G's 3rd Birthday

G was so excited to have OLAF on her cake :) 

Whipped cream for snow and some pink icing just because she loves pink. Pink everything. 

Opening gifts with the siblings. She got a Frozen set of mini dolls from Papa and I, a bunch of random stuff from the siblings and a tea party ( food included) from G&G :) Grandma baby sat for us a few weeks later and they had a grand tea party then :) 

G loves pink, Frozen, coloring, babies, Olaf and trying to keep up with every other child on the place. She's quite the little motor mouth and loves to sing. She just got a toddler bed and graduated to it from a mattress on the floor ( so when they fall out of bed they don't fall far.) G loves to play with S inside and 'wing with J3'outside. She's a very brave girl and anything J3 can do: she can too ;) 

Thankful Thursday.

So I'm siting at the kitchen table, tapping this out, munching on a granola bar and watching the sun rise. Yes, it's 8:22 and the sun, here, is just rising. Pretty isn't it. 

The funny lights in the top one is from our Christmas lights in the living room reflecting in the window. 

R, a great friend of mine, could tell you how much I love to watch sunsets. Sometimes on our little girls nights out we've driven quite out of the way just for a good view of the sunset. Once we even got a call from her worried husband who happened to be tracking her phone. Opps. But this morning I'm watching the sun rise from my kitchen table.  This is huge. I had no idea I could see it rise from inside my house. Maybe it's the time of year? Like the sunsets we see rarely in the fall when the days are just the right length? I'm hoping not. I'm hoping that I've just been sleeping in and missing them and it's not some weird sun directional thing like the falls sunsets. 

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! :)