7 Quick Takes about Everyday Uses for Trigonometry, Stink Lines, and Signs Your 4-Year-Old Might Be Spraypainting Under Bridges in a Couple of Years

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

If you want to know what it's like being married to an engineer, it's like this:

If you thought this looked like blueprints for a time machine, that's a good guess but no.

It's just what happens when you're looking online at computer desks and ask an engineer whether he thinks you could fit a keyboard tray underneath the one you like.

—2—

Have you ever opened someone else's mail by mistake? It seems like every time we're accidentally delivered someone else's mail, I realize a second too late that the name on the envelope I just ripped open isn't mine.

And what do you do next? You can't just put pre-opened mail in your neighbor's mailbox or they'll get all mad at the mail carrier or the post office, so you have to go over there in person and be like, "Hey, sorry to bother you but your Verizon account is past due" or "Bad news, your health insurance only partially covered your colonoscopy."

Why, oh why, can it never be just junk mail?

—3—

Phillip's first time conducting sacrament meeting for church was on Sunday (for those of you who are new readers, we're Mormon and he was just called to be a counselor to the bishop, who is the head of our congregation.)

But regardless of the visibility of whatever calling he has or whatever important stuff he's doing up at the pulpit, our kids like to keep him humble.

"How did I look up there?" he asked after church.

"Stinky," the kids said. (They're so predictable.)

"How can someone look stinky?"

"Stink lines."

—4—

My 6-year-old wanted to make a Shopkins figure out of salt dough (don't ask,) and while it was baking I started to smell something.

Well, this doesn't look like a horror movie or anything.

At first I was completely shocked and confused, but using my mom forensics training I figured out that a red plastic Tupperware lid had stowed away under the baking sheet with the salt dough Shopkins knock-off.

Phillip wiped most of the mess off the bottom before it hardened, and I took the racks outside where I spent a very focused 20 minutes on the front steps melting the plastic with a lighter and wiping it off with a paper towel.

I burned my finger and accidentally lit the paper towel on fire, but now I'm pretty practiced at this sort of thing so I'll be ready for next time.

—5—

Can I just say how much I love you faithful readers? Long-time reader and fellow blogger Melinda from Purple Slob in Recovery recently featured her favorite Unremarkable Files memes on her page this week, and I'm honored to finally be making someone laugh besides myself (which is kind of why I started this blog in the first place.)

Go visit Melinda's blog to check them out and say hi, and if you like what you see, head over to Unremarkable Files' Facebook page because there's more where that came from. You wouldn't believe the source material my kids provide me with on a daily basis.

—6—

Sometimes I realize something very brilliant about parenting and really kick myself for not figuring it out until 14 years into the game.

What I've learned recently is that the best place in the world to shop for birthday presents is at the dollar store.

Yes, the dollar store gets a bad rap because it does carry some things that are basically crap, but they also have some cool stuff. Some of my kids' favorite toys have been stocking stuffers from the dollar store.

Not only that, but buying at the dollar store means you can get the jump rope AND the bubbles AND the stickers AND the sidewalk chalk AND the glow sticks AND a cute container to put them in, and still spend less than if you'd gotten one or two of those at Target.

Learn from my mistakes, fellow parents, and don't take your local Dollar Tree for granted.

—7—

Lately, my 4-year-old son has been obsessed with this book his sister brought home from the library called Angelina and the Princess. We have to read it multiple times every day.

To sum up, Angelina is a mouse ballerina who gets sick the day of auditions. Mom tells her to stay in bed but she sneaks out, does poorly at auditions, and gets a minor role — but as luck would have it, the lead dancer sprains her ankle right before the performance and Angelina steps in to save the day.

It's pretty different from his usual favorites about trucks and trains, so one day as we were settling down with Angelina and the Princess I asked, "What exactly do you like about this book?"

"She tiptoes out of the house," my preschooler said, using the exact wording from when Angelina goes AWOL.

"Why do you like that part?"

With a grin he immediately answered, "Because she doesn't listen to her mom."

I'm in trouble.
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18 Ways You Know You've Had a Lot of Babies

Having lots of babies changes you, and I'm not just talking about stretch marks and a wayward pelvic floor.

Parenting a large brood means you're used to dealing with a very specific set of challenges and joys — usually ones only other big families will understand.

If you've had a lot of babies, chances are...

1. The Labor & Delivery nurse waved you off saying, "See you in a few years!" (Yes, that actually happened to me.)

2. It's completely possible for your baby never to be set down all day, just transferred from one pair of arms to another.

3. Family memberships, kids eat free deals, and occupancy codes in hotel rooms are a joke to you.

4. You're regularly stopped in public and told "You have your hands full" when less than half of your children are with you.

5. Your parent friends have aged out of playgroup and moved on, leaving you to find a new group. Three times.

6. You've been hearing crying (both real and imagined) 24/7 for 10+ years. Instead of phantom crying, you sometimes hear phantom silence.

7. There's always somebody in the bathroom and there's always something wrong with the toilet.

8. Your baby can sleep through a thunderous piano performance, a toddler bear hug, and people fighting over a kazoo three feet away from her head... all at the same time.

9. You have this doormat.

10. Your toddler has a preferred hierarchy of people to go to when you've told him no.

11. You overhear the kids talking about "when the next baby comes," and you're not even pregnant yet.

12. You're okay with waiting 10 minutes to see if the crying baby will settle down on his own. Actually, better set a timer so you don't forget about him.

13. Everything your pediatrician says to you starts with "You probably already know this, but..."

14. Your kid learns to do everything by observation, from using a spoon to using a potty.

15. Instead of going directly to mom or dad when he has trouble operating a toy, your toddler just stands in the middle of the room and yells "Can somebody help me?"

16. You've stopped attending curriculum night and any other kind of parent orientation night for the schools. You've been there longer than the principal, anyway.

17. You dismiss all methods of sleep training. You realize this is just a phase and the baby will learn to sleep eventually, no matter what you do.

18. You know each sweet age of childhood is fleeting and try harder than ever to relish it. And you totally do, when you aren't preoccupied with someone else crawling on your head asking for water.

If you've got a big family, you know firsthand that having a lots of babies is a grand, messy adventure that sometimes seems bizarre to other people. But even with the decades of sleep deprivation, you wouldn't give it up for the world.

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Turkey

This week my kids and I learned all about the country of Turkey, which isn't as easy as it sounds because Google searching for a "Turkey craft" results in 10,052 results for Thanksgiving handprint turkeys. And you know how I feel about those.

Also, in a very strange coincidence we've sort of acquired a wild turkey who keeps wandering through our yard. My kids named her Harriet and she's taken to hanging out in our window wells. Periodically, we have to chase her out of the garage.

(I've included links to the books, videos, and resources we used to learn about the country of Turkey and you're welcome to use them. Some of the links are my affiliate link, which means I get a small percentage if you choose to buy something. Thank you!)

Monday

After finding Turkey on the map, my kids made the Turkish flag. Our wall is really starting to fill up with flags after seven summers of doing this!

You'll notice the background of the flag is divided into three equal sections. My kids are Nazis about fairness in all the things.

Then the kids filled out their passport pages with information about Turkey from the map.

Apparently my 6-year-old and I need to review the correct spelling of 'Turky.' But actually we won't because it's freaking adorable.

While the kids worked on the flag and their passports, I read out loud the book T is for Turkey and skimmed through sections of We Visit Turkey.

Then we watched an hour-long DVD called  Rudy Maxa's World: Turkey, which was strangely fixated on the host's obsession with buying Turkish carpets but taught us a lot about the country, anyway.

(If you can't get your hands on the books or DVDs we used, there is a great general reference page on Turkey from National Geographic Kids here.)

When Phillip came home, we hopped in our cars (we have so many kids we have to caravan it, don't judge us) and headed out to dinner. I'd told Phillip to find "a kabob place or something" for dinner, and when we pulled up I was instantly mad. 

First off, there was a letter in the name of the restaurant that wasn't even part of the Turkish alphabet, and the first thing I saw on the menu when we got in the door was 'tzatziki sauce' which I know for a fact is Greek. We were in a generic Mediterranean restaurant, NOT a place that served reasonably authentic Turkish food, and Phillip was getting reamed out for it.

Some kind of foreign-y food. Probably.

My 4-year-old's meal of mac & cheese and french fries was decidedly not Turkish at all.

However, I later learned some things we ate actually were Turkish (or at least they were widely served and eaten in Turkey.) Oops. Phillip was gloating over the fact that the Turkish language learning CDs we listened to on the way home specifically mentioned things on our plates like kibbeh and stuffed grape leaves, so I had to apologize. 

Tuesday

The history of Turkey is so long, rich, and fascinating that we had a hard time finishing everything. But we sure did try.

We started at the very beginning, with the ruins of the oldest known civilization on the planet. Catal Hoyuk is in modern-day Turkey, which we learned about with the videos here and here.

We took the opportunity to talk more generally about what an anthropologist is, and how they use artifacts they find to make educated guesses about the culture who used or created those artifacts.

I asked the kids to look around the house to see what anthropologists would learn about our family (they said that based on the contents of the shoe basket by the door, anthropologists would assume that 347 people lived here.) Then we looked at a penny and made assumptions about the culture who used it based on just the existence of the shiny circle (I found the idea for this activity here.) It was an interesting thought experiment.

Next, we're getting into mythological territory. The Hittites created an empire in Anatolia in 2,000 B.C. and that's where Troy was. Remember the Trojan War? I explained how it was a factual event but most of the details have been mythologized over the years, and we read those myths in an abridgment of the Iliad and the Odyssey called Trojan Horse: The World's Greatest Adventure.

It went on and on about how Helen was the most beautiful woman in the world and when I flipped the page the kids were like, "Wait... that's Helen??" "Why does she have '80s hair?" Good times.

The height of seductiveness back then was the female mullet. Everyone knows that.

Even though scholars debate whether the Trojan Horse was just a metaphor, we then made a model of a Trojan Horse using these templates from DLTK Kids.

They struggled a little, mostly because I left them to it while I took their younger sister somewhere. When I returned they'd assembled it without the directions and ended up with an extra piece and a Trojan Horse that didn't open. (I later found out that the not-opening part was actually part of the instructions, so we cut a trapdoor into the back with an X-Acto knife so we could put Minecraft mini-figures inside.)

The real Trojan Horse was also traditional-looking on one side and extremely flamboyant on the other.

And that's not it for history, guys. King Midas was also a real person who ruled in the area in 700 B.C. My daughter summarized the myth of King Midas turning everything he touched to gold.

Many place names in Turkey are familiar to my kids from the Bible. The Hittites, Mount Ararat, Ephesus, Tarsus... I could go on. The point is, this is a super-rich area and we talked briefly about what we knew about each of these places. According to Wikipedia, the apostle Paul didn't change his name after his conversion as is popularly assumed; Saul was the Hebrew form of the Roman 'Paul.' I learn something new every day.

We then focused on the city of Istanbul. Did you know it's had three names? First when the Greeks took over in 334 B.C. they named it Byzantium, then the Romans took over and the emperor Constantine renamed it Constantinople after himself (I'm sure he was a real humble guy,) and after it was conquered by the Ottomans and then later by Greece again, Turkey finally won their independence in 1923 and renamed the city Istanbul.

We read a fantastic book called Istanbul, Once Constantinople to get that timeline straight in our heads, but to be perfectly honest I still had to fact-check myself with Google while writing it down for you. History is hard.

Wednesday

We continued to listen to our Turkish language learning CDs in the car, and my 14-year-old who loves languages devoured the little green booklet that came with it figuring out the rules of Turkish grammar and pronunciation.

I like to keep this in the car because it makes me seem smart.

Using YouTube, we learned how to say hello, please, and thank you. I insisted that the kids use Turkish 'please' and 'thank you' at dinner but no one could ever remember how to say 'thank you.' It's a doozy.

Out of all the languages we've used to count to 10, Turkish was the greatest challenge for me. Almost every language we've studied has at least some similarities with English or Latin, but I couldn't find any here. It was just me and my memory which is frankly not as watertight as it used to be.


But thankfully my 14-year-old is around to remind me.

Turkish has a Latin-based 29-letter alphabet. I printed out a pronunciation guide from the Internet and gave the kids some extra "Hello My Name Is ______" tags so they could approximate their names.

And I left out a copy of a children's illustrated Turkish-English Bilingual Visual Dictionary to try their hand at pronouncing the words.

Thursday

I'd never considered Turkey for the list of places I'd like to visit someday, but after this week I've completely changed my mind. Today, I read a cute picture book about two dogs who go to Turkey on vacation called Bella & Harry: Let's Visit Istanbul! and then we talked about all the amazing places there.

There's the extensive ruins of Ephesus:

The "fairy chimneys" and underground cities in Cappadocia:


And the terraced hot springs called Pamukkale (Turkish for "cotton castle"):

This place is too cool.

Friday

Even though the country is 99% Sunni Muslim, Turkey is officially a secular state. To review Islam we read Owl & Cat: Islam Is... and then we talked about the poet Rumi.

I grew up seeing quotes from Rumi but I didn't know he was a Muslim mystic who founded the Mevlivi order in Turkey, more popularly known as the Whirling Dervishes. We read a children's picture biography by Demi called Rumi: Whirling Dervish and watched this 3-minute CNN documentary on whirling dervishes.

Then we watched The Hidden art of Islam (free with Amazon Instant Video!) and learned how Islamic art is based on math and geometrical patterns. 

I thought afterward we could just grab some graph paper and make a simple Islamic-inspired design, but it turned out to be much more complicated than I'd assumed. After scouring the Internet, I finally found this amazing online beginner tutorial for creating 5 basic patterns. 

It took the kids forever to draw and decorate, but the end results were pretty amazing:

My 12- and 14-year-old's designs. You have no idea how many guide lines they had to measure, draw, and erase to get these patterns.

My 10- and 6-year-old's designs. Didn't they do a nice job?

For dinner I made pide (Turkish pizza,) which was eaten down to the last crumb and I have to say was easy and turned out pretty well:

And even though most people think it's Greek, baklava actually comes from Turkey so we had some for dessert. Storebought of course, because I can't handle trying to make my own.

Fun Reading

I also gave the kids a bunch of books to read for fun throughout the week. Included were these Turkish Fairy tales:

• Turkish Fairy Tales by Eleanor Brockett
• The Fish Peri by Ariane Dewey
• Hilili and Dilili: A Silly Turkish Tale by Barbara K. Walker
• The Hungry Coat by Demi

and these historical fiction books which they claimed to enjoy:

• Leyla: The Black Tulip by Alev Lytle Croutier (juvenile chapter book)
• The Road from Home by David Kherdian (7th/8th grade)
• The Emperor's Winding Sheet by Eleanor Brockett (YA)

Our pretend trip to Turkey was even better than I thought it would be. I learned a ton and now have a new place I'd like to visit someday. The kids had a great week, did some art, did some STEM, learned a new language, and ate pizza. I'd say it was a pretty good week.

And for reference, here's a picture of the turkey who keeps roaming around our house and peeking in through all our doors:

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7 Quick Takes about Polite Gun Fights, Weird Things I Text to My Husband, and Ideas for Charging Stations I Did Not Find on Pinterest

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

This week while I was looking for interesting content from around the Interwebz to share on the blog's Facebook page, I noticed something odd.

I was scrolling through and seeing articles about swimsuits, back-to-school shopping, Halloween, and CHRISTMAS, all at the same time. This was on July 30th, meaning it was literally Christmas in July, and it wasn't even a pun. The Internet has officially lost its mind.

—2—

Using a divide-and-conquer approach to yard work this week, we had one kid sweeping the porch, two weeding in the front yard, and one more cleaning the garage doors with a hose and scrub brush (I do not recommend white garage doors to anyone.)

While I was pulling weeds in the backyard, my 10-year-old appeared and said, "Mom, I just finished the garage doors. Come see how good they look!"

I said I'd be there in a minute, and less than a minute later my son was back to tell me that the 2-year-old had washed the garage doors, too. After dipping the scrub brush in a mud puddle.

This is why stay-at-home moms can't get anything done, by the way.

—3—

I'm getting way too familiar with the swag bags they give out to kids in the emergency room these days.

Spent hundreds of dollars visiting the E.R., but we got a free plastic car. So.

Every single time my 2-year-old gets a cold, it turns into croup. We're mostly able to manage it at home with a trip to the steamy bathroom or a treatment with our nebulizer, but neither of them were cutting it this time.

I took my miserable, wheezing toddler in to the pediatrician, who then sent us to the E.R. They gave us steroids and diagnosed my son with 'reactive airway disease.' RAD may or may not turn into asthma as he grows older.

Which is, ironically, not very rad at all.

—4—

My 4-year-old was asked to give a 3-minute talk in Primary, the children's organization at church. We wrote a short talk about families, but I knew he was going to be petrified up there so I wanted him to have lots of chances to practice delivering the talk as I whispered it to him one line at a time.

We practiced it alone.

We practiced it for Phillip.

Then we sat the kids down at the table and said, "We need you to listen to this talk and act like you're all little kids in Primary." So my 12-year-old started pretending to pick her nose and eat it.

I'm not going to lie, I've been in Primary and that's pretty accurate.

—5—

My kids were having a Nerf gun fight and I was dying watching the 2-year-old participate.

First of all, he's too little to cock the guns so he kept having to approach the enemy and sweetly ask "Can you cock this?" before shooting them.

Second of all, this kid takes military chivalry to a whole new level. Not only did he say "thank you" every single time someone cocked his weapon, I even heard a polite "excuse me" when he was trying to maneuver around someone into the makeshift couch cushion barricade.

—6—

A few days ago, a female turkey wandered through our yard. I didn't think much of it because we have all kinds of wildlife going in and out, living near the woods. 

But then I saw her again. And again. When I went out on the porch to take a phone call because my kids were too loud in the house, I had to go back inside because the turkey was strutting around making even louder noises. 

She keeps making a circuit around the neighborhood and ends up back in our yard, every time. I have no idea what she wants.

She particularly spends a lot of time just staring at these French doors; I'm not sure whether she's looking for someone or just admiring her reflection. 

We're currently on Day 3 and I'm starting to be legitimately curious about how this is going to resolve itself. Will she eventually just move on? Or do we, like, have a pet turkey now? 

Apparently there is a turkey epidemic in New England right now.

I don't know anything about turkey behavior, but this seems weird to me. I might have Googled whether turkeys can have rabies. (They can't, FYI.)

—7—

How do you real people organize all your charger cords for all your devices? I see those cute little DIY charger stations on Pinterest and believe me, we've tried to do that. Within a week it turns into an abyss of scattered devices thrown haphazardly on top of each other and tangled cords that take over the whole counter.

I'd had it up to here with all the devices and their assorted cords cluttering up the kitchen, and I knew something had to be done. Unfortunately, this was the best I could come up with:

Presenting the iTrash.

At the time I just wanted to get everything out of the way, but it turns out it's highly therapeutic to take a mess that's driving you crazy and shove it in a trash bag. Even when you know it has to come back out eventually.

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7 Quick Takes about Cleanup Songs I Can Relate To, A Real-Life Application for Cut and Paste, and Modeling Jobs for People with Too Many Legs

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! For most of the week, Phillip was out of town and the two oldest kids were away at church camp, so it was just me and the youngest four kids. I don't even know how to cook for just five people. It was super-weird. How was your week?

—1—

I was combing through YouTube, looking for a cleanup song that might motivate certain sluggish children. Anyone else ever done that? 99% of what I found was of the insipid "clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere" variety, but I also stumbled across a diamond in the rough:



This cleanup rap was punctuated with comments like "Stop lookin' at me crazy, LET'S GO!" and "All these pictures of clean houses on the Internet... I'm like, These people don't have kids!"

When he lost it at the end and started crying and begging the kids to just pick up SOMETHING, I knew I'd found something special.  I don't know this guy, but I feel like we're living the same life.

—2—

We went to the beach and one of the kids needed me to take them to the bathroom. A row of Port-a-Potties had just been trucked in for some event happening at the beach the next day, so with a heavy heart I took my child's hand and walked toward them.

For the record, I hate taking kids inside a Port-a-Potty. They touch everything and take forever and insist on holding a 5-minute long Q&A session about the fecal matter they can see down the hole and I'm gagging right now even thinking about it.

But this time, it was different. It was brand-spanking new: we watched a guy snip the zip ties holding the doors shut as we approached. And it was SO CLEAN. There were no smells. Nothing nasty on the floor or seat. Nothing of interest in the toilet for my kid to hold a press conference about. I never thought I'd say this about visiting a Port-a-Potty, but it was an amazing experience.

After we walked out I looked back and saw that my toddler had tracked a bunch of mud in there and it looked every bit as gross as the Port-a-Potties I so dread entering. So it doesn't take long, I guess.

—3—

I think God wants Phillip to stop traveling for work, because lately his trips have been kind of a disaster. Last week he was in Michigan and missed his flight home, and there wasn't another one until Saturday morning. When he showed up on Saturday morning, it was so foggy they kept delaying the flight for hours and hours until they finally canceled it altogether.

He tried again on Sunday. After the first time he went through security he was told his carryon bag full of work equipment was "too heavy" and "could be used as a blunt object" so he had to go back and check it, and both times he went through security he was randomly selected to have his hands wiped for traces of explosives.

Then he remembered his car keys in his carryon and went back to retrieve them just in case something happened to his bag, and on the way back through security he was randomly selected for the explosive wipes a third time.

After another delay, his flight got in around 10:30 that night, which was barely enough time to wash and dry his clothes before he had to catch a 5 AM flight for his next trip to Pennsylvania the following morning.

As if we didn't get the message, his flight home from that trip was also delayed by several hours. Don't worry, we got it loud and clear. He's not going anywhere until at least September.

—4—

My middle schooler told me her friends play a game where if one of them says something weird you yell "copy!"

And then later when you yell "paste" at a random time they have to repeat it.

I'll keep that in mind for the next time the kids say "You're right, Mom."

—5—

I was doing some online shopping when my 6-year-old walked in, looked at the product images I was browsing, and said, "Why does she have so many feet?"

It was a valid question.

—6—

Today is the last day of my kids' swimming lessons at the high school pool, and I'm proud to say we've been on time every day for two whole weeks. One time we even got there early and my kids literally did not know what to do. I dropped them off and they came back out saying, "No one's in the water!" It was that unprecedented.

While the older kids are in their lessons, I pass the time with my 2- and 4-year-old by letting them bike around on the sidewalk or walking around the school. They've made friends with one of the maintenance guys. One day they saw him up on a ladder running some kind of cord up to the ceiling, and they were mesmerized.

The maintenance guy asked if they wanted to "help" and told them to hold the cord and cut a section off for each of them to take home. They talk about it all the time now and this guy says hi to the boys every time he sees us.

Also, if you ask my 4-year-old what he wants to be when he grows up, he answers "a worker."

—7—

We have a pizza stone in our cupboard that I've never used, even though we make pizza at home all the time.

I thought I'd give it a shot this week, and even though I don't have a paddle, the Internet assured me it would work just fine to assemble the pizza on the counter, slide it onto a baking sheet, and then easily transfer it to the pizza stone.

Lies.

This looked like Jabba the Hut after it was cooked.

Moving it to the baking sheet was such a disaster I didn't even attempt to put it on the pizza stone. Stupid world wide web. I don't know why I believe a word you say anymore.

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Namibia

Don't feel bad if you didn't know where Namibia was before this week. You probably haven't had a reason to!

My kids put Namibia on our itinerary of world countries to learn about this summer and I'm not going to lie, it wasn't easy to find resources on the second-most sparsely populated country on Earth. But with a little determination and inter-library loan, anything is possible.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means I may earn a small percentage of your purchases as commission if you buy anything. Like a mattress salesman, but with less hovering when you're trying to pull the trigger on your decision.

Monday

The kids found Namibia on the map and filled out their passport pages. When I started doing this, all the kids were little and needed help, and now I have a middle-schooler who knows more about geography than I do.

These passport pages have been a great help to us during The Educational Summer Vacation and you're welcome to download and use them for free.

Click to download blank sheets.

In the early years I used to bind the passport pages in a book with an official-looking cover and personalize each one with that kid's picture; these days I print out a stack and staple at the corner.

Both are valid options.

Flag of Namibia: crayon, 2018.

While the kids researched and drew the flag of Namibia, we listened to the national anthem. The Namibian national anthem is one of the prettiest ones I've heard so far. 

Tuesday

This was news to me, but Namibia used to be a German colony called German South West Africa. Who knew??

A lot has happened since then (Namibia was captured by South Africa during WWI and gained independence in 1990,) but German influence is still very strong. Go to Namibia and you'll see German architecture, German food... German is even one of the official languages (the other is English.)

So we reviewed how to say please and thank you in German (which I reminded the kids to many eye-rolls that I expected them to use at dinner,) and then watched this German numbers video on YouTube. 

(Putting the numbers to music is awesome for memory retention, by the way. I can count to 10 in Arabic as well as I can in English because of a camel-counting song I learned like 5 years ago.)

I put this German Picture Dictionary for Kids on the coffee table, and because my older kids are incorrigible bookworms who will read anything left within their reach (up to and including appliance user manuals,) I knew they'd pick it up and look at it.

My kids were thrilled that color names in German are pretty similar to their English counterparts.

Then they got some extra screen time to play around on some free online German game sites here and here. (The second is a little hard to navigate so you'll need to help them learn to use it.)

Wednesday

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised since German roots run deep in Namibia, but I didn't expect to find that Namibia is 90% Christian, and of those Christians, 50% are Lutheran. We took the opportunity to learn more about Martin Luther (who was German, incidentally.)

There's a 4.5-minute long National Geographic documentary on the Reformation here, but if you have teenagers who can stomach it I highly recommend this 2-hour PBS documentary. (I now know all there is to know about Martin Luther, and there's a lot more to the story than the highlights you learn in school.)

We also read I Am Lutheran and the kids wanted to know why there are so many names for what we call the sacrament: the Lord's Supper, holy communion, eucharist... I have no idea. There just are.

Thursday

The Namib Desert runs up and down the entire Atlantic coastline of Namibia, and the way the dunes come right up to the ocean is really incredible.

We read some information on the Namib desert in particular here, and checked out the book Sand Dunes by Peggy J. Parks. Despite its not-at-all riveting title, it was fascinating! It told us a lot we didn't know about the Namib, and after we finished the kids were all excited about looking up the things we read about.

We watched this awesome Smithsonian video on shovel-snouted lizards and this crazy video about the noises sand dunes make. It's almost too weird to be believed:


We watched more videos like this one and this one about the Skeleton Coast and this one about sandboarding in Namibia, and then this beautiful footage of a jeep expedition into the Namib:


Maybe it was the strings music in the background, but this video made me legitimately start tearing up at how beautiful the world is.

After reading the first page of Survival! Desert (a Time for Kids book) so the kids would be interested in picking it up on their own later, we moved to the porch with two trays full of flour and some drinking straws to practice forming our own sand dunes.

The older kids discovered it took time and patience to form a sand dune. The little kids (plus a toddler we were babysitting for the day) had a blast blowing around the flour and all ended up looking like Father Time.

Had zero idea what we were doing or why, but they were totally into it anyway.

If you do this at home, remember to reserve the honor of cleaning up afterward for the best-behaved child of the day or week, and let them blow it all off with a Shop-Vac set in reverse. They'll love it.

Friday

We watched a movie I found at the library called Magic Journey to Africa. Frankly, I've heard more coherent storylines when my kids insist on recounting their dreams in the morning, and the CGI and the acting was a solid D, but we saw the Namibian landscape and my 6-year-old liked the flying Pegasus.

For dinner I made cabbage and pap, which wasn't super-flavorful but not horrible, either. I really did want to like it, though, because it was soooooo easy.

Pap is the stuff in the center and is served with just about every meal in Namibia.

Traditionally, people eat pap directly from the communal dish with their right hands. (It figures that the one time I told my kids they could eat with their hands, none of them wanted to.)

At bedtime I read The 3 Little Dassies by Jan Brett. It's an African version of the three little pigs inspired by her trip to Namibia. Even if you don't know Jan Brett's name, you'd know her distinctive illustrative style when you saw it.

To be honest I wasn't sure we could fill up an entire week talking about a sparsely-populated country I knew nothing about, but I shouldn't have been worried because Namibia is a fascinating place and we barely scratched the surface. Now I know better.

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