Bunk Beds

Before. The oldest 5 and I painted beds for J3 and G.  

After. 

In 

Thanks for the picture L :) 

J3 and the New Tub

Can you tell there was a sale on?

J3's 4th Birthday :)

Making his cake. He loves to work the mixer.

Boy and Cake :) 

Cheesy smile :) 

It was a great party!! 4 years old already!! 

Kid Pictures :)

Brothers

J (10), S (10 months), L (9) and J3 (3). 

Sisters

E (7), R (6), G (2).

Stair steps :) 

J3 is BUSY!!

Recently he told me his smile didn't work.. and it really didn't. I worked at it a little bit and then I was hit with a brain wave and took him over to the mirror. His smile still works in the mirror when Mommy tickles him. He is growing again and the pants Grandma F brought over a while ago that were too long, now fit him. He used to beg to play the computer game he likes but now after a couple minutes he's done. I like that. I like that he can feel free to try it out but still not be tied to it. He no longer asks to do school every 5 minutes either. He's quite contented playing critters with G and helping me with little chores or playing with S or R when she's done school. He's really quite helpful and enjoys being my little helper dude. He's never woke up dry ever so we've quit waiting for him too. The best thing we've found is just to teach them to wake up and go in the middle of the night. J3 will have to learn to wake himself up in the night to go to the bathroom. The 3rd day into it he woke up enough to walk to the bathroom himself instead of me carrying him, the first night, or pulling him along, the second night. It will be awhile before he will wake up and go alone. The scariest thing about this stage is having them wandering around in the middle of the night half asleep so I'm OK with getting them up and making sure they make it there and back. I'm up anyway. 

J3 has recently seem to mature a bit. He no longer needs constant supervision, though I still watch him like a hawk as I'm not used to this new stage yet. He is enjoying crafts and coloring more now and seems to have decided to work on his pronunciation as he's getting tired of repeating himself. He and I work on that here and there during the day. It almost seems like we are seeing the fruits from our constant parenting for the last 3 years and I'm hoping that's so. He still likes to be in the middle of anything that is happening but now he also seems to have the skills to DO many of the things he's been wanting too. I think we will have to modify the chore chart soon as he'll be ready for a bit more 'fun' stuff, as he calls it.

He really loved decorating the tree this year! The kids decorated Grandma's tree too and he was so careful climbing up on the stools so he could reach higher and so responsible and careful with the ornaments, hanging them just so, handling them gently. Quite a change from our little rough housing little man last year! 

General Update. Nov. 2013

I went on the computer to the blog tonight to make sure I don't forget how to blog. It's been a bit crazy around here you see and I'm still trying to get my feet back under me and remember that there are other things to do besides school, butchering, and housework and parenting.. well when the kids are asleep anyway. SO here you go... general update of our life.. crazy as it is :)

We've had two birthdays, which reminds me I need to change my about me again. E turned 7, and I already blogged about that here. And G turned two and we had her party last week. I'll hopefully post that soon. Other than that fun we've pretty much been busy putting up the animal harvest of the year.

Meatball the 3 year old steer we brought home, hung for two weeks and cut and wrapped and frozen. One simple sentence but a heck of a lot of meat and work since we did the entire thing ourselves. We sure are enjoying having beef again though :) OH and we bought a new meat grinder.. it's amazing!! Gobbles up the meat quick as a wink! Super quiet too.. Papa and I can chat while we work with this grinder.

6 pigs have hit the freezers, some for us, some for others. We have 4 more to do. There is a tote of sausage on the back porch waiting for Papa to smoke from our last butchering marathon. About 130 lbs of it. Pork pepperoni, summer and Mennonite sausage. Tastes great, we tried it all :) At one point we had a production line going. Papa cutting pork chops with the electric meat saw, J bringing them to the butcher table, L, E and R using canning rings to scrape the bone chips off and passing them to me to have the fat trimmed and do the final bagging. 10 chops to a bag. 12.5 bags. 3 pigs worth of chops. I don't see the point in packaging it in small packages.. I'm rarely going to get out just one bag. Normally I do two. Then we have leftovers :) I know.. we like to eat. We like to eat MEAT!!! lol. Papa's got bacon making in the back room and more frozen waiting to be sliced. Slicer is likely next on our to buy list as the place in town were we've always gotten it done can no longer slice it for us. Slicing bacon by hand is HARD WORK!! I don't mind work but 20 sides of bacon is a bit much to hand slice.

As we are butchering there is a lot of hides and innards and things in the lagoon.. which means we are seeing Eagles again. The kids have been taking pictures of them. So far there are only two but we are hoping we get the 8 or so we had last year later on in the season.

Term one of home schooling requirements 'to do' list was saved by a patch of cold weather.. kids couldn't spend much time outside so we actually almost finished the work for Term 1 before the deadline.. I don't feel to bad that we didn't. We only missed one assignment which is awesome work as we got 12 weeks of science and Social Studies work a mere month before the end of term. Some crazy changes to the curriculum in the school we go through. This term we are, hopefully, done with the changes and it will go smoother.

 R is reading and doing so wonderfully. She loves it and has been pecking away at her term 2 work for awhile now as she flew through her reading program. I'm really enjoying J's set up this year and he is too.. his system is a bit different now with his grade 4 teacher and we both like it.

S is doing really well. He's got cheeks :) Loves his jolly jumper. Tried banana's and HATED them. Sleeps long stretches at night, often is only up once around 5 or 6 am. And is in general a very happy smiley giggly little boy. He loves to laugh. If you laugh near him he bursts into giggles. Today I put him on his belly on the floor and he scooted.. later on I did it again and noticed he is bringing his knees up in order to move forward. Crawling is not far off. He has great hand eye coordination and rarely misses when he grabs things or shoves things in his mouth. I was going to wait until 6 months for solids but Papa's work has a Christmas Party that I want to attend so I will try him on cream of wheat soon. Just so I can go to the Party and Grandma will have something to feed him if she needs too. With the other boys I normally started solids at 4 months but S just isn't as hungry as L and J were. He's no where close to the constantly hungry J3 was at this age.. mind you he's only about 14 lbs and J3 was something like 20lbs at this age. S really is a Griggs :) J3 takes a bit more after my side of the family. I tried banana's just to see if he was really interested at all and he really was not. I'll likely wait another week now and try again. If nothing else I'll send it along and Grandma will have it if she needs it. The party will likely only last about 3 hours and we'll be near Grandma's house so I can go nurse him if I need too. And no I won't be leaving him a bottle.. I've not bottle fed the 1st six and I don't plan on starting with the 7th ;)

I realize I'm skipping around from family to farm but this next thing is both :) We got a couple more piglets to raise up on bottles. My uncle's pig had too many again and he brought two little female, gilts, piglets over Monday afternoon. We named them Sausage and Chops. The smaller one is Chops.. she's got attitude! They weighed in at 1.5 lbs and 3 lbs Monday when we got them. We are going to weigh them each week for a while and see how they grow. They are super cute. Sausage does seem to have a problem with her legs but it seems to be getting better as she gains strength. They were a week old when we got them, but very small. I put a glass square pan of milk in their tote tonight and I can hear them drinking it!! The pan is heavy enough they cannot get their little pig noses under it and tip it out!

Umm.. house.. nothing to report.. still there, nothings happening on it.. too BUSY BUSY BUSY putting in the meat harvest :)

Kittens.. seems like Daisy's kittens didn't make it. Never did see them but she's not skinny like she was last time, actually she's in superb shape, which makes me think they didn't survive. She must have abandoned them. Which is sad but there is nothing we can do about it so I'm not letting it get to me. Fluffs kittens are older and fine.. each one has been door trained. Some took longer than others. The little brown female got past J a couple of times but we did eventually teach her not to rush inside the minute a door opens. I won't have them in the house.. there are enough of us in here as it is :) 7 kids, 2 adults and 2 little pigs. Not bad for a two bedroom trailer with a addition!! Anyway now with her 3 kittens we have Daisy, Midnight, Fluff and the kittens are Caramel, Mischief and the so far unnamed orange male. Our last orange male has disappeared and we've not seen him in months. A good reason to keep a breeding female around.. cats don't seem to last long up in the north woods with the coyotes and wolves and eagles.

Papa is back to evening shifts. Noon to midnight, Wednesday thru Saturday. Which means I get less sleep then I would if he was on a normal shift but that's ok :) I like to see him at the end of the day and S often isn't in bed for the night until 11 anyway. I am taking my vitamins :) Dr. Nicole :)

Anyway. As always we are busy busy busy with family, farm, work and harvest. Some things get put off for later while we deal with more seasonal things.. for example I normally potty train right after their second birthday.. which G had almost 2 weeks ago now.. and no I'm not potty training her... I'm not going to either until later when butchering is done. It's not fair for any of us to do it now so we won't. It won't hurt her or me none to wait.

So things to look forward to on the farm is the end of pig butchering which should be not this weekend but next weekend. Isabel's calf which is due around the 23rd of December.. She's been AI'd to a Brown Swiss so we are hoping for a heifer. She sure is cranky these days and chasing Milton and Patch around a lot. Patch is still a scrawny little runt of a steer and both Papa and I have wondered if we did ourselves any favors when we got him from the dairy. We actually had him tied under a roof the 1st time it snowed as he was not looking good at all. He recovered well and is in with the cows now. He does have a nose for trouble and got out several times before we realized he could open our man gate by the milking area. Now the gate is bungied shut and he tries and tries but can't wiggle through anymore.

Oh right, the woodshed.. Pretty much done.. we got 6 inches of snow when Papa had two more piece of tin, one on each side, and the ridge cap to put on so neither of those are done but the snows pretty much off the roof now so he might get to that soon. We are loving the extra space and the wood dry and right by the house!!!

Our phone had a problem with our electric fence one morning when we had a dump of fresh snow so it's no longer working and we are phone less. We are looking into a cell phone to replace the home phone and hope to get that all figured out this weekend, but in the mean time are communicating mainly through Imessage and FB.


I have to say though that I LOVE MY LIFE. I'm not complaining as I write this. I'm explaining. I'm not whining. I'm winning my battles that are near to my heart. I'm taking a stand for what I believe to be right and doing it. If I wanted to whine I could tell you that I've been out of my yard 3 times, besides church, in the last 6 weeks and I miss the contact, however small, with the outside world. Another good reason to take my vitamins :) But I don't want to whine. That is not why I blog.

 I blog for my kids. Like a scrapbook. Which reminds me G has been saying some pretty funny stuff lately! I want to remember how Papa and I make pancakes the morning of the first snow, we kick the kids outside and make them pancakes while they play in the snow and then when breakfast is ready they come in and we eat hot pancakes and drink hot chocolate and talk about the wonderful world God made for us. (And yes I know that's a long long crazy sentence but that's me :) Say it really fast and a bit breathless :) )  I also blog for you.. the reader who actually made it to the end of this book. The Aunt Linda's. The family far away and nearby. The Momys Ladies.The random person who found our crazy life by accident and enjoys reading these rambling posts. The old friend. The large family curious person who wonders how we make it work. The odd person we have that random chance encounter with at the store. So thanks for reading and HEY I know your out there so leave me a comment or two and prove it :)  


Well I feel like I've written a book after my recent silence. I hope you enjoyed it. I will try very hard to sit down at the computer more often and keep you lovely people updated.. and post pictures.

Good Night and GOD BLESS!!!!

A Pile Of Toys..

J3 recently put all his favorite toys in one spot.. sister included! 

A Little Update. Sept /13

Well I've been a bit MIA this last little bit. It's been busy around here and I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed with school and canning and house building and farming and I could just keep going but that won't help. So I'll focus on the positives.

 We've finished our 1 set of PACES this week and now are moving at a much slower pace in school. I don't know what I was thinking jumping in with both feet like I did. I guess I deserved the dunking for not thinking it through. 

 J, L and E are now finished 1/4 of their PACE work for the term and now we can take some time off later if we do end up moving into the house. We are slowing down for a bit now though, that pace works fine in the middle of winter with little else going on, but is way too much for this time of year and this time in our lives. 

R is almost half done her reading program, two years of watching others do this program is really working to her advantage and she reads like a pro! 

J3 is learning the songs for the reading program from R and loving his school time with a picture to color. 

G is also coloring pictures but she'd much rather be OUTSIDE. And even a mention of an animal can send her running to get her 'oots. Or boots as us non baby's call them :) 

S is also doing well. We had a bit of a heart murmur scare with him but the pedi in the city couldn't find it so that's a good sign his heart is fine. He is 'underweight' to maintain his growth curve on their charts so I'm waking him to nurse if he doesn't wake himself during the day and he seems to be gaining. I'm not super concerned as this is what our girls did too..and they are just small. It's in their genes. He is grabbing stuff now and trying to get it in his mouth. He also smiles a TON and giggles too :) Super cute! 

We took the kids to the beach yesterday and spent a couple of hours just relaxing. It was wonderful. It was needed. The weather has been strange for September and we've had +30C several times this last week. The leaves aren't even changing colors and the gardens and grass are still growing. Very odd weather for here. We are loving it. We pulled the kids little pool out again and the spent hours building boats and playing in the water. We might do that again today as its suppose to be very nice today and Papa and I will be busy stuccoing :) 

I'm going to try and keep posting a post a day for a bit and try and catch you all up on us, the farm and the house. Have a wonderful Saturday! 

August 2013

J

L

E

R

J3 

G

S at 6 weeks.

Sister Cuddles

The kids all fight over who gets to hold!! If he falls asleep on you are called the BEST baby holder!!

J3, E, R holding S.

E and S.

What good big sisters!!

You Never Know....

What you'll see on our yard!!  

Sometimes it's kids playing a rousing game of soccer, or chickens eating grass, full grown cows munching around the trampoline, or little pigs rooting in the dirt. There are almost always laying hens and children, dogs and toys. A couple of weeks ago it was calves as well..

Everybody loves Papa. 

Patch; still a little wild.

J3 and Milton.

Calf and beer.... such is the homestead life!! 

Calf, Papa's shadow (also know as Chip) and beer... 

Ah it's the homebrewing/homesteading life!! 

Samuel Is Here :)

My wonderful Dr. Nicole, S and I,and Papa about 45 minutes after he was born. It was a quick labor and delivery and we were all relieved that it was over and that Dr. Nicole made it there on time. She RAN in and arrived soaking wet from the rain. Other then a couple of things; he had a LOT of water in there with him and soaked the entire room, he was born face up, and he was a bit limp at birth, but still pink and crying, and had to be assessed for a bit, everything went super well and fast. 

The proud Papa holding S for the first time!! 

The afternoon after he was born I woke up to find my whole family staring at me. They'd come in to my hospital room while I was asleep, S asleep on my chest. S slept through the whole visit and the kids loved on him the whole time. 

J walked into my room and said.. I'm the oldest I get to hold him first :) 

He was the least impressed about the new baby during the pregnancy, and even then not unhappy just sort of vague, so I was very pleased to hear him ohh and ahh over S right from the start. 

Tickled PINK!! That is the only way to describe the kids reaction to their new brother. 

E and S. 

G petting him. E is so proud of him!! 

R looking serious. He weighs almost a 3rd of what she does which made it a bit hard for her to hold him. J3 was waiting for his turn.

Kissing that little forehead! 

J3 loved him and was so pleased he got to hold him! 

G kissing him.

G loved him, kissing him and petting his head, until we tried to get her to hold him...
NOPE NO WAY!! I love how S looks so peaceful and G is the one that looks like shes going to cry..

normally it's the baby who is unhappy and the older kid looks pleased. 

The Griggs Family... numbering NINE!!! Thanks Crystal for taking the pictures!! 

My flowers from Papa and the girls flowers they picked for me. 

Samuel is named after my cousin Blair Owen, B&B on here :), and Papa's childhood friend Brett Quinn. He's a beautiful baby, peaceful, eats like a champ (I call him my little Barricoda!! for his latch!), sleeps solid and rarely makes a fuss. He has the Griggs baby nose and Papa's ears. His toes are short and stubby and his fingers long and slim. He was born with large bruise on the top of his head which is slowly going away. My labor with him was from 5:30pm to his arrival at 7:45pm. The fastest labor I've had yet. 45 minutes shorter then E's. He was 8 days over due and was born a day before his father did 36 years earlier. He shares a birth month with Papa but is the only Griggs kid born in June. Keeping up the tradition :) Each of our children, so far, have their own birth month! 

We are both doing fantastic! His bruise is going away nicely and I'm feeling almost 100%!! I'm still resting lots, and will continue to rest lots until Papa goes back to work next week, but physically I'm amazed at how fast I felt pretty much back to normal already. So much different then G's birth 19 months ago which took several months to recover from. I'm pretty sure that the 5 week herbal formula and the red raspberry leaf tea have been very beneficial to a fast birth and healing! If #8 is in Gods plans I will be taking both of them again :)