Real February Life

 We had some fun, fun family things happening in February, so I think we'll need a little post to gather all the regular stuff that happened between the fun.  Unassociated things, as it were.  

I think a duck update first.  Drew allows the ducks to wander along the north retaining wall.  Sometimes they fall off.  One of the ladies fell and pithed herself (I thought "to pith" just meant to get stabbed, but I looked it up and it seems it is relegated solely to the severing of a spinal cord or a stab in the brain, so I will redact my statement and I will try again).  One of the ladies fell and punctured herself on something sharp and Drew had to spend several days going out there and wrastling her down so he could put antibiotic ointment on it until it healed up.  Just look at his face.  He loves his ducks.  

Here is Sidwi, who chose a more comfortable place to fall off the wall.

They are too heavy to do much "up" flying.  He had to be extracted.  He was indignant.

The raspy drakes are much more endearing than the females when they have things to say.

All the ducks are now sexually mature.  Here is a duck egg side-by-side with a chicken egg from Costco.

All the ducks are also now sexually active.  Duck relations are upsetting to watch under normal circumstances, but with Crutchy it was beyond the pale.  His gimpy leg prevented him from mounting properly, but it didn't prevent him from trying.  And trying.  And trying.  Behold the serial rapist who would have been acceptable if he had been a better lover:

To be fair, it's really not an easy thing to do.  I mean, just read this:

Many ducks form bonds between males and females that last for a whole mating season. But rival males often violently force themselves onto females. To gain the edge in these conflicts, drakes have evolved large corkscrew phalluses, lined with ridges and backward-pointing spines, which allow them to deposit their sperm further into a female than their rivals. These extreme penises are even more unusual when you consider that 97% of bird species lack any penises whatsoever.  But female ducks have developed countermeasures. Their vaginas are equally long and twisting, lined with dead-end pockets and spirals that curve in the opposite direction. They are organic chastity belts, evolved to limit the effectiveness of the males’ lengthy genitals. (full article - Ballistic Penises and Corkscrew Vaginas: The Sexual Battles of Ducks)

Seriously.

Drew was sympathetic to his struggle, but unwilling to sacrifice the wellbeing of his ladies.  He tried to rehome Crutchy on the New Mexico poultry Facebook group he's a part of, but, as he said, "No one really wants a crippled, mixed breed."  So our neighbor Reggie the Hunter came over and assisted Drew in restoring peace to the duck pond.  Crutchy was pithed!  No, he was just gently decapitated.  In my garden.  

With this board as a chopping block.  

Then they cleaned the meat and divvied it up (Reggie gifted Drew his old filet knife) and Drew grilled some tasty duck breast for dinner the next day.  The leg was sadder to eat, cause it still had some of that orange leg skin on it...

But you would not believe how much quieter our ducks are, now that they aren't getting constantly molested!

In addition to tending his duckies, Drew has been training hard for all his races this year.  He goes to the gym a couple times a week around lunch time and he runs the mornings I am not swimming (usually Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday).  So many, many miles...

In the cold, too!  Here are some icicles he spotted on a morning run that formed off a water tank by a construction site.

He is definitely a bit stiff after his longer runs, but all the muscles and joints seem to be holding up and I think he's feeling confident in his preparatory efforts.  I picked him up a massage gun at Costco, an impulse buy that just so happened to coincide with Valentine's Day!  Nailed it.

Drew showered me with new technology in February.  His old phone wasn't holding a charge anymore, so he bought me a new phone with a snazzy camera and he took over my "old" one.  We replaced the screen protector.  It was time.  

He alsoly (as Annie and Merrick continue to say regularly, to my delight) got me an Apple watch for Valentine's Day, so I can spend my evenings busily tidying and running up and down stairs and marching in place and flossing aggressively (the dance move, not the dental hygiene practice...yowch) trying to close my movement ring.  

The only other Drew-thing I need to mention is his new working-from-home uniform, which consists of many different colors of the same pair of sweats.  This is obviously the model.  Drew's bulging arm veins are obscured by arm hair.

Also there are these short sleeved hooded shirts.  This is also not Drew.  In case you were confused.  

Let's see, my update consists of another impulse buy of many beautiful puzzles...

...my hair being Wolverineish on my way to morning swim...

...and the completed to do list below.  Rafe turned to me the other day and said, "Mom, you have a lot of jobs."  It is a true thing.  Back in January Mel and Isaac bought a townhome and we started toying with the idea of moving to Utah to live in Killarney House when they move out in the fall, as Drew is working 100% virtually under COVID rule in his new job.  We have now been waiting for 3 months to hear if the request will be approved.  It has been very difficult not to dream about being able to quit some of these jobs in the interim.  I love them, and would miss doing all of them if we moved, but I am also lazy.  

I am trying to be a good family school mom, though.  We missed much fewer meetings in February than we did in January.

February was intense.  Tuesday Poetry Teatime was getting to be too much to squeeze in between everyone's online classes, so it is now Monday Poetry Muffintime!  I think muffins may be my favorite thing to bake.  I'm not very good at bread and cake and always eat too many cookies when I make them, but muffins!  We most often have apple cinnamon, banana, pumpkin, bran, or orange muffins.  Sally's Baking Addiction is my go-to recipe inspiration.  And my 24-count muffin tin that Leo gave me for Christmas guarantees that the children can have as many muffins as they can stuff in.  You WILL love poetry!  YOU WILL!

We had 3 family school student presentations to prepare for in February.  Each child is supposed to give two presentations a year--one for social studies and one for science.  They are intended to be a family research topic that the child becomes an expert on and then teaches to the class in a 20-40 minute presentation, depending on grade level.  Since Rafe and Annie are in the same class they were permitted to do it together, so we only had to prepare 4 (my poor friend who joined family school a couple weeks after us has 3 kids in different classes, so they had to do 6!).  Vivien's science presentation was on Energy Transfer in Collisions.  We did an experiment dropping eggs from different heights to observe the difference in the amount of change that takes place during collisions at different energy levels.  

Rafe and Annie's science presentation was about Biogeology--how living things change their environment.  We included this picture of our globe willow that the kids call "Book" lifting the cement with its roots in their presentation.

Since we're still online, the kids got to give their presentations from home.  I helped them make a Google Slides presentation.  Ok, I made the slides.  Sometimes I let them choose the pictures, but I think I spent at least 10 hours on each one, setting everything up in a way that they'd be able to present confidently.  I'm sure someone else could've done it faster, but I make presentations about as quickly as I write emails or blog posts.  If we are still here next year, the kids will be much more involved in the making of the presentations.  And Vivien actually did make a rough draft for her second presentation all on her own.  I was just being the shepherd that has to walk in front since my flock had never been to this place before!  But anyway, they screen shared their slides with their class on Google Meet and gave their presentations from their floor desks.  They are freakily good at all the tech stuff after spending a year in online school.  

I think everything else here is by person.  We'll start with the Voo.  We made Valentines for a Primary activity.  The little heart in the middle spins on a string when you open it.  She chose the colors.

Vivien is still doing ballet at Dance Theatre Southwest.  When we travel or there's an exposure at the studio she has to do class over Zoom.  It's not very fun, and she spends much of her Zoom classes coming into the kitchen to check the time.  But the other day (I think it was technically in March, but I don't want to forget about it so I'll put it here) she told me that she had prayed in the morning that she would be able to do a good job in ballet, and then she had her best class yet.  She was very pleased.  I love it when we can have positive prayer experiences!  And I do love watching her dance.  

Here are all the spelling words from one of Vivien's last Sophie dictations.  

Saoirse recently broke her neck.  We took her apart and gave her a new one, as well as some rice for her body to balance out her weight distribution a bit.  She's held up pretty well, considering her humble origins.  

We gave her a bit of a bath too, then let her dry off in the sun.  

Vivien loves to play with Aria.  When we go to their house, even when it is so cold outside, they always walk us out afterwards and wait until we drive away, because they are Korean. 

Oh, I have a Jaina story here in my phone.  Jordan was dropping Aria off at Primary activities.  They do them at the same time as mutual in this ward, so it's pretty dark already when they start.  Loyal Jaina was in the car, apprehensively watching Aria walk towards the church through the dark, alone, to an unknown activity, but then she spotted me coming up to the building with Viv and Rafe in tow and said, "There's Sabrina!  I feel comfortable now."

Rafe got to start going to Primary Activities too (because he is old enough and we got to start doing them again in our ward).  He has awesome leaders.  They played minute to win it games for his first activity.

He is playing with both hands at the same time now on piano.  Just look at his cute concentration face.

And this smile too.

Drew has been very good about throwing a baseball with him, while we wait for more sports teams to open up.

Oh, Annie and your cute little face.  She is not a baby anymore.  

But it's fun to see the person she is now even in her baby pictures.

We are still plugging away at the first Twinkle variation.  There are so many little things to train when you learn the violin.  It is slow and frustrating.  But I tried to play my violin the other day with opposite hands, just as an experiment, and it was truly awful.  Couldn't even play a scale.  It helped me to recognize all the amazing progress she has made.  She can play very well if she doesn't get distracted.  Worth continuing!

I have one little Annie quote here from my phone.  "Dad says when you tell a lie, a creepy spider comes and wraps you up in his tentacles!"  She had gotten into the habit of telling convenient lies, like that she had fed the rabbits or made her bed when she actually had not.  She has gotten better, so she must be afraid of that spider...

Here is Merrick asleep on our bed, where he still winds up more often than not.  Actually, it might have tipped the other way recently.  50/50.

He fell off the wall again.  He was very sad and took quite awhile to calm down.  I had him come sit next to me while I worked on Vivien's social studies presentation (on social activist Marley Dias) but he kept whimpering.  I started patting his back and then realized his shirt was getting wet.  

Ta da!  All the blood.  It appears the Mexican Elder tree not only broke his fall, but also broke his skin.

We wrapped him up proper and then he was happy as a clam.

It looks like he got in it with a tiger.  

We love our baby boy.  Even though "[he] caaaaan't" do anything.  Well, he can play.  But if you ask him to go somewhere he doesn't want to go, then, "My leg hurts." Always the same inflection, high to low.  

4 year olds!  I suppose I should be enjoying this stage, as it might be the last time I do it.  It is hard though, when he does things like putting his elbow in every single loaf of bread I just purchased at the store.  One loaf could be an accident.  All four? No, sir.  

One more of all mi bebes: