Saturday, October 25, 2008

What a day!


Well I started my day hearing Eric coughing and crying a bit. It was actually the middle of the night. Later I hear Gareth down stairs crying too. Eric and Gareth are staying with us this weekend. Joe and Moriah, Cody and Mishael went to marriage encounter. I'm so excited for them and they must be having a good time, because they haven't even called once to see how the children are doing.


So even though I planned on leaving the house by 9 am, I did not want to get out of bed at 9. It was really nice to lay around and not have to get up.
We finally got up and I changed a diaper, which amazingly I haven't done in a long, long time. I suppose I was burned out, so when the grandchildren needed one changed I seemed to be able to let someone else. Well not this time! :)

I had ordered some Hutterite chickens. Hutterite chickens are like homegrown chickens. Really big and plump, juicy. They had carrots and eggs too. I bought 10 dozen eggs. I go through about 8-10 dozen a month usually.

So the baby delivery that I was trading the new front deck for was being built today, and Jim was coming by to finish the trim in the boys room. The Deck isn't quite done yet, but it is really nice. A great sturdy deck that should last through many a snow storms.



Yesterday while the boys were playing in the back yard they found a dead deer, all torn up like something was eating it. Jon thought it looked like a mountain lion. Jim while here took a look and said it's just like the lions to go for the liver first. He took the dead carcass away for us, as he said otherwise that Lion could hang out around the house, but with the carcass gone he will go hunting else where. I wondered when we had so many deer this yr, why all of a sudden we haven't seen any.

So I didn't really know what to make for supper. I decided to make some bread. Took the cookies out of the freezer, and ended up making some broccoli soup. Monica made the dough into loaves for me and they were beautiful.


I was glad I had a snack to feed all the hard workers. Elvie said Mark was an excellent carpenter.

Caught a picture of Rick. When I snapped the picture he was drinking out of that carton of orange juice. I tried to catch him in the act.
Jon in the midst of this busy day somehow got something in his eye. We couldn't find anything in there, but maybe he scratched it. Over the next 2-3 hours it got worse and worse. We tried different drops we had, having him close his eyes, etc. rick finally took him in to the prompt care and they numbed it up and looked around, and couldn't find anything. He is still in so much pain. Even though he now is numbed up and drugged up.

Not a very nice picture, but you get the idea. His eye was swollen the next day, but by the afternoon he was much better.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

cookies revised again

Well I revised my cookie recipe again. It's much softer now and healthier too.
Here it is:
2 cups oil changed to 1 cup oil and 1 cup applesauce
2-3 cups of peanut butter
4 cups of sugar changed to 3 and half cups
A glug of molasses
A glug of lecithin
6 c. of whole wheat flour, cut this down to 3 c. plus one cup of ground flax seed, meal
8 cups of oatmeal
4 tsp baking powder
4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
and I added chocolate chips this time, they are the good ones from Costco.
The cookies are really good still, and I feel like it's such a good snack compared with all the stuff kids seem to find to eat.

So people take pictures of food for their blogs and the pictures look amazing. I guess I'm not much of a photographer! Mine just looks like food. I've never been very good at making things look like the pictures in the cookbooks either. Our birthday cakes never look like the pictures. Well food that tastes good and is healthy is more my goal then looking perfect.

This is a big recipe. So after I'm tired of baking I make the rest into balls and freeze them. Then it's really easy to bake them next time the oven is on.

foot ball and pathfinders

Jon's done with foot ball for the year. He sure enjoyed it. Running laps, doing push ups for talking back to the coach. :)

Not a very good picture. He didn't seem to want to pose though.


Pathfinders is like a Christian girl scouts/boy scouts. They earn badges, learn pledges, go on camp outs etc.Mark is in there somewhere too.


James
Monica

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Boy's room



My projects are going extremely slow. My life has been so busy, and I have so much to do that I have to be content with everything going very slow.
My weeks are busy even without births.
Monday is a normal day, Rick drives children to school in morning, then I drive Jon in at 11:00, do town errands, go home and do a few hours of homemaking, then pick up children at school at 3:15, then it was Jon at 5:30 after football. But Jon's done with sports for a month or so. That is a slow day.
Tue, we add Mark's Singing lesson, ( he was invited to be in a special choir) and pathfinders in the evening.
Wed is prenatal day and piano lessons, so we are gone all day till 5 at least.
Thur is another "slow" day like Monday, except now I'm adding a women's bible study to my list. and Fri children get out at 12 noon, so we usually can catch up with a bit of stuff.
When I have births it uses up the free days or other days, besides the births, there is a ton for paper work, birth certificates, newspapers announcements, waivers to fill out, newborn screen test, laundry, supplies to order, tools to sterilize, another kitchen to clean, etc.
So back to the boys room, (now you can see why it's so hard to get anything done).
I am determined to finish this room before I go on to another.
We moved the bed in last night, found some matching comforters at Kmart on sale. Still need to put trim around the floor. We need to change the light fixture and then just figure out how we are going to organize everything so the room can stay clean. That should be fun.

This is before painting

Here's our stripped walls!

Their new matching bed set

Saturday, October 18, 2008

8 babies in 5 weeks

Wow, no wonder I was so busy! Well I'm looking forward to a short break. I have 2 babies due the middle of November. Then I get a break for December. I would love to make good use of the time.
My niece April was the last birth. It was a true "Butter Birth" My 3rd water birth in a row. She had a nice big baby boy, 9lbs 7 oz!

Our precious new grand baby that was only 8 weeks from conception left us to live with Grandma. Grandma always loved babies. I could just see her up there in heaven rocking Moriah's little baby. Moriah miscarried and we were all so sad for her and Joe. May the Lord open her womb that she will have many little babies! :)

Saturday, October 11, 2008

a bit of daily life

We moved the boys bedroom temporarily into the family room while we work on their room.
The project is going great. Popcorn has been taken off the ceiling, room textured, primed and the ceiling painted. Now for the paint. I thought it would be good to give the boys a choice. Oops! Mark wanted orange, red, green and blue! Well it was a risky decision and we actually decided that 2 walls are a nice light blue and the other 2 walls are going to be stripped! Well my comfort is that paint is just paint. If it's awful we can always paint it again! So we picked up on green, light blue, bright blue, and red. Wow this should be interesting.


Have you ever made fried beets? They taste so different when they are fried. They're great. You take raw beets and grate them. Fry them in some butter or olive oil. Salt and pepper and your are set. Monica told me she didn't like beets. I told her you have to taste these. She was sure she was going to hate them. But she took a bite. The next time I made them she was snacking on them before dinner. She said, "you were right, fried beets are different."

Frisky 15 yrs old and still frisky.

Our burnt wall is making progress. Wiring is next.

My wainscoting had never been painted. Since we have to paint so much I just made this huge list of everything to be painted. So this is where we started. It looks so nice and clean.

I'm eating onion soup again!

I don't know why just out of the blue my gallbladder will kick up. This was a horrible attack again. I just ate my wonderful soup. This time it tasted great. I made it with some leftover rice, beef bullion, and celery, onion and a clove of garlic. This time it tasted so good, very soothing.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Jon's teddy bear



I've been washing all the stuffed animals lately. Jon came in the laundry room and saw his old teddy bears, Dock and Duke. He has fond memories of Dock and Duke. Next thing I know, I go to wake him up in the morning and there is Dock and Duke in bed with Jon.
15 yrs old, football player, all the girls after him, but he still likes his teddy bears!

What's Rick up to?

Literally Rick has been up! He's been working on the radio almost non stop. Going up to King mountain has been a common trip.
The radio is a community radio station. All of this is volunteer. It's a legal, high power station, something he has dreamed of all his life. All community run. People in the community can have shows and then when there are no shows, Rick fills in with music. He does a lot of oldies, on Sundays he play Christian music. He has offered Church's to be able to play their Sunday sermons over the air.

Looks like it's almost up and running.
View of Libby from up there
You can see Rick under the tower
I think that's Jon at the bottom of the tower.
Rick usually takes one or two of the boys with him. Paul got to go once too. Some dads take their boys hiking, hunting etc. Rick takes them up mountain tops to climb radio towers!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

I have been tagged

Interesting things people come up with on the internet.
Well i was "tagged" by Martha, my oldest daughter. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Martha/
I guess I am supposed to list 6 trivia items about myself and then tag other people.
Well it sounds like fun.

#1 I don't like sports, I used to love to stitchery, I love fixing up my house, I love cooking, helping pregnant women, unschooling children, reading books, watching good movies.

#2 this one is sort of a riddle. I've lived in the same house for almost 20 yrs, but we lived in 2 different places, 70 miles apart. Well I don't know how to make it a riddle. But after living 4 yrs on the W. K. we moved our house 70 miles to away.

#3 4 of my children were born in my bedroom in this same house. 7 of my children don't remember living in any other house.

#4 I love changing the look of our bedroom. I use my birthday money every other yr to buy a new quilt or comforter. But I have had the same curtains for almost 20 yrs. Although Martha recently made me promise that I would get new one.

#5 I only weighed 106 lbs even after 3 children, I really didn't start having weight problems until I was in my 30's, and then mostly after I stopped having babies and nursing.

#6 We have so many deer this yr in our yard. It's like they are family pets. They come up right by our windows, and sleep right by the garage. One day I came home and there were 3 deer in the garage! They were eating my plums that I had in a bowl. They are like little puppy dogs.

So I am going to tag
Monica http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/monica101
Lori http://www.homesteadblogger.com/uronaRyde/107504/
Michael http://www.mylestaylor.com/blog.html
Debra http://www.deardiary.net/show/diaries/65561/welcome
Lois http://loish.blogspot.com/

2 more births

I got a call last night from a friend who was going to another midwife. The midwife was out of town though. This person last time had a very traumatic emergency C section. But she thought she might be in labor now and I said "call if you need me" So 3:30 am I get a call. We meet at the birth center at 4 am and 5 am the baby is born. Little tiny girl.
Sweet birth.
About 2:30 in the afternoon, we had sent the family home in great shape and we were cleaning the birth center, when I get a call from Sherry, "the next client is in labor"
So much for my nap!
I get there, a home birth 1 hour from the hospital and the FHT are way too low. Do we transport and risk a birth in the car or do we just try to deliver fast. We prayed, the Lord gave us wisdom and helped that baby. Baby was born at home and everyone was doing great.
I'm home now at 8 pm and hoping to get at least a partial night sleep in case April starts in labor. I'm excited that I don't have anyone else that I'll be worrying about when April starts.
Praise the Lord, he is so good to us! I love being a midwife. How the Lord blessed me with such a wonderful job. Why does he bless me so much? I'm so thankful.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

well the big projects have begun

This is the stencil that we had in the boys bedroom. Miriam and Gina worked really hard to paint this on. We are going to have to cover it up, because we needed to re do all the walls with new texture.
So the picture is for our memory of the nice stencil . Each color was painted on separate. They did a great job.

This is a picture in the hall . I took a picture off the wall and you can see how black it is. We are slowly but surely getting all the walls washed. Some will have to be painted too.


The only way to get all this done is to dig right in there and start. So we started with the boys bedroom. We had to move everything out. They have lots of stuff! Lots! I'm so glad this has forced us to get the house clean. We boxed up all the stuff, washed what we could, moved all the furniture into the family room and threw away about 5 bags of garbage! Gave away all clothes that don't fit or had holes. Still we will have more sorting to do. I have 2 baskets of clothes in the laundry room to go through and wash. And when they bring those boxes back in I wonder if I can't thin them out a little more.
We came out black again. Soot is still everywhere, but we are beginning to get on top of it.

We were very tired and it was hard to keep going, but Jim was going to be here at 8 am and we needed to have the room empty for him to scrape the ceiling and tape and texture.

This is the family room with their furniture in it.
This is the cracks in the ceiling that have needed to be fixed for years.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Sunday

We were having a very restful Sunday. We went to church in the morning and tried to have a little picnic afterwords. Only problem was there was a bit of rain and cold. Not too much, but it didn't make you feel like hanging out too long.
We live in such a beautiful area. Can you believe these are everyday sights!


Boys were skipping rocks

Sunday, October 5, 2008

my house to do list

So here is my list for getting the house fixed.
This is basically the list for the person I'm hiring. Hopefully we can help or do somethings ourselves. Especially the painting. It's a lot of painting! Rick is working on wiring too.
This doesn't include putting in the flooring. I am planning to hire someone to do that too. It's $5 a yard to install carpet. I used to think that was expensive, until I started pricing other installers. Then in the Dakota house I paid someone by the hour. I think I ended up paying more. So now I'm happy to pay $5 a yard.
I'm not sure if we can afford to put in the front porch. Possibly put a little one up to hold us over.
So I have one person that has been cleaning soot for me. She is very good. Jim who will do my drywall and handyman list, his wife is going to help me with painting and then the carpet installer.
Hopefully I can make the insurance money stretch. It's so exciting and this fire was a blessing in disguise! :)

Down stairs;
Replace Living room Window
Fix Roof
Dishwasher falling forward (it's not really attached)
Replace burnt wall
Fix dry wall in bathroom
Texture bathroom walls
Trim on bathroom floors
Replace front door
Trim kitchen around doors
Trim all around house, hall
Front porch?

Upstairs
Trim upstairs family room and guest room
Take off popcorn ceilings in:
hall, kids room and master bedroom and master bathroom
Tape and Fix drywall in ceilings,
finish taping boys bedroom
Trim boys bedroom door
Fix leak and ceiling in upstairs bathroom

Paint
Family Room ceiling
Wainscoting in kitchen and hall
Living room ceiling
Fix and touch up living room walls
Kitchen ceiling
touch up kitchen walls
Top of basement stairs
Basement stairwell
Stairwell and upstairs hall
Book case (white)
Upstairs bathroom
Upstairs master bedroom
Master bedroom ceiling
Boys bedroom
Boys bedroom ceiling
Downstairs bathroom
Touch up everywhere

Friday, October 3, 2008

Mark's birthday








I can't believe he's already 11. I can't stand the thought of him growing up so much.
another couple of yrs and we move into a whole different life.
We had a pretty relaxing day.
School on Friday's is always only till 12 noon. I'm so glad, because it's the one day we can do something, like catch up on chores, bake with the children, look at their school papers etc.
So today we made lasagna together, made cookies, a recipe I created, taught James how to wash the toilet. It was nice to just be a mom.
The cookie recipe I created is quite good, but they get hard. I like soft cookies, so I'll need to perfect it somehow. I wanted to work on it though, because I don't like to use butter in cookies, it's expensive and I think oil is better for you (but who knows the truth about that)
Here it is:
2 cups oil
2-3 cups of peanut butter
4 cups of sugar
A glug of molasses
A glug of lecithin
6 cups of whole wheat flour
8 cups of oatmeal
4 tsp baking powder
4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt

I'm going to try cutting down on the oil, maybe replace with some applesauce.