Christmas Crafts and Cookies

For some odd reason the Christmas season insists that you craft. I'm not sure why it does but it does. And I love it. Crafting with kids is fun. Crafting with BOYS is funner yet. The other day we did Paper Christmas trees and E got to make a pipe cleaner bracelet. Today we painted hanging ornaments for the tree. J had a bear, L had a star, and I had a moose. E got to color and Baby R was locked in her chair with a gingerbread "Mary" (the men are Joesph) as the kids call gingerbread woman. Christmas time also calls for cookie making and decorating and we made cookies last week and we were hoping to decorate them this week but we didn't have water for part of it and the week is getting away from us. Anyway. L wanted his star to be yellow so I got him a paper plate and put a little paint on it and off he went. J wanted brown for his bear and so we all started to paint. L covers about half of his star (the middle half :) And wanted another color, green. So green goes on top of the yellow. Still looks cool. Then J wanted red for his hearts under the bear. Fine. Great. I like how he paints. L perks up (painting so far for him is a tad boring but all these colors are fun) "I want red too." OK. No surprise there. "I want BLOOD!! I want blood on my star!" Then the two of them proceed to have a talk about how stars don't bleed so maybe the star was butchering something, chickens or maybe bears or something, and got covered in blood?? I just closed my ears after that and hoped L would want another color to cover the BLOOD. I'm still shaking my head. I've crafted, being a girl, with girls for years. Blood doesn't come up. EVER. It's like a taboo topic. But a Christmas craft with my boys and here we are having a, what they consider, perfectly normal and fine conversation about blood on their Christmas ornaments. He did pick another color and another and another and the blood got pretty much covered up but in the end his star was red but blood was not mentioned. We all had a great time. E actually colored 2 sides of her page from the coloring book quite well which is neat and we'll have to start coloring more. The boys have never been really interested in coloring but maybe with E coloring they will too. J did an awesome job on his bear and it is brown with blue eyes with a pink scarf and hat and red hearts hanging under it.

Another Pig Story.

OK OK I'll admit it. A pig has me for a favorite too. I'm not sure which one but one of our pigs really loves me. Or maybe it used to it hasn't done anything in a while. But I thought... fair is fair if I tell about Papa and Wilbur I'd better tell about The Egg pig. You see one day when Papa and I were moving the pigs this fall... I made a friend forever pig. Quite on accident I can assure you. I was waiting for Papa to be done messing with the wire and I found a egg in the hay. Now the chickens have been in and out all summer so I have no idea how old this egg is. So I have a bright idea. I'll feed it too the pigs. Good thing I did as it turns out it had been there for some time. Well one little egg shared between 6 pigs and no one gets much, if any. So I was just going to put it right in one pigs mouth. So I showed the egg to the 1st pig that comes along and sort of pop it in it's mouth and hold it there for a second until it chomped on it. Worked great. I was wearing gloves so I wasn't too worried about my fingers. The pig went crazy with pure joy!! At least I think it must have been pure joy, I would have thought from the smell that the pig should have been retching but the pig seemed to enjoy it very much. Actually I know that crazy pig loved it. Every time I went into the pen for a long time I would have pig follow me trying to get at my hands. The Egg pig was born!! He'd nudge me on the hand just like a dog does, begging for more eggs. I never did find anymore eggs in the hay, even though I looked for quite some time:)

Haircuts and Kittens.

Haircuts. Last week when Papa had a few days off I cut hair. Male hair. LOL. The boys figured we should cut E's hair as well and she caught on and asked "haircut??" a few times. So we explained why not to her and she was mostly fine with that. But after each haircut the person who's hair was just cut has a quick shower so rinse all the hair off. Well J's hair was cut and he showered, the L's hair was cut and he showered, then Papa's hair was cut and he showered. And confused little E says "Haircut??" Nope. "Shower??" she says with a worried look. I laughed. Nope. Relief!! Pure and simple relief flooded her face. No more questions asked just in case I changed my mind. Once she gets in the shower she has a great time but she really would prefer not to.

Kittens. The kittens are still very tame and the other night I picked one up (the black and white) and pet him and brought him in and got him warm and purring. It's a little male which is what I thought. The other one is still more testy and I haven't gotten him yet. I'm pretty sure they are both males as our two males have accepted them completely. Patches, the mother, is gone again and both Papa and I haven't seen her for over a week. We suspect she has kittens again somewhere as she did this last time as well. Miserable time to have kittens. I need to go dig in the shop and see if I can find them. I don't think they are there though as last time she took herself far off and we did not even see her for 4 weeks. She doesn't even come to the house to eat. We are probably going to fix her this spring. Depending on a few things.

Parade Awe!!

Update Dec 8th.

Well we've had a interesting week, or 2, and this is in no particular order :) Our extended family has grown again with the arrival of Kirsten (said Keersten) on the 4th!! WAHOO. Congrat's D&A and the Oakster!! I told you you'd have a girl!! :)
The kids have all been sick and we went nowhere and did nothing this weekend. Baby R got it first and then L and E Saturday morning and J Saturday afternoon. I've got a bit of it as well, but Papa, as usual, hasn't gotten it at all. E gave us a scare Saturday night, barking and having trouble breathing. She had a touch of croup and we put her in a steamy bathroom and night air in turns and put her mattress beside our bed for the night. But she recovered quickly and last night slept in her crib. Thank You Lord. Baby R was better by Sunday morning, back to her smiley self. L and J were done by Sunday afternoon. Except J still has a cough, very normal for him to keep a cough for weeks after a cold, mild or otherwise. So E is really the only one left. So we had a lazy weekend, watching movies, puzzling, Papa plowed the driveway with the skid stear from work (one of the perks of the new job), Papa also made a new batch of beer (and a mess!!! 2nd time it's ever boiled over!! YUCK). We skipped church and our Saturday night games night with B&B and just spent time healing.
Friday night was the town Christmas light parade and we had a blast. The kids loved it and got pocket fulls of candy!!! We went out for hot chocolate after and had a great time. I have some pictures I'll try and post later.
Speaking of Christmas we also took the oldest 3 kids to the local dollar store and let them pick a gift for each of their siblings. Papa stayed in the travelall with the kids and I took them one at a time into the store to pick out gifts for each other. E is a very fast shopper, L is SLOW, and J took time to figure out what each one would like and did a great job of it. When we got home I took them one at a time into the bedroom and we wrapped them. Lots of fun. J keeps telling me "my mind keeps telling me to tell them what I got them.. But I won't" L has told J at least once what he got him but J pretends, or really doesn't, not to hear him. L also insists that the gift he picked for Baby R is for R and L. We will share!!! E is so quick she really has no clue what she got them. They can't wait to get a tree so they can put them under it. We did decorate for Christmas already, stockings up, lights up nativity set up and awed over, some other pretties up. Bows are everywhere. It was great fun.
We have been having wacky weather. Warm, warm, warm, COLD for 24 hours with 10 inches or more of snow, then WARM and rain, rain, rain. They shut our local highway down for several hours one day dealing with the ice everywhere. One morning I woke up and went to check the pigs and looked out and there was 6 piggies sleeping happily in my milking area!!! So Papa went out before work and chased them in. But he didn't have time to fix the pen so I went out early to fix it and found we had gotten 10 inches or more of snow, wet and sloppy. I found a pallet and was tying it to the hole :) when Papa came back for the shovel. Stuck in the yard. A few minutes later I could still hear him spinning so I went out to lend a hand... or my weight actually. The car is very light in the back and rear wheel drive so I stood on the back bumper and off we went. A few trys later we made it out the driveway. Our road had not been plowed but there was tire tracks so off he went. Pushing snow with the undercarriage. I went and finished my fixing and Bindy still wasn't there so I decided to go have a look down the road and make sure Papa wasn't stuck some place. I got to the end of the driveway about the same time Papa did. He didn't think he could make the turn to the hwy so he'd gone down the side road and was stuck. So he started up the Travalall and called work to say he'd be late and we headed out to pull him out. I love my travelall. She goes anywhere and does anything. She had no problems. We hooked up the car and he pulled me to the nearest connector road (to the hwy) and a few minutes later he was off to work in the car and I drove back home in the travelall. Just in time to milk the cow. What a morning and all before breakfast. He normally would have just taken the travelall to work on mornings like that but I was meeting him in town later for the parade and the car will not fit us all.
Sometimes after the kids go to bed we watch a movie and have a 'date'. With or without friends. When we do this we've been putting music on for the kids so they can't hear our movie (we live in a small space and even with their fan on they can still hear our movies) and will go to sleep. The 1st time we did this we did a CD of hymns. The kids liked it and the next time I assumed Papa would do the same CD. Well we put the kids to bed and he did the music and 20 minutes later I'm still hearing awake noises out of their room so I went in to see what was up. Here Papa had thought the kids would like some change and put his "Natural Guitar" CD in for them. Well the CD is great and I like it. But it has wolves howling in the background of over half the songs. Poor kids are all freaked out!! WOLVES!! LOL. Papa felt bad, he hadn't thought of that. So I switched it for the hymns and everyone was in dreamland in no time. After doing this CD 3 times J comes up to me and asks me if I want to hear a new song. J is very musical and constantly learning new songs and making up his own songs. Sure I'd love to hear his new song. He sang me the entire 1st verse of Amazing Grace. A few words where off a bit (wrench, "mommy why is he a wrench??) but the tune and timing was right. Amazing kid. He's getting a child's guitar for Christmas and we are all wondering if he'll pick it up easily and naturally. He already plays Papa's guitar but can't reach both ends to play properly.

Parade Awe!! 2

Papa and Wilber the pig.

Baby R with her 1st pony tail. She has 2 times as much hair as E did at the same age. She was not happy and this is the best pic I got.

Baby R!!

Baby R having a bath in the kitchen sink. If you look close you can see her top tooth. Her bottom tooth is on the other side hidden by her top gum!!!

Thanksgiving and Papa's Days off.

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Sunday and got in the Thanksgiving mood by making hand turkeys. We all made one. So we had a hand turkey family!! We have a 3 gallon bucket of mixed pea's and beans and that is what we used for decorations. They are very easy to make. You get some colored paper and trace and cut out your hand. Turn it over so you can't see your trace line, slather with glue and add beans, peas or some people use different kinds of dried pasta. Even E had a great time doing this. With Baby R's it took both Papa and I to get a trace of her hand and then I just put glue on it and dumped a bowl of beans and peas over top. Waited a little bit and tipped it back into the bowl to get the extras off and it was done. I figured that was what she'd like to do with them. But I didn't want her eating any. E put the entire bowl she had one at a time on her glued hand in a big pile and yelled DONE!! So I dumped the extras off and let her do it again.

We celebrated Thanksgiving with Papa's last boss, his wife and his daughter. We had a great time. Ate extremely well as per normal. Our one lonely turkey was great, breast nice and juicy just the way Papa likes it. We did not weight him, we forgot, but he weighed considerably more then E. (And he BARELY fit in my huge turkey roaster, we had to tuck the wings in as I cooked him breast down.) She is 20 lbs so we assume the turkey was late 20's early 30's. I made the best pumpkin pie ever, from the pumpkin J and I did, and a pretty good apple. After the meal we taught them to play Pinochle, which my team actually won!!! Gasp. I must be having a winning streak as that was 2 games, on two different nights, that my team has won. Both times we won by about 500 points!! YAHOO. The kids read books with Amy and watched us play. J and L had a cute discussion over supper about who's muscles where bigger which we all got a kick out of. Baby R loved the pumpkin pie and cranberries.

We moved the pigs again. Papa took the boys outside to make a pig run. We needed to move them about 200 feet so he made a pole and wire run from one area to the other. This worked great and the pigs are now in the under cover area where our cow spent last winter and what we've had so far this year. They will stay there now until butchering day. Which, being under a roof should be fairly easy to hang them. They are totally enjoying it (we poked holes with a rock bar and filled them with corn and they are happily turning it upside down.) but poor Bindy was really horrified!! PIGS in HER covered area. She stood a ways off and stared at them. She refused to go get a drink all day (it's by the pigs). She was so nervous milking that Papa only got 2 gallons that night and I got 2 the next morning. She heard the pigs 'whoof' and just about scared the daylights out of me. Her whole body did the lift up and move inches trick!! While I was milking. Now that's she's gotten used to them a bit she tattles on them. One of them got out yesterday and she bawled and bawled until we got it back in. Now the entire strength of the fencer is on the pig pen. I doubt they'll get out again. This morning I got about as much milk as I normally do so she has adjusted well. The plan right now is to butcher at least the biggest 3 between Christmas and new years. Maybe the biggest 4. We already have a line on Berkshire wieners for April and we are looking forward to trying the breed.

We loaded up the kids in the back of the Travelall and went and got a load of poplar from the back. 30 minutes and we had a truck bed trailer loaded and unloaded. I love being prepared!!! Because our weather this year is so mild we have not been burning any pine unless we need to start a fire. So we have been going through more poplar then normal. Which is fine with us as we have TONS of the stuff split and stacked.