Who Dunnit?

There are a lot of great things about having a large family, but one thing that drives me nuts is how difficult it is to figure out who dunnit.

For example, we have an intermittent toilet flusher in our home. It does not take a rocket scientist to determine who did not flush the toilet in a single-child family, but in larger families finding culprits can be a challenge. The other day I found an unflushed toilet and with minimal investigation I was able to determine the gender of the culprit. Marching into the room where the three boys were playing, I started my FBI-approved child interrogation techniques. They all denied that they had dunnit and would have implicated another brother if given the opportunity. Now it is a little harsh to say that one of my boys was lying. Whoever dunnit probably thinks that they did actually flush the toilet which is why they can so convincingly say that they are innocent and pass my internal lie detector test.

It is not just the boys, however. My mother has made for the girls bunches of these decorative hair doohickeys. Now Anna normally wears them but the other girls will sometimes use them as well. I guess the idea is that you need lots and lots of them in every shade of every color so that you can find the perfect one to match your outfit. Pretty crazy, I know.

Anyway, they were getting lost. CrazyMom would go to get Anna dressed in the morning and not be able to find the perfect matching doohickey. The obvious culprits are the older girls, but of course, they all insist that they always put them back in Anna’s room.

Stuff like this – someone not doing what they are suppose to do and you not knowing who it is – can get under your skin. I am supposed to be parenting my kids and training them to be responsible but I can’t figure out which kid needs trained. The dangerous thing is that I can start having negative feelings about suspected culprits. I mean, come on. We all know who is not flushing the toilets. And the hair doohickeys, well I will give you a hint – Miss Bookwork never wears any frilly things in her hair.

But in America it is innocent until proven guilty and I need to learn to do the same in my own home. The disappearing hair doohickey situation is a good reminder. We finally found the culprit; it was Patches, our cat.


Here is a photo of Miss Bookworm with Patches after she happened upon Patches’ secret stash of hair doohickeys under the couch.

Ahhh. . . Summer

Today is the first official day of summer break for me. While I am not willing to admit that I am a workaholic (for the obvious reason that I am not a workaholic), I did spend the day at school getting started on some school related projects. But this evening had an entirely different feel to it without the weight of an impending school day bearing down on me. CrazyMom and I went on a walk with our three youngest kids down to the creek to catch a crawdad. (We only took our youngest three because our oldest four kids took off for camp this morning.) It was a beautiful, carefree moment that captured the essence of summer for me.

Little Foot is looking for crawdads.

K.D. and Little Foot are disappearing down the creek bed following a couple of ducks.

CrazyMom is showing the crawdad we caught as it hangs from a stick.


Little Miss Anna is disappearing down the path.

Sunday Evening Offertory

Miss Bookworm played the violin for the Sunday evening offertory tonight with CrazyMom accompanying on the piano.

What a Beautiful Day

Mother's Day

Notice CrazyMom curled up in a comfy chair with a book in one hand and a coffee mug in the other. This is what Mother's Day is all about. Unfortunately, it only lasted for about five minutes. After church, lunch, an adult soccer game and an appropriate extended recovery time for CrazyMom and I after the game, there just was not much time to sit around reading. But a few moments is better than none at all. . .

After CrazyMom's five minutes were up, we interrupted her and had our traditional gift giving event. Here are some photos (with commentary, of course).


Buddy handmade a special notepad with appropriate pages (like "To Do" and "Grocery List") as well as other craft items.


Here CrazyMom is laughing over the fill-in-the-blank answers that Little Foot put in his card. You can read them for yourself below.


Now those are interesting responses. I should clarify that when I asked Little Foot about what he meant by "Mom doesn't have something on" he said, "You know, when she does not have stuff on" as he pointed to his face. Turns out that he does not like the makeup look. Also I should clarify the "be in private with her husband" refers to when CrazyMom and I retreat to my office and kick everybody out. It is the only way we can talk to each other during the day.




K.D. with his homemade card.


F.G. with her homemade card.



Ed presenting one of her annual Mother's Day gifts which is . . .


a picture block with a photo of her giving the picture block to mom last year in which there is a picture of her giving mom the photo block the year before.


Big girl Anna with her hand drawn card.


Miss Bookworm with an original Mother's Day poem on a card.


CrazyMom feigning a pleasantly surprised look with the book I got her from her "Books I Want" list. (Mary over at Owlhaven wrote the book A Sane Woman's Guide to Raising a Large Family).


Us together.

But He was Brown

Anna is a particularly social child who loves everybody, especially older boys and men. Often when another dad shows up at our house, she acts like she has seen him before in Ethiopia. We have worked with her on this trying to get her to understand how unlikely her statement is.

Well, last night we had a family over for dinner. When we gathered the troops for dinner, Anna went up to the other dad and said, "I used to know someone just like you in Ethiopia . . . but he was brown."

Breakfast Chatter

When I came down this morning, there were already four kids at the breakfast table. As I started collecting my breakfast in the kitchen, I heard the chatter that was going on.

“Well I am going to have two kids and adopt two kids . . . from Africa,” F.G. was saying.

“Yeah? Well I am going to have seven kids and adopt fourteen kids,” Buddy said showing both his affinity for prime numbers and their non-prime multiples.

The one-upmanship went on for a few minutes until Buddy was claiming that he was going to have 150 kids. Deciding to be realistic for a moment, Buddy said, “Well, I don’t think that is actually possible.”

EM Bucks

When I was filling Easter baskets on Saturday night, CrazyMom had some “EM Bucks” from Ed and Miss Bookworm to put in each basket. I was aware that these things existed and knew a little bit about the program, but I decided to sit Ed down and interview her about the EM Bucks to find out more. Here is what she said.

What are EM Bucks?

If Miss Bookworm or I see somebody doing something kind, then we write down what they did on an EM Buck and then put it under their pillow. Then they will find it when they go to bed or when they get up. They can use these EM bucks to buy things at our store. Oh yeah, we also give out EM Bucks when someone reaches a goal they have.

What does EM stand for?

E is for Ed, and the M is for Miss Bookworm.

Where did the idea of EM bucks come from?

I had a dream that I had a store that I ran that everybody loved. I decided to include Miss Bookworm to help me with the store since she probably would not be interested in buying any of the stuff anyway.

What types of kind things have you found people doing?

The other day I was joking with F.G. and asked her to move all of the chairs so I could sweep the floor. She actually did it even though it was my chore and so I gave her a buck. When we were dying Easter eggs, LittleFoot dropped and broke his last egg and was sad. F.G. gave him her last egg to make him happy. One time K.D. pulled out a chair for a friend’s mom that was visiting. The other day Anna and LittleFoot had to set the table and Anna said she would do it all so LittleFoot could go and play. Also, at Easter we put a buck in everybody’s basket to help celebrate. One time Buddy saw the milk was empty and so he went down to get more milk from the downstairs fridge without anybody asking him to. Buddy also reached his goal of getting to level 3 in his Mad Minutes at school and he got a buck for that. Then there was the time that Mom had some old leftover Girl Scout cookies and homemade chocolate chip cookies. LittleFoot let someone else have the homemade cookies and he ate the old Girl Scout cookies. Also, Anna would get up in the morning and spend an hour eating breakfast. Mom is always telling her to hurry up and one day she ate in 20 mins and then went and made her bed.

What type of things do you have for sale?

We have a Bop-It for $17 EM Bucks. We also have a whole bucket of 1 EM Buck items with bracelets, McDonald’s toys, or cereal box toys. There is a package of beads that sells for 4 EM Bucks and seven mini smell pens at 1 buck each. There are some other things as well.

How often is the store open?

It is not set. If we know that we have been handing out bucks and people have several bucks, then we will open the store. But we make sure everybody has three or four bucks so nobody is left out. Anna gets to go first since she takes so long.

How have the other kids responded to this program?

When we first told them they were all excited and wanted to know what was in the store, which we did not tell them. Whenever F.G. gets a buck she always says, “Hey Miss Bookworm and Ed, look! I got a buck!” When we had the first store and I was helping Anna spend her 3 or 4 bucks, Miss Bookworm had to hold the other kids back until she was done. Then they spent a half hour looking over everything in the store and trying to decide what to buy. They also like to share with everyone else the bucks they get and what they did to get them.

Do you think this program has had an impact on the behaviors in our home?

Umm, well, I wasn’t really paying attention to what nice things people were doing before, but now I notice it more. I sometimes see people doing nice things when I am around to try to get a buck.

How long do you think you will continue to do hand out bucks?

I have no idea. Probably until either Miss Bookworm and I have to go to school and so we aren’t around to see what is going on as much or if the younger kids get too old and don’t want what is in the store anymore.

Thank you Ed for taking the time to share about the EM Buck program.

Easter Morning

Easter Eggs

Here are some shots from this afternoon as we decorated Easter eggs.