Boyd Bear Tracks

Since this is the Boyd BEAR blog. If there is a period of no activity, it must be because of hibernation! :-) Unfortunately, we don't get hibernation weather here. Plus, with four kids now, even if there's no activity on the blog there certainly is in our house!!

We're doing well in school. I figure we'll finish up near the middle or end of June. It's amazing to think the year is almost done!! Here are some samples of Lucas and Ellie's writing:

FANTASTIC JOURNAL VOYAGE --by Eliana

Sunday, May 2, 2020
I left Montana. I was going to Bangladesh. I will tell you about how I got here. I was on an airplane and I crashed. Then I came out of the airplane and I (had) crashed here in China. I am sad that I didn't go to Bangladesh.
I am 19 and as tall as a gorilla. I have to eat with chopsticks and I eat a lot of Brown rice. I saw a dragon two times. I would like to go back to Montana.

SHORT STORY --by Lucas

It was a warm inviting day, good for swimming in Saylorville lake and drinking cold lemonade in the hot sun. I was walking to the lake, looking very funny, with a big hat, baggy shorts, and blue flip flops. I had a towel over my shoulder, and a yellow float bed in my arm.
I got to the lake and there were no people, which was good, and flopped on my bed in the warm water. I was there for about 30 minutes and was thinking about my 10 foot corn stalks. I started home and, as I got there, I noticed my corn was cut. I rushed there and found foot prints in the mud leading towards the house. I figured I was just where the person or people were minutes ago. I found that the foot prints led into the kitchen. In the dining room door . . . BLAM! The float bed popped, and I found out the kitchen meatknife, which was the biggest, was put in the wall. A tall man, about 6 feet high, walked out from behind the table and told me to put my hands up.
I asked the man what he wanted. He said he wanted my tall Iowa corn and was going to take it when he heard me coming. I told him he could have my corn as long as he would not return again. He took my corn, and I had my nice cold cup of lemonade. Just what I wanted all day long!

Marcos is in the "terrific" twos stage. Not so much emotionally (although he has his days) but more physically. It seems that every week he falls and gets a bruise on another part of his body. I'm wondering if he's the one that will cause us to visit the emergency room. So far we haven't with either of the older kids. He always has bruises on his forehead, and now he has busted his lip, smacked his ear, and conked his nose. He looks like he's been boxing! Poor guy! I took pictures of the kids to print off and put on the wall, but his frame is still empty. Every time I want to take a picture he falls, and I would like a nice--bruiseless--picture. So he doesn't have one yet.

Jason is a very happy baby now. The first month or so with him I thought he would be a fussy baby. However, as soon as he started his first smiles, he started being more cheerful. He loves to interact with people. He just stares at your face and smiles and giggles. It also helped that we bought him a swing. It has been a lifesaver since before he wanted to be held all the time! Now we can actually get some school done :-)!

Ellie's birds finally hatched their eggs (the 2nd try). We're waiting until they get a little older (and you can tell if they're male or female) before we sell them. Actually, she's thinking of selling the female and one of the babies. She would like to keep Lollipop because she (we think) is more calm and has been easier to tame. Of course, Larry is the one who started it all, so she'll keep him.


We finally bought some plants for the front of the house. It was pretty ugly out there with just sand and concrete. Each child picked a plant to take care of. They haven't really done much with them. They were watering them each day, but now it has started raining, so I guess they'll just need to weed them. I think I found the name of each plant on the internet. They're all plants that grow well in drought, so I guess they're perfect for here (unless it rains a lot and kills them). I picked out a plant for Jason called False Heather (I think). I didn't get a picture of it yet.

This last weekend we had a multi-family garage sale with our team. I pulled out a bunch of stuff that had been sitting in boxes for years. We actually made about 260 dollars!! I couldn't believe I had stuff that could amount to that much stored--for the last 10 years or so!! We were able to buy the kids some Bibles in Spanish and some of the money will go towards new bikes. They're pretty excited! I think I may need to have another garage sale when I finish unpacking all the boxes. I still haven't managed to clean out Eliana's room (she's sleeping with the boys for now). And, we have a bunch of boxes at the Medinas' house that I need to go through. This house is quite a bit smaller than the ones we have lived in before, so I think I still need to get rid of some more stuff. Maybe knowing that I can make some money on it will encourage me to "let it go" :-)!