MOVING!

Well, might as well go public with it now :)

We are moving! The house we are currently living in has been sold, and we are moving to an "amish" or "plain" farmhouse! Yay! We will have a couple goats, and of course Hollyhock, chickens, guineas (uh...a type of bird that eats bugs and looks like a small turkey-chicken thing), and also boarding some steers there.

Cyle and Michelle will move into the house down the road too, so we will be about 3 miles from each other, which is still wonderful, even though the kids will miss being able to just walk over to each others house.

Lord help me :)

In my house, we will have no indoor "facilities", but a very nice outhouse. We have drains, but no plumbing. There is no dishwasher (um, obviously), no washing machine, no dryer, no stove or oven...but its okay! I have this AWESOMELY huge wood stove complete with a water reservoir, an oven, and a warming shelf! This can be moved outside onto our MASSIVE front porch during the summer to help prevent the house from overheating :)

We will still have a phone line, and there is a solar panel that runs a few downstairs lights, our fridge, and the well pump (which we manually turn on to fill up the water barrels).

I am still trying to figure some logistics out...but Grace says she is confident that I can rise to the occasion ;) I sure hope so!

OH! We do have a barn that has electricity so we can charge batteries and cell phones, etc. I foresee a laptop computer in our future..................................

Incase anyone is panicking for my sake, its okay! We actually house-sat for the family last weekend while they were at the beach before THEIR move, and it wasn't near as bad as I was dreading it to be. We all took baths, went in the outhouse, cooked on the stove and in the oven, did dishes just fine, and actually had lots of fun waking up BEFORE the crack of dawn to get the chores done! WE CAN DO THIS!!!

Who wants to come visit? I have a 6 bedroom house now ;)

Lets discuss a bubble...

A Bubble is something that we all have been imagining and concocting for awhile in our heads, here at the farm.
It would have to be breathable to let him breathe...yet soft and spongy to prevent even the slightest bump, bruise, slice, stab, etc.
It would have to prevent stumbling and clumsiness, as this is usually what precedes the incidents...

Shall we review???

#1 Jason was almost 3 in our Gibsonville house, when he decided to run away from daddy...tripped on his own feet...fell into the coffee table...and split his eyebrow open. We butterfly stitched it, but there still was a very visible scar.

#2 Jason was shopping with Daddy and Uncle Cyle, and him and Nick were hanging on the cart...Tyler was in the cart and decided to go over to the boys' side...the cart tipped...Jason's head hit the floor, RIGHT smack dab on his old scar (from incident #1)...it instantly swelled...the scar tissue couldn't stretch...the skin popped open right in front of Jon and Cyle...HERE HE IS:

Apparently, Walmart employees were all informed of the incident, as a couple of days later in walmart one of them was like, "Oh, we heard all about YOU!" when he saw Jason's head and Jason told him he fell over in a cart.

Healing nicely! When all of the sudden....

#3 Jason and Jon were watching while Gracie and Cyle milked Hollyhock...a plastic toy tunnel moved in the wind and spooked her...she backed/ran into them...sending Gracie, Jon, and Jason UP and OVER the electric fence! As Jon had been holding Jason when it happened, he realized Jason was flying straight for the brick pile and tried grabbing him clear of it...unfortunately the corner of his head still hit the corner of a brick...and was punctured and started gushing blood...thank the LORD we had Cyle (an EMT) to help me stop panicking and assess the situation and give a diagnosis ;) We cleaned it up, and as he started acting just fine in a few minutes, we patched it up and prayed it would heal well.

Here you can see his big head "patch". We buzzed his hair around the gash.

Here you can see his buzzed hair, and his *nicely healing* sore

And here too :) BUT WAIT!.........

#4 Jason decided to WRESTLE aunt Grace, Micah, and Tyler...he got a little carried away...and bashed his head on the base of my sewing table...OUCH!

But wait there's more!

#5 Jason was playing with the other kids around Grace and Lizzy's door...Nicholas somehow accidentally shut the door while Jason's finger was in it...OUCH!
I didn't get any pictures of this, but pretty much his whole finger swelled to double its size, turned purple, the nail got all pussy underneath, and finally fell off about a week ago. He is currently nail-less on that finger, but at least it doesn't look as bad as it did.

We are currently awaiting "big incident #6", although he has had multiple incidents between these such as: Falling off his bike multiple times, bruised his knees and legs, etc.

Does that explain the need for a bubble, now?

Snuggling on the Couch

Down at the Creek

Walking down to the creek together, for a picnic!


Lizzy walked into a branch, and hurt her eye, so we tried these to help her eye feel better...
NOPE!


How 'bout these ones??
NOPE.


Micah in the sunshine and sand


Michelle showing Abby and Zoe the water


Eating lunch on the "tick rock". Yeah, we found ticks all over our stuff AND us...and upon closer inspection, our rock was obviously some tick hangout. GREAT.


Grace
(What a beautiful picture...)


The Babies!


Lizzy with the 2-year-olds


Heather and her boys


Heather & Micah, Michelle & Abby


Cousins!


"do a little random dance...do do do do do"


Grace & Lizzy


Sweet little Abby in the sand


Awww...Tyler and Zoe Sharing


Aunt Gracie with the mama's and babies ;)

Heather & Micah, Grace, Michelle & Abby


Brave, happy children. That water was pretty cold!


Some snuggling after a cold dip for baby

Heather Making Bread

My First bread-making experience. It turned out pretty good, despite running out of flour and using wheat bran for the last 2 cups...and accidentally miscalculating the amount of yeast (6tsp instead of 8). This is of while I was kneading it :)


THIS time, it rose BEAUTIFULLY! And it record time!


Kneading it a bit before shaping loafs


The little red hen, shaping her loaves up ;)


Ready to bake!


Here they are! Let me tell you, they were SO delicious that we ate an entire loaf while it was still fresh out of the oven and warm, with our homemade butter. Mmmmm....

Homemade Butter...Mmmm....

So, we have an abundance of milk now, thanks to Hollyhock! We were so excited to be able to make our own butter and cheeses! So far, we have made about 1/2 pound of butter, and a batch of ricotta cheese, and we just received our order of Rennet to make the harder cheeses! Also, we have our curds and whey that are almost ready to make mozzarella!

The feeling of being able to create your own foods, particularly the more expensive dairy products in our stores these days, is just exhilarating! The milk tastes better, the butter tastes better, and the effort more satisfying than ever!

Dirty Baby

Abby's Soaker

Abby loves her new soaker that Aunt Heather made!!

Look at those cute thighs!!!

Happy 4th Birthday Jason!

We had so much fun at Jason's birthday party bash! Friends and family came to our house, and we ate, played games, and visited until dark, when we started up the bonfire and roasted marshmallows!

Jason got lots of special gifts, and some money to start a bank account! We have wanted to do that for awhile, but are always forgetting...so we are keeping out a little spending money for him, and putting the rest in an account for him to save up as a "college fund" sort of :)




A bowling set!




A Little Einsteins Dominoes set!


Ralph and Debbie, taking Jason to his gift...


He was kinda embarrassed, and didn't know how to react :)


I could tell he was loving it though...but had a twinge of guilt for abandoning his old bike...so he rode it around for a bit to make it feel better (and himself), before admitting he really liked the new one


New Overalls (a special request of his), from Aunt Lizzy and Aunt Grace

Car Wash

(Check out Zoe...now you know what I'm talking about!)





This wasn't really done to repay the debt owed for destroying the paint on Cyle's car, but I think it did make him feel a little better in the end :)

I was determined to wash all the road defreezing agents off of my car, and Michelle and Cyle's cars weren't lookin' to pretty after their cross-country trip, so we decided to put all of our munchkins to work!

Jason: Did hard work, frequently climbing on the hoods to get the hard spots we couldn't reach. He ended up DRENCHED by his brother and cousins, but had an overall good attitude, and eventually got to "hold the hose" at the end of the water fight.

Tyler: Pretty much just played in the water with his rag, occasionally stepped in it, and I think the only times his rag touched the car, was when one of us girls MANUALLY applied his hand and rag to its surface. He ended up drenched after 5 minutes thanks to Zoe.....

Zoe: At first put her rag to work on the car, but then became overly obsessed with squeezing water on Tyler, or anyone who was short enough for her to reach (Nick and Jason were squeezed on a few times while bent over). Same thing as Tyler though, her rag rarely touched the car. She bailed on us though once the actual water fighting started...and was probably the only dry person on location! We decided to let her experience a "Happy splattering", so she wouldn't be fearful or upset about the prospect of getting wet :)

Nicholas: Was really helpful too...but was very meticulous about his washings, and usually picked a spot to wash, and faithfully scrubbed it with his rag :) He did really well with getting wet and dirty though, we were so proud of him! At first he wasn't happy, but then when we intentionally made it a fun time, and he saw his dad and mom get in on it, he really had a blast.