Random Things, including dried frogs, and a cucumber named Alfred

I learned a lesson at lunch: Never be watching an educational video about caves with super good photography while eating. They were detailing a 100 meter-high mound of bat guano covered in cockroaches, and explaining the immense part this food chain plays, and I suddenly totally lost my appetite. The mound was absolutely swarming with cockroaches. I don't know what it is about me and crawly bugs. I love frogs, toads, snakes, and lizards, unlike most girls, but I squash every bug I see. On the same d.v.d. they were also showing glowworms threading out their little sticky threads.....Ew! I don't want to be a girl about it but...I am. But on the other side, today while folding laundry we found a dried up frog that must have run through the wash in someone's pocket, and I wasn't scared or disgusted by him....we all have our limits! :)But isn't God's creation wonderful? I mean, even the bugs, I must admit, play a huge part in creation, and we'd be entirely lost without them. I once read a little rhyme by Ogden Nash that said,

"The Lord in His goodness made the fly

And then forgot to tell us why."

But have you ever stopped to consider that a fly really helps decompose stuff? I don't know...I'm trying to look on the bright side of "bug-dom"! :) So some other things that are going on are that we made strawberry goat's milk icecream! Yum! It is super good! It should have been though! We used 10 egg yolks in it! Also, Gracie decided to "adopt" a cucumber, and named it Alfred. I haven't the foggiest idea where she got that name, but...any-who! That's what's been going on in our life recently! Oh! Tomorrow we are going to have a whole family of girls and their mom spend the night, and we are going to watch "Wives and Daughters"! I am soooooo excited! YAY! When Mama asked Dad he thought about it a moment and said, 'It's free, and it's fun- Let's do it!" :) If you haven't yet, pretty please enter our movie quote contest below! :) -Rachel

Qjduicsl (Bless you!)

Made you look! :)
Here is a question: What do Sarah, Matthew, and I do with twelve young "childrens" in the house, while it rains outside, two dogs run in and up (one who keeps having an upset stomach) and the kids bounce all over (4 very energetic boys) and the moms are gone grocery shopping? I am wondering.....at times like this I begin to think of the Brown children in Nurse Matilda, or Jane and Michael Banks, or the Vontrapp Children with poor Maria. (And yes... frogs will be a part of today. Several of the kids spent a good part of the afternoon catching tadpoles. Actually, Anna was cleaning out the tadpole bowl over the pans of brownies on the counter....we didn't die yet.)
There are many ways it could go...I don't like to think of some of them. But we will press forward and assume the best. We could always send them outside to take showers in the rain? Or....pretend we worked in a brick factory and make squares of the abundant mud...or not.
Anyway, we'll hope and pray for the best, and I'm glad that moms can go out together without any children. The joys and amusements of two large families living in one large house!
With Slightly Great Trepidation,
Rachel (Agreed upon by Sarah and Matthew who witness my hands typing this.)