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 :) 

The Griggs Cousins :)

Papa's folks came up for a few days this month and brought with them Papa's niece!! It was wonderful to see them!! I took almost no pictures and this is the best of the ones I did take. Sorry.. I really should have taken more!! Cousin M stayed one night with us and slept in the kids room with them! 6 kids to a room!! They were all so tired they didn't hardly move and slept like logs!! Papa enjoyed reading one of our new books to them before they went to bed. We went out for supper and ice cream, spent hours at the park riding bikes and running and playing. We fed the sheep and watched a movie, drew pictures,  we ate really well as Papa cooked all weekend :) All in all we had a BLAST!! Thanks for the great visit Grampa and Gramma Griggs and Cousin M!