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! :) 

Baby Update :) Naming Fun.

Cute isn't he? Papa and I went out for lunch after the ultrasound and named him. All three names, but we'll only share the first one until the birth. It took us two full hours to name him, the longest time ever! We went alphabetically and got to T!!! Not much after T! Lol. Papa doesn't like boys names that start with a vowel, we are off J names and there are a LOT OF BIBLICAL J NAMES, and our last boy was S so we didn't want another S name so soon. That makes naming rather difficult! 

 His name is Tobiah. Yes it's a biblical boys name keeping our tradition, there are two men named Tobiah in the Bible :) We didn't realize until after the announcement that one of the two men named Tobiah in the Bible was kicked out of the temple for some reason. Lol. Hopefully that doesn't mean he'll be a little trouble maker ;)  Papa read the names out and told me what they meant and Tobiah means 'Yahweh is good.' Good strong meaning and we both liked the name but it really seemed to settle in my heart and I told Papa that was the name. He agreed and we stopped looking and matched up some middle names to go with it. Then we checked the initials :) and made sure no words were spelled; they weren't :) 

Now, for the record, I was having a bit of a hard time remembering it but I think I've got it now! We don't know any Tobiah's and I'm not sure I've ever even heard the name before which, of course, is my excuse. The kids were pretty excited but they did wonder at the name as it isn't one they've ever heard. I think they are getting used to it too :) 

Quick Walls Update.

Just a few quick pictures for you who are not on Facebook. 

Weaning piglets

Well we finally weaned the piglets this morning, or I guess we actaully just separated the sows and piglets. The weaning takes a couple days. All but one of them will be 10 weeks old on Friday so it's about time. What a rodeo! The piglets stayed in but every other pig on the place got out at one time or another! At one point we had at least 15 pigs out! These are big pigs! 200lbs to 400lbs! Actually I think both Big Girl and Gilly are over 400lbs easy. 

We finally got them all back in and the fence hot and they are all staying in now :) Mahahahahaha. That fence HURTS. I got nailed this morning and OUCH!! 

And no I didn't get any pictures! I was way to busy trying to keep the pigs in sight! 

But I will say something I say every year about this time...those butcher pigs are getting NICE and BIG and, don't you know it, it's 'about time to put some of them in the freezer!' 

But it's really not. We are way way way to busy to be butchering right now. The pigs will have to wait until at least November. 

Speaking of which I'd better go help Papa outside. I'm sitting in with the littles so they will nap and they are all asleep so it's time to go do some wall building :)