Help Me Save The Rainforest! (A post by Katie)

Every month I have to do a "Helping Our World" project where I have to do something that has a positive effect on our world. So, I've decided to put up my BCR (brief constructed response) I made back November about how we should save the rain forest. This was not hard at all, so don't worry:

"It is EXTREMELY important to save the rain forest. The tropical rain forest used to cover 14% of the earth's surface. Now, it only covers 6%! Over half of the rain forest has been destroyed! This is NOT good. More than 20% of the world's oxygen comes from the rain forest. We need oxygen to survive, so we need the rain forest. 137 plants, animal, and insect species are lost every day (update: that's 50,005 per year)! We should not kill all these plants, animals, and insects in ONE DAY, every day! There are 3,000 known plants that help treat cancer. 70% of these are found in the rain forest (update: that's 2,100/3,000 plants).Cancer is terrible, and we need these plants to fight it! 1 1/2 acres of the rain forest are destroyed EVERY SECOND (update-that's 200,000 acres everyday, and 780 miles every year)! We use many items from the tropical rain forest on a daily basis, such as banana,coffee beans,cocoa beans,rubber, alkaloids, digitalis, spices, etc. We need these things, as they are a part of our lives. If we destroy the rain forest, we will lose many things that are important in our lives."

 

Interesting start to the week

Yesterday morning was not particularly rough or chaotic.  Mondays always stink, of course, and the girls were a little lethargic but otherwise it was a pretty standard morning.  I decided, sort of last minute, to add a decorative white chocolate swirl to the cookies Beth was taking in to school for her birthday, so I was a little behind on dressing Ruth, Lucy and myself, but that often happens for various reasons anyway.

When it came time to wait for the bus, I sat in the van with the door open, feeding Ruth a banana while Lucy played in the back seat.  Ruth was just wearing a t-shirt and diaper and Lucy was sporting a very old nightgown that is at least 3 sizes too big for her.  I was wearing my pjs as well, an old pair of pants littered with swiss cheese holes and a flimsy t-shirt with a collar that has been pulled down too many times to be public-appropriate but again - we were just sitting in the car, waiting for the bus.

When the bus finally came, it bombed by the house as if we'd never existed.  Beth, Claire and Abbie all immediately began to yell in panic, and then we heard the unmistakable sound of the bus coming to a sudden halt down the road.  I jumped out of the car and yelled, "Don't run out in the road!  Wait, wait!" to the girls, but they were all flailing and yelling themselves and they didn't hear me.  Before I could reach them (they were halfway down the driveway) they started to run - down the busy highway- towards the bus.

I charged after them, with Ruth dangling like a football in one arm and a banana in the other, trying to will the cars on the road to stop (why weren't the cars stopping?) with my mind.  The girls rounded the corner of our neighbors yard, still flailing and hopping around like puppies, and I yelled to them "Stay in the grass!  STAY IN THE GRASS!"

As I was rounding the corner myself, I heard a shriek of terror coming from our yard.  Poor Lucy didn't understand what was happening; all she knew was that we were sitting in the car one moment, running wild and screaming the next.  I looked around my neighbor's hedge to see Lucy, looking exactly like Newt from Aliens,

crying in terror and running directly for the road, where she must have assumed we'd gone.  "No, Lucy, stop, STOP!" I started to yell, torn between guiding the older girls along the road towards the bus (which, to be clear, was nowhere near our house) and turning back to bodily stop Lucy's panic-stricken progress towards the road.  In the end, realizing that traffic had finally, finally stopped for the bus, I shouted a last instruction to the older girls and then turned back to Lucy, who ran to my side, shaky and teary.  The older girls made it onto the bus without further incident, and as the bus door hissed shut and I breathed a sigh of relief it finally dawned on me what sort of picture we presented to the many, many cars who were now stopped on the road, giving them ample opportunity to take in the sight.

With as much dignity as I could, I got a firm grip on my banana, pulled Ruth's shirt down to cover her belly, put my arm around my little wild-child and, hoping against hope that the holes in my pants were not where I thought they were, turned my back to the gaping onlookers and returned home.

Magic Daddy

I've just hurt my leg exercising, so while I sit at the computer holding a squirmy baby and icing my calf I might as well put up a story on here that I've been meaning to tell.

On Good Friday, we were all in the car on the way to see Katie in our parish's Passion Play.  Lucy was in a talkative mode, so Chris was egging her on by asking her various random questions.

"Do you know what I do when I'm at work?" he asked her.

This has proven to be a nebulous concept for the girls over the years.  When Katie was in kindergarten she told her teacher that Chris was "kind of a nurse."  The other girls tend to just shrug and say, "he helps doctors somehow."

Lucy, however, did not hesitate.  In her decisive and prompt way she immediately answered, "You bring people back alive."

When people ask me if it bothers Chris that he doesn't have any sons, I always just shake my head.  They totally don't get it.  He may not have someone to arm wrestle, but he has six little girls who adore the ground he walks on.  He is absolutely and without rival their hero.

I mean, when I say they believe he can raise the dead, I am saying that quite literally.

Sometimes I worry that we are bad parents...

Abbie insisted today on wearing her hair in a side ponytail, "like the girl in Napoleon Dynamite."

As she checked out my handiwork in the mirror, she said, "No other girl in my class has thought about doing this!  I'm going to be the first."

Yes, I thought.  I have no doubt that you will be the first... in kindergarten.   

You know what, though?  She looked really cute.

This isn't the clearest picture but it's the only one I took.

Yee-Haw!

The Girl Scouts had their Daddy (and Granddaddy)-daughter dance today, and the Mlineks rocked it.

(Miss Lucy insisted on jumping into the picture and bringing the crazy, as she so often does.)

 While the cow-folk were doing the "Tush-Push" (I am not even making that up!), Ruth was sitting around at home, being happy for no reason at all:

A good day all around!