Thankful Thursday. May 2nd

Today's post is being written while I lay on my side in bed, the only mostly comfy position I can find. My back is protesting the lifting I did last week and I'm no longer lifting at all. Even lifting little G is hard. I'm not complaining, just explaining. Stretching and massage help quite a bit as does walking, but sitting upright is out and leaning back while sitting is better but still painful. My chiropractor helped quite a bit yesterday but I think mostly it will just take time.

Poor Papa is now doing all the milking; morning and evening, but I'm thankful that his shift allows for him to have the time to do the morning milking. It takes him about 35 minutes to milk alone and feed calves,  so he has to get up at 6:30 am to milk before work. (Those of you who know Papa know he is NOT a morning person and this a big sacrifice for him!)   I used to  wash milk stuff as he brought it inside and help that way but the sink is too low and its super painful now. When we were able to working together it only took about 20 minutes, and I'm hoping my back will get better enough that I can at least wash again.

I'm thankful for the training I've been able to do with the kids all winter as they are able to keep up on the house work with very little help from me. They also are amazing help with the lifting the littles, dishes, laundry and yard work! A lot of our fun training; things they wanted to learn and still enjoy, is really coming in handy too..like putting cookies on pans, slicing bread, putting mayo or jam on bread, picking out G or J3 clothes, washing baby hair in the tub, organizing the book shelves and more that aren't coming to my mind.

Papa has also taken the opportunity to start teaching J how to get Isabel on the milk machine and said both the boy and the cow did really well! I'm constantly amazed at how strong J is and what he can do! The other day he carried a box of school work that Papa said was heavy and it barely even fazed J.  Having a 9 year old boy sure is a handy thing!  J and L together took a small piece of our 'new to us' kitchen cabinets from the truck to the house the other day with no help from Papa or I at all. They are both fairly good with the wheel barrow and bring firewood, bedding and totes and things where ever they need to be. J's even learned how to take stuff out of the oven recently.. Quite a big deal for him as he's very leery of hot stuff. Yesterday he lit the fire pile in the yard all by himself. (Yes I asked him too and was supervising.)

So it is now several hours later and I'm sitting at the computer to finish this post. Papa is outside getting the chick barn ready for the 400 little yellow peepers that are in transit right now and will be arriving here tomorrow morning. Papa has taken the day off tomorrow to get chicks home and help me get every body fed, warm and happy in the barn.

My back has done much better this afternoon and I've barely had to rest it at all. PTL!! Maybe I will get somewhat back to normal yet :)

Anyway if your the praying sort and think of us; please pray that my back gets better, and that we find time to do all that we need to do; hopefully without stress :) Thanks :)

Oh and don't worry I will for sure take LOTS of pictures of the kids with the chicks tomorrow.... :) ;) and hopefully get around to posting them soon!!

Milton and Patch

Hanging out. 

Easy Peasy Pizza Night!!

Everyone helped! 

Pizza the super easy way! 

Sliced bread

Ketchup 

Italiano seasoning

sausage

cheese

Mushrooms were optional.. :) 

Pineapple would have been fantastic but we don't have any :( 

You could do anything you like though!! 

We get 6 loaves of bread a week in trade and we are getting over run with bread in the freezer so we are looking for ways to use up more bread. 

These are awesome and totally make the list!!

Bonus.. the kids just did it tonight... completely alone... 

And they loved every minute of it :) :) :) :) :) 

Doors (And The Last Window!) Have Arrived :)

YAY the inside doors for the whole house arrived today!! 

9 total! 

The window is the special order one we've been waiting for for the front of the house.

6 feet by 4.5 feet! My new front kitchen window :) Love it already! 

A better look! They are pine doors and we will be staining them the same cherry as we've done before.. the boys bunk beds  the kitchen bench and the wood trunk in the living room are all the same cherry stain. The only stain Papa and I can agree on :) Good thing we both like it!! 

Clay Bowls.

J and E have been really into creating stuff lately and they dug clay out of our yard and made these neat clay bowls. J's is the bigger one and E's the smaller. They have them by the wood stove to dry a bit and they are drying nicely. Not crumbling at all. I think soon we will be able to paint them! J also made a clay letter J but it fared less well and lost the upper part. I think it was just to thin to hold nicely. 

The Snow Melt Continues :)

I took these pictures last Saturday the 19th of April.. exactly a week after we got 13 inches of new snow.. 

Looking out to the road.

Kids play area. 

Looking into the front area from the yard. 

My strawberry bed! 

Looking into the place. 

The front of the house/driveway. 

More kids play area.

The front of the cow pen and the new pig pen. See Papa sitting under the tree?? 

The laying hens winter pen.. with the cement mixer. 

Now this is what it looked like last Saturday!! 

Amazing what a bit of rain and some nicer temps can do in a week!! 

Spring might actually be around the corner!!! 

L's EIGHTH Birthday!!

We celebrated L's 8th birthday this weekend!! What a fun time!! 

Shirt from Grandma and Grandpa F.

FISH HOOKS!!! 

G and R being cute :) 

What Papa calls 'the bait.'

Grandpa F and E checking out a neat game.

J3 handing L his main gift from us. 

Ohh... what is it?? 

A DRAGON to eat the bait :) Makes cool sounds and lunges with it's head to eat things!! 

Cake TIME!! Ice cream Oreo cake with a cougar and a deer on top!! 

Happy Birthday L!!! 

Dreaming Of Spring! Thankful Thursday Post!

We like to keep our front window decorated :) This morning we took down the last of the winter decorations and this afternoon we did this!! 

From the inside.. note the snow and the green grass showing through!! 

From the outside! With R's little smiling face in there and a reflection of the truck/calf pen and you can also see part of the bus and the chicken barn through the window on the other side!! 3 different perspectives in this one photo!!

We had a blast making flowers, some with hands, some with just fingers, some free handed and cutting them out. R even cut out a few! 

J says 'Maybe this will encourage Spring to come!" 

I told him it might :) but it will for sure encourage us as spring comes!! 

It's been raining all day and the snow is melting, mud is everywhere and we are keeping busy inside. 

Fun in the Sun in The North :)

Little Miss G in her little pink boots and purple jacket taking her first walkabout in the spring warmth. 

Little Mr. J3 who can find all sorts of things to do with sticks besides make water rivers in the mud :) 

I have pictures of the others too.. but they are not uploaded yet so I will have to do them later as our internet is at it's limit for the month :*( 

Update.. April 15th :)

Oh this is a general life update. I've got a few minutes to type while the kids are doing school..

Papa's two weeks off went extremely fast. No surprise there :) We actually got quite a lot done considering the weather didn't do a lot of cooperating. On his last day home we got 13 inches of heavy nasty wet SNOW!! J is doing a weather chart for the month of April and lets just say the weather was NASTY for a good chunk of Papa's days off. We did have some nice sunny days were we spent hours outside; kids in the snow and mud and Papa and I working on the house. We also had some OK type days where the kids played outside or inside while Papa and I worked on the house and came in for short warm ups/kid checks every time we could no longer feel our fingers. We also had some cold days where we did a lot of critter planning and school curriculum planing and fiddling with our house plans.

It was MUCH too cold to stucco though we did get all our stucco sand, lime and cement mix home :) We also got windows in! Some of the frames are finished but not all of them and we are waiting for our front 6 by 4.5 foot window to come in so we can install it :) I'm looking forward to that!! Most of the lathe is at least up where it belongs if not done and the stuff that's waiting needs the windows to be done first. We also have two outside corners we need to lathe and stuff straw into.. but with the snow pile off the roof these areas are really hard to get at so it will wait until we can get to them.

We got our chicken order in, 400 unsexed Cornish giant meat birds,  and they should be arriving May 3rd. Papa also got the feed ration figured out and ordered what he needed for that. Our normal supplier for wheat will not have any this year so we are shipping up corn from down south which will add a bit to the cost of the bird but not a lot.

We called the local dairy too and they didn't have any calves for sale in the start of April but told us to call back. So we did and they'd had their first bull calf that morning. If all goes well we'll be picking him up this Wednesday or Thursday :) The dairy is close to the place where we are borrowing a boar pig and we are hoping to get both at the same time :)

We also took some time and made some memories, helped others and had some fun too :) We got quite used to having Papa around and now will have to get used to his new schedule of day shift. We are looking forward to having him home for supper every night and having Saturdays off. It does throw a wrench in any doctor appointments I have for Baby S but we think we have figured out a way to do the appointments on his lunch hour. Hopefully it will work well and I will not have to look for sitters every two weeks for the next 6 weeks and every week after that! That's a lot of sitters :)

Baby S is doing very well.. growing and showing and giving my internals a workout when ever he's awake. He is a very active baby at this point and I'm just hoping he slows down some before he's born as I'd like to cuddle him instead of watch him run off!! Mostly kidding but he is very active!! Between 9 and 12 weeks to go :)

The kids re-started school today and only have about 5 weeks left, at their current pace, to get done about a month early. We should have about a month off before Baby S's due date and possibly 6 weeks between the end of school and the his birth. Right now the weather is still mostly wet and cool and it's a good time to be homeschooling in the North! Our next years basic curriculum is ordered and I'm having a bit of fun looking into fun stuff to do on the side next year.

Other upcoming events are the hopeful arrival of spring one of these days bring us some warmer weather, dry ground and green grass!! When this event finally does happen, we have big hopes for the month of May, we are going to be having a stuccoing work day!!! Come one come all :) But first..

SPRING WHERE ARE YOU??? COME ON SPRING LET's HAVE SOME FUN!!!!


(From one of my favorite Franklin Movies EVER!!)