To Warm Our Hands

We bought a wood kitchen stove. It will also heat our entire house and provide hot water. One problem is that we found lots of people who are able to install it but no one who will or has time. We have a metal roof, which is awesome, but makes dealing with the chimney liner installation tricky. So, for now the beautiful stove is sitting on a piano mover in my dining room. Sigh. It really is lovely and not at all intimidating, as I thought it would be during the months we waited for it.

Downstairs Pictures of the House

Abby from Sugarcreek worked hard and helped me get really organized and get some color on the walls. Over 3 months, though really only a handful of weeks of actual labor, we collected paint and things from here and there and then.....






Now, it is starting to feel like home. I was getting used to the white walls, but really I am a lady in need of colour. Thank you Abby for helping so very much. :)

Storytime, or As the Summer Ends the Girls Rediscover Books....

Yeah, I don't know what happened to the photo sizes, but it took 15 minutes just to upload them to blogger, so I'm not going to redo them. Aside from that, the point is, in the 129 pictures I took over the last two weeks about 30 of them were of the girls being read to or playing with books or reading to each other. I love it. Lil'Bug found the Tale of Emily Windsnap and Dearest rediscovered Bunicula and suddenly nightly bedtime chapter book reading reappeared after the summer long hiatus. Then Blueberry discovered her shelf of board books and now her favourite thing in the morning is to pick a book and flip through it, then have it read to her 30 + times. Yay! I love books. I love reading to my girls.

Farewell Good Hen

We finally caught and butchered the fast and clever meat chicken that had escaped the last round up. She hid out with the pigs for a while and now that the pigs are gone, suddenly we have about 4 more chickens. Funny. By we, I mean Dearest. I hate butchering, specifically, I hate plucking, and he doesn't seem to mind it. Still, can't wait for the whiz bang plucker to be built over winter.

Today was mostly spent cleaning and sanitizing and cuddling a very cranky baby. The anti viral gave her a headache I think. She kept covering her eyes and pulling at her hair. Poor thing.

We gathered the huckleberry from the garden and the last of the pumpkins. Dearest had a go at plowing the new garden beds and the old. I am extending them to the West and eliminating the Eastern bed. I am thinking about growing pumpkins in the pig pen, as pumpkins like it "hot", but I can't find any data verifying that the attempt would be safe on that ground only a season after the pigs are off it. On the other hand, I can't find anything saying it wouldn't be either, just that most crops will burn on such ground. Still looking.

Lil'Bug is turning 5 soon. Time flies so very fast. She's just a few weeks past the cut off for Kindergarten in Iowa, but we homeschool and I am hesitating to call it a grade, well, ever. The problem is that some people/places seem to need that and just saying that she's 5 and we homeschool isn't cutting it. They want to know what level "curriculum" she's at. Dude. She's 5 (or will be very soon). I tried explaining what we do, but really failed at the attempt. I think it will work itself out as they get to know her, but I worry about how many more times this will come up?

I am going to start uploading pictures from the past few months and posting them by date, so they won't be at the top of the blog when they appear. Dearest gave me the "facebook stole the record of our family" talk and I must admit I feel incredibly guilty. I just didn't feel like blogging. It is complicated. Part of it is actually facebook, but not the timesuck part of it. It is that suddenly I am connected to all these people and my blog isn't so anonymous anymore. I know, it wasn't really ever, but in real life I am a bit shy and a lot sensitive to my family thinking I am a weirdo. I am a weirdo. I do lots and learn about lots of unconventional things. Life is an adventure I fully intend to live. I intend to document it for my children. So there, that's that.