Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Massive update, 10 million pictures

Seriously, there are 71 pictures in this post. I had some catching up to do, ha! So with no further ado, we'll start back in May when Son1 celebrated his 11th bday.

He requested a dragon cake like his sister had a few years ago. Here's the very imperfect creature:

Birthday boy blowing out his candles:

Birthday boy's brother enjoying the cake. I made him something from my cookbook called "colonial marble", a marbled chocolate & vanilla cake.

Husband spent a few evenings after work creating this awesome gift, a pair of wooden swords & shields:

My 11 yr old reads all.the.time. When asked what he wanted for his birthday he said "books." So, we mostly just got him books!

Him & his swords. His party was great, the kids all ate lots of cake & got good & sweaty. Afterwards we walked all the kids over to the park where they ran their energy off. It was a hot & sunny & good day!


Also in May we went on a homeschool field trip to Conway Family Farms. The tour was very informative & the place is lovely but my youngest 2 had a hard time of it. They get a lot of big public school groups out there so I understand they have to have lots of rules, but all the "do nots" didn't leave much for my super active 3 yr old to do. They didn't want us to touch the dirt because they recently laid out composted manure (as if my kids haven't played in that 4.2zillion times), didn't want the kids to throw any of the thousands of pine cones that lined the land, or climb on anything. Son2 ended up throwing some pretty embarrassing tantrums, but, he was bored out of his mind so whatya gonna do. There was also an hour long line for the candle making my 11 yr old took part in. By the time we left I felt uber stressed out. But the place is pretty, they gave us all delicious goat milk ice cream, & the tour was great if you were over the age of 6 or so. ;)

Just after I snapped this picture I was asked not to let the kids stand/play here!

Son1 & Son2 got to milk a goat, that was pretty cool:

Son3 enjoying the sun:

A random recent pic. Since Husband & I have begun eating meat again after many years, we've had an entertaining time learning how the heck to prepare & eat it! I've never actually cooked much meat in my adult life since I went veg when I was 18 so I'm especially clueless. I made myself laugh when I ended up with some ground beef & just couldn't think of what on earth to do with it besides make taco meat. Then I opened my cookbook. The first recipes were all for, DUH, hamburgers! Oh yeah, that's what people do with ground beef! haha. So here we decided to try to tasty Oregon Dungeness crab. It was super delicious but we really didn't know how to get the meat out. Husband had to look it up on YouTube. It takes a lot of work to get crab meat out!

Here Husband is showing the kids the ins & outs of The Crab:

We had been fantasizing about having a bonfire in our own yard. Suburbia & giant flaming bonfires don't go well together so Husband went out & created this splendid little fire pit. :) We made s'mores. Son2 (AKA Mr. Crooked Pants) & his "smarsmellow" as he calls them.

"I like s'mores!" Dirty little backyard firepit chocolate eating baby:

June 12th was our last day of our home school year. I invited my friend Danielle & her kids to go on a hike in the forest at Tryon Creek state park to celebrate. It was super cool & time flew WAY too fast. Here is a ginormous slug & his amazing plentitude of slime. You just can't appreciate the incredible amounts of mucous flowing from this slug from a picture:

Danielle & I each had 2 kids walking and one kid in a sling on our bodies. It was extremely humid & we went up & down hills. We old ladies had to stop & pant a few times while the kids scurried all over the place. It was totally gorgeous out there!

Me & my youngest shorties. I think Son1 was hunting for bears with his stick, er, weapon, here. :p

Son1 agreed that this was way more fun than doing school work at home. ;)

Baby brother & his log:

So that was it, the end of 5th grade for Son1! I'm doing some preschool stuff with Son2 still because he loves it so much, but I'm not too structured about it because I'm just not feeling in school mode. It's summer! But I have been planning & planning & searching & list making for next year's schooling. It's quite a project! And I just can't quite figure out how to organize school work for two (my 6th grader AND preschooler) for next year. Bins, binders, folders? Anyway, I still have a lot of research & organizing to do. It's super fun, though.


So, June. June is strawberry season! We ended up picking 70lbs of strawberries from a nearby u-pick farm. It's an awesome farm- organic berries for only $1 a pound! I went out one Saturday with Husband, & one Saturday with my friend Danielle. Son2 strolling through the field:

A bucket of berries modeling in the strawberry patch:

My little helper, Son1. We washed & cut the caps off of 87665544333 strawberries. We started getting a little goofy in the kitchen & laughing hysterically about nursery rhymes.

I ended up freezing 5 lg ziplocs full, eating a bushel or 12, making strawberry cheesecake (several times, yum!), and made 29 pints of jam. This picture is called "all in a day's work" :). My jam plus some of the abundant greens Husband has grown & harvested from our gardens:

This is how a one yr old eats his toast & strawberry jam. By pouring his milk all over it.

A belly pic from 21 weeks. Wow has Baby had a growth spurt since then! I'm so much larger now. And my skin is itchy. And my pelvis is rebelling. And my tail bone aches so bad. And and and..... ;)

I snapped this picture today. Three of our 4 backyard hens, Police Man, Myrtle & Pope. Pot Pie II was feeling camera shy.

Several of these pictures I went out & took today. Here are some of our container plants, these are on our front porch. These tomato plants are looking pretty fabulous:

They've got a lot of tomatoes forming on them. Someday most of these will probably end up in Son2's belly. He's a tomato inhaling monster.

One side of our backyard. Husband has all kinds of neat stuff going on here- mizuna, kale, chard, artichokes, zucchini, jerusalem artichokes, garlic, some spinach & greens & other things I'm sure I'm forgetting, plus more container plants & a few baby maple tree volunteers. :p

Beneath the dining room window... potatoes, mint & giant hydrangea. I love our hydrangeas. I'm totally digging them up when we move.
Here are some beans, celery gone to seed, mint drying on the clothesline, & an awesome potato box Husband made, bursting with happy potato plants. Plus the tarp Husband's forever using to kill off more lawn to make space for more garden. Oh, and the cat of course, writhing around hoping I'll pet him.

This side of the house was crappy lawn & bark when we moved in 3 yrs ago. Now it's bursting with green, compost bins (bursting with something, cantaloupe maybe?), & many garden beds. There's more to the right hidden by the bolted carrots. In this area Husband's got more stuff growing than I'll be able to properly recall. Just imagine an impressive list of garden plants here & be amazed that my super cool husband created all this even though he suffers from the worst allergies I can imagine every spring. I'm so appreciative that he goes out & creates gardens for us instead of hiding in the house moaning like I think a lot of us would do if we were as sick as he!

Some amusing garden carrots:

Our own little strawberry patch was extremely productive this year! Last year it produced about a dozen berries. A very delicious dozen. ;) But then this year, it's produced dozens & dozens! The kids would go out & chow on them, & then go do the same thing all over 2 days later. I have only planted about 8 starts total out here. That's it! The magical little plants send out runners that create so many new plants in such a short time! I love it!

This all started with about 4 starts 2 yrs ago, then I added about 4 more last year... and now we have this great patch! If I knew we were going to live here for years, I'd dig up more of the front yard to make room for more runners... but as it's looking, I'll probably be digging up as many of these as a can to bring with us when we move sometime in the next year. :)

Some of our plentiful kale. Some days I open the fridge & think I'll drown in the amounts of greens Husband's got tucked away in there. We've been eating well!

Some dried mint, from our bush, for tea or cooking. It smells so good!
Another random shot from today, my reading pile. ;) We've got Storey's Guide to Raising Ducks, The Family Cow, Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats, a book called Homestead, a couple BackWoods Home magazines, a Countryside magazine, & a couple preschool activity books from the library that I'm perusing for ideas. Underneath all that is our home school binder that I'm forever adding notes to. I'm unable to read just one book at a time, I hop all over the place in my book pile.

I've done very, very little to prepare for our coming baby because we have nearly everything we could ever need saved from our last babies. But I did buy a dresser off Craigslist! The one on the far right is Baby's Dresser. And it's now full of teeny little clothes. The top 3 drawers are unisex things, the bottom drawer has a few super cute boys things but mostly piles of uber girly pink things, just in case. ;) The only other fun thing I just did in prep for the new wee family member is ordering the birth supplies we need from In His Hands! Who knew someone could get so excited while waiting for sterile gloves, giant maternity pads & plastic pillow covers to come in the mail!? Haha. I can't wait til the supplies get here so I can be even more excited. I also ordered the hemostatic herbs (to stop the hemorrhage I expect I'll have, again) I'll need just in case Baby comes before the midwives. There is one major thing left that we need to do- start thinking about names! I don't even have one iota of a name idea at this point. We asked our 3 yr old what the new baby's name is & he said "Jenny". haha! I don't know where he came up with that. He does keep telling me it's a girl, though. :p But then he also told me that there are 20 babies in my belly.

Another shot from today, my birdies. I've had the cockatiel for 14 years now, and his little girlfriend for 4 or so. He's so funny, every spring he starts singing the cockatiel mating song to her. He follows her all over the cage whistling & singing trying to impress her. Too bad she's not the same species as him! (or wait, would that be not the same breed? Hm.) She does nibble on his tongue & groom his head, so I think it's true love anyway.

This is what the kids were busy doing one night while I was desperately sleepy & trying to herd them all into bed. Hahaha. They were having way too much fun & made me laugh.
Guess what cool new goodie I purchased? A yogurt maker! I'd been wanting one for some time, then I read THIS POST over at True Vine Herbs. I was sold! Ok well I actually read a ton of online reviews as well before ordering, but it was that post that introduced the wonderful gadget to me. I love it. I can make whole milk, flavored, organic yogurt for 7cents an ounce. That includes the (organic, whole) milk & culture. The cheapest comparable yogurt I can find at a store nearby is 19cents an ounce. Woohoo! That means that each batch of yogurt (42 ounces) that I make, I spend $2.94. If I bought the comparable from the store, it would cost $7.98. AND it's delicious. How awesome is that?! I still have a lot to learn about the recipes, so far I've just been making strawberry yogurt since I have all that strawberry jam lying around.

A nice shot of the kids lying around reading together:

So, now we're on to our recent visits to a friend's house. Son2 showing me his flower, so cute!

I tried typing this out without using our friend's names & it was just too difficult & weird. So I'm going to use their real names & then ask them tomorrow if that's ok, & if it's not then I'll come back & replace them with aliases. Like Bob & Barbara. haha. I'll let them pick who gets to be Bob & who gets to be Barbara.

Our friends Brett & Brian have all kinds of cool stuff going on out at their place. I want to follow them around & take notes. I had asked them some time ago if they would be interested at all in showing us how to butcher some stuff, namely ducks since duck is my most favorite meat. ;) Since they are awesome they agreed and a few weeks ago Brian taught my husband how to butcher a goat from start to finish. I watched the butchering part but I was busy on kid duty during the actual killing. It was rough for Husband, being his 1st time doing such a thing, but I know he was grateful for the knowledge. We really want to learn how to do these kinds of things ourselves. I'm only posting one picture out of the several I took of the goat & the duck butchering because this one is pretty tame, & I don't want to enrage all the vegetarians who love posting anonymously to blogs like mine.

This is where the goat hung to bleed out, beneath the kid's tree house. Husband is engrossed in listening to Brian's instructions here. What a nice place for such a thing to happen, this green & gorgeous & natural place, as opposed to the horrible places factory farms & slaughter houses are.

The free ranging chickens were hilarious- who knew they were such carnivores?! They couldn't get enough blood & whatever else dripped or was tossed nearby during the process! It felt very natural, being surrounded by greenery & clucking chickens while we butchered. And here's a funny irony. Husband & I had several conversations about the whole thing, to process our feelings on taking the life of a food animal & how not easy it can be. And then, just after the goat process was completed, we discover the family cat positively torturing a baby squirrel on the front door step! Here we were, knowing that that goat lived a healthy & natural life outdoors with its mother, and had as quick & painless a death as we humans know how to give, yet we still had to deal with the emotions it all brought up...... and there was Mother Nature. A pet cat, very deliberately attacking & then releasing an adorable little baby squirrel. He attacked & released it so it would run just so he could joyfully pounce on it & attack again. And again. For about 2 hours before the poor thing couldn't run anymore & became boring to the cat so he finally ate it. Geez! At least we didn't do THAT to the poor goat, ha! It was all so weird, thinking about where our meats come from, analyzing how violent nature is.... Here is Son2 watching the cat chase, pounce & release the squirrel in a wood pile (no, we didn't let Son2 watch the whole thing, he just happened to follow me out to where I was taking the picture).

The next weekend we went back out for the lesson in duck butchering. I was able to take part in the whole thing because Brett so graciously watched the kids for me. It felt really empowering to know that I could do such a thing! Husband & I talk about our plans for living an ever more self reliant life in the future, & I fantasize about living this self reliant life & giving Big Agribusiness the finger because "I can do it myself, rawr!", but talking & fantasizing are totally different things than actually doing. So I was a little nervous, I thought to myself "What if I just can't stand it? What if I never want to butcher another animal as long as I live? What will become of all my self reliant talk & fantasy & blabber??" But thankfully, it all was fine. I felt pretty darn empowered. I enjoyed looking down at the nasty bruise I got on my knee after diving into some gravel to catch a particular duck & thinking "Rawr! I can catch & butcher my own duck, HA!" :P

We don't buy meats that came from a factory farm. We never will. I want to know that my animal products came from healthy & happy animals that died as humanely as possible. You don't find that in the grocery store, and you pay a premium price for it from nearby family farms (we pay $6 a pound (!) for duck from the nearest farm that raises & butchers animals to my standards & markets to the public). I would just lovelovelove to be able to raise them ourselves, so we know exactly what sort of a life they lived, exactly what sort of a death they had, AND, because we will save plenty of money on food (meat, dairy, eggs). AND on top of all that, because Husband & I want to give the big fat finger to the government who is NOT very good at ensuring we the public receive decent food! I love knowing that we can do it ourselves. That was the main lesson I learned, along with the well taught & informative instructions on butchering that Brian gave. I'm super grateful for the experience!

Son2 playing in the rain at their house:

I love this rooster. I always take pictures of him when I visit Brett. He's so regal & stands so erect & manly. He's huge.

And he's usually surrounded by his adoring women:

Unfortunately, 2 weeks after I snapped these pictures he attacked our friends' 3 yr old pretty bad, so he lives no more. Too bad. He was awesome to look at, but turned out to be a big jerk (haha, perhaps that reminds you of some men you've known in your life?).

Some more cute pictures of the kids out at their place, Son3:

More super cute Son3:

And Son3 getting eye to eye with a chicken in the grass:

One of the days we visited Brett & Brian happened to be Summer Solstice. So we enjoyed a bonfire!

Son3 enjoying the bonfire safely from a trike, hee:

Pretend you can see the awesome sunset in this picture, where all the camera picked up was black sky:
;)
Y'know, my 11 yr old WAS there during our visits. He just pointed out that there are no pictures of him. :p That's because he is a blur of activity the entire time we're out there, I barely see him! It's wonderful. I'm so glad he gets so much fun outdoor play out there.

Omg. Getting this far has taken the entire day. :P It's 9:30pm now, past my bedtime! I'll have to continue tomorrow.


Good morning! :) So, to continue.....

I turned & snapped these pictures from the front seat of our van one day. This is the typical scene in the back seat. This is where we keep our noisy battery operated toys, in the car for entertainment on long trips.

This was about 60seconds after we climbed into the van. Did I not say that my 11 yr reads all.the.time?? :p It's true!

Son2 climbed into the high chair, convinced his baby brother to join him, & then begged me to take a picture. So here ya go. :)

Our 3 yr old (that would be "Son2" ;) ) drew this in his car seat just recently. He said he'd drawn a bird, & he sure did! It was so cute I had to take a picture.

Moving along into July, here Daughter is, moving out! She is a few weeks away from turning 18. For months she's been telling us about her plans to move all the way to California to live with some of her teenage friends. This was her original plan & it scared me to death! She'd be so far away, she's never lived on her own, how reliable were these friends?, and, how on Earth did she think she could support herself on a minimum wage job- IF she could even find one? And then, one day, her dad suggested that she move in with him. He was planning to move into a bigger & nicer house in early July, why shouldn't Daughter join him? And she accepted! I was so relieved. Her dad lives a couple miles down the road. He's rarely home during the week due to work, school & other obligations so Daughter would have plenty of time to ease into a more independent adult life while home alone during the week. But she'd be right nearby, and living with her responsible dad instead of a bunch of teens. ;) A good plan all around I think.

So here she is on moving day, July 3rd:

Son3 gets a lot of this kind of treatment: "C'mon baby!" and then being drug around. Here he's being drug into the moving van.
I don't think it's really hit me that my daughter *moved out*. She was often gone at work, school, or out with friends, and so far we talk so often that it doesn't feel like she's gone to live someplace else. I AM reminded by her big, empty, purple bedroom though! We have no idea what to do with the empty room. Husband of course wants to cut a hole in the roof & haul up soil to plant a garden in there, ha, and I want to raise some dairy goats in there. ;)


A family from our local homeschool group threw a Fourth of July party at their house nearby. It ended up being really fun, they went all out with tons of fireworks for the kids, plus they have a play room bursting with cool toys. And turtles. And guinea pigs.

My in-laws were visiting over the weekend so we brought them along. Here they are, plus Husband, friend Brian & Son2.

Son2 had soda for the 1st time at this party. Root beer. He drank some & said, "it feels weird on my aaaahh" and stuck his tongue out while saying "aaaahh". Haha! Here's Husband & Son3 with a sparkler:

My friends Brett & Danielle & Brett's son experiencing Sparkler Joy:

Son2 & sparkler:

The set up was great. The family lined up chairs in their driveway & lawn, then let off fireworks in front for everyone to ooh & aah over. There was so much smoke & Son2 was so excited that he stayed SUPER close the whole time & nearly lost his voice completely.

A random food dehydrator shot. We order our apples in bulk from a nearby bulk foods company (Azure Standard). Once the kids have had their fill for a few weeks, the ones at the bottom start to get a little wrinkly so I slice them up & dry them. A good thing to do with overripe bananas when you're not in the mood for banana bread as well! I used a small star shaped cookie cutter on these apples. :)

And another belly shot. This one I took just yesterday, at 25 weeks along.

And to prove that there is in fact a little human in there & I did not just swallow a basket ball as many people like to tell me I look like, here are my 20 week ultrasound pictures.

The wee little profile!

If you look at where the tiny arrow is pointing, you see tiny toes:

Here is a tiny leg. This part of the ultrasound was so fun. The technician was doing some femur measurements on the baby's legs that were all curled up against its body. Suddenly it decided it needed a stretch & so strrrretched its teeny legs all the way straight out, right into my bladder. It was so cute!

This one's not as easy to make out, but on the rightish side is the baby's face looking right at you. You can see the skeleton face. :)

And here's where these pictures actually live, in the frame behind our honeymoon pictures in the living room. ;)



And that's it! I've come to the end! My 2 youngest have been sick with a cold. I let our 3 yr old watch movies yesterday since he was a sickly mess. And all my 18 mo old wanted to do was breastfeed, so I was able to get all these pictures in here & type everything up. Which I did mostly one handed while breastfeeding. :p

Monday, June 1, 2009

Y'know, I just don't really have time to blog

And I think it will only get worse the more kids I have around my knees. And shoulders. ;)

I've been thinking about my blog for some time now, trying to decide exactly what I want to do with it. I really do create posts in my head on a very regular basis, usually while I'm driving off in the country somewhere. But I have so much going on at home, and my youngest kids just *hate* it when I am sitting here in this chair, staring at this screen, and otherwise not focusing on them. My toddler is pretty impossible most of the time when it comes to my computer time. He'll start screaming & thrashing around if I even put my hand on the mouse while holding him! Haha.

I do read most of the blogs on my blog list on a semi-regular basis. I can get away with quick blog checks while breastfeeding.

Also though, I think about how many great blogs there are out there that are regularly updated with all the things I'm passionate about. I mean, who needs a hurried blog post about frugal, simple, natural living from me when there is Plain & Joyful Living and Pockets of the Future? Those happen to be my favorite blogs. :p And when it comes to living & farming sustainably, most every blog I link to, plus most of the blogs they link to are chock full of sustainable living goodness. And gorgeous pictures. :) I've been wanting to post about bulk food storage, and preparedness, but I really just haven't had the time to delve into such a subject unfortunately. But there's always Food Storage Made Easy and Safely Gathered In! Awesome sites about that topic.

I love reading large family blogs, like THIS ONE, and THIS ONE, and THIS ONE. Of course I always question how on earth women like them find the time to keep their blog going. Those 3 blogs are written by homeschooling women with 8-14 kids! How do they do it?? My suspicion is that they don't sleep. ;)

And I love homeschooling blogs. I created one a long time ago (HERE) but have never posted once in it. And I have a whole folder of saved pictures from our school year saved just to post in it! And then I see homeschool blogs like this amazing one: Toad Haven Home School & I get sucked into finding fun things to add to our homeschooling instead of blabbing in my blog about our own home school. :p

I also would love to post more kitchen work posts, pictures & recipes of the delicious things I create from scratch. I love reading those kind of posts in others blogs..... but ask me if I even remember to grab the camera during kitchen cooking adventures. :p I'm too busy trying to hold my skirt up from being pulled down my the toddler, & not allowing my 3 yr old to mix all my freshly milled flour with water & gluing himself to the counter. Plus listening to my 11 yr old tell me allllllll about the dragons & knights & cathedrals & castles & scientific thingies that I don't even understand that he is reading about.

Another issue I over analyze is that sometimes I like sharing articles or opinions on current events, or the ways of the world or what have you, but inevitably I will just get nasty comments left by those that disagree with me. I know that that is just the nature of the internet, everything I post is public & any ol' meanie can come say whatever they want, but why would I want to open myself up to that? Sometimes I really want to just talk about something, like ask any cyber people out there if they wanna intelligently discuss some controversial topic with me, but, that just doesn't work very well on the internet I guess. My views fall pretty heavily on the conservative side & I've found that liberals can be very loud & mean. I also love to blame nearly all society's ills on feminism but that doesn't bode well with the large numbers of feminists posting over on Mothering.com where my blog is linked in my signature. Haha. And I do have good friends & a husband in IRL that I can blab all I want to about politics or my opinions or whatever so it's not like I have no outlet for that. But then I really, really appreciate reading other blogs written by people brave enough to share how they really feel & getting difficult topics out there in the open. If only I had as thick of skin as them.

So anyway, I guess my point is that there are plenty of things I'd have fun posting here but I can't seem to find the time. Or the angry toddler is holding the mouse hostage til I give him my full attention. And really, if I'm mainly posting for fun, shouldn't it be easier?? :p And there are SOOoooOooo many other things that I consider great fun, or at least worthwhile, that do not include glowing screens. :)

Friday, May 1, 2009

If poor Mr Webster knew how his dictionary was going to change!

Did you guys have any idea how drastically different today's dictionary is compared to Webster's original?? I didn't! It's fascinating. Noah Webster was deeply Christian & he wrote the english dictionary from that standpoint. He would just fall over dead from shock if he could see how secular his dictionary is today (not to mention his country). You can go here to see the whole 1828 Webster's Dictionary.

http://1828.mshaffer.com/

Some examples:

EDUCATION: n. [L. educatio.] The bringing up, as of a child, instruction; formation of manners. Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.

Of course today's Webster only blabs about the "acquiring of knowledge", there is no mention of parental responsibility or how indispensable a religious education is of course.

How about MARRIAGE:
n. [L.mas, maris.] The act of uniting a man and woman for life; wedlock; the legal union of a man and woman for life. Marriage is a contract both civil and religious, by which the parties engage to live together in mutual affection and fidelity, till death shall separate them. Marriage was instituted by God himself for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, for promoting domestic felicity,and for securing the maintenance and education of children. [He then included Bible quotes]

Can you imagine reading "
Marriage was instituted by God himself" in today's dictionary?!

We also got a good chuckle out of the words bugger & buggery. But I'll let you look those up if you are so inclined. :p


All of this came about because there is mention of it in Plain & Joyful Living's recent newsletter, that I adore & recommend. In the newsletter is the 1828 definition for "education", but my suspicious husband wasn't convinced so we looked it up on the magical internet. Lo & behold, the old Webster proved to be very entertaining!



Thursday, April 30, 2009

pictures

In no particular order...


Son2 enjoyed painting with veggies for about 6.3 seconds before he decided it was more fun to eat them than paint with them:


We had a sunny day in March (or was it February?) so I took the kids to the park to soak up some much needed vitamin D. Assuming you can absorb vitamin D through snow hats, ha. It was still freezing! The kids were happy to be out, though:



We also paid a visit to OMSI. As usual I couldn't even get a picture of Son1 there, he's always a blur. The Littles enjoying "Gak". Gak is fun to play with in OTHER places, but do not ever invite it into your house. We learned that the hard way years ago. Several pieces of furniture & clothing were permanently ruined. But anyway...

Son3 thought he was *hilarious* when he found this boot & put it on (they have a pile of boots for the kids in the water play area). He walked around & around laughing.


Son1 showing off his groovy dragon drawing:

And here he is sitting in our tree, reading National Geographic:

These are my kitchen helpers. Although, they are not very helpful. Do they look mischevius? They are!

Son3 likes to "help" like this (digging in the flour):

And like this. Here he is saying "who dropped all that stuff on the floor??"

This picture makes me laugh every time I see it! He leaned over & put his face on the cutting board that was covered in flour. Haha!

Thankfully, the biscuits still got baked:

If you look closely, you can easily tell which 3 of these eggs came from our own hens. The rest, even though the box they come in is labeled organic, free-range & all that, still can't compare to home raised eggs. (Hint: ours are giant, tall, & very orange. Full of vitamins & deliciousness.)


Just some tasty canned stuff. Apples & dilly beans. I love these dilly beans I canned last year! They are so, so good. I've been eating them on sandwiches instead of pickles. Yum. Oh, and the pickled beets! I only made 3 quarts because I didn't know if I'd like them. I ate them so fast I didn't have time to take a picture, ha. This year I'm canning 20 quarts of pickled beets! And I shall eat them all myself. I like pickled things. I wonder what else I can pickle around here...

Bulks beautiful bulks. I like to stand back & look at my canned goods & my bulks & sigh a happy sigh. :)

We had some of our super awesome friends come over a few weekends ago. Two couples, each with 3 kids. I made a ginormous soft taco meal & the day was full of goodness. Here are just some of our combined herd of kids! heehee. They chose to squash themselves onto our little outdoor picnic table. They all play together so well, it's always really fun to get them together. I really wish these friends of ours lived next door!

One of the couples however, lives an hour drive from us out in the country. I've mentioned them in my blog before. I lovelovelove visiting them. Besides just being all around cool & fun people, their off grid home & whole lifestyle is so inspiring. Plus I always love hanging out surrounded by acres of green with chickens wandering by randomly. :) And our kids run amok so well together. My 10 yr old in fact, has so much fun all day out there that I don't think he even misses glowing screens! Shock of shocks. :p Here is my friend taking down her laundry, haha. I just loved the whole scene of it. She looked all Earth Mama in her long skirt, her preschooler trailing her, and the trees & greenery surrounding . :) She just laughed when I said I was taking a picture of her & her laundry. They just got a washing machine, after handwashing for years. A solar powered one of course. ;)

Friend's goat. Hi goat. Just when I started snapping pictures of the new baby goats, the camera batteries died.


And then Easter! Son2:

This is what happens when you ask a sugar loaded 10 yr old boy to smile nice for an Easter picture:

This was funny. It was just after Son3's very first plastic egg popped open & m&ms spilled out. He was SO intent on picking up each m&m one by one as quickly as he could & shoving them in his mouth. I was trying to get his attention but he completely ignored me. He had important business to attend to!

Happy kid, Easter eggs:

More happy Easter kids:

One more happy baby shot:



A random photo of the sign I cleverly altered & hung in our garage some years ago:
And a belly pic. It's quite outdated already though as I'm just 9 weeks in this picture but am now close to 16 weeks. I look the same, just bigger. :p
So there, I'm caught up with picture posting! Now I just need to come back & post a real update on how things & stuff & things are around here. I feel especially lame when I fall behind in my picture posting because this is the only place my mom gets to see pictures of the kiddies.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Time flies when you're a pregnant zombie podling

So do you guys remember that fabulous old movie, The Dark Crystal? And remember how the evil Skexis drained the vital essence from the innocent little podlings? Well, my cute teeny fetus is not an evil Skexi, ha, but it *does* drain my vital essence. I'm a total podling. Hahaha.

But otherwise, I'm just fine!

Not much to tell that's not pregnancy related around here as all I do is shuffle around between naps, pretty much existing in survival mode. The laundry on the laundry room floor is about 3 feet deep now. But at least no one is starving, and we get our homeschooling done. I'm 8 weeks now. I expect this extreme fatigue to lift in about 3-4 weeks. I'm pretty lucky, really. I don't suffer with much nausea or any other common 1st trimester miseries.

Yeah. That's about it. All this typing has left me sleepy. ;)

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Guess who's coming mid-October, 2009!!






I HAVE NO IDEA!!!


But I sure can't wait to find out!!!!!!!!




And here is where I *would* post a picture of my nice, beautiful positive pregnancy test, but as I am only about a whopping 12 days along, the test is so faint I'd never be able to pick it up with our camera. In fact, you have to hold it at a very special angle in the daylight to even be able to make out the tiny pink blur. Hahahahahaha!!!

I get to do it again! I get to do it again!

I truly am the luckiest girl in the whole wide world.



Ps. It sure is a good thing went with the 8 seater minivan a few years ago. Hahaha!

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Ha, take that processed food manufacturers

I just have to share these 2 moments that I am proud of. ;)

Today I gave my 10 yr old a writing assignment consisting of describing exactly how to make a peanut butter & jam sandwich. In his sequence, he tells the reader to take out the bread & a bread knife & then "cut 2 slices of bread". He didn't say "take 2 pieces of bread out of the bag". Heehee. All's we eat around here breadwise, are found in the bread box, baked by me & sliced by the hungry person.

And, a few weeks ago I was reading a picture book to our 3 yr old. There is a picture of a boy eating breakfast- there's big corn flakes in his bowl plus 2 boxes of breakfast cereal on the table in front of him. My son is pointing out & naming things in the picture. When he gets to the big cereal flakes he decided they looked like "strawberries", and when he got to the cereal boxes he said "soap". He's never had cereal from a box & our dishwasher detergent comes in boxes similar to processed cereal boxes. Ha!