Purdyville

Here’s the little red riding hood story for boys. The  other original boring, sappy-go-lucky, and silly is for girls and little kids. Anyway, Once upon a time there was a wolf and his mom. His mom told him to catch a delicious little human girl because his granny got shot in the leg and couldn’t hunt anymore. So the wolf set out to find the little girl. he was walking along a path when he heard footsteps. So he dug a hole, jumped in, and buried himself. When the footsteps where right above him, he burst through the dirt and knocked over the little yellow riding hood (for thats who it was.) “Oh, hello mister wolf,” it said. “My granny is sick in bed will you pick flowers with me?” The wolf, deciding that little yellow riding hood had cooties, scampered up the nearest tree. Then he called up pest control, put on a gas mask and threw a net over little yellow riding hood. Later, the pest control showed up and sprayed cootie disinfectant all over  little yellow riding hood, who shriveled up like a prune. The end

The moral to this story is NEVER READ STUPID STORIES LIKE THIS. Bye.

How I got my inspiration for my tree fort was all because one day I was sitting around, thinking it would be nice if I could swing on some nice and new swing, not the old and rusty one we have. So then I thought it would be a nice idea if I made a tire swing, so Caleb and I set one up on the apple tree with bailing twine. When Justin called me in to dry, I told him and Evan what I was going to do. But Justin said, “that will get in the way of tree climbing you know.” And Evan said, “besides that is our favorite place to swing down.” This hadn’t occurred to me at the time and I wondered what to do. Read more »

By Deirdre

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.

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That’s the words we saw on a piece of paper on the dining room table, Justin and I. Except it was spelled “NO BOYS OR GRLS ULOWD”, in Deirdre’s handwriting. “What’s that say?” Justin asked. I read it aloud, adding “I have no idea what she did it for, though.”

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. Read more »

Dad has been working in the garden just about every day. After all the initial roto-tilling was done, he made raised beds and planted carrots, beets, swisschard, and lettuce and spinach also (I think; I can’t remember for sure). The majority of the time, however, he’s been digging a sort of “trench” all around the garden. It makes an edging of hard, packed down dirt all around the garden. When I asked him if it was to help with drainage, he said no, it was to keep out the weeds. He said it would also act to carry away excess water when needed, but its primary purpose was to create a wall of packed down dirt around the garden to keep the weeds from creeping in. Yesterday he planted tons of potatoes, and today he planted leeks and was making a bed for squash. Read more »

Instead of sledding . . .

. . . 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.

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The chickens always get out. Sometimes, in the winter time, when there’s patches of grass that there’s not any
snow in, the chickens get out, and sometimes in the springtime and summer and fall they get out, but the ducks get out near winter time under the apple tree to eat fresh grass. (Also OF COURSE they don’t get out when the grass is all covered with snow.)

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.

[Ed: This is something I helped Caleb write a while ago, but we didn't post because Caleb wanted to leave it unfinished so that we could add more inventions to it if he thought of more. But since he hasn't been thinking of anymore we agreed to post it now.]

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)

(Dictated to Cadie)

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.

My feet are soaked. I just got back from picking strawberries at a local U-Pick place. We (Rundy, me, Justin, and Owen) picked about 80 pounds today.Yesterday Rundy and I picked about 40 pounds. So I’m going to be busy making jam and freezing strawberries this afternoon! Hopefully I’ll get help washing and hulling.

The garden is finally all in. Rundy planted corn, squash and cucumbers. I put in tomatoes, pototatoes broccolli, lettuce, spinach, leeks, basil, parsley, organo, carrots, and peas (though some of the younger boys helped me with the peas, and Teman helped with the potatoes). The potatoes are starting to bloom which means the new potatoes are almost ready. The tomatoes are all blooming, and some varieties even have small green tomatoes (I planted 6 different varieties). The peas are almost ready for picking, and we have been eating salad quite regularly from the garden. I started a new garden for the herbs, closer to the house, by Rundy’s cherry tree.

We don’t usually make a big deal out of graduations around here. But it was my night to cook when Lachlan finished his computer repair course, so I decided to make it a celebration. We had marinated chicken, fresh baked bread, and a chocolate trifle for desert. Oh, and it was also Lachlan’s night wash dishes, so he got to clean up the whole mess.

 Like I said, we don’t make a big deal out of graduations.