1. What is my favorite Animal?

A. Baby chick

B. Rabbit

C. Kangaroo

D. Tiger

2. What is my favorite color?

A. Red

B. Blue

C. Yellow

D. Orange

3. What is my favorite Dessert?

A.  Apple pie

B.  Chocolate Cream Pie

C.  Chocolate  Cheesecake

D.  Black forest cake

4. Who is probably my favorite character in me and Calebs made-up-game, “the little kids adventure”?

A.  Me!

B.  Spacebee

C.  Lardy-Buck

D.  The Rabbity Sand dune-a-tist

5. If I could get ant present I wanted for my birthday what would it be?

A.  A play metal sword  that was made out of pipe so that you couldn’t hurt people as easy.

B.  A Longshot-CS6 Nerf Dart gun (if that was what it was called.)

C.  A smart One of those Big white dogs.

D.  My own Bee-Bee gun

Answers

1.  C . Kangaroo

2. D. Orange

3. C. Chocolate Cheesecake

4.  B. SpaceBee (Gleeglen warrior. If you don’t what that is, ask me.(or don’t))

5. A. A play metal sword  that was made out of pipe

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.

. . . Justin and Owen made snow boulders!

Owen is usually the first of the little kids to go outside. He is what I call the “Great-Day Heralder”, because he’s always on the lookout for Great Days and proclaims them with much enthusiasm. On such a day, he’ll say as he washes breakfast dishes, “Boy it looks like a great day out there, I’m gonna try to finish these dishes extra fast so I can go out there.” After he finishes dishes he usually goes out for a little bit to see how it is out there. He comes back in exclaiming, “GREAT day out there! It’s a great day out there! Man, it’s such a GREAT day out there, Hammie [Caleb] want to come out with me after I’m done with my homeschooling?” Caleb usually makes a non-committal noise like “Mmmm…” Owen usually has to badger him about it to get him to come out, but once he does they both have a great time out there.

On this particular day–New Year’s day–Justin was the one who came out with Owen, though Caleb came out a little later. Owen was going out to try out the snow. As he was getting ready to walk out, Justin said to him, “Tell me if it’s good for making a snowman.” Owen came back in a little later, saying, “Justin it’s GREAT for making a snowman, if you want to come out.” Justin stayed at the computer without making any response, and Owen was a little impatient. He came into the dining room and said, “Well Justin, ARE you going to come out? Oh yeah I forgot, just because I said you could doesn’t mean you’re going to.” Of course, Justin was the one who said to tell him if the snow was good for making snowmen, and he did come out.

When I looked out the door window a while later, Justin and Owen were together rolling up a huge snowball on the front lawn. Justin has done this before–he’s not much of a one to moderate. If the snow’s good for rolling up snow, he’s not just going to roll up some medium-sized ball. He’s going to roll up a HUGE ball because–why stop rolling? The snow was wet enough that it rolled right up like a blanket, as you can see.

But then comes the invariable trouble of not being able to push it any further when it gets really big. Justin and Owen hadn’t pushed it very far around the lawn before they were struggling to roll it. Part of the problem is not having good traction. When it gets big enough, you have to put more heft lower down on it to get it to roll over. But when you put your hands down low at the angle you need to be at, it’s harder to get traction. In the picture below, they were trying to push it sideways–not downhill as it had been going–which also makes it more difficult. The snow smooths out in the way it’s being rolled, and to get it going another direction you need to use more force. I came over to help them, but with no success.

So they had to leave it there how it was. They did roll up another ball and put it on top for the middle section of the snowman, but they never gave it a head. (By the way, the snow ball in the first picture is the same one as in the second two pictures, although it looks a lot bigger in the first!)

When I looked out the upstairs hall window later on, I saw both of them, small in the distance, trodding up the hill. I assumed they were going to go sledding. We always go sledding on that hill, and there is hardly a day with snow suitable for sledding that Owen doesn’t go up and take advantage of it–especially if Caleb or Justin is out there with him. But I noticed they had no sled with them, and as I continued to watch, Justin started to roll up another ball. It started out very small. . .

And got bigger…

And bigger…

And BIGGER . . .

. . . till it was a Snow Boulder. And then they got ready to roll it!

The Snow Boulder began rolling down the hill, as they ran after it . . .

. . . only to crumble apart at the bottom.

Oh well!

They went over to “Strawberry Hill” (there used to be an especially lot of wild strawberries there in the summer) to make a Snow Boulder over there. The hill they are on is part of the same hill they were on before, but lower down and on the north side (left when you are facing up toward the woods). The line of bare trees you see is the edge of our property.

Here’s Justin, setting to work rolling it up.

But as you can see, this one fell apart as well.

“Let’s do one over there next,” Justin said (I can’t remember exactly what he was saying, but it was something to that effect), looking across to the other side of the hill. They used to be to the left of the path, towards our neighbors L; they walked over to the right of the path, towards our neighbors W on the other side, near where the gardens are in the summer. Here is Justin rolling up Snow Boulder number #4:

Once it got big, it was awkward to move again. But it was only downhill, after all, so they managed it.

They tried to make the Snow Boulder a little more smooth and round. Then Justin pushed it into the (empty) pond, which it was now directly across from.

After a brief moment of repose on the ruins of the No-Longer Snow Boulder, they got back to business.

Justin was feeling hot, so he took off his coat. The sun was coming out from behind the clouds, too, as you might be able to tell from the way the snow looks.

Then he started to roll up the fifth Snow Boulder.

See how fast it gets so big?

It’s heading toward the apple tree (that is, the apple tree that is several yards to the right of the small apple tree sapling you can see in the far right of the photo–out of the picture).

These pictures are so you can see the layers of snow it rolls up into, especially when you keep rolling it the same direction, which I think Justin did with this one–he may have rolled it more diagonally as it went along, but he didn’t roll it back and forth like with the other ones.

Here Caleb sits atop the apple tree branch that the snow boulder ended up under.

Meanwhile, the clouds were breaking apart and moving around quite rapidly. (Justin and Owen were too preoccupied with what they were doing to notice the drama in the sky, but it distracted me for several moments.)

While I was standing there by the apple tree taking pictures of Caleb and the clouds, Justin and Owen walked back up the pathway they created . . .

. . . and soon rolled another Snow Boulder down.

There goes Snow Boulder #6!

This is what the sky looked like then.

Snow Boulder #6 found its resting spot at the edge of where the barn used to be.

Justin and Owen were staring off to the hill opposite our house, across the road. They were joking about rolling snow boulders down there, and that’s what they’re laughing about here.

But of course they couldn’t make them on the hill across the road. “I know, let’s go make them in the Secret Garden and the woods,” Justin said. (The Secret Garden, as we misleadingly call it, is an area of trees with a path leading up to the woods.) They all went trodding off along the Secret Garden path, on to make more and more Snow Boulders in the regions beyond. But I was getting tired of taking pictures, and needed to be doing something else, so after a parting shot of them walking away and one last picture of the breaking-apart-to-blue-sky clouds (as well as a short movie to show how fast the clouds were moving–I wish I could post that), I went inside.

I asked them later if they ever did wind up making Snow Boulders in the woods. (At that point I didn’t remember for sure whether they had planned on doing it in the woods or just the Secret Garden.) “Oh yes, we made tons in the woods,” was their reply. Titi then interjected to describe how it was almost surreal taking a walk in the woods–there were Snow Boulders all over the place, popping up around every corner, she said, as if some giants had been having a snowball fight!

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.

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) 

Deirdre is the only one who still has all her baby teeth!

The first batch of baby chicks has arrived!!

They will quickly turn into meat chickens for the freezer, but right now they’re fluffly little balls that scurry around.

Dad and Teman are taking a week off!!

Since both of them are home all week, it’s easy to confuse one’s self into thinking it’s the weekend. Teman just finished two weeks of working over-time, so he’s particularly glad to get his time off.

Lachlan survived his presentation for his computer repair class!!

He wasn’t looking foward to it, and was very happy when it was over. He was surprised at how well it went over with the class. (His topic was PNG as the superior file format for photo hobbiests.)

Frost predicted for tonight!!

 I usually predict our last frost as coming in the first week of June, but this may well be our last frost of the winter. I do have cold weather plant already in the ground and growing (peas, lettuce, spinach), as well as a bunch more waiting to go in (lots of broccoli and leeks). Meanwhile, the light stand is all ready full to over flowing with tomatoes, basil, and other tender plants.

Monday: Caleb (age 6) makes macaroni and cheese, from scratch. He needs only a little help from me.

Tuesday: Cadie made Chicken and Spaghetti for supper last night. I boil another three pounds of spaghetti for lunch, and stretch last nights sauce–slice up 4 onions, cook them in hot olive oil and a lot of pepper, put in the rest of last nights sauce, thin it out with a can of chopped tomatoes with roasted red peppers (Dad gets them from Giant) and a 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes, add a little more oregano and rosemary, chop up the remaining chicken and toss that in too. It was good.

Wednesday: I talk Justin into making tuna salad. We eat sandwiches on homemade bread fresh from the oven. (I made the dough Tuesday night, let it rise all night, put it into loaves first thing in the morning, and bake it shortly thereafter.)

Thursday: Collin made Cornflake Chicken and Mashed potatoes for supper last night. I stretch it into Chicken Gravy on Potatoes–I talk Owen, Caleb and Deirdre into peeling another 4 lbs. of potatoes. I boil them, and mash them into the leftover potatoes (with more butter and milk). The gravy is made by chopping up several cloves of garlic (5?), cooking them in a stick of melted butter, adding a fairly heaping 2/3 cup of flour, and cooking until the flour is browned. Then I added a can of condensed milk, two cans of concentrated chicken broth (Campbell’s), two cans of water, and a little rosemary. I chopped the remaining chicken into the gravy. Caleb also helped by stirring the gravy while I chopped chicken.

Friday: What I call a "coyote" day. We scrounge. Some have sandwiches, some have leftovers. Some don’t eat. First come, first served, and some people don’t wind up very satisfied.

Saturday: Oops! I accidentally defrosted too much ground beef when making supper last night. (I didn’t see that Mom and already pulled out two pounds for me, so I pulled out another two pounds.) Since the meat was already defrosted, we couldn’t put it back in the freezer. Evan (12) makes spaghetti and meat sauce (his specialty).

Sunday: Leftovers. A bunch of kids make themselves spaghetti pancake with the leftover spaghetti from last night. Some of us eat the leftover Sausage and Rice casserole from last night.

When I mention the types of things we make for lunch, the most common response is, "Oh, I’d use that as a supper!" Well, what would you do for lunch? 11 people aren’t going to consist off of thin air from breakfast till supper, and especially not when 7 of those 11 are either boys growing at a frightful rate or grown men. Justin (10, almost 11) and Owen (9) in particular seem to be on growth spurts of sorts. I think they’re trying to get taller than me before my next birthday, or something. They’re making good head-way.

For Deirdre’s birthday, we made ravioli. Well, we boiled store-bought ravioli. 12 pounds of it. Even while using our three-gallon pot and our 5 gallon pot, we didn’t have enough pots to boil it all at once. So Evan and I put our spaghetti strainer into our big bread bowl, and we poured the ravioli into that. Then we pulled the strainer out and dumped the ravioli into serving bowls and the hot water back into the pot for another batch. It was kind of a project. In the end, we didn’t have much in the way of leftovers, either.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to cook for only two people, or even just four. I imagine it would take a lot less time. Ever since I began cooking, it has always been for a crowd. Sometimes, I’ve cooked for other (smaller) families, when I know they’re having a tough time. I get a little panicky when I see how little food there is, certain there won’t be enough to feed everyone. More often than not, I get back a response that there was tons of food, and that they had plenty of leftovers. How peculiar.

Boys don’t like haircuts or picture takings.

One of my many tasks around here is that of the town Barber. Once upon a time, a long time ago, Grandma Purdy used to cut the boys’ hair. Between her declining health, and the ever increasing amount of boys (and their hair), she was forced to drop the task, and I was nominated to fill it. The first couple of times were difficult–meaning, time consuming; I don’t believe the boys wound up looking any more dreadful than they usually do–but it took me a long time to do each hair cut. Nowadays, I think my average time for a haircut is about 7 minutes. Still, 7 minutes x 9 boys = 63 minutes, and that’s more than an hour, not even counting the time it takes to play musical chairs and/or drag people kicking and screaming to their fate.

I generally cut everyone’s hair at the same time, or as close to that as possible (sometimes peoples’ schedules make it inconvenient or impossible to get everyone lined up), and do it about once a month or whenever I feel guilty noticing the shaggy heads about me. Last Tuesday was such an occasion, so everyone got scalped.

Although the general theory of my haircutting remains the same, everyone has their own quirks, like this:

 Dad, alas, is getting older. The main trick to cutting his hair is not cutting off too much of it. It shouldn’t hang into his eyes or ears (not that he cares, mind you), but it also shouldn’t reveal the fact that his hairline is, indeed, receding (which I think he might mind, at least a bit).

 Teman has very thick hair, which is prone to making the hair clippers choke. He has a mostly straight-forward haircut; the trickiest part is trimming his beard to match. He, as all of the boys, would love to grow a waist-length beard (and they tell me if they ever manage it, they will let me fork it and braid it). Sadly, his only grows so long, and then breaks off. Mostly it just gets bushier and bushier, to the end that when I cut all the hair on top of his head, he looks completely lopsided. I wouldn’t care if he didn’t care, but he’s decided they ought to stay rather proportionate. The tricky part is that, like all the boys, he twizzles his beard when he thinks, and he thinks quite a bit. That leaves a rather twisted, ratty mess which I’m supposed to straighten out and make match the rest of his head. I’m getting better at it every time, I think, but it’s still a bit tricky.

 Rundy’s quirk is that he has what I believe is called "widow’s peaks"–although the front of his hairline comes out as far as expected, it dips back quite far on the sides. This makes trimming the front a bit trickier for me. He doesn’t have a beard enough to ever warrant trimming (he tortures it so while thinking and writing, he shall be lucky if the poor thing even survives). Rundy likes efficiency, and a bit shorter of a haircut than some of the others. He keeps wondering if it would be better to use the cheap plastic guides that come with the clippers. I’ve never tried, and I confess to say I don’t see much reason to bother trying when I’m already quick and comfortable with my comb and clipper routine.

Arlie, of course, has curly hair, and that really used to put me in knots. I think I’ve got it down pat now, but sometimes it still looks odd to me. He was the first one to ask for beard trimming, mostly because he didn’t much care for his spotty, fluffy beard, and preferred that, if the whole thing wasn’t going to fill in properly, it be close trimmed. My only real claim to fame here is that, even though he’s currently living with Grandma Purdy, he still prefers my haircuts to hers. So I must be doing something right.

 Lachlan’s hair stands straight up on top. It’s very peculiar. No amount of combing or water could ever get it to lie flat, and no amount of water or styling is necessary to get it to stand up. I cut the sides and back as normal, but when I cut the top I always feel more as though I’m trimming a hedge than cutting hair. After I cut the top, I peer at it to see if I’ve managed to get to, at the very least, a close approximation of a regular shape. It never fails that every time I’m standing there scrutinizing my work he says something along the lines of "Face it, Titi, you just can’t make me any better looking than I already am," or some variation thereof.

 Collin’s hair is very easy to cut, except for the fact it is the thickest, the most wiry hair in the universe. It makes the hair trimmers want to cry. Cutting a brillo pad would probably be easier.

 Evan’s hair grows faster than the grass. Especially during the summer. I can hack it all off down to a scant 1/4 of an inch, and by the time he gets up the next morning, he’s verging on an afro again. I cut his hair the shortest of anyone’s, but you can hardly ever tell.

 Justin’s hair is pretty easy to cut, but he has a very annoying cowlick on the right side of his forehead, so his bangs are always crooked, despite my best efforts.

 Owen is the most worried about how his hair will come out, hence, the most fun to cut. I can always get a good reaction out of him just by saying, "Oops" or "Oh, well, hopefully no one will notice." He has the softest hair, and it seems he has widows peaks like Rundy. His hair used be quite blond, but it is getting more brown by the year.

 Caleb has nice, cooperative hair; the rest of him has a bit more trouble. He says the hairclippers tickle terribly when I trim the hair on his neck, and I used to have to get Lachlan to pry Caleb’s head up out of his shoulders (he’d pull his head in like a turtle) just to get at his neck. He’s much better now; he only shivers convulsively and giggles like crazy.

 Anyway, this Tuesday while cutting Evan’s hair, I realized that his hair was standing up. Not all over the top of his head, as Lachlan’s does. Just one strip down the center of his head, much like a mohawk, or a rooster comb. I told Evan I was going to cut off all his hair except for that one strip. He said "Ok. Go ahead." (He likes playing with fire.)

Unfortunately, when we ran this idea past Mom, she wasn’t too thrilled.

 "Hey, Mom, I’m going to give Evan a mohawk!" Silence.

 "She said no!" Evan laughs.

 "She did not! She didn’t say anything!"

"She made a face!" Evan is still laughing. Apparently, he could see her face and it was amusing; but my back was to her as I cut his hair. I took a peek to see if it really was that amusing.

 "I don’t want any of my children to have mohawks," she said.

Bummer. So I just cut the sides and back as usual, and then took a picture of him with his chicken comb. This was less appreciated than the threat of a mohawk. He scowled; he made faces. This amused me endlessly, and I giggled at him from behind the camera. Then he would grin, and then shortly there after get mad at me, because he most certainly did not want to get caught on film (digital or otherwise) with a smile on his face, for pete’s sake. Nonetheless, I got my pictures, and finished the hair cut. (And I did manage to get him on film with a smile, too.)

Next I was cutting Caleb’s hair, and out of the blue he asked if I could give him a chicken comb as well. This took me by surprise, but I suppose it’s the same as making horns out of hair when you’re getting your hair shampooed. (Alas, I haven’t been able to do that for a very long time as it only works on short hair.) I was game to give it a try, but his hair wasn’t as much. His hair isn’t inclined to stand up as much as Evan’s, but Caleb had had the good luck of sleeping funny on his hair that night, and it did stand up funny a bit in the back. But it still needed a good deal of coaxing from the water and comb. He was tickled pink, and apparently drove the others to jealousy. Justin wished he hadn’t already had his hair cut, so he could have had one, but I nipped that in the bud. Justin’s hair lies totally flat; in fact, his hair clings to his head with both hands. I’d have better luck getting him to fly than to get his hair stand straight up.

 So next time you come through Purdyville, be sure to ask for a hair-cut. I may even be able to make you look like a chicken!