stored in the back, so you have to re-fill it sometimes.

Well, there was also just one that everyone makes up, which was a jetpack that goes on yourself, so if you’re taking walks on the road, and you reach a lake that the road goes into, you can just jet-pack over it like the cars would. There was another one which was an air vent that was strong enough to blow a person like, 90 feet in the air. And then you’d put a trampoline under it, and then you’d turn it on and then it would slowly be powering up. So you’d jump on the trampoline, and the trampoline would bounce you up, and then when you were falling down the other thing wouldn’t be all the powered up so it wouldn’t be strong enough to keep you from falling down, and then you’d hit the trampoline (which was above it), and it’d blow you so you’d bounce extra high, about 100 feet up.

(Dictated to Cadie by Caleb, age 7)

I was carving something when I saw a chicken flying up on top of the gate and flying down again to the other side. Certain chickens always get out of the fence, but this one was a different one that the ones that normally get out of the fence. At first I just ignored it and went inside for a while. But when it went on for a while, I decided to get the chicken back in the fence myself.

The chicken was walking around on the patio. I started walking towards the chicken, but it saw me coming and flew up onto the gate and then down to the other side. I walked away a little bit surprised. While I was walking away, the chicken flew up onto the gate again and flew down again! The same thing happened as before. This time, when I went away, the chicken flew up onto the gate, but I picked up a stick and ran toward it and tried to beat at it with the stick! (Owen starts laughing crazily.) I really just swung at it a little bit, I didn’t beat at it with the stick. The chicken got very surprised and flew back into the chicken yard.

The same thing happened again and again. It kept doing it faster and faster, like the chicken thought it was a game or something. At this time, the chicken was back in the fence and I saw it looking up to get ready to jump again. So I banged the gate with my stick to scare it away. Then I started walking away, but the minute I took a few steps the chicken was already back up onto the gate again! It was kind of funny how the chicken kept getting out non-stop. I RAN back as FAST as I could, but the chicken was too fast for me! It flew down off the fence! I was getting kind of excited at that point and I picked up a bigger stick and started whacking wildly! The chicken started squawking a little bit and flew up onto the fence. The chicken ran off into the chickenyard and didn’t look like it was going to come back again, so I went inside.

 It was the morning, but still dark, and I was going to check if anyone was awake. And my brothers,  Evan and Collin, are the latest sleepers. My brother Owen’s bunk bed was next to my top bunk bed, so there was a crack between them both, and I could look down onto Collin on the bottom bunk. I tried to look through the crack, but I was going the wrong direction.

 It looked like there was an alarm clock on my bed that showed red, but in real life it was not on my bed but on clothes-shelves and it showed the time in green. I thought I was going back to my pillow, but really I was going toward the edge of my bed. I kept on going and I fell off my bed. Then my older brother Rundy asked me if I was all right, and I said "Yes," but I was kind of scared, but I didn’t say that.

Then  I got back up onto my bed, and everything looked like how it was in real life, and I went back to my pillow, and laid down again.

—

One day, I got up and I ate breakfast, and it is my chore to dry breakfast dishes.  And we got a call inviting us to our aunt and uncle Nate and Sharon’s to go swimming. And I started to dry dishes.  But for a little while I thought none of the people in our family who could drive would want to drive, because it was such a long way. But then I found out that Lachlan and Rundy and everyone except Teman, Dad and Mom would go. Even my younger sister Deirdre.

I went into the bathroom to change into my swimming suit. Then I got sunblock on and put my clothes on over that. And I was excited about going to Nate and Sharon’s, but I thought it would be a long way. But when we were going, it didn’t seem like a long way. 

Once we were there and in the swimming pool, and I had my swimming suit on, I got in the life jacket and I got into a floating tubes and got into the shallow end. I felt kind of scared because I couldn’t feel the bottom of the shallow end, like I could last time. Then I pushed myself down, and I could feel it with my tiptoes.

Then I got out of the pool, and took off my floating tube, and went in again. I could walk on the bottom without getting on my tiptoes! And then I started walking around. Then I get bored of that and walked out and got in my floating tube. Then I went into the deep end with my floating tube, because I couldn’t swim. So I needed a floating tube. How I got onto the deep end, is Justin got me there, by dragging me by the floating tube. He went onto the end of the shallow end and dragged me out. And I kicked my feet and started moving.

Then I  got bored of that and went out of the pool and dried off and went into the bathroom and changed back into my clothes and started having Popsicles that Sharon gave us. Then I gave some to some of my brothers and sisters, but some of them didn’t want any.  

Then I decided I wanted more, so we kept having more and more, ’cause Sharon offered us more, till I decided I was done having them.  

Then I went down in their basement to play. Their basement is like a playroom. I couldn’t play the games I wanted to, but Sharon was going to put on some cartoons for me, but then I had to go. But I did see some good cartoons.

I went out, waiting for my brothers and sisters to come out, too. And while I was waiting,  I swung on the swing sets that they had out there. It was fun but I didn’t get to do it very long.  

A little while later, I got in the car, ’cause everyone else was in there, and we started off towards home. Overall, it was a fun visit.

Dictated by Caleb (age 6)