Update.. Family Life.

Well I haven't done this in a while so I thought it was time. Papa is still working from 8 to 7ish Monday through Saturday week one and Wednesday through Saturday week two. We really enjoy having 3 days off in a row and are trying to make the best of them. We are trying to get ready for the 6 or more months of winter we have here. Lately he's been putting the finishing touches on the area between the house and the road in what we are calling our Orchard area. He worked several nights with the chain saw until it got to dark to see (about 45 minutes now if he gets home at 7ish) then burnt branches and crap wood in the dark. All the wood that was down is now cleaned up and the area is cleared with the exceptions of the few poplar trees we left and the firewood he just cut up. My job now is to load the firewood onto the pickup bed trailer and haul it closer to the house (where we cleared this spring we have a new 'firewood spot'.) where we'll be able to plow right past it which will make winter firewood a lot easier. I have so far done 3.5 loads and have 5 or 6 to do! We've decided against the "wall of wood" that we did last year as it was hard to get the wood past the drip line of the roof and this year the roof is so much bigger that it'll bury any wood there. He also recently fixed our hot water heater which thankfully was only a element and a easy fix! Our wood stove pipe decided to rust out on us and that is also in the works. The last few days we've had chiller weather and have been heating the house with electric heaters and the oven. Oh and piling on sweaters and slippers. Tonight he should be able to finally put it all back together. He's had some fun trying to get parts that work and is actually getting one made special! What a mess!!

We had our 1st frost of the fall on Sept 27th almost a full month later then normal. It was great and gave us time to get a lot more tomatoes and for the pumpkins to grow bigger. The biggest one was about 15lbs!! What a lot of work for such a small reward but the kids loved 'their' pumpkins and are looking forward to making pies. I think we got 8 good sized ones and a handful little tiny ones that I left out in the garden and will feed to the pigs with the rest of it.

The boys have been busy with everything as little boys like to be!! J recently told us he was going to marry Girl T who says NO WAY!! So we've had a couple of talks about marriage. After one of these talks L told me that he was going to marry E!! I explained to him that he couldn't marry his sister so then he wanted to marry R. More explaining. Oh well then he'd marry ME!! More explaining. Then he'll marry Mackenzie! More explaining about marrying someone your not related to, like sisters, mom's and cousins. By this point he was getting a be tired of this whole marriage mess. FINE says he... I'll marry Brianna!! Ok I told him you can marry Brianna. He looked so relived that I laughed and laughed!! We then had a talk about sometimes you marry people that you won't even meet until your an adult and that you don't need to decide now. J and T are funny though. She says she's not going to marry him she's going to marry another little friend of hers and he sticks with it. He's going to marry T!! When she told him that she wouldn't marry him he calmly told her, in almost my exact words, the speech I'd given L and him about not knowing who you were going to marry until you were an adult. They play "family together" and 'getting married" But with NO KISSING!! A rule T's mom had to reinforce several times!! Papa told the kids a long time ago about how our bodies are Gods and how we need to keep our bodies for God's use and for our future mates. And J has completely adopted this for himself and sticks to it. It is really neat to see. I've also heard him give the T girl this talk but she must have liked kissing him (cheek) because it took her mom to tell her several times before she stopped. BTW they play with in sight of us almost always so we know exactly what's going on!! They are very cute together and miss each other when they are apart. When the T family was gone T girl missed J so much she cried!! Sweet to see them but we are not planting celery. LOL. (The Amish supposedly plant celery when they are expecting to have a wedding. )

E is sprouting like crazy and out grew all her pants again. She's still light but now is tall. Crazy!! Amazingly R also grew and is now wearing E's dresses!! They just stretched!! I cut both the girls hair and now they both have bangs which is super cute on them. Thanks to Girl T E also has a new 'play dress' that she loves. Actually it started with my sister Ria. And she doesn't even know it. We went over to her house about 3 weeks ago and as we were leaving we borrowed Beauty and the Beast from her. It went over well. Really well. They LOVE it. All of them. E practically swoons when Belle walks down the stairs with her 'BEAUTIFUL' dress on!! E HAD to wear her yellow dress after that. Actually I think it's safe to say she's been wearing dresses almost as often as pants lately. And it's not me. She asks for them and often gets MAD if she can't have one. Even little R MUST wear a dress.. and loves it. R always picks the same one. A red topped Christmas type dress with roses on the waist and a black skirt. E floats between her yellow one and anything else that catches her eye at the moment. The boys love it too and pretend to be Beast while he's fighting Gaston and they all sing the songs til we all a bit crazy!! J and L also love to do 'funny parts' which is them parroting the parts they really like back and forth. They have about 1/2 the movie memorized!! Anyway I promised them a movie night (for once not Beauty and the Beast) and they are waiting for me to be done!! I have some pictures of the girls in their dresses with 'pretties' in their hair and one of girl T and J and I'll try and put them up later!!