Thankful Thursday.

Today I'm thankful for:

Sunshine, it's almost November and we still have no snow. Beautiful sunny days with only a little wind. A wonderful fall season.

Pork roasts. We are cleaning out the freezer and we have several pork roasts left, some ribs and tenderloin and bacon. Today's supper is a pork roast cooked for hours at a low temp. with applesauce, baked potatoes and green beans. I hope I can fully enjoy the tastes and savour them. 

Sick days. Papa is home sick today and while I'm not happy that he's sick I am thankful he can take the day off and get better. 

Sleeping children, schooling children. The oldest 4 kids are quietly doing school. The youngest 3 are all asleep in their beds. I love quiet time and I've missed it. 

Our new woodshed. Papa fought his cold long enough to put the last little bit of tar paper on the woodshed roof this morning while the kids and I put the last of the 5 cords in it. We still have slabs and smaller rounds that need cutting up and brought in to the shed but the bulk of it is done. 

And the one slightly 'off' one for today is.... I'm thankful for homeschooling. I truly love having my children at home 24/7 and love that I get to teach them but I get very annoyed and stressed with the supplemental work they are required by the government to do each term. Maybe someday I'll morph into a unrestricted teaching style but for now I'd better get up and get at it. 

Have a great day ya'll :) 

Firewood...And a Place to Keep It.

Papa and I finally decided on a good place for a woodshed so we decided to build it before we changed our minds. :) 

We used a post pounder to pound in 10 posts for the foundation. Here is E running the post pounder..J and L had a turn too. 

After the posts were levelled and squared we made a 2x4 beam to hold the trusses. We made these trusses years ago, in fact they were the same ones we used for our straw bale barn here.

Trusses waiting for spacing. Foggy morning. This is right off the back door and the milking parlour..we are also planning a cow candy mixing area, tool storage, and a small critter pen under the roof.  Critter pen for calves.

Here it is as it stands today. This whole project started last Monday and we are hoping to get the tar paper, and the rest of the strapping on it today and start filling it. The tin will need to be ordered in so we'll put it up later. We are expecting snow this week so we want to have it ready before then. 

Walls and floor will be pallets. Calf pen will be at the front on the other side of this picture right next to the milking area. I'll post a picture when it's got wood in it. 

Kids rolling wood that needs to be split away from smaller stuff. We bought 5 cords from the mobile work crew this year and its nice stuff! The wood to be split line up went all the way around the trampoline in this picture when we were done! So I've been splitting wood too. 

We have had beautiful weather this October so far. It's been amazing and we've have been spending lots of time outside.

I want to say HI to Aunt Linda and Granny Sarah and THANK YOU for the very neat baby gift and letter Granny Sarah! Thank you for being such a wonderful sweet person! May God bless you both! I think it would be wonderful fun to make cookies with you and I know that your grandchildren are very blessed!

I do plan on blogging more but I'm finding myself quite stretched lately so I'm very sorry to say posts will likely be sparse for a bit longer. I will try to post E's birthday pictures soon though.. :) May God Bless you and keep you. May the sun shine on you and your coffee never run out :) 

S Laughing.

A Lunch for Papa.

What Papa found on the table awhile ago.

They made it themselves :) 

Morning Ramble and S Update

So it's 6 am and S is up. He's hungry and now that I can blog on my ipad I can write this up as he nurses. He slept 7 hours and I got 6 hours, in a row! Pretty amazing since I've rarely gotten more than 3 hours in a row since his first paediatrician appointment 6 weeks age. At his appointment last week she said he was gaining enough and I could drop some feeds at night. S must have heard her as he started sleeping longer hours that same night. So this is my third night with some decent sleep.  This will change my life. I may actually start blogging again. I've already started doing crafts with the kids again. I'm drinking less coffee, by almost half, and as the kids and I joke.. I'm feeling human again. R once got it mixed up and said she was feeling rather chickenish. We still laugh about that. 

S's appointment went well. He's now 12.5 lbs and 60 cm long. He's just about outgrown his 3 month clothes. If fact I have his next size in the house and will probably switch it in this week. His reflux is much better. He's even waking up on his back. I put him to bed on his side. He used to only sleep on his tummy. He has started to enjoy playing on the floor and rolling over belly to back and back to side. He is very strong and holds his head up really well. He loves to stand and is grabbing random things and trying to out them in his mouth. He loves to laugh. S is almost as cheerful as R was, always smiling and giggling. He is our smallest boy so far by a pound or so for his age. He's a Griggs :) where are J3 was a Fehr. Us Fehrs have bigger genes :) I'm the second smallest of my family and Papa is the biggest of his.. Makes for kids of all shapes and sizes. 

The paediatrician said we don't have to see her again so long as his breathing stridor doesn't get any worse but continues to get better. She said it should be gone or almost gone by 6 months. So far I've noticed a slight increase since he started sleeping longer hours, or maybe I'm just actually coherent again and it's always been like this. I'm truly not sure. I don't do well on little sleep. I NEED at least 4 hours in a row and I feel very fuzzy and out if sorts when I don't get it. I feel like I've lost some time. I know where it went though. It went into keeping S healthy and that's a good thing, a great thing, a calling even, so that's ok. 

The paediatrician did find a mild heart murmur this time but because it comes and goes its not a cause for concern. I have one too, and so does Grandma G. Mines never caused me a lick of trouble. 

The kids loved the paediatricians office. It's on the 10th floor, as high as any of them had ever been, and there are neat windows that show you the city from a new height. It makes me dizzy :) We found several landmarks and enjoyed the fall colors. But we were dissatisfied as we couldn't see our truck. We're funny like that :) 

That night Papa made us mussels steamed in white wine, with takeout sushi and oil and vinager and bread.  It was fantastic. I think we all felt like celebrating. It was a great day! 

Oh and P.S. we found a great new way to go shopping for kids with kids. iPods and iPads! Seriously! One of us would go in and take pictures of ideas and then come out and show the other and we decide and than one of us goes back in to buy it. Because we rarely shop without them and because we don't do Halloween we don't like to take the kids into stores this time of year. So this new way to shop worked awesome. It would work even better on two phones as you could text stuff back and forth! For us to be able to text Papas iPod has to have wifi and neither of the stores did. 

Anyway S is asleep again and it's only 7am so I think I'll try to get a couple more hours of sleep. 9 am is wake up time around here for the kids and lately for Papa and I too. I've checked the farm. The big pigs are sleeping in their big round straw bale, Maggie is snoozing and Isabel is getting an early start on her hay, the laying hens are up and about pecking around, the piglets (weaned yesterday and their first night alone) are huddled in a bunch in some straw inside their triple strength pen, the kittens in the tote in the entrance are wrestling and I can hear their feed bowls clanking gently together as they play, G just started singing in her playpen so I will go lay her down and shut their door...to much light and she needs to sleep more. 

Here is a picture of S in his chair and new sweater. I have a non blurry one..but this will have to do for now as the other ones on the computer :) Have a wonderful day! Oh and Happy Thanksgiving Canadians!! 

The Great Tooth Night

A while ago I posted on FB that 3 kids lost 4 teeth in one night and asked you to guess who :) 

Here are the results. 

R lost her bottom right tooth, her second tooth ever!

J lost his first molar and his 11th total! 

And E lost TWO teeth!! Her 7th and 8th!! 

L wants everyone to know that he doesn't even have a loose tooth at the moment and J3 would really like to have a loose tooth.. but doesn't :) 

So that is the line up!!

So S you were the closest!! Great guess!! 

Brown Coat!!

Well he's finished. Papa finished the last of the stucco we wanted to get done this year yesterday. 

Officially the inside was done Friday the 27th! Yesterday, the 28th, he did the front wall on the outside. It will see the most weather and so it was important to get done as well. 

I have to say he did a fantastic job.

 The scratch coat we all worked on. Anyone and all hands were helpful.. We got it done in less than 9 days. 

The brown coat Papa pretty much did alone. I helped the equivalent of maybe 1 day.  

It was hard work. The brown coat goes on in two layers and its best if you do the second one right after the first. The second coat has to be as smooth as possible and than you wait a couple of hours and smooth it out again. Some of these wall were gone over 5 times. That's a TON OF WORK. 

Actually it is roughly 17000lbs. 

9 days 1st coat

13 days second coat

7000 lbs sand

3500 lbs lime

+3 year old mix=

12000 lbs +

5000 lbs water=

17000 lbs  in 22 working days

Part of the long side wall. That's the pantry window. Looks great hey? 

The front kitchen window from the outside! That wall to the left will be redone when the middle wall goes in. 

The outside with a filler coat. Papa has decided to try and finish the brown coat on the outside as he has all the materials, the weather is still nice enough, and to put the skirting up we need to take down the platforms he made for scaffolding. 

This will be in the inside hallway walls. The holes are for the doors into the hallway.

The Master Bedroom :) big enough for a baby area as we are not having a nursery. The color difference you see is just wet vs dry. It cures grayish white. 

The front kitchen wall. My sink will be under that window!! 

The view from the yard.