The Bettendorfs are ready for spring!

Hi! This is Hannah, and today we had a wonderful time playing outside in the beautiful sunshine. We are ready for spring, and the trees are too! Dad and I put in a few "spiles" and one of the trees was dripping so quickly thad when Dad checked it two hours later, there was a gallon to a gallon and a half of sap! Here are some pictures of us playing outside.

 Megan is rollerblading! Fun!

 Mom and Hans enjoying the sun.

 Della riding a "plasma car".

Magnatiles

This is Megan reporting on the latest magnatile structures.

Mom is resting, (with Rachel and Hans) Dad is putting more spiles in the tree to get more sap, (with Hannah and Lars) That leaves Della Luke and me, so we decided to build with magnatiles.   

This one looks quite large, do you see anything unusual? Okay. Maybe not, but since Luke and I built it we can tell... Della is in it!!!

 Now you can plainly see that Della is in the tower... I had a lot of fun building her in!

 She was getting hot, so we decided to wreck it... one piece at a time.  Della did not really agree, so once we had the roof of it off she pushed some over. She was getting a little impatient.

 Next we made a boat as you can see I am the "captain" of the boat.

QUILTING

Hi! This is Hannah, and I am the oldest kid in our family. My Grandma is here today, and I am learning how to quilt. Here are the steps:

1. Chose your fabric and design
2. Cut out and sew the squares
3. Sew the squares together
4. Make the "sandwich" of fabric, batting and the back
5. Baste the layers of the "sandwich" together
6. Then you do the actual QUILTING!
7. Take out the basting
8. After all of that you put on the binding

Here is a picture of our log cabin quilt.

We have just finished basting the "sandwich" together. This is a diagram of how we did the basting.

Today we are going to start the quilting!

Maple Syruping

Luke pounding in a spile.

Luke tasting the sap.

The big three about to put a bucket on the spile.

Dad boiling the sap to make syrup.

This is our home made syrup.

Hi!  My name is Megan.  I am 9 years old and the 2nd oldest of the 7 kids in our family.  This year our family is trying something new.  We are making maple syrup from the trees in our backyard. It is VERY fun! We have tapped 20 trees. I enjoy tapping the "spiles" into the trees, putting the bags on the spiles, collecting the sap, turning the sap into maple syrup and best of all eating the syrup! We use the maple syrup in various things such as, in coffee, on pancakes, on ice cream and with little licks off of our fingers and utensils used in the process of making maple syrup. YUM! We have gotten 5 cups of syrup in about a week. Today we are boiling down the sap to make more syrup, Dad says we will probably get about 8 cups today! (43 drops of sap makes 1 drop of syrup.) So far this year I have been enjoying making maple syrup!
 

Here we go!

It's official, the Bettendorfs are joining the world of blogging.  The kids assure me they will post and document the happenings and antics of our family honestly, while I get to censor what actually makes it on to the blog.  I'll admit I've been extremely lax in keeping up with photo albums, baby books and journals in the past few years, so I welcome the opportunity to record the day to day activities of our crew.  I want to remember the sweet days of tea parties, playing outside and dancing in the kitchen.  I want to remember the countless ways God blesses our family every day. We are on such a wild, wonderful journey!