Back to normal life...

Ha, ha, ha!!!  Some joke, eh?  The break was great!  I am sure I will do one again in the near future.  I set high goals (with the idea we would aim high, and if we missed, at least we would have gotten a lot accomplished).  Not all of my goals were met.  Surprise :-)  I really need to get back into schooling, which will be hard since I still have a lot of work to do in that area.  But, for now, we must press forward, making do with what we did get done.  I am going to try to keep up a reduced computer time and put that time into the things that were left undone.

I made sure to add some fun things in our 'schedule' these past two weeks.  We had a birthday and a mock camping weekend.  We still need to do some major improvements of work habits.  Oy.  Not sure how to address that issue right now.  I suppose a lot of prayer and thought will need to take place to work that out. 

I suppose I will make a list of all that still needs doing and spread the work out over a week, instead of a day or two.  Sometimes it just seems like there is a never ending list of all that needs doing.

We had a cute little surprise yesterday.  Saoirse was going out to collect the eggs when she heard this cheeping from under the house.  She peeked her head into the open air vent (some of our grated ventilation spots do not have their grates anymore), and lo and behold one of our chickens had been laying eggs under the house and she hatched out 6 chicks!!!  Unfortunately one of them died this morning.  This chicken is a first time mom :-)  She's doing a great job, but sometimes I've seen one or two chicks go running off in the opposite direction.  These little guys are REALLY little...only a few days old, all yellow down.  The one that died got stepped on by a larger animal (a goat I suppose).  Poor little thing. 

I will try to get some pictures up to show you all some of what went on during our 2 week break.

PS: I am working on my blog design, so I apologize beforehand if things don't work, or if things look wonky.  I am having a hard time getting my side bars to not interfere with my posts.  Not to mention that I can not customize all of my text colors.  I am not digging the blue :-) 

Taking two weeks off line

Just stopping in here to say that starting this weekend I will be off line. The computers may be up and running come May 4th.  Things have been really out of control over here.  With all that we've been doing on the homestead, trying to do *all* our schooling, regular chores, appointments, horse lessons/work, choir, church, fellowship.....well, let's just say we are in serious need of a family tune up!!! 

So if you don't see me around, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, I'm just knee deep in some serious training, loving, serving, working, playing, etc....with my family :-) 

God bless!

Gardening, fencing, and potty training

We had a very busy weekend!  Last weekend I knew that I wanted to tackle the boys' potty training this weekend.  I started on Thursday by giving them multiple vitamin C tablets.  That may seem like an odd way to start potty training, but I had my reasons!  We had two boys with "issues".  Jedidiah has been number 1 trained for some time now, but number 2 freaked the poor boy out.  Jonah insisted he was terrified of the potty and would scream bloody murder if we tried to get him to wear underwear or sit on the toilet.  Sigh.  So all week we talked about how their diaper days were coming to an end on the weekend. 
Well things went pretty much like I thought they would.  Jonah was fine about the underwear...for about 20 minutes!  Then he went bonkers when he realized that he couldn't have a diaper on.  He screamed, and cried, and screamed and cried.  I had to put the diapers up high, out of his reach.  Oy.  BUT that being said, he only had two accidents for the whole day.  On top of that he stayed dry both nights!  Which is weird because during the day he was running to the toilet every 5 to 10 minutes, but could hold it all night.  Jed on the other hand could hold it for hours during the day, but can't make it through the night.  Either way, both boys are going potty all day long!  Yay!! They got a ton of stickers and fun tatoos for their efforts.  Even Aubrey has taken interest in trying to go on the potty again.  He had the unfortunate incident of coming down with a bladder infection the day after he decided he wanted to be a big boy and wear undies, and the pain freaked him out and he has been scared of the potty since.  But he wasn't about to miss out on all the sticker fun!  He still has a long ways to go, but I'm just glad that he is taking interest in it again.

This past week Saoirse took to making a list of all the foods she wants to try to dehydrate.  Her first attempt was an apple and some bananas.  She set right to work, and is checking off her foods as she accomplishes dehydrating them.  Too cute.

Saoirse, cutting up the bananas.  A really good choice to begin with as it is easy to cut.

I was able to get the flexible sheets for my Nesco, this has opened up another avenue to dehydrating.  It has been very, very handy to have saved the Nesco.  I was going to get rid of it, pass it on to someone else.  But with these sheets it is now being used...a lot!

Saoirse's little set up.  She is sitting on a booster chair, set on the ground.  She is using a plastic lid to cut the banana on, which is set on the boy's plastic tool bench :-)  She put the dehydrator try behind her.  Her only problem, which was a very serious one....her siblings kept sneaking in and eating the food!!  She was not happy about that.  Dehydrated fruit doesn't stand a chance lasting more than a couple of hours in our house!

We  accomplished a lot over the weekend outside.  Jeremiah put up the fencing for the boy goats. It's not ready for them to move into quite yet, but it should be by next weekend.  I can't wait!  Our milk tastes great the first day, but by day two there is an off taste.  This has never happened with our goat's milk before.  We are suspecting that it is due to the females and males being housed together in close proximity.  They are separated by a fence, but that is all.  The boy goats will eventually be moved to the other side of our house, giving enough distance to not interfere with the taste of the milk.  For now, since we can't have raw milk anyways, I'm heating up the milk to 180* before turning it into yogurt.  I would prefer to make raw milk yogurt, but I don't want that taste in our yogurt!

Above you can see my very special veggie markers.  Um, yeah.  This is called, wait till the last minute to plant your seeds and write out the veggie names with marker and run the paper through the laminator.  I had tried to paint rocks, but that wasn't working.  Currently the rocks are holding down the above marker in place at the beginning of each row.

Flannery wanted to paint the veggie names on wood.  This was a great idea, and you can see she did a cute job. The only problem?  We only had one piece of wood! 

Flannery and Saoirse joined me to do half the planting in the warm afternoon sun.  Later on we finished the job with Moira and Aubrey joining us.  The girls decided that each seed spot needed to be marked with a stick.  So now we have all these small sticks sticking up out of the ground!

Saoirse moving the mulch out of the way.  You can see some her sticks behind her hands.

Now I have to say I was plenty impressed with how dedicated Saoirse was to getting these seeds planted. She isn't exactly known over here for following through and finishing the work she is supposed to be doing.  But she planted many rows of veggies all on her own.

I suppose we won't be winning the "Most Organized Gardener" award anytime soon :-)

Above you can see my 'shovel'.  Yup, that green stick!  Somehow small trowels go missing whenever you need one.

Speaking of sticks...some may remember that I had a stick, from the mulch above, stab me in the foot about 9 months ago.  The doctors who saw my foot insisted that nothing was left inside.  Um, yeah, tell that to my foot!  About 2 months ago I noticed that the area, which has remained raised since the accident, was now pink/red. Then it started to itch, and get a bit painful every once in the while.  Not two weeks or so ago it began to blister!  There is something in there...trying to get out!!!  I think I will head to the doctors as it still seems to be lodged, but clearly my body is trying to get rid of it. Isn't the human body amazing?!

My rock/laminated paper veggie markers layed out in the order that I planned to put them.

We all got a bit of sun today, with pink cheeks and for some, pink shoulders.  It was finally warm!  Not the warm because the sun is shining, but still cool/cold air, but really and truly warm.  Ahhhh, it felt so good to be out there soaking up the sun and digging in the dirt!

See?  Springtime bliss :-)

These are our naughty chickens.  The two younger girls and the two older boys had just spread this straw out over the herb garden.  There was one small area on the right where the straw bale sat, and so there was a bit of straw on the ground.  But these naughty girls were digging through it, looking for goodies, and you can see all the straw outside of the rock border!

Flannery suggested I take this picture...a *hands full* of dirt....a play on my blog name. 

Our new mantra...."Grow, garden, grow!"  Ha, ha!  It will be interesting to see if I find any of the girls talking to the plants or our baby trees. They thought Jeremiah was silly for telling them that talking to plants help them to grow.  But he insisted it was true.  We'll see if they believe him :-)

A decent outdoor day

Can someone tell me where spring is?  I'm afraid we will skip right over spring and jump right into summer.  I don't like when that happens.  It is more difficult to adjust to the high temps.  For now, there are no high temps...brrrr (for spring mind you).

Two little boys hanging out.  I was thinking how long it took for us to get Jonah to wear long sleeves and long pants as we headed into fall/winter.  We've only had one day that short sleeves were wearable, and Jonah freaked out.  So I suppose it will be the opposite, he'll be wearing long sleeves and pants when it is 95* out, until he gets used to the idea of short sleeves/pants.  Silly boy. 

Please excuse Aubrey's bloody head, he had just banged his head, opening his wound up.  So much for getting him stitches!

Although Jonah won't wear summer clothing he will wear his new sandals, provided he is also wearing socks.  Baby steps, baby steps.  Aubrey on the other hand is obsessed with these winter boots.  He's not too keen on his new sandals, which match Jonah's.

Checking on the baby trees.  Jonah has the nurturing spirit in him.  He is very intrigued by the trees and wants to take care of them.

Getting a closer look.  We Jeremiah was able to finish off the fencing in the front yard.  This should keep the goats out, and stop them from eating the garden.  But I worry a bit for these baby trees as some are literally only a large stick size, making them vulnerable to little boys :-)

 Here Jeremiah is 'fixing' a snapped branch.

We took advantage of the nice weather to get some painting in.  I had painted some arrows on some rocks for their treasure hunt and all the kiddos wanted in on the painting action.

Aubrey painted the longest.  Jed and Jonah painted for a bit, but went off running after each other.  Aubrey painted the afternoon away.

So cute.

It was neat to see how focused he was, and how he really was trying to carefully paint the top of the rock.  He wasn't just slopping on paint.  Though he had difficulty in keeping the colors from mixing.

Thoughtful artist.

.At At some point Saoirse joined us and she brought along a few more things to the 'table'.

Thankfully the messes stayed outside!  I must remember this for future painting time.

Saoirse at work on something.  I wasn't sure what she was doing at first.  But she came up with a cute idea:

Stamps!

See all that mucky mess!  How wonderful that it is *outside*.  Yes, I am repeating myself, but that is only because the following day the boys found the paints and decided to have a painting day inside....along with the mess that follows.  Oy.


 

Here is a wee sign of spring. Maybe, as these are on one of our apple trees, and these started coming out when they were inside...our warm house.

A wonderful Easter

Before I get into the details, I ask you all to lift up a friend's sister.  While at our house, our friend received a phone call telling her that her sister had tried committing suicide.  I ask you to lift up this woman, that she would recover fully.  Please pray for peace for their whole family as they deal with this heartbreaking situation.

Yesterday I was very busy with making food, cleaning and putting together the treasure hunt.  We were blessed to have three families join us in our Easter celebration.  One family had just moved back to the area the night before!  It was neat as they are a family who eats Paleo.  So it wasn't weird having to explain why we eat the way we do! 

I had two mostly GAPS legal desserts planned.  One, an almond cookie, didn't come out as I imagined.  The review on it was that no one would know this was a GAPS cookie.  I would beg to differ!  Of course, it could be I didn't make it correctly. It's not one I want to jump in and try again right away.  The other was semi GAPS as it was a brownie made with sweet potatoes.  Sweet potatoes are kind of a fence rider when it comes to GAPS compatibility.  But, for the holiday, I thought we would indulge.  Now, I've made a black bean brownie recipe a couple of times in the past with bad outcomes each time.  Again, the reviews about these type of brownies was all thumbs up.  So I was a bit apprehensive to give these a go.  But boy where we VERY pleasantly surprised!!!  They were terrific!!  A definite "We have to make this again, soon!" kind of terrific. 

I got the recipe from HERE.  I  must go write a review for them :-) 

I didn't have enough time to make the two treasure hunts I had planned.  I had planned on making one for the older kids and one for the younger kiddos.  Time was running out so I just made one for everyone.  They all had fun.  We finished up just in time for some of our guests to leave.  I had them going all over the place, hoping to wear them out ;-)  Not sure if it worked, as my kids were up pretty late.  Hmmm. 

Today, I am hoping to get on the ball to get us back on track with all that needs doing.  That task seems very daunting right now. 

Update on my "Milk Jar Help" post

Although we have only started milking last weekend I have been using the colored circles and the "y's" and "k's".  The "y" stands for yogurt and the "k" stands for kefir.  I feel that it's been long enough to give an update to see how they are working for our family. 

So far I've only had one problem with this system....I don't have enough of them!!!  Ha!  I have plenty of the plain colored circles, probably too many, though they will come in handy should we loose any.  I did not have enough of the y's and k's.  Being that I had a large batch of yogurt in my dehydrator, and not enough y's to go around I took action.  As I thought more on it I realized how much easier things are to label, and that I should have more of these labels handy for some of my other milk type products.  I was trying to stick with one color per day for the milk and one color for the other milk products (yogurt, kefir, etc).  I did not have any more brown paint chip cards so I decided to make due with what I had.

It didn't take too long to make the circles, cut them out and write what was needed on them.  I then laminated them, and after cutting out the magnets from the magnet sheet, Jonah attached the magnets to the back of them.  I was a little bummed that some of the marker smudged.  I really wasn't up to using a permanent marker, like I did the last time, as I don't like their smell.  So I went with regular kiddo markers.  Oh, well, they will still work! 

So here is a shot of my current stash of labels:

 Lots of y's!  I made some for coconut kefir, animal kefir, villii (a room temp culturing yogurt), whey, coconut milk, coconut/nut  milk, and one for starters.  There's nothing quite like opening your fridge to see a bunch of glass jars with white stuff in them and not exactly knowing what is in each!  Problem solved.  Although masking tape works great, I would have to actually find said tape and find a pen...every. single. time. Not fun.  This is working like a dream for us!

 Ok, so there is the problem of them all staying in their proper place.  But, still better than hunting down tape and pen.  The girls did not know I had made new labels.  One of them went into the fridge for some yogurt and proclaimed we were out of it.  I told her there was no way we were out of yogurt as I had just made up a large batch.  I told her to look for the jars with the y's on them.  She was thrown off because she was looking for a brown circle.  As you can see I have them in purplish colors now.

 This picture and the ones that follow have nothing to do with my labels :-)  Just some pictures I took before I put my camera away after taking the label pictures.  Flannery and Saoirse have set up a drawing station at the desk.  They sit on the opposite side that you are supposed to.  We have wide window sills, and they use those for seats.

 Saoirse at work.

 Flannery has been very much into tracing pictures and coloring them in.

 Isabella was sitting on the couch across from the desk working on her math...until her little brothers convinced her to draw them some pictures of helicopters, dinos, cars and such.

Flannery's notebook that she insisted I take a picture of.  Oh, look!  A pencil sharpener!  We only have five pencil sharpeners in our house.  They either don't work, the batteries are dead, or they are lost.  This does not bode well with 7 kiddos using pencils and no pencil sharpener. 

Finally, some pictures

Hey, I like pictures :-).  They make a post a lot more fun!  I've got some odds and ends ones.  After a busy few days I thought I would catch up with pictures. 

 Jedidiah was quite pleased with himself that he earned his reward for passing a long awaited milestone.  Potty training.  Yes, he's much older than most children who are potty trained at the tender age of 2 or 3.  I've shared here before that I was quite sure we would not be among the group of parents with an apraxic child who doesn't potty train until the age of 6.  Yes, six.  This is a very common thing among children with apraxia.  No one knows particularly why.  Sensory issues?  Miss wiring?  Not sure.  I'm happy that he beat the age six dealy, but not by much!  Not to mention he still has to tackle nights.  But, hey, I'm just glad he is day trained!  We had a much coveted reward waiting for him when he tackled the day time potty challenge.  Pet Shops.  Yes, the small, cooky looking animal thingies that are a craze?  Definitely not on my list of 'keepers'.  But hey, desperate times, call for desperate measures :-). 

He thinks the mailman gave them to him!  Ha, ha!  He was very excited to open up this box.

He takes them everywhere!  I try to limit where he can bring them, more for fear of him losing them, and a meltdown ensuing.

While the boys were on Plymouth Rock with the new Pet Shops, I was making a list, or lists as was the case.  Getting ready for our Boot Camp 2012.  Things are falling into place.  And lest anyone thinks this may be a bad thing, I can assure you I have a lot of FUN planned.  We have a hard time staying on target when we try to do some child training.  So I thought by adding some fun, good family time, and some fancy 'team' shirts, we would be on our way to a splendid Boot Camp.  I am looking forward to this challenge.  It won't be easy, but I think we will come out the victors, with some well behaved children, a renewed love for each other, and some fond memories to boot.

This is the pile of composted dirt we had dropped of the other day.  Not as impressive as I thought it would be.  It will still come in handy, we were just expecting there to be more of it!  Thankfully we found a free source of composted mulch.  We have plans to use the mulch pretty much all over our land.  No, really.  We considered renting a dump truck for the stuff.  No, I'm not joking.  Most certainly not after our fiasco tonight.  Currently, as I write this, Jeremiah's pick up truck is stuck.  Really, really stuck, right in our back yard.  It's under belly is in the mud!!  It's not going anywhere any time soon, especially when it's supposed to rain tomorrow.  We are seeing if we can get a hold of a chain to pull it out with our van.  Fun times people, fun times.

Speaking of fun times, we all had fun at a recent birthday party we went to over the weekend.  I still have not gotten Flannery's official birthday picture up (her birthday was on the 20th of this month)!!  But this wasn't Flannery's b-day party, her's is this coming weekend.  The party we attended was for a friend, who turned 5.  It was held at a local park.  This was good and bad.  Good, lots of room to run around, bad because there was lots of room to run around :-)  Trying to keep track of the boys was very hard to do.  Jed was obsessed about running around this fence.  Jonah...
 

 ...he was obsessed with finding all the balloons he could get a hold of.  Aubrey?

He was obsessed about trying to climb the stone stairs.  Stone.  Baby.  Not a good combination.

At one point as I was grabbing the baby away from said stone stairs I caught Jed chasing his balloon.  He was just running out of sight when I called out to him.  I really try not to think about what could have happened, but that can be hard to do.  After I called him back, we went together to get his balloon.  Had he ran after it himself he would have gone all the way out by the road.  And I can assure you he would not have found his way back!  Scary.  This is why these types of events stress me out big time.  It only takes a moment for a child to get lost, in a big, big park.  Thankfully all ended well.  We had fun, Jed got his balloon back, and I'm still sane....sort of.

Saoirse peeking out of one of the old buildings on the park's premises.

We seem to have a new problem here at my house.  A problem between Flannery and I.  You see Flannery has fallen in love....with bokeh.  Oh, yes!  Don't know what bokeh is?  It's the blurriness you get in the background, or sometimes foreground in photos.  Like the picture above, you can see the flowers, but the background is a blur of color.  I have to practically wrestle my camera away from Flannery to get a turn with it!  And this has gotten worse, *after* we just bought her her own camera!  When I brought up the fact that she has a camera of her own now, she responded with...yeah, but it doesn't do photography.  Ha, ha!  She's talking about the bokeh people!  Too funny.  But I will say that she's getting pretty darn good at this photography thing.
  

For the record, I love bokeh too :-)  I also like this picture I was able to capture as we were leaving the park...ya know, after I wrestled my camera away.  I like it in color and b&w.

A beautiful sight!  Our front herbal garden is complete.  Well, except for the actual herbs.  That will be the easy part!  See all that dark goodness on top?  That would be the free composted tree mulch.  Black gold!

A Flannery picture.  We went out in the back yard to start on the corner garden area.  It's filled with weeds, vines, brambles and such.  Flannery decided to take pictures.  That wasn't helping to get the weeds up.  But after all the work we did I was hoping she did have a picture of "before".  Unfortunately this is the only before picture she took of the area.  Trust me, it's a lot worse in real life.  This looks tame to what we had to deal with.  I may have to bring my camera out the next time we work on the area.  It was kind of discouraging to work, work, work and stand back to see that we didn't get too far!!  Some before pictures may help boost the moral of our crew :-)

Another Flannery picture.  Warning, bokeh not only in the background, but the foreground as well.  She loves when that happens.  I only have about 1500 pictures of her trying to get the best angle and bokeh from a shot.  And NO I am NOT kidding.  My memory card can only hold about 500 pictures at a time (I lost my bigger mem. card), and I've had to delete the card multiple time in the last two weeks.  Multiple times.  I have enough goat pictures to last me a life time!!  But hey, that's how we learn...by doing :-)

Because when you keep practicing, and keep 'doing', you end up with something cool like the above picture.  This is a picture that Flannery took today.  Maybe not amazing (although I think so), but for a ten year old?  Hello!  I was taking a picture of my sister making bunny ears over my brother's head at ten years old.  Wait...I don't think I used a camera till I was in my teens.  Keep up the good work Flannery!  (yes, she reads my blog :-))