Milton and Patch

Hanging out. 

Easy Peasy Pizza Night!!

Everyone helped! 

Pizza the super easy way! 

Sliced bread

Ketchup 

Italiano seasoning

sausage

cheese

Mushrooms were optional.. :) 

Pineapple would have been fantastic but we don't have any :( 

You could do anything you like though!! 

We get 6 loaves of bread a week in trade and we are getting over run with bread in the freezer so we are looking for ways to use up more bread. 

These are awesome and totally make the list!!

Bonus.. the kids just did it tonight... completely alone... 

And they loved every minute of it :) :) :) :) :) 

Doors (And The Last Window!) Have Arrived :)

YAY the inside doors for the whole house arrived today!! 

9 total! 

The window is the special order one we've been waiting for for the front of the house.

6 feet by 4.5 feet! My new front kitchen window :) Love it already! 

A better look! They are pine doors and we will be staining them the same cherry as we've done before.. the boys bunk beds  the kitchen bench and the wood trunk in the living room are all the same cherry stain. The only stain Papa and I can agree on :) Good thing we both like it!! 

Clay Bowls.

J and E have been really into creating stuff lately and they dug clay out of our yard and made these neat clay bowls. J's is the bigger one and E's the smaller. They have them by the wood stove to dry a bit and they are drying nicely. Not crumbling at all. I think soon we will be able to paint them! J also made a clay letter J but it fared less well and lost the upper part. I think it was just to thin to hold nicely. 

The Snow Melt Continues :)

I took these pictures last Saturday the 19th of April.. exactly a week after we got 13 inches of new snow.. 

Looking out to the road.

Kids play area. 

Looking into the front area from the yard. 

My strawberry bed! 

Looking into the place. 

The front of the house/driveway. 

More kids play area.

The front of the cow pen and the new pig pen. See Papa sitting under the tree?? 

The laying hens winter pen.. with the cement mixer. 

Now this is what it looked like last Saturday!! 

Amazing what a bit of rain and some nicer temps can do in a week!! 

Spring might actually be around the corner!!! 

L's EIGHTH Birthday!!

We celebrated L's 8th birthday this weekend!! What a fun time!! 

Shirt from Grandma and Grandpa F.

FISH HOOKS!!! 

G and R being cute :) 

What Papa calls 'the bait.'

Grandpa F and E checking out a neat game.

J3 handing L his main gift from us. 

Ohh... what is it?? 

A DRAGON to eat the bait :) Makes cool sounds and lunges with it's head to eat things!! 

Cake TIME!! Ice cream Oreo cake with a cougar and a deer on top!! 

Happy Birthday L!!! 

Dreaming Of Spring! Thankful Thursday Post!

We like to keep our front window decorated :) This morning we took down the last of the winter decorations and this afternoon we did this!! 

From the inside.. note the snow and the green grass showing through!! 

From the outside! With R's little smiling face in there and a reflection of the truck/calf pen and you can also see part of the bus and the chicken barn through the window on the other side!! 3 different perspectives in this one photo!!

We had a blast making flowers, some with hands, some with just fingers, some free handed and cutting them out. R even cut out a few! 

J says 'Maybe this will encourage Spring to come!" 

I told him it might :) but it will for sure encourage us as spring comes!! 

It's been raining all day and the snow is melting, mud is everywhere and we are keeping busy inside. 

Fun in the Sun in The North :)

Little Miss G in her little pink boots and purple jacket taking her first walkabout in the spring warmth. 

Little Mr. J3 who can find all sorts of things to do with sticks besides make water rivers in the mud :) 

I have pictures of the others too.. but they are not uploaded yet so I will have to do them later as our internet is at it's limit for the month :*( 

Update.. April 15th :)

Oh this is a general life update. I've got a few minutes to type while the kids are doing school..

Papa's two weeks off went extremely fast. No surprise there :) We actually got quite a lot done considering the weather didn't do a lot of cooperating. On his last day home we got 13 inches of heavy nasty wet SNOW!! J is doing a weather chart for the month of April and lets just say the weather was NASTY for a good chunk of Papa's days off. We did have some nice sunny days were we spent hours outside; kids in the snow and mud and Papa and I working on the house. We also had some OK type days where the kids played outside or inside while Papa and I worked on the house and came in for short warm ups/kid checks every time we could no longer feel our fingers. We also had some cold days where we did a lot of critter planning and school curriculum planing and fiddling with our house plans.

It was MUCH too cold to stucco though we did get all our stucco sand, lime and cement mix home :) We also got windows in! Some of the frames are finished but not all of them and we are waiting for our front 6 by 4.5 foot window to come in so we can install it :) I'm looking forward to that!! Most of the lathe is at least up where it belongs if not done and the stuff that's waiting needs the windows to be done first. We also have two outside corners we need to lathe and stuff straw into.. but with the snow pile off the roof these areas are really hard to get at so it will wait until we can get to them.

We got our chicken order in, 400 unsexed Cornish giant meat birds,  and they should be arriving May 3rd. Papa also got the feed ration figured out and ordered what he needed for that. Our normal supplier for wheat will not have any this year so we are shipping up corn from down south which will add a bit to the cost of the bird but not a lot.

We called the local dairy too and they didn't have any calves for sale in the start of April but told us to call back. So we did and they'd had their first bull calf that morning. If all goes well we'll be picking him up this Wednesday or Thursday :) The dairy is close to the place where we are borrowing a boar pig and we are hoping to get both at the same time :)

We also took some time and made some memories, helped others and had some fun too :) We got quite used to having Papa around and now will have to get used to his new schedule of day shift. We are looking forward to having him home for supper every night and having Saturdays off. It does throw a wrench in any doctor appointments I have for Baby S but we think we have figured out a way to do the appointments on his lunch hour. Hopefully it will work well and I will not have to look for sitters every two weeks for the next 6 weeks and every week after that! That's a lot of sitters :)

Baby S is doing very well.. growing and showing and giving my internals a workout when ever he's awake. He is a very active baby at this point and I'm just hoping he slows down some before he's born as I'd like to cuddle him instead of watch him run off!! Mostly kidding but he is very active!! Between 9 and 12 weeks to go :)

The kids re-started school today and only have about 5 weeks left, at their current pace, to get done about a month early. We should have about a month off before Baby S's due date and possibly 6 weeks between the end of school and the his birth. Right now the weather is still mostly wet and cool and it's a good time to be homeschooling in the North! Our next years basic curriculum is ordered and I'm having a bit of fun looking into fun stuff to do on the side next year.

Other upcoming events are the hopeful arrival of spring one of these days bring us some warmer weather, dry ground and green grass!! When this event finally does happen, we have big hopes for the month of May, we are going to be having a stuccoing work day!!! Come one come all :) But first..

SPRING WHERE ARE YOU??? COME ON SPRING LET's HAVE SOME FUN!!!!


(From one of my favorite Franklin Movies EVER!!)

SURPRISE!!!

Papa went out to do morning chores this morning and heard mewing.. 

Apparently Fluff decided to add to the homesteads population over night.

He had to climb up the ladder onto the trailer roof to get a picture! She had them above the wall on the back porch where the cats have been sleeping all winter! There are at least 3 kittens :) 

This, by the way, is a MUCH BETTER surprise then the 13 inches of snow we got last night!! 

G's 2 Yard Dash!

Now that we have a calf right in front of the front porch we've had a couple of interesting moments. The big kids go out several times a day to talk/pet/look at Milton the calf. G is unable to do that by herself. 

G is not allowed in the entrance because of the wood stove and the dangers there of and she can't open the door. There is a black rug between the entrance and the trailer and the edge of the rug is as far as she is allowed to go alone. 

In the spring the wood stove often over produces heat during the last half of the day and as I'm still drying laundry in there I don't mind. I just let it and open some windows and often the doors in the entrance. G likes this. She will stand on the edge of the rug and look outside, but sometimes it's just too much for her. I love watching her. G will be happy on the edge of the rug looking outside and then, when she thinks I'm not looking, she glances around a little (never behind her :) ) and BOLTS for the front door.. the 2 yard dash to FREEDOM and, of course, the calf/cats/dog which she loves. She normally gets about half way there and some alert kid is already letting me know and I catch her just slowing down to very carefully step over the door frame and on to the porch!! She is quite the little sprinter! 

Yup I'm a stinker!! 

Since then we've been teaching her to come to one of us and grab our hands and say CALF (which she can say very well) and then she is allowed to walk to the front porch and have a visit with the animal crew that hangs out on the front porch. 

Big Girls Quilts FINISHED!!!

Two little girls enjoying their new quilt covers during a recent movie night! 

They love their new quilts and they are much warmer then their old blankets which helps their little fat free bodies stay warm at night! 

As G's quilt was sort of an extra idea and she still has lots of blankets that fit her small size I've decided to finish her quilt as I have time this spring and, if that doesn't happen, next winter. The top is done but I still need to do the back and then sandwich the 3 layers together and either stitch it together myself or get the local place to do it for me, and then the binding. Several hours of work yet. :) Maybe G's quilt will be my 9th month project :) as I'm almost done Baby S's afghan.  

R's Exciting Day!!

Today was a BIG day for R!! She's been SO wanting to go to school for the last Oh 18 months or so since E started and today she got enrolled in our home school Academy!! I filled in all the required boxes and R got to hit the send button!! She was GLOWING she was SO EXCITED!!! I think she floated a couple inches off the floor for a bit!! We've already gotten confirmation that she's been enrolled, and the other 3 re-enrolled, and she has the same teacher as L and E. She'll be in Grade 1 come September!! She'll be great at it :)

IT'S MELTING!!!

March 21st/13

6 days Later on March 27th/13.

5 days later on April 1st/13

This really doesn't show the snow melt as well as some other areas in the yard and cow pen but these are the pictures I have. Under the trees in the yard we have grass and the cows have a LARGE patch of grass showing. The driveway in front of the house is almost totally dry except where the snow melt rivers run thru it off to huge puddles below the driveway. Yesterday we got rubber boots out and washed the snow pants and put them and the snow boots away!! Spring is coming!! :)