Addition Update

It’s looking like a home. Last week Paul painted(sprayed) the ceilings and walls and installed light fixtures. Wallah, it’s a home. We still have a lot of work ahead – moldings, trim, carpet, baseboards and last but not least breaking through to the existing house. BUT, we hope to occupancy in two weeks. 

 

 

Our existing woodstove hearth has to be totally dismantled and rebuilt. Remember our only source of heat is our wood stove? Somehow Paul has to take all the brickwork out and rebuild our river rock hearth while the stove is cookin. Hmmmm, I never can understand how he will accomplish these things, but he always does it. Jacking up our whole house, leveling and reinforcing the beams, lifting our second floor and placing a beam across our living room, fixing broken phone lines and electrical…the man is amazing. All that in one package and he’s the best Daddy, too! 

Each room is 24x25. Upstairs we’ll have two 24x12 bedrooms. The above pictures is the girls’ room, notice their bedding on the floor, they just can’t wait, lol.

 

And this picture is back downstairs looking West. There is my last minute sliding glass door that was found that night on Craigslist and it matched all our other windows! What a blessing.

I have to insert a praise of my sons. Micah(5) is not satisfied to stay in the house when the men are out working. He may be a little guy, but he is very strong and diligent. With those two qualities he is amazingly helpful! He moved a lot of dirt, cleaned up messes and ran many errands for Daddy.

Jacob(12) has been right in there with Daddy building and says he is ready to build his house, he understands  the process and has a confidence he can do it. He spent most Saturday welding a cattle feeder for a neighbor. It’s a funny thing to walk out and see this *man* suited up and welding in the driveway, then realize it’s your 12yr old son. He did a fantastic job and Daddy says he’s got *the touch*. By the time he’s 14, he’ll be welding like Big Boys.

Then comes Daniel. He is fascinated by electricity and such. Both Daddy and Daniel plopped down on the plywood floors, matching tool belts and Daddy demonstrated how to wire in the electrical sockets, both the wall sockets and the smoke alarms. Daniel was honored and patiently sat that day wiring in EVERY socket and alarm both upstairs and down(7 alarms & 16 sockets). We expected him to tire of it and go play, but he did them all. It was fun to see him run around with a light bulb and tested each socket afterward. And yes, Daddy snuck in there to make sure everyone was done right when he wasn’t looking, it’s our electrical after all!

D-Day for Turkey

I took all these great pictures of Turk and wouldntyaknowit, they magically disappeared in my camera. So here is the account. Turk was fetched from his pen and waddled over to said butcher block. We waited for the small crowd of onlookers to arrive, stuffed Turk in a burlap sack, duct taped him well to prevent his wings from breaking, hung him up and Paul did his dirty work. It is always a great family time butchering the turkey, Danny did a marvelous job of raising the creature and it brought much entertainment to the farm. I even had a picture of me kissing his globby fluorescent blue head, complete with snood draped down in front of him.


Turkeys are interesting critters, not the smartest and yes, we will attest to the rumor that turkeys are SO dumb they WILL die in a rainstorm. Turkeys become curious at the raindrops from above and will look up at the rain eventually drowning themselves. This happened to us one year, with a 20 lb turkey. I was livid with the dumb beast, but alas, he was gone and as much as my Dutch side wanted to scoop up the well dead $40 carcass and butcher him up, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

It was a four person job to pluck. Emily and I plucked him whilst Mr. Williams held the bird steady and Paul poured boiling water over the stinky, sticky feathers. My niece(Emily) may be a city slicker, but she knows how to pluck a turkey! Jess rode horse, Jacob hosed down, Daniel skinned the gizzard, Emma ran around to and fro, Micah roller bladed on the gravel driveway, Gracie watched from a distance and Elijah napped most of the time. After everyone left I was commiserating on how small he looked. He just didn't look as robust as we like and Mr. Williams and I guessed him to be 16 lbs at best.

After getting the dressed turk in the kitchen sink, I plucked the pin feathers with a pliers and singed his hairs, made him all pertty-like. I got the scale out and Paul weighed him...28lbs?! Really? Yes, he was a whopping 28lbs and I even had trouble stuffing him in the freezer. We are anxiously awaiting Thanksgiving Day! Bring on the turkey!

Pictures!

My computer decided to remember it has a G drive so I can put some pictures up…finally. These pics go with my post from earlier this week.

Brrrr it’s getting cold.

The rain suddenly turns to snow in one block worth of driving. Everyone cheers!

 

 

Daddy is an easy target.

We did find some better hills.

 

Making a snowman at the ski lodge.

 

The snowman. We left him, made one loop around Heather Meadows and some young men had come and already smashed him to smithereens with their truck. Thanks guys.

Cold happy children

 

Daddy and seven children giving the thumbs up while doing donuts in the van. My husband still can not resist doing this in the snow. It’s a guy thing, I guess. ;)

 

A red-capped Russula! A HUGE one! We arrive at Nooksack Falls.

 

Yeah, yeah, there’s the Falls, now on to the MUSHROOMS!

 

Another picture perfect, fairy tale book fly agaric, gorgeous!

 

My sweet children, bless their hearts, ran around picking every neat mushroom they found. We quickly laid rules to leave them IN the ground, for crying out loud, so we can enjoy them next year(and to appease the other tree-huggers that were looking at the children in horror as they picked the mushrooms)  The russula above was at least 9 inches across!

 

My camera used to take beautiful up close pictures…<sigh>

 

A plate full of edibles and mushrooms to identify when we get home.

See the cute little bright orange one? And the perfectly translucent jelly-like one? And the coral mushroom that is edible? Oh Joy, what a day!

The Five Scariest Things You Can Do This Halloween

Click here to view this post from my blog Oct 2008.

Lazy Sunday

This year has been all about building and not much time to go enjoy the outdoors together as a family as much as we'd like. This morning we changed that. After we slept in after a late night working, we packed lunches, donned snowsuits, threw the sled in the back and left on a journey to find snow. We expected to find it sooner than we did as it didn't start snowing until 1/4m from the ski lodge! That was looooong trip. We kept offering to turn around and go play on the river or something, but the children all persisted to find snow.  We were the only ones up there sledding and boy was it fun. We made a snowman, had snowball fights, Daddy spun donuts in the van with all the children whooping, we sledded down hills and just enjoyed each other immensely. The anti-lock brakes quit working on the truck so Daddy did not feel comfortable going to Artist Point, otherwise we would have gone as this weekend they close it down.

On the way down, we stopped at Nooksack Falls because of a tip I received from Ruth D who said the mushrooms were crazy up there. We stopped and the Falls were the least of my attention. There were mushrooms EVERYWHERE and the ones you only see in the books, too. We found tons of edibles, sponges, agarics, russulas, fairy rings, orange peel, witches butter(yum) and it was crazy nuts how many different kinds there were! We came home with two plates and a chip bag full of mushrooms to identify. Now where's that Audubon book?

I actually took a nap this afternoon, a NAP. I feel the ugh kicking in, coffee doesn't smell as wonderful as last week, the rooms spins periodically and my stomach must not get too empty. I have been treated like a queen in the last 48 hours and I just tell the children "You only love me for my baby" and they agree with a smile. Sheesh, do I feel used. ;)

It's the size of a lentil, it has a beating heart..It's a.....

Baby number 8!!! Finally back to the even numbers, yes! 2, 4, 6, 8...Yup, all accounted for. Another sweet nose to wipe, diaper to change, piggies to count, long nights peering at the sleeping eyes praying for his salvation, thanking God for the blessing of another eternal soul added to our family by His grace. Daddy broke the news this morning and now I need to pull each child back down from the clouds...especially Jess. She is already looking forward to attending this birth also, if the Lord decides for me to carry full term, she was such a wonderful presence at Elijah's birth.

Official due date June 17, 2011 - Translation into Jennifer's timing = June 30, 2011

Washington Eagle Forum Candidate Endorsements - Whatcom County

Click Here for Google Doc

We love this sheet the Washington Eagle Forum puts out, when we are stumped on an issue we can see what they recommend. I encourage you to get on their mailing list(and give them something to cover postage just to help out) for information concerning the elections. Most of the time they are spot on, however, they do promote electing women into office. Don't forget to mail in that ballot!

Friday

Friday. Our fifth weekend working on the drywall. Fifth. I had no idea it would take this long to hang and finish it out. Every night we work for a few hours after Paul gets off work, then on the weekends till the wee hours, it wouldn't be so bad if one didn't have to shower the dust off. We both start looking like 30-something and leave looking 70-something complete with gray hair and wrinkles.

Tonight we finished the downstairs, thanks to the help of a surprise visit from Klay and his son Caleb. We have done well keeping the dust out of the main house for weeks to our surprise. As a final touch, Paul swept the whole floor out about 20 minutes ago. I was upstairs and thought I saw a fog in the air. It was drywall. I ran downstairs and it was hazy all throughout the downstairs and thick layer of dust on EVERYTHING. My books, kitchen counters, carpets, furniture...everything. You know what I'll be doing tomorrow...but for now I am going to bed. Call me a slob, I can not deal with this tonight ;)

At least after this, it is just lights, carpet, fixtures and trim. The list has an end.

On a lighter note, tomorrow should be a great day. Micah is a real thinker about God and has many pointed questions pertaining to Christianity. He has a strong conscience and is a born leader, the first true leader in all our children. Today we were riding in the car alone and he said "Mommy? I am not going to sin tomorrow. I told God that I love Him so much that I will not sin and I will not." I told him I look forward to that! Not to sound like a mean Mommy but I can not wait for him to sin tomorrow and won't have too for long I suspect. Then we will have another one of the wonderful conversations about what Christ means to us and why His job on the cross was so important. Aaaahhh, does it get any better?

Time for bed.

I'll let you know how long Micah makes it.