Little Corn Huskers :)

From the looks on their faces you would think it's a horrible chore, but it really isn't. They totally enjoyed it!! This was the last of 2 boxes of corn got for a steal of a deal :) There is still some to be eaten or something but I had the kids husk it all so I could tell if it was molding or anything. Most of it was fine. The pigs really enjoyed the husks! In the back there you can see Baby J on the 'outdoor playpen' also known as the Trampoline!! :) 

Scratch Coat is FINISHED!!!

Looks serious doesn't it?? We needed to get the last bit of scratch coat mix up on the roof so we could finish off the top part of the wall above the trailer and seal the straw off completely. We did get it up there... and the scratch coat is NOW FINISHED!!! Papa ended up adding several more pallets under the wheel barrow and then he pushed and I pulled and TA DA the wheel barrow was on the roof!! No I did not hurt myself! We both were very careful! Once the mix was up on the roof the plastering took no time at all (we are getting pretty good at it :) Papa did need a little more and did have to make up a bit more to finish it off but it's DONE DONE DONE now!!! YAY!!! 

A Little Miss R Update.

Little Miss R is really growing up!! She loves her babies and packs them around a lot. Here she is using a blanket which started out as a cape as a baby back pack. She's quite the little mother!! She's been growing lately and getting clumsy.. hopefully she stops growing so fast before the wedding where she's the flower girl in October! She would really like to be doing school with E and L and one day I teased J that he knew the program so well maybe I'll get him to teach her and before I knew it R was digging in E's drawer to find her box with her pencil, eraser and glue, and ran up to J and told him she was ready. Teach ME!!  J looked bewildered and asked me if he was suppose to start now?? lol. She's still only 3 so even though she can sing the songs and say the sounds we'll not be starting her reading program anytime soon. She really has very little fine finger control but that is simply a maturity thing.  She is enjoying learning to draw and color in the lines and doing sort of a kindergarten with L and E's grade one.

3 Little Stories :)

A Sand Story:  Papa took the truck to the 'city' the other day and picked up about a ton of sand for our plastering. Too bad our new skid steer could not pick it up out of the trailer as the sand was too heavy for it to lift over the side of the trailer!! So Papa shoveled a bunch of sand into a second feed bag and tried to take the smaller bag out with the skid steer!! Well.. the bag ripped right open and all the sand landed in the bottom of the trailer!! When Papa tried to take the larger bag out it slipped to the back of the trailer and this 

was the result!! In the picture Papa is already shoveling sand to the front of the trailer to try and get it to level out.. it never did he just emptied more sand from the bag to the trailer and took the bag out. Chip is never far from Papa when he's home. See him laying beside the trailer?

J was a great helper.. holding out the straps so Papa could put the forks in them. 

Ready for lift off!! 

Bringing it to the 'mixing area' :) J looking on, feeling a bit cocky I think :) 

A Note About The Skid Steer: This is the same skid steer, or bobcat, that Papa used to borrow from work.  We recently bought it from his bosses for our farm workhorse. Papa's work got a newer one!  We needed something to move bags of feed, bales, what have you around on the farm. We're also really looking forward to using on steer butchering day to hang and move our dead steers!! No more cutting into quarters and wrestling the chunks of meat into the back of the travelall. Now we'll be able to hang it right up to skin etc and then place it right into a plastic lined trailer to take to the butcher or to hang in the yard to cure before we cut and wrap it ourselves. I have to admit I really wasn't super keen on buying it, even thought we got it at a GREAT price, but Papa was quite insistent and so far it's making BOTH our lives easier. I can't wait to do forest clearing next spring as the skid steer will make moving cut logs so much easier without having to cut every log into firewood sized chunks. It also makes moving bags of feed SUPER easy and it's so much nicer to have the feed close to the animals that are eating it :) I have to admit though that we'd probably still be talking it over if it hadn't been for my brother Danny.. we had them over for supper one night and he told us he'd give his left arm for a skid steer (and his right for an airplane:) as it would be so helpful with his business. I knew some day we'd need something to help with the lifting work on the farm but I'd hope to put it off for a few more years.. and quite honestly.. I was hoping to have a bit more house built and paid for first. Papa got a nice $$ bonus for competing his IP test, the final of all 4 apprentice years, and it paid for most of the skid steer. 

A Cow Story: Maggie LOVES the skid steer!! You can see her in a couple of the pictures. They must have fed her with one at the dairy and she RUNS over to see what it's up to every time Papa drives it! Often MOOOOOing and looking impatient! 

A Baby Cuddle.

I've always enjoyed taking pictures of Papa snuggling with the newest Griggs baby but Baby J never would cuddle with him long enough for me to grab my camera. Well lately Papa has been getting all the Baby J snuggles and I finally got my picture!! Late is always better then never :) 

Inside Scratch Coat Finished!!

Papa and I got the last of the inside scratch coat on the straw bale walls the other day :) This was the biggest wall and it took FOUR loads of plaster to finish!! 

Looks great hey?? I love the look of it before Papa scratches it! So nice and smooth and much more like the finished project should look. You can see Papa's not quite done in the bottom picture.. he's sitting on top of a ladder in the top left corner finishing the last little be up!! This corner will be the 1st spot brown coated as we want to be able to move the wood stove into place before we start using it daily. Papa has a few days off and we are trying to get at least that area done for the winter. The brown coat is all mixed and in the 'tub' (see bath pictures below) which has been lined with plastic. The tub is ALMOST FULL and might be enough to finish the brown coat completely. We're really not sure how much plaster it will take. He used up pretty much all the sand that he brought home the other day! 

The BIG TUB!!!

The kids were so excited, the warm water hose from inside had been running warm water for over 30 minutes, the weather was warm enough for a bit of a bath!! Finally, Mom said, Get NAKED!!! Oh well wait.. keep your underwear on!! lol.

Stripping, it's amazing how fast 4 little people can get mostly naked! Yes, it's fall and yes R and E are wearing sweaters because it really isn't all that warm outside! 

Mad dash to the tub and a frantic crawling in! 

Sitting enjoying the nice warm water. They all thought it was a bit too warm at first but it didn't take long and they were all splashing and playing and sliding down the sides of the tub. The ridges on the edges are GREAT for standing on and jumping into the water!! 

After quite a while had passed I stuck Baby J in there too.. he didn't much care for it at first but it didn't take long and he was splashing with the rest of them. While we were there we might as well get clean :) Papa brought us some shampoo and some towels and we did a 5 head scrub! 

Kind of an expensive tub right?? Yes it is. It's not just a tub, actually it's not really a tub at all. Papa and I needed something that would be dual purpose. A large tub or something that would be able to hold cooling chickens and our plastering mix. This cow waterer is the best 'bang for our buck'  for the size we wanted. It will be easy to line with plastic for chicken butchering day or for the plaster! It's sturdy enough to hold all our chickens or an entire coats worth of plaster.. and bonus it makes a pretty cool tub or summer time pool for the kids!! Besides those 3 things I have a feeling we'll find many more uses for it.. For instance, I just thought of this..  I bet it would make a great pen for chicks or small critters!! It might even be put to use as a outside play pen :) 

In Other News :)

What is this?? Have they finally come to their senses and realized that it's all together TOO much to homeschool 3 kids, have 3 more, have a farm and run a household... etc etc.

NOPE we have not!! 

Yesterday our great neighbor Mike brought a friend of his over with his little boy, about 8 years old, to see the piglets. They got the farm/straw bale house tour and after they'd left my kids all came RUNNING to me!! Mom!! Do you know what he said!! He LIED!!! They were horrified, not that they don't lie on a fairly regular bases, but it was WHAT he'd lied about that hit them where it hurt!! The little boy, remember we don't know this family at all and after yesterday we'll not go out of our way to make relationships!, told our kids.. 'You wont learn NOTHING homeschooling!!' I soothed the kids with reassurances about everything that they are learning, including manners!!   Ok time to hop off the box!!

Papa got a phone call the other day and from the glint in his eye I knew it was no good!! I could just TELL!!! As I was sitting beside him I got to hear quite a bit of the phone call and by the end I'd put my .02 in. Papa laughed with the guy on the phone as he explained and there was no point in him having to listen to us argue about it and he'd call him back in a bit. I knew it would be a LONG bit!!  It really wasn't. Once I'd heard the whole thing and gotten a few considerations.. hee hee.. I didn't really have a problem with the idea. The guys name was John and he's somehow or other involved with one of our local Christian schools, several years ago the school had problems with one of their buses and brought it up to see if the guys where Papa works could fix it. They figured out the problem but it ran to too much money to fix it. The school ended up getting a different bus instead and still has it to this day. When the bus had been in for repairs Papa had told John that if they ever wanted to get rid of it to let him know. It has a diesel motor in it that he really wanted for one of our trucks. WELL!!! Yup you guessed it.. two years later and they want to get rid of the bus. John remembered what Papa had said and gave him a call. There were a few things that really cinched the deal... #1 it was free.  #2. It runs.. but will not start unless you use either, not a problem as I do NOT plan on EVER driving it. #3. Papa can fix it :) #4. It makes a GREAT playhouse!! :) #5. We can take some seats out and convert it to an RV for camping. Rough but better then paying through the nose for an actual RV and we don't camp all that often so rough is fine! #6. Papa really does want the motor for one of his trucks. #7. The kids love it. They got to drive home with Papa in the bus and man oh man the smiles were face cracking!! I SO wish I'd remembered my camera!

And we have a great place to park it!! At least for now.. we'll see how old it gets having a bus within view of the house. The spot where the bus is parked is a dead spot in our otherwise lush acreage..We're not sure why as it's been seeded and babied for several years. Papa thinks maybe because of the trees right behind it. 

Oh yeah... and the funnest thing of ALL... Internationals do make buses.. they are everywhere but this one just happens to be made by 

Bahahahahhahahaha!!! (It is also our 1st ford EVER!!, Papa says AND LAST!!)

Oh and before you think now we're going to go crazy with buses.. one of the 'considerations' was that there WILL NEVER BE TWO BUSES ON OUR PLACE AT ONE TIME!! They may pass in the driveway but may never linger!! Papa still dreams of owning a International Bus you see but as far as this homeschooling, do it yourself-er, mother, wife and all around farm apprentice, never mind chief cook and bottle washer, is concerned.. ONE BUS IS ENOUGH!!! 

What Has Been Eating The Apples??

Looks like something very hungry has been snacking on my apples...a Hungry Little Baby J!!! 

Yes I keep my fruit in a wipes box :) It USED to live on the floor in the kitchen but we recently had to move it to the counter... seems we have a HUNGRY HUNGRY BOY in our house who just needed a nibble here and there!! I had told him not to touch.. and he didn't.. I found him leaning over 'bobbing' for bites with his hands tucked to his sides :) He was trying SO hard to obey!!  Only his mouth made contact!! 

Heehee Look What I Can DO!!!

Yup Baby J is climbing chairs!! And OH SO proud of himself!! 

Creative Kids.. Sand Creation's!!

The kids really love to play in the sand!! J and L made this town one day while we were plastering :) It's got tunnels and roads and all kinds of fun stuff!!

Happy Happy Gift to ME!!! :)

A couple of weeks ago now I was taking the kids to the park and we stopped by Papa's work to tell him what we were up too and see if he could come join us a little on his lunch hour. Well he happened to be on his break and Phil, a guy he works with, pointed me to the office. Now in all honestly Papa did tell me that Phil had NO idea but I have a feeling that next time Papa tries to pull a stunt like this all the guys will know and I'll be 'detained'  so that Papa can cover his tracks. What was Papa up to?? Gambling? Buying Internationals?? Nope.. he was trying to surprise his wife with a gift!! I walked into the office and there is Papa sitting at the computer with a IPad2 on the screen and he's on the phone with the place in the 'city' that sells them.. To tell you the very truth I was shocked!! I didn't even know what an IPad2 was!! LOL. I do now :) Papa turned BEET red from shoulders to hair line and hung up the phone. We took a little walk outside and he told me what he was up to and why and what an IPad2 is. Very cool!! As it turns out I didn't actually get the Ipad2 for a couple more weeks as they refused to sell him one over the phone. So the next time we went to the 'city' we went and took a look and picked one up. AWESOME!! I love it. As backwards as I know we are it's really cool that we found something 'new' that fits me as well as my new IPad2. I can 'borrow' books online through our local library and read them on my Ipad2 without even leaving the house! As I still read between 5 and 8 books a week this is wonderful. I can check my email, the weather or whatever and not even have to leave my bedroom. Our laptop is wonderful but it pretty much lives in the living room and it is used for movies, music and everything else.. my Ipad2 is MINE!! :) Papa does get to use it every once and a while.. but only if I'm not :) 

Papa and Baby J watching a youtube video, something about Internationals, on my new IPad2.

J's 1st Written Story :)

I gave J this little book for writing in. I told him he could write about what he wanted when ever he wanted or I would give him a topic and he would have to write about it. His first couple of pages are filled with his name, his WHOLE name!! Quite a chore to write it all out but he'd never learned to write the whole thing and needed to. Then he wanted to write his siblings names.. their WHOLE names. Now your probably thinking what's the big deal with the WHOLE name thing?? Well Papa and I name the kids after people, great grandparents, grandparents and well... two people PER kid and it makes for some LONG names. For instance J's WHOLE name is, I believe the longest, at 26 letters from start to finish!! R's is the shortest and Baby J, L and E's are all pretty close, numbers wise. He also wrote out my name and Papa's. That's a LOT of writing! This little memory story is what he wanted to write about after our visit with G and G Griggs and cousin M. He did ask me to spell some words but there are a few misspelled, and a few things left out, and that's OK, it's his little book and his memory. 

Oh and he's decided that for this little book he will only write in pen and that he's going to keep it forever. I'm ever so curious to see what he'll write about next!! 

Creative Kids!! Wood town.

While Papa and I were being creative on the plastering the kids found their own way to be creative. A couple of boards, chairs, the old mattress from the hid a bed, some toys, the outside 'fort' blanket, and a couple of hours to themselves and they created a pretty cool 'Wood Town' as they called it. 

 Strutting their stuff!

They played on, under and around it all weekend. It changed daily if not hourly and they had a BLAST!! L was master builder but everyone got to try different ways to make up the town. The last day they made a big half square up to and attached to the trampoline and had a real work out running up and down the boards to the trampoline and back and forth then jumping on to the mattress. 

Plaster #2 Scratch Coat Finished Photo's.

 Here are some scratch coat finished pictures. The back wall!! The bottom has been scratched in this picture but the top was still too wet. It was scratched later that night. It's a bit of a mess on the right side of the door but we can fix that yet! 

From the side, still the back wall and part of the side wall. This is 3 loads of plaster. I think. I did loose count some where in there. 

The finished side and front. Looking good!! The board is to get the wheel barrow onto the porch :) You can still see the bale lines in the walls but after the brown coat it should be smoother. We do have quite a few holes to fill with the scratch coat before we do the brown coat. 

The mostly finished front. We ran out of lathe to fix around the pole on the right there so I made a quick trip to the city to get some more one morning. More pictures to come. We got almost all of the scratch coat done, inside and out,  before we ran out of time and sand. 

Plastering The Addition!! Day 2 :)

Day 1 was spent getting sand, lime and cement mix from 'the city', finishing up the last little bit of weed whacking now that we bought some more twine for the weed whacker, setting up and watching our straw bale house building movie to make sure we knew what we were about to do.. It helped...a LOT!!  

The next morning we started early, Papa got out his bale building book to make sure of his recipe for mixing the plaster and then he took a deep breath and started mixing!! The kids watching from a distance!! We had wanted to rent a mortar mixer but couldn't find one so we rented a cement mixer instead. We'll rent the cement mixer again.. though next time we are also going to buy another wheel barrow! The cement mixer came from town and we would have had to drive to the 'city' for the mortar mixer which means several hours of driving back and forth when the cement mixer did a very nice sized load, a wheel barrow almost full, which is about an hours work! The bagged stuff on the pallet is the cement mix and the lime, the big feed bags are two grades of sand, one fine and one a mix. The black garbage bag is chopped straw from the weed whacking. 

The mix? 20 shovels of sand, 10 of lime, 2 of cement and a couple of large handfuls of chopped straw per shovel of lime!! Yup that's it!! Easy as can be!! Oh and some water to make it look like dino poop!! :) 

Papa's got a load on a 'hawk' getting a feel for the texture of the plaster.. we started at the FAR end of the house so that we could learn out of sight of every person who ever comes on the place.. :) It went well though and even the back looks nice. We did get better and better through out the weekend and the next coat will not have the learning curve so it should go easier and faster! We did about 11 or 12 wheel barrow loads of plaster over 4 days. Each load took about an hour depending on how long we could both work on it. I was in and out with some loads as I had kids, meals and what have you to deal with but Papa only did two loads alone so I guess I was helpful :) 

With plastering you have to do 3 coats, the scratch coat, the brown coat and the finish coat. Each has it's own fine points and the scratch coat is the roughest.. a good one to start with!! The scratch coat is also the only one with straw in the mix and the only one where you can do more then one layer to fix holes or what not. The scratch coat is also the ugliest!! You have to 'scratch' the semi wet walls to make a hold for the next layer to grab on to! 

The very 1st load hits the straw!! The trick is to push it on hard so that it meshes with the straw and stays put. 

R trying her hand at it! 

E loves her new helmet and kept it on while we played with the plaster. Note they are standing on puddles.. you have to wet the straw down before you plaster. When the plaster dries it needs moisture to harden properly which the wet walls give it. Without that moisture the plaster would harden and fall off!! 

Yes.. it felt VERY Strange to wet down the straw bale walls we have been protecting from water since last fall!! It truly was one of those.. OH MY WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE ARE DOING moments!! 

J loading up R's trowel. The girls and L do not have the arm strength to push the plaster into the straw.. it kept falling off and they didn't last long. J worked with us several times and enjoyed it a lot. If we were working he wanted to be but there were only so many spots he could reach.. he did do a goodly chunk of the front wall.

Dino poop!! LOL!!! 

If L had the interest he probably could have done well too.. he just wasn't at all interested. 

The wall with about 3/4 of a load of plaster on it. The other side by the door had the rest. Looking good!! 

Cowboy Baby J!!

Ride Cowboy Ride!!! 

He loves it!!! 

E is rocking it from behind but she doesn't need too.. he can rock it alone!! 

L Lost His 1st Tooth!!

His front two teeth have been loose for AGES but they just wouldn't come OUT!! So the other day I did a little twisting, as you can see his adult teeth are already through BEHIND his baby teeth!, and then it just popped out! YAY L!!! He still has one more I'm going to have too pull soon.. He said it really hurt when I twisted it and then didn't even feel it pop out :) He was pretty proud!! We found a small jar with a lid and wrote.. L's Teeth on it and put his 1st baby tooth in it!! Super exciting :)

A Few More Piglet Pictures :)

If you don't look too close they almost look like dalmatians!! 

Papa holding a newborn piglet.. just to show about how big they are at birth. 

These are the last batch of piglets about 12 hours after birth. She is a great momma!! She's about 300lbs, they are about 4 or 5lbs :) 

You know Your a Redneck When...

You haul square bales of hay home in the car.. then QUICKLY take it out before your wife can get a picture of it to add to her blog :)