Throwback Thursday

    I keep this picture as the screen picture on my iPad. S loves it. PAPA he screams every single time he sees it, just like G did before him. 

    It was late at night and the boys were tired but the gas station ( look at the price of Gas!!) was pretty much deserted and I asked Papa to pose for me and he did. A very rare event. 

    This was taken before E was born in 2006. Here are the boys J and L in the back seat. This was the first trip to town in Polly. I remember L hated that jacket. We had been driving a brown VW Rabbit before this but the three kids wouldn't fit so Papa bought Polly and got her ready as a family hauler. She has been through a few updates: she has a 3rd seat in the very back and can now haul 9 :)  We recently thought we had to up grade to something bigger but then we realized that she seats 4 in the front seat :) So Papa and I and J and L can all sit in the front and we still have room for baby!! Yay!! 

Little Monkey

He loves to watch the critters and kids outside :) 

Thankful Thursday

Wow it's been ages since I wrote a Thankful Thursday post! 

Today I'm thankful for 

- my crew and crew master: Papa and kids. 

- several really good nights of sleep. 

- my kidneys seem to have decided to behave themselves for a bit :) 

- beautiful sunshine

- little kid snuggles. One of the best parts of my day. 

- S and his love for cows. 

- J3's energy and enthusiasm. If only I could soak some of it in! 

- the Internet and everything that's now available in our homes.

- little girls who love to do hair and who are getting quite good at it.

- friends who encourage. 

- baby T's thumping through my belly. He hit the ultrasound wand so hard the other day it bounced! 

- my maids, dishwasher, washer, dryer, coffee maker, oven, milking machine :) 

And the last and slightly 'off' one: the dogs. I've got a love/hate relationship with them at the moment. I love that I almost always know when someone drives up, an animal is out, or someone is walking on the road. I hate that Tucker try's to climb into vans and that Chip is cranky. They've taken to fighting over a coveted sleep spot sometimes several times a day. Bonus Chip is losing weight :) which is probably why he's cranky. 

The Big Space. A Quick Tour.

A general Looky see. 

The girls, E and R's, new room :) 

The boys, J and L's, new room. Storage that I need to go thru on the top bunk. 

The toddler room :) J3, G and S sleep in here. This was the room Papa and I lived in during the last several months :) 

Our room is still in major disaster state so you'll have to wait for pictures of the new master bedroom. Just for reference it's the room all 7 kids were sharing until last Wednesday :) 

The hallway and shelves and butchering table by the back door. The pile of boxes on the right is also a 'go thru project.' 

The reading nook. 

The entrance..lots of space for drying clothes and outside jackets etc. We also have a inside wood area now :) 

The living room, not sure if the furniture will stay this way. This is our second try at arranging it. This set up is for church here tomorrow. We'll see how it works. 

The school table, piano area and the view into the entrance.

Half of the kitchen/dining area, and the pantry wall. 

I hope you enjoyed this quick tour :) Have a wonderful Saturday :) 

Painting The Floor.

Before

Primer 

First coat. 

Pretty isn't it? 

Space! Glorious Space!

Space, glorious space, it's wonderful to have it! Huge rooms and wood heat! No more frozen feet! Lol. (Sung to the tune of Food, glorious food off one of the Ice Age movies, my kids could tell you which one. Ask your kids I bet they know too! ) 

Actually our feet are still cold but the skirting will help with that. Anyway...

Pictures of the new space, we are officially living in all of our house that we planned on for the winter. Behind the bales on the top floor, in the picture below, there is more upstairs but we are using it as bale storage and therefor have sealed it off from this side. We still have the upstairs bale wall, the wall by the woodstove and the hallway wall to build with bales. The rest of the inside walls will be 2x4 walls.

This picture was taken with my back to the straw bale wall at the front of the house so this is the total new space that I can fit in one picture.

I took a picture from the back wall too..

The light is bad in this one. There is very little wiring done so far so that's the only light there is back here. The furniture is all in the middle because we need to paint the floor yet. We are also installing two fans in the ceiling and a huge light thingy, and putting plastic on all the straw bale walls before winter, hopfully in the next day or so. 

Here is a better picture of the back space. Back door, two windows (one for each bedroom that will be here). The second story is above this. 

This next pic is the front where the entrance meets the living room and you can see where the second story ends. There will be stairs off this end of it. The stairs will start about where the Orange chair is and the landing for the stairs will be about where the ladder is. 

Here is another view. You can see where the living room meets the kitchen/pantry and where the hallway will be. (The line of doors on the straw bale stuccoed wall) 

Looking at the inside doors that are finally inside doors :) The door closest to the back door is what is now the kids room, and the other is the main bathroom door. 

Here is another view. Looking from the living room to the kitchen. This is all open space and will remain that way :) That pole is the only Un-enclosed pole in the whole place. We think we will build a kitchen island around it eventually. 

So this picture is looking from the new space to the entrance, yes that is laundry hanging everywhere! So nice to be able to hang laundry again! This will be a wall later but we took it down for the winter, better air flow, no plastic or straw too close to the woodstove. 

Oh and a BIG thank you to my mom for coming over and making bread with the kids and helping tear down the straw bale wall! And to Mr & Mrs B who helped Papa and I a ton last night. Moving furniture, sweeping floors, insulating, and eating BBQ chicken and shrimp and some of Grandma's awesome bread! 

And The Wall Came Down!!!

I know I'm skipping some important steps but I'll blog them later...on the phone. 

Yesterday we took the wall between the kitchen and living room down. 

Before 

During. 

And from the kitchen side..

And then...

Yay look at all that room!! 

Looks like a House!

Just a quick picture for you! Got the last straw bale in the exterior walls this morning, did some tough talking and some more planning and got our ducks in a row for the next little bit. Papa asked me to text a picture of the house to him in town today so show a blog follower so I actaully have a picture of it on my iPad! Lol. Most of the pics are on the phone. Anyway it looks awesome and I will try to post more pics soon with the phone. Papa is out weed wacking the walls to make them smooth for stucco and so we get the mess over with now. It's a very dusty job and we will stay inside the house until it's done. Big 4 kids are doing Math and Bible at the table and I'm sitting in with the littlest 3. Oh and resting ;) 

Oh and I'm so excited!! Papa picked up two windows in town while he was there so I'll get to see out of two front windows until we get the rest later this winter. With two layers of plastic on the window you can't see a thing out of them but the light still shines in :) With two glass windows I will still be able to see the drive way and yard! :) 

Baby Update :) Naming Fun.

Cute isn't he? Papa and I went out for lunch after the ultrasound and named him. All three names, but we'll only share the first one until the birth. It took us two full hours to name him, the longest time ever! We went alphabetically and got to T!!! Not much after T! Lol. Papa doesn't like boys names that start with a vowel, we are off J names and there are a LOT OF BIBLICAL J NAMES, and our last boy was S so we didn't want another S name so soon. That makes naming rather difficult! 

 His name is Tobiah. Yes it's a biblical boys name keeping our tradition, there are two men named Tobiah in the Bible :) We didn't realize until after the announcement that one of the two men named Tobiah in the Bible was kicked out of the temple for some reason. Lol. Hopefully that doesn't mean he'll be a little trouble maker ;)  Papa read the names out and told me what they meant and Tobiah means 'Yahweh is good.' Good strong meaning and we both liked the name but it really seemed to settle in my heart and I told Papa that was the name. He agreed and we stopped looking and matched up some middle names to go with it. Then we checked the initials :) and made sure no words were spelled; they weren't :) 

Now, for the record, I was having a bit of a hard time remembering it but I think I've got it now! We don't know any Tobiah's and I'm not sure I've ever even heard the name before which, of course, is my excuse. The kids were pretty excited but they did wonder at the name as it isn't one they've ever heard. I think they are getting used to it too :) 

Quick Walls Update.

Just a few quick pictures for you who are not on Facebook. 

Weaning piglets

Well we finally weaned the piglets this morning, or I guess we actaully just separated the sows and piglets. The weaning takes a couple days. All but one of them will be 10 weeks old on Friday so it's about time. What a rodeo! The piglets stayed in but every other pig on the place got out at one time or another! At one point we had at least 15 pigs out! These are big pigs! 200lbs to 400lbs! Actually I think both Big Girl and Gilly are over 400lbs easy. 

We finally got them all back in and the fence hot and they are all staying in now :) Mahahahahaha. That fence HURTS. I got nailed this morning and OUCH!! 

And no I didn't get any pictures! I was way to busy trying to keep the pigs in sight! 

But I will say something I say every year about this time...those butcher pigs are getting NICE and BIG and, don't you know it, it's 'about time to put some of them in the freezer!' 

But it's really not. We are way way way to busy to be butchering right now. The pigs will have to wait until at least November. 

Speaking of which I'd better go help Papa outside. I'm sitting in with the littles so they will nap and they are all asleep so it's time to go do some wall building :) 

Pregnancy Update 21 Weeks

It's hard to believe but I keep finding reasons to be surprised at how very fast time flies. You'd think I'd be more used to it by now :) 

Baby #8, we'll find out the baby's sex at the next ultrasound on the 27th, is already 21 weeks! If you follow my Facebook page (The Griggs Family Homestead) you may have seen last week that I posted that Baby #8 was half baked :) I'll make sure and post when we find out if he's a he or she's a she. Papa and I actually agree this time that he's a he and in the way life works: we have a girls name but not a boys name. But who knows we could both be wrong! :) It's been known to happen. 

Baby is active and I'm feeling movement almost every day. Mostly in the evening and early morning. Most of my morning sickness is gone as well with just the tiredness here to stay apparently. And yes, I'm resting often and pacing myself. We have been crazy busy but I take several more rest/water breaks then normal and make sure I get at least a rest, if not a nap, almost every afternoon. G&G Griggs were just up for a visit, more about that in a later post, and I got a nap/rest every day that they were here! Super nice! Thanks Mom! 

Views From the House

I'm amazed at how much we can see from the house windows. Ok, I KNEW how much we were going to be able to see from working on the house ever since we got the windows in BUT it's so DIFFERENT living in those views :) 

One half of the view from our bedroom window. Look Isabel and Maggie! 

The other half of the view! (Tarp is covering the plywood for the floor) 

This is the kitchen window, I didn't take pictures of the side dining window. See there is the trailer parked up front! 

And here you can see the piglets creep feed pen! 

Step out the front door...

And you can see the whole yard! Turn a little bit...

And you can see the front of the entrance! Turn a bit more....

And you can see what the kids are calling 'the stage' (the open entrance wall) and the soon to be floor area and the cow and pig pen and shed in the back :) 

Here is a picture of the entrance last night while the boys did chores. 

Trailer is OUT!!!

It was amazing :) I have a movie of it on the phone that I can't seem to post. 

They have arrived!  See our green truck? All 7 kids were in there with granola bars and apples for breakfast. They had a nice view that way and I didn't have to worry about them getting in the way. 

First they hooked it up to their winch and lifted it way way up! 

Then Papa went along and cut most of the supports. Then they drove this little wheeled thingy under it also using a winch. They got it placed under the rails of the trailer and set the trailer down on top of it. 

Getting the trailer ready and setting it on blocks after took most of the 2.5 hours they were here. 

Here they are ready to hook the trailer to the truck. I didn't get a single picture of it moving out as I was taping it and I can't seem to share the movie on here. I'll try and share it on Instagram #griggsfamilyhomestead later today. 

It sure left a big hole to fill!! 

Looks awesome to me!! :) 

We Moved into the House Today!

The day started with this. The hydro company came and switched our power to the house.

And ended, well almost at the end of the day, with this 

Pizza supper..cooked in the trailer :) as the propane wasn't working yet in the house. It is now! 

In between we: 

Moved the younger 3 kids beds into the trailer.

Got the delivery plywood and 2x10's we need for the middle chunk of floor.

The inpector dude came and made sure the house was all A OK. 

Papa and J tore down the bale wall in the entrance that attached the trailer to the entrance. 

We had lunch in the trailer.

Papa and J cleaned up their mess!

Grandma came and helped us pack up, move and unpack the kitchen. Wowza what a organizer she is! My pantry was stuffed looking and now I even fit the microwave in it! 

Our rep for the kids collage funds stopped by so we could sign some paperwork and made the older 6 kids a Japanese origami which was pretty cool! 

Grandma helped us pack up and move the pantry from the trailer into the house. And we moved our dresser and bedside table and got the bed made up! 

Papa got the rest of the skirting off the trailer, got things hooked up and unhooked as needed.

We had supper :) 

After supper the boys cleaned up in the trailer and the girls did dishes. 

Papa and I moved the fridge into the entrance and his trunk and the vacuum cleaner while the kids watched Donald Duck in our sinking bed. Air mattress, need I say more? 

S went to bed.  

The girls and J3 helped me repack the fridge in the entrance while the boys did chores.

Girls and J3 went to bed. 

I sat with my feet up and talked to Papa as he set up the propane oven etc. 

Big boys finished chores and went to bed.

Papa did more hooking/unhooking and moved the dishwasher into the entrance. 

I tuck taped the air mattress. :) 

Papa took off to pick up something or other. 

Papa came home and I started this, he's now checking the air mattress for more holes as we are slowly sinking. And we found it! 

Good night all :)