A New Skill.

Papa informed me the other day that I would have to take 'skid steer lessons.' I wasn't super keen on the idea but as he still can't sit it sure would come in handy if one of us could use the skid steer. So after grabbing a pair of ear plugs and inwardly building myself up to learn a new skill, Papa and I headed out to fire up the skid steer. I climbed in and sat down and Papa started to tell me how to start it... I'm thinking turn a key.. he's going to great lengths to tell me about ether!! A few minutes later I'd gotten it started.. ether works wonders and we were OFF and crawling :)

First thing I got to do was move the pigs 1 ton bag of feed, only about half full, to the barn where we had just started feeding the piglets, creep feed style. It took me a while to figure out which directions of the petal moved the forks which way.. Feels totally backwards to me! But I moved the feed bag without any trouble! Then Papa attached a ball to on of the forks and I got to move this

Yup all the way from the back where Papa had cut it up this spring and the boys had filled the trailer earlier. It actually took almost as long to hook the trailer to the skid steer as it did to drive the trailer backwards all the way to the house! It steers really super easy believe it or not! As you can see though Papa was a bit leery of my 'driving' and moved both the car and the travelall out of the way!! The kids were watching a movie inside and the baby asleep so I didn't have to worry about them. Papa wanted to dump the trailer load himself which suited me just fine. As it was he ended up just lifting the trailer part way and pulling most of the wood out by hand. Then I drove the trailer back to the piles of firewood to be brought to the front and parked it so we could re-fill it. After I got back to the house I got to 'play with' the chunk of metal that we took off our old addition and move it to a better spot. It went pretty well :) 

I learned a few things that day!

How to drive a skid steer and move the forks at the same time! 

That Papa and I can hook a trailer to the skid steers fork ball without me having to see what was going on without too much frustration and only a bit of time :) 

Papa has more patience on pain killers then he does normally :) 

That driving a trailer bed backwards isn't as hard as it looks :) 

If you hit a bump/stump with the skid steer Hang on!! It rocks pretty good. 

If you happen to be 8 months pregnant and driving a skid steer and hit a few bumps/stumps your belly muscles will hurt afterwards! 

Driving a skid steer while pregnant makes me motion sick :( 

That starting an engine with ether is not as hard as you might think.

That it really is FUN to drive a skid steer :) Even if it makes me a little motion sick!! 

Down Time And Jr.Monopoly!

Papa recently had two weeks off work. If your wondering what wonderful project we got done in that time I'll tell you! Nothing.. Well unless you count the fact, and I do,  that Papa can now get off the couch, walk, drive and sit!! (I on the other hand lost 2.5 lbs!!) He has had sciatica pain before but NEVER like this! Turns out, after several doctor visits, rides to the 'city' to see our favorite chiropractor, several pain meds and a trip to the ER that Papa has a bulging disk in his lower back which is pinching his sciatica nerve!! It was a bit stressful!! I've NEVER before had Papa ask ME to drive him to the 'city.' Normally he avoids me driving at all costs. *Something about waking up heading backwards towards a ditch? I'm not sure what his problem is? We survived after all!! :) Besides that it was years and years ago!! 

Anyway so if your stuck pretty much flat on your back for about a week when your normally a pretty active working man you find things to do.. when your awake anyway. His pain meds made him sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep!! The kids of course loved having Papa home and several days he helped me with school.. when he could keep his medicated muddled mind on it that is. Note to Self.. E, our little airhead *lovingly said, and Papa on drugs = very little school done!! He did teach them the Jr. Monopoly game which they all love. L, so far, is our little Mr. Monopoly much to J's dismay! :) The 4 kids play and Papa is the banker. They are all even learning from it. R is counting better and better and E, L and J are all working on their adding and subtracting skills.

Papa has now been back to work for 3 days. He's drugged pretty good and has a 'helper' at work to do all his heavy stuff but he's working!! PTL!! The kids and I are getting used to him being gone all afternoon and evening again and doing school like crazy people to get our extra's done as well as the reading program before little Miss Baby G comes along. On that note, I'm not sure doing the chores twice a day for a week did anything good for my pregnant self but I'm really grateful to be doing chores only 4 times weekly again instead of 14!! And looking forward to being chore free as I normally am at the last few weeks of pregnancy. Papa's back could take awhile to heal completely but they are expecting him to make a full recovery. For now though we are still slowing down life, which is surprisingly hard to do on a farm, and still trying to be ready for winter when it hits. We still have some meat birds of a friends to butcher, hay to haul, Maggie to get bred, calves to provide for, piglets to sell and cut, and firewood to finish!! Never mind the cold weather prep like water and hoses and heat tapes. Things are looking up though! In the last 2 weeks we've gotten two dump truck loads of firewood brought right to the house and dropped off in the yard which has blessed us amazingly!! We've also got a Papa who can drive, walk and work again!! 

Baby J is Growing Up!!

He got his 1st haircut the other day!! Here Papa is holding up his LONG hair so we can see how long it was before we cut it!! 

And here he is after his fairly painless haircut. He took it better then either of the other boys did at his age. Papa gently held his head still and I cut as FAST as possible!! It only took us about 10 minutes TOTAL!! I'm getting super duper fast with my scissors!! I cut all three boys hair and Papa's in just over an hour!! Not too shabby as it used to take me an hour to do ONE head of hair!! Baby J is looking much older these days after his haircut and I think it's time to drop the 'baby' in his name on my blog. Not sure what to use instead though?? Some idea's are LJ for Little J, or J2? Anyone got any other ideas?? The new baby is almost here as well so it's about time to change his screen name :) 

Little Corn Huskers :)

From the looks on their faces you would think it's a horrible chore, but it really isn't. They totally enjoyed it!! This was the last of 2 boxes of corn got for a steal of a deal :) There is still some to be eaten or something but I had the kids husk it all so I could tell if it was molding or anything. Most of it was fine. The pigs really enjoyed the husks! In the back there you can see Baby J on the 'outdoor playpen' also known as the Trampoline!! :) 

Scratch Coat is FINISHED!!!

Looks serious doesn't it?? We needed to get the last bit of scratch coat mix up on the roof so we could finish off the top part of the wall above the trailer and seal the straw off completely. We did get it up there... and the scratch coat is NOW FINISHED!!! Papa ended up adding several more pallets under the wheel barrow and then he pushed and I pulled and TA DA the wheel barrow was on the roof!! No I did not hurt myself! We both were very careful! Once the mix was up on the roof the plastering took no time at all (we are getting pretty good at it :) Papa did need a little more and did have to make up a bit more to finish it off but it's DONE DONE DONE now!!! YAY!!! 

A Little Miss R Update.

Little Miss R is really growing up!! She loves her babies and packs them around a lot. Here she is using a blanket which started out as a cape as a baby back pack. She's quite the little mother!! She's been growing lately and getting clumsy.. hopefully she stops growing so fast before the wedding where she's the flower girl in October! She would really like to be doing school with E and L and one day I teased J that he knew the program so well maybe I'll get him to teach her and before I knew it R was digging in E's drawer to find her box with her pencil, eraser and glue, and ran up to J and told him she was ready. Teach ME!!  J looked bewildered and asked me if he was suppose to start now?? lol. She's still only 3 so even though she can sing the songs and say the sounds we'll not be starting her reading program anytime soon. She really has very little fine finger control but that is simply a maturity thing.  She is enjoying learning to draw and color in the lines and doing sort of a kindergarten with L and E's grade one.

3 Little Stories :)

A Sand Story:  Papa took the truck to the 'city' the other day and picked up about a ton of sand for our plastering. Too bad our new skid steer could not pick it up out of the trailer as the sand was too heavy for it to lift over the side of the trailer!! So Papa shoveled a bunch of sand into a second feed bag and tried to take the smaller bag out with the skid steer!! Well.. the bag ripped right open and all the sand landed in the bottom of the trailer!! When Papa tried to take the larger bag out it slipped to the back of the trailer and this 

was the result!! In the picture Papa is already shoveling sand to the front of the trailer to try and get it to level out.. it never did he just emptied more sand from the bag to the trailer and took the bag out. Chip is never far from Papa when he's home. See him laying beside the trailer?

J was a great helper.. holding out the straps so Papa could put the forks in them. 

Ready for lift off!! 

Bringing it to the 'mixing area' :) J looking on, feeling a bit cocky I think :) 

A Note About The Skid Steer: This is the same skid steer, or bobcat, that Papa used to borrow from work.  We recently bought it from his bosses for our farm workhorse. Papa's work got a newer one!  We needed something to move bags of feed, bales, what have you around on the farm. We're also really looking forward to using on steer butchering day to hang and move our dead steers!! No more cutting into quarters and wrestling the chunks of meat into the back of the travelall. Now we'll be able to hang it right up to skin etc and then place it right into a plastic lined trailer to take to the butcher or to hang in the yard to cure before we cut and wrap it ourselves. I have to admit I really wasn't super keen on buying it, even thought we got it at a GREAT price, but Papa was quite insistent and so far it's making BOTH our lives easier. I can't wait to do forest clearing next spring as the skid steer will make moving cut logs so much easier without having to cut every log into firewood sized chunks. It also makes moving bags of feed SUPER easy and it's so much nicer to have the feed close to the animals that are eating it :) I have to admit though that we'd probably still be talking it over if it hadn't been for my brother Danny.. we had them over for supper one night and he told us he'd give his left arm for a skid steer (and his right for an airplane:) as it would be so helpful with his business. I knew some day we'd need something to help with the lifting work on the farm but I'd hope to put it off for a few more years.. and quite honestly.. I was hoping to have a bit more house built and paid for first. Papa got a nice $$ bonus for competing his IP test, the final of all 4 apprentice years, and it paid for most of the skid steer. 

A Cow Story: Maggie LOVES the skid steer!! You can see her in a couple of the pictures. They must have fed her with one at the dairy and she RUNS over to see what it's up to every time Papa drives it! Often MOOOOOing and looking impatient! 

A Baby Cuddle.

I've always enjoyed taking pictures of Papa snuggling with the newest Griggs baby but Baby J never would cuddle with him long enough for me to grab my camera. Well lately Papa has been getting all the Baby J snuggles and I finally got my picture!! Late is always better then never :) 

Inside Scratch Coat Finished!!

Papa and I got the last of the inside scratch coat on the straw bale walls the other day :) This was the biggest wall and it took FOUR loads of plaster to finish!! 

Looks great hey?? I love the look of it before Papa scratches it! So nice and smooth and much more like the finished project should look. You can see Papa's not quite done in the bottom picture.. he's sitting on top of a ladder in the top left corner finishing the last little be up!! This corner will be the 1st spot brown coated as we want to be able to move the wood stove into place before we start using it daily. Papa has a few days off and we are trying to get at least that area done for the winter. The brown coat is all mixed and in the 'tub' (see bath pictures below) which has been lined with plastic. The tub is ALMOST FULL and might be enough to finish the brown coat completely. We're really not sure how much plaster it will take. He used up pretty much all the sand that he brought home the other day! 

The BIG TUB!!!

The kids were so excited, the warm water hose from inside had been running warm water for over 30 minutes, the weather was warm enough for a bit of a bath!! Finally, Mom said, Get NAKED!!! Oh well wait.. keep your underwear on!! lol.

Stripping, it's amazing how fast 4 little people can get mostly naked! Yes, it's fall and yes R and E are wearing sweaters because it really isn't all that warm outside! 

Mad dash to the tub and a frantic crawling in! 

Sitting enjoying the nice warm water. They all thought it was a bit too warm at first but it didn't take long and they were all splashing and playing and sliding down the sides of the tub. The ridges on the edges are GREAT for standing on and jumping into the water!! 

After quite a while had passed I stuck Baby J in there too.. he didn't much care for it at first but it didn't take long and he was splashing with the rest of them. While we were there we might as well get clean :) Papa brought us some shampoo and some towels and we did a 5 head scrub! 

Kind of an expensive tub right?? Yes it is. It's not just a tub, actually it's not really a tub at all. Papa and I needed something that would be dual purpose. A large tub or something that would be able to hold cooling chickens and our plastering mix. This cow waterer is the best 'bang for our buck'  for the size we wanted. It will be easy to line with plastic for chicken butchering day or for the plaster! It's sturdy enough to hold all our chickens or an entire coats worth of plaster.. and bonus it makes a pretty cool tub or summer time pool for the kids!! Besides those 3 things I have a feeling we'll find many more uses for it.. For instance, I just thought of this..  I bet it would make a great pen for chicks or small critters!! It might even be put to use as a outside play pen :)