A Couple Of Special Quilts

 So much is happening right now! It feels kinda crazy. It's crazy to think I haven't posted in 10 months. I also haven't been keeping up on my journals!

Partially in December and February, and mostly in January, my sister and I made a wedding quilt for our baby sister and it was so fun and wonderful and so much work and time! 161 "woman hours", and that is not including time at the fabric stores, embroidery, or drive time to each other's houses! I loved it! And so did our little sister. I think her husband was not as impressed, but I imagine that he likely doesn't understand what really goes into a quilt. Besides, I think on the whole, it tends to be the wife who cherishes a wedding quilt the most, anyway. 

Speaking of quilts, I'm running a mystery quilt along for "the cousins". That would be my cousins' daughters, ages 10-12. It has been fun so far.

Baby boys

 While nursing this evening, Little Guy was driving his little car on my arm. Major heart-eyes on this mama! I love him so much.

He also was tickled pink to find a toy gun at my aunt's house the other day. He has zero association with guns, real or fake. He does not know they go boom. How is he already attracted to them?

He loves balls and he loves throwing things whether it's a ball or not.

He is doing well with weaning. That's bittersweet for me.

Soap is mean

"I don't want soap in my eyes and I don't want soap on my face. Soap is MEAN. And splinters are mean, too."

-my 3yo after a soap ordeal

Fences

 I'm so tired of fences.

We have had issues off and on for a long time with our electric fence. It was tangling in a nearby old, loose barbed wire fence. Took a lot of work to get that out of there. Then another line was tangling in barbed wire. Couldn't take that out as it isn't ours, but ours was the majority of the problem anyway, as this particular line was loose. We had wrapped electric wire around a LOT of wooden fence posts, as I was confidently assured it WOULD NOT be a problem, unless perhaps everything got VERY WET. Well, that is the problem we spent seven hours on yesterday, but we got all of it off of wood! It had also routed through some trees, and Son added t-posts to jut the fence out of line a bit in those places and go around the trees. 

It finally seems to be working! 

There are still a few things to complete, things that shouldn't interfere with the fence working for a few days, but that won't be sufficient long term. I'm hoping Son will be able to fix those small issues this morning before we let the sheep and goats out. 

(I started this post last night. In fact, I finished most of it before I fell asleep...)

This Saturday

Today was full. My Man and I went out for breakfast and to discuss our budget for this year. Sounds crazy in April, but we just got part of our tax return after a couple months of tight purse strings, and it's a good time for us to plan our budget out. 

My Man, Son, Sissy and Honey burned drain ditches with a neighbor. I worked some on digging ditch on our property. We are re routing the way it drains from our pasture. After burning, my Man and Son worked on this also. I also was involved in showing off the lambs. The office lady from my Man's job brought her grandkids and their parents, to enjoy the lambs, sheep and goats for a while. We had crock pot meatloaf with salad and green beans for dinner. We are working on baths now, and I'm about to wash some hair. Little Guy got six hours and twenty-seven minutes outside today. 89/1000! 

Spring lambing finished

This morning, we finished off lambing for a bit. Six ewes have lambed within two weeks, and they added 12 ewe lambs and 2 ram lambs to our flock.

The proud mothers;

Raspberry, Strawberry, Splash, Frost, CD, Rose.

The bereaved mother; Blackie.

We went through quite the ordeal holding down Blackie for a few days of milking. We wanted to freeze the colostrum in case of future emergency, and we milked her for 4 days just to get all the best beginning milk. We were going to ease her off slowly, but we wound up deciding to just let her try to dry off cold turkey. Hopefully she won't be hurting too much. She does seem a little more comfortable now than she was a few days ago.

Raspberry had triplets. She is raising two ewes and lost a ram.

Strawberry had triplets. She is raising ewes.

Splash had twins. She is raising ewes.

Blackie had twins. Stillborn rams. 

Frost had twins. She is raising ewes.

CD had triplets. She is raising one ewe, one ram, and she lost a ram.

Rose had triplets. She is raising two ewes and a ram. 

We had several present with elbow lock this spring. My Man had to assist in multiple births and I had to assist with one. 

We anticipate that Hairy and Blondie are likely pregnant, but they just lambed unexpectedly in November, so we don't think they are far along. We have the adult rams locked up for now, just in case. 

My Man got the 50% ram he was hoping for out of Rose. 50% Dorper and 50% Romanov. He's a cute little guy, too!

Needing Cold Water

 My sister has been sending screenshots to the family group chat. Screenshots of posts from my Mom's blog. Back when she was in the throes of raising and homeschooling 8 young children. Those are precious memories, and I'd like to fill my blog in with more of the same, for my kids to reminisce over as adults.

Here is a scene from my life, while in the throes of raising and homeschooling 7 young children.

My Man has a tradition of taking the kids out early on Saturday mornings for breakfast. It has evolved through the years, but for the past couple years, they take turns. Today was Sweetie's turn, so she was up quite early. She had a wonderful day, but by the time bedtime rolled around, very exhausted! After dinner, I sent her to start her bath, which her older sister had run for her. She started having an emotional breakdown because she had to use the hall bathroom. I helped her calm down. Then she had an emotional breakdown because the water was too hot. I felt the water as she was stepping into the bath, crying "I need cold! I need it cold!" It wasn't overly hot, but I turned the cold on and she immediately put her hand in the running water.

"AAUUGHH!!!" she screamed. I can just imagine a cartoon strip with the character screaming, with their hair all standing on end! It's exactly what she sounded like! She instantly turned the water off and started swishing the "cold" water in to the "hot" water. There was still a tiny stream coming from the faucet because it always does that after it's turned off. So she started pushing and pushing on the knob until the stream stopped a couple seconds later.

"That's how much I needed, Mama. That's enough cold now."

(The water was on for possibly one full second.)

Milking

I've been a pretty busy woman. I mean, always, but especially the past couple weeks. We started milking (meaning Son and My Man). It takes a lot of work for Mom to keep all of the equipment clean; jars and lids, milk pail, filtering funnel, cloths for cleaning her udder. We have a Dexter, which is a dual purpose breed, so we aren't getting as much milk as a dairy breed would give us. But we still get between a gallon to a gallon and a half per milking, and that's 2-3 gallons daily to handle. I guess she's giving a bit more than that, but they are keeping a certain amount out for bottle feeding her calf. We are sharing milk so far with my brother-in-law's family, and with dear friends who have shared with us several times in the past. We still have way more milk than we need. Milking began on monthly grocery day, and we don't have an extra fridge. So we've been having to move milk fast.

I think I've decided that if I make a batch of mozzarella each day, we'll probably keep pace. I tested how the homemade mozzarella freezes, and it does fine. Son wants to make butter and whipped cream, so I've begun skimming the cream before cheese-making. We bought an "antique" countertop butter churn around the time we had to stop milking last time (because she'd gotten a bad wound on her udder and couldn't handle the milking). My Man and Son used it for the first time a few evenings ago and it worked quite well. That night, we ended up with a big slab of butter, a quart of buttermilk, and 2 mozzarella wheels. That consolidated 2 gallons of milk plus some additional cream from an earlier cheese making session. I may attempt converting the whey into whey powder, but we'll see how it goes. It's supposed to be pretty easy, but... I've been a pretty busy woman.

Monthly Groceries Day

 Yesterday was a busy day.

 I started on 3 hours of sleep, and didn't eat anything until 3:00 pm (except two slices of canned peaches). My Man took Punkin and Sweetie out for breakfast. He also took Son, Sissy and Honey out to Walmart and Ace (we had a broken toilet seat that needed replaced). And then he took the big girls to the library. He and I (and Little Guy) visited the local secondhand stores, looking for Corelle dinner plates. And My Man was looking for something else, but I don't recall what it was. Neither of us were successful. Then Little Guy and I went for our monthly grocery orders. That took longer than usual for various reasons. I also visited Goodwill, but still no luck finding dinner plates. I picked up Burger King for my super late lunch. Once home, our wonderful children unloaded everything and helped me put away, but we only got the perishables put away this time. Then My Man left once more, this time going to visit some out-of-state friends who were staying with their family, other friends of ours. He did take Sissy and Honey, but I stayed home and started tackling meat preparation tasks. I cooked and froze 30 lbs of ground beef, separated and froze about 12-13 lbs of raw ground beef into meal-sized portions (about 2.5lbs), seasoned, formed and froze around 7 lbs hamburger patties, chopped/sliced and froze 25 lbs of chicken. I also put a 10 lb roll of ground beef into the freezer, and a 5 lb package of chicken in the fridge to deal with later, because it was getting late. Other things that I did during that time, were to unload and reload the dishwasher, give Punkin a bath, put Precious down for bed, nurse Little Guy more than once, and take the sleeping Sweetie up to her bed. I had Son complete some other tasks for me, and he also watched some episodes of History in the Dark and took a shower. Honey also bathed after they returned. It was very nice to go to bed, although late.

 And while writing this post, I see that Little Guy (who was pretty cranky with the events of yesterday) is truly mobile now! He's enjoying rolling and scooting along to get whatever he wants to play with next. Super cute! He's a very happy little guy!

Braids

 I've been fixing Honey, Punkin and Sweetie's hair in braids to keep it out of the grasp of Little Guy. And Precious gets upper pigtails. Punkin and Sweetie aren't very happy about this, but I told them it's temporary. They have been losing hair to their little brother like crazy. And he's been getting hair in his mouth sometimes. And I've NEVER had so much hair in the vacuum cleaner before. So braids it is.

She Looked At My Face

 I see all these memes about "what made my toddler cry this week" or "reasons my 4yo had an emotional break down this week". They include things such as "he looked at me!" Or "because her banana was yellow".

Now I have six children, and for the first time ever, my fourth child nearing 4, was crying and kicking her sister. In distress, she cried "She looked at my face!! 😭😭😭"

Also, Son had the thought that I should add to my blog posts things such as "My Son bought a bike that he can do skids on." He has been pretty aware of the importance of this accomplishment for the last few days.

Through the Rough Patch...?

Sometimes you are traveling down the road of life and it seems like there are annoying bumps and potholes here and there. You try to avoid them, but sometimes you hit one. And so much of the road seems to be covered in "washboard". Maybe you complain more than you should. You wish you could always be on a nice, smooth stretch, but it rarely happens.

Then you really do hit a rough patch. Jagged rocks are scattered everywhere, and yet the potholes make their appearance too. You can avoid the sharpest rocks, but you must be paying close attention. You can't avoid everything, though. Before, you thought you were going slow. Now you are just creeping along, painstakingly picking your way through the obstacles.

Once you've made it through with a minimum of damage, you are on the washboard again. You notice a couple juts and a pothole. They make you happy, because after what you just experienced, this is easy!

My analogy is rather stronger than what I'm actually feeling, I have to admit. I'm thinking more of somewhere between the washboard and the rough patch I described. But still.

I went to get groceries this afternoon. Most of the shelves had been refilled! I was so thankful! I certainly took that for granted before. I would complain about our circumstances and the prices, and how hard it can sometimes be to feed a family of 7 plus the occasional company. Then mass hysteria showed up. In fear, shoppers cleared the shelves. Confused, I looked around at our meager options and counted my blessings when God provided a staple or two on the shelves. We managed to scrape by. We didn't go hungry, but we didn't always like what we were eating. And then today, things were almost back to normal! Besides all the social distancing signs. And the tape marking where people should wait to go into the store if the temporary hysteria-induced capacity was reached. And all the people wearing face-masks. And the one-way-aisle directives.

But the shelves were almost full. I even saw toilet paper! (I didn't need any, so I didn't buy any.)

I think we're through the worst of it for now, and I'm thankful for that!

Can't Wear Anything

I always wear long skirts, but my girls have pants and they prefer them. There are some occasions when they aren't allowed to wear pants.

Honey: Can I wear pants today?

Me: Do you have clean pants?

Honey: I can't find any.

Me: You can't wear dirty pants, so if you don't have clean pants, then I guess you can't wear pants. It's not my fault you don't have clean pants if you took them all off the wrong way with the underwear stuck on them, and you won't turn them right side out so I can wash them.

Honey goes off pouting.

A few minutes later, I hear her walking down the hall crying and hollering.

Honey: I'm NOT wearing a dress today, so if I can't wear pants, I guess I can't wear ANYTHING today. Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!!!

I considered saying "You'll probably get pretty cold if you don't wear anything." But I decided instead to pretend I didn't hear her. A little while later, I told her "You're still in your pajamas?!! You better go get dressed in a hurry!" and she did.

One Dollar Breakfast

I haven't felt very well this morning, so I've been dragging. But don't worry. Sissy has been doing it all. She got dressed and did her chores. Then she fixed her own hair beautifully. Next, I heard Punkin screaming, while Sissy calmly repeated "I've already started, Punkin, I'm going to finish. Punkin, I've already started and I'm going to finish." She was trying to fix Punkin's hair. I finally intervened "Oh, just leave her alone!". Then she was chasing down Honey to fix her hair, which she finally accomplished after a mini-battle.

Finally, while I was tiredly nursing the baby, she came to me with a notebook and pen, and said "If you want to eat any of the breakfast I am going to make, you will need to pay me one dollar."

"What are you making?" I asked, quite interested to know, since we are very low on groceries at the moment.

"I'm not sure yet."

"Well, there aren't many choices, because we don't have many groceries."

Anyway. She ended up making a peach smoothie with some frozen peaches, a bit of sugar, and some milk.

Immediately afterwards, Honey came in, distraught. "Mama! She says I have to give her a dollar!"

"Don't worry, I'll pay for you." We went and got a dollar out of my wallet, which I gave to Honey, and she gave to Sissy.

A few minutes later, they were looking for a pen. It seems that Sissy needed to write down how much money she'd made.

Now she's four dollars the richer, and I think I'm going to encourage her to spend a few dollars on something nice for the family soon.

By the way, just in case any of you were wondering: I don't charge my kids for breakfast.

Day 3

Potty training Punkin.

Day One: She learned that she could delay bedtime by saying she needed to go potty. Over. And over. And over.

Day Two: She learned that if she squeezed out a few drops every 10 minutes or so, she could earn LOTS of jellybeans!

Day Three: We switched to underwear, which have remained dry since we put them on at 7:30 this morning (so nearly 5 hours). She's gone potty some, but I've been rewarding dry undies instead of potty in the chair, so she's not spending all her time running over to push out a little dribble. But no accidents! So cool!

I'm still prepared for her to lose interest, and if so, we'll just switch back to pullups. I don't like to do so, but it's just not worth putting our family through misery if undies aren't remaining successful.

Potty Training

Let me just say; it's been a long day of potty training.

Wa-wa

Punkin says "Wa-wa" for "water".

Today, heading home from Piano Lessons, I was singing.

...And if you'll drink this water,
You'll never thirst again!

There is a river
That flows from God above.
There is a fountain
That's filled with His great love.
Come to this water;
There is a vast supply.
There is a river
That never shall run dry.

As I finished, I could hear Punkin in the back seat singing with all her little heart

Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa!

A Quick Recap of September 2019

This has been a busy month and it's not quite over yet!

We drove 1200 miles and spent most of a week camping, hiking, and spreading ashes with my family for Dad's memorial. Then we made the long journey back home.

We tried to recuperate for a couple days, but also had to do the kids' beginning-of-year reading tests, pick up some curriculum that had finally arrived (4 weeks after ordering) and attend the quilting meeting and piano lessons. My sister and her husband got back about a day and a half after us, and she also had to take a couple days to try to recuperate. She has made that 1200 mile trip a couple of times lately, having moved here very recently before the memorial took place.

After a few days had passed, she and I canned peaches together over the course of a couple different days, and with many of the peaches being on the verge of starting to go bad. That was a big job in itself!

And before we were quite finished, my Mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and sister-in-law's-boyfriend arrived after an 1100 mile journey. The boyfriend spent the week at somebody else's house - the reason he'd come out was to hunt anyway, so he was out in the mountains most of the time. My sister-in-law spent a few days with us and a few days with her best friend, who also lives in this area. My mother-in-law spent basically the whole week with us.

During that week, we also got started on school. A bit of a juggling act since I didn't want to waste a bit of the time we had with my MIL, but also a necessity to accomplish. At the end of the week, I looked at our accomplishments and was pleasantly surprised by all we were able to accomplish in spite of that!

This week, we've had to run here and there every day so far, although yesterday's running about wasn't until my Man got home and we went to a viewing. After we got home, I just wanted to go straight to bed, but instead I pushed everyone through baths and hair-washing, sent them to bed, and after feeding/coddling/lulling the baby to sleep, at LAST I took a bath myself and then headed for bed.

This morning, I amazed myself by having chores, breakfast, etc. all accomplished AS WELL as a little of our school, a load of laundry, and popping a load of dishes into my recently acquired and much-loved dishwasher, after which we left for this morning's funeral early enough to stop and pick up the sympathy card I'd previously forgotten to purchase. I did not attend the graveside or potluck dinner afterward, as I had a previously scheduled appointment with the HQC from the Charter School. After she left, having informed me that I had more curriculum ready, the kids & I headed up to the campus once more and got our books. We came home, I took note of this batch of 18 books (I have a list on which I'm keeping track of everything ordered and what is not here yet).

Then the kids had their (required) pleasure reading and piano practice (they alternate who is doing which, since both subjects take about the same length of time), and then I got dinner in the oven because it takes 2 hours to cook, and then I sat down with a (large) cup of coffee and the computer, and have been cold-heartedly ignoring the sad baby (she is falling asleep and hates that) while I write and try to imagine myself staying awake in church tonight.

Tomorrow I have the leave the house once again to do some banking, plus hoping to spend a bit of time with my sister, then Saturday my Man has plans, then Sunday is Potluck after Church. Monday will begin another week of school (and hopefully not much else!), and end an extremely busy month!

I hope October is a little calmer. I intend to heavily prioritize sleep once we get through this weekend.

Camp

My family was able to spend most of a week at "Camp". We went to my childhood camping place, a place way up in the mountain and away from everybody except a few hunters. My Mom and most of my siblings went up to camp Sunday, and my Man & kids & I followed Monday. One sister wasn't able to get there until Thursday.

We spread Dad's ashes here and there about the mountains he had so loved to bring us to each year.

It was sad & fun all mixed in together. I think the benefit in waiting 19 months after he passed away before being able to accomplish his request, is that we were able to find more enjoyment together at camp. Which is what he wanted, I think.

I'm glad we got to go.

I'm glad my kids got to experience that camp once in their lives.

I'm glad for the time with my family.

I'm glad it is now done.

Planning Progress - Almost Done! 2019-2020

I'm happy to say that my school planning is basically complete! I'm SURE it will have to be tweaked once we get into it, but it's so much easier to tweak a plan that's not exactly working as well as anticipated, rather than starting from scratch and feeling the futility of weeks spent treading water.

I had done a lot of back-and-forth in my mind about whether or not to enroll with the local charter school again this year. We did last year, and did not the year before. There are pros and cons for both choices, and I was really on the fence about it. I was leaning toward not enrolling with them, and had almost made that my final decision, but I wanted to discuss it with My Man first. We talked about it together, and decided we WILL school through the charter this year. It's such a relief to have that plan made! Everything else partially hinged upon that decision!

I have chosen our resources for the year, and have the list in to the school to purchase for us. There are some odds and ends we will need to purchase for ourselves, as well. The biggest thing being a home weather station, as I want to dedicate much of our year to a simple weather study. I'm basing this off of a weather journal we kept for a year or two while I was being homeschooled. I look back on that time with such fond memories!

I will have the kids' chore charts ready after I buy more laminating paper. I didn't realize I only had 2 sheets left. And then I tried using them on one chart and accidentally messed it up. It has all these little wrinkles at the top and I can't seem to get them fixed. I know these charts work because we tried them for a couple weeks about a month ago, and the only problem was that I had to print a new one each day for each kid, and then we had old ones all about the house not making it to the trash. We decided we'd laminate them and use dry erase markers to check them off. (We did have to make tweaks, of course, but that is done now and I feel confident in their continued success.)

I have a similar checklist for myself that includes all the basic things, which I'm hoping will keep me on track instead of stressed out. I've also made a school checklist with info about how often during the week we should do each subject, and for how many minutes at a time. I am very much a fan of Charlotte Mason, but I have to say that my weekly plan does not exactly reflect her suggestions. I have read extensively on the idea of following her timetables exactly, and was stressed that I couldn't seem to do so no matter how hard I tried. I have come to peace with this, and I am pleased with my current intentions.

I have on another sheet a simple, easy-to-read plan of the morning schedule. Just another paper to help us see where we should be at any given time. This is the only paper that actually says "Do this at such-and-such time", and it is very general. (For example, it says simply "School" during that time period, instead of "Math" followed by "Literature" etc.)

I have a few other small things to get in order, but this has been for the most part, a pretty relaxed planning period. Just a little here and there and I've seemed to pretty well get things accomplished! I think I'll be able to easily knock out the rest well before time to dive back in to school (hopefully I'm not jinxing myself...).

I am very excited about the coming year! I am also very excited about our vacation weeks!

And the thing that I am the very MOST excited about is something that I have NO basis to gauge whether it will be successful or not. But I THINK I'm going to be very pleased with the results! It solves several problems at once in what seems to be a simple solution. Here are the problems:

- Many of the women in our church (including some homeschooling mothers with their children) meet every Tuesday for lunch and quilting (Park Day during summer vacation). We love attending but:
- It is difficult to fit this in while also keeping up with the school agenda. I don't want to go to a 4-day week unless absolutely necessary, but 5 days isn't strictly necessary to accomplish our goals either.
- Especially since I also have to get groceries at some point in the week, which is such a huge job! It has to be done either with 5 kids in tow, or at night when they are in bed and My Man is watching them. Neither way is fun.
- And we also need to fit in piano lessons at some point!
- And I absolutely DO NOT want to have to leave the house more than one "business day" per week. Not unless it's of an evening with my Man.

The resolution:
Alternating Tuesdays. We'll have a school Tuesday and a shopping Tuesday. On School Tuesday, our workload will be lightened a bit to make the time for our friends. On Shopping Tuesday, we'll go to ONE of the two stores I mainly frequent, and purchase 4 weeks worth of groceries from that store. The next Shopping Tuesday, we'll get 4 weeks of groceries from the other store. I also intend to experiment with the "Pick-up" feature: shop for the groceries online, and then just let them load the car and go home and deal with the groceries. As far as piano lessons are concerned, I can't tell you HOW HAPPY I was when the piano teacher texted me last weekend because she was working on the schedule. She had a slot for us, and was asking if it would work for us. But she also noted that if Sissy was going to start this year, then we would need a different slot instead. I told her we plan to have Sissy start. So she asked if Tuesday afternoons would work, from 2:30-3:30. This is THE VERY BEST time of the week for us to go to lessons! I was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO thrilled! We'll be able to leave the quilting and go straight to lessons. When lessons are over, we'll arrive home in time to get supper going and complete our evening chores.

I am SO excited about this! I'll let you know how it goes. I hope it is everything I imagine it to be.