Horsin' around

This post is a little bit of everything that's been going on the last week or so- and some of my ponderings.  Tomorrow is the first day of school, so I wanted to get all caught up before that goes down. 
I am so happy in my life right now.  For years, I felt like I never had time for myself and felt frustrated at that.  Now, I have tried to schedule my priorities and enjoy the time that I do have.  In addition, I ever strive to enjoy the time with these precious children.  I don't always succeed; I am often frustrated, but I am trying!  A big change I made in the past year is to get up before the children.  I always joked before that I had 4 live little alarm clocks, so why would I set an electronic one?  But, in the past year as I literally took a step in the dark and have been getting up 5 days a week at 5:30 am, I have really felt a difference in my life.  I feel great physically as I exercise each morning and also get a chance to be re-centered mentally, emotionally and spiritually as I think and ponder- especially on the days that I run outside in the quiet of the morning.  I LOVE THE MORNING!!!!!!!  If you are missing the time of day when the sun is putting forth it's first rays, you are really missing out.  It is glorious!  It fills my whole soul with joy!  There is also something great about being all showered and ready for the day before the children are up.  So, even though it is a sacrifice to get up so early, I am reaping great dividends and I wouldn't have it any other way.
For the past year and a half or so, I have also been playing the piano each night after I snuggle the children.  I have really improved, which is exciting!  (I am still not to the point where I could really play for anyone or at church or anything).  I feel good knowing that I am working on a talent that I've wanted to have for years.  I quit when I was little.  I should never have quit; it's been one of my biggest regrets.  So, I'm trying to rectify that now. 
Okay, on to the pictures. . .
I love how much a part of everything we do Kate is nowadays.  She is really growing up!  In fact, she got frustrated with Grant today and roared out her disapproval and then proceeded to grab his shirt and bite him!  Wowza!  Watch out, world, she's a wild one!  Luckily, she just got shirt in her teeth, so Grant just thought it was funny. 
Here are the kids all trying to stand on their heads, even Kitty Bitty:

I love these kids!!

Jason, Kenneth's brother, came to visit spur of the moment this past weekend.  It was fun to have him!  He and Kenneth worked on the unfinished bedroom and bathroom in the basement.  They also had the chance to go with a friend to herd up cattle on a ranch Saturday morning.  Kenneth said he felt like the man from Snowy River.  Here are some pretty awesome shots Kenneth got on his phone from that adventure:

Gorgeous early morning sky

Hello cows!

Look!  They're real live cowboys!  (And Jason, too!  He's in the bright red shirt and white baseball hat)

Kenneth's view from the horse

Corraling them up to get them on the truck to take them to a feed lot in Texas.

Lookie there, there are some hills in Kansas!

Here are the three little ones and I sitting on the porch rocker I painted black:

I love these children!

 We've not only been horsing around, we've been productive, too.  I canned just a few pints of dill pickles.  I used regular slicing pickles because that's what I've got from the garden, so I'm not sure how they'll turn out, so I didn't do too many.  I also canned salsa this past week.  Yum!!!  I used our tomatoes, green peppers and onions to do it. 

My small batch of salsa.  Fellow canners will likely understand:  isn't that 'plink!' noise of the jar sealing one of the most satisfying noises?  I love it!

Here are Jason, Kenneth and Grant working on the basement:

My little chocolate-faced man pounding with his plastic hammer!

Kenneth framing the bedroom with 2 little helpers.  It will be cool to have another finished room down there!

Jason was such a great help moving this project, which sat largely untouched the last year, forward.  Hooray!

The girls had a Sharing Time lesson at church about Family Home Evening and they were very excited about preparing for Family Home Evening all by themselves.  Here is their planning sheet:


Emma and Arianna did this all by themselves!

Clues for the scavenger hunt they orchestrated.

A friend of mine was curious about our daily chore schedule and our new month long rotating menu plan.  I have put it off for years, folks, but I've finally done it!  We will still tweak it I am sure (and change it for other times of the year), but here it is as it stands right now.  Not very fancy, but there you have it.  We've really been working on healthifying our diet and I feel great about it.  We've found lots of new dishes- full of plants- that we have been enjoying!  The girls make overnight oats on Monday for 2 of our breakfasts during the week, which they love to do and really simplifies, not to mention healthifies mornings around here!  And we all enjoy eating it, so it's a win-win!

My breakfast menu is there an the bottom on the piece of paper.

 Here are Emma and Kate out with the chickens:

Kate insisted on wearing the sunglasses.

Like how Emma uses the dump truck to take the waterers to be filled?

Sweet, funny little Kate!

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post: The first day of school 2014.

Busy days of Summer

What else have we been up to?  Lots!  There are the daily chores: taking care of the chickens, weeding the yard, harvesting in the garden, household chores.  Then other projects: canning, painting all kinds of furniture.  We also got to attend our next-door-neighbor's wedding.  We will miss having her live right next to us, (She moved out of her parents' home when she got married and lives across town) but starting soon she will be the girls new piano teacher, so we'll get to see her every week.  Here are some pictures:

We sat on the balcony so the kids could see better.  It is a beautiful, historic, Mennonite Church here in town.  I spent most of the time in the nursery with a view of the sanctuary- Kate was too loud!

Marissa and Nathan at the reception

I've been canning more green beans with the kids.  And some pickled beets, too.  Yum.

I cannot keep this girl off the counter.  I know I shouldn't have taken her picture, but she looked so darn cute up there with her little pig tails!

'Helping' with the beans.  There are green beans and wax beans, in case you are wondering.

 I've actually had to remove all the bar stools from the kitchen to keep Kate from climbing on the counters.  It makes for a crowded laundry room, but at least I'm not taking her off the counter every couple of minutes!

Beautiful batch of pickled beets.

In other news, Grant hasn't had to wear his patch in a few weeks!  Hooray!  We go back to the eye doctor in a couple of weeks to see if his vision has held without the patching.  If it has, no patch!  If not, we will have to go back to patching again. 

I've also been painting like crazy.  It's been one project after another, and as all projects go, they all took WAY longer than I had thought they would.  But, I am done for now.  There are many other painting projects looming on the horizon, though. . .

Our first project: Arianna's new school desk.  $1 find at an estate sail last summer.

Sanding

Everyone wanted to be part of the action.  Arianna loved it!

Emma was really concentrating.

An end table we got for free when we were married.  It was ugly, scraped-up brown.  I think it's new black color looks great!

Emma's new school desk.  We've had it for 8 years.  I've been trying to get rid of it for at least 6.  But, now I'm refinishing it!

The drawers- that one by Arianna is in really bad shape!

The side looked horrible  (This pictures is also after sanding, so it looks even worse.)

 

 

On his way leaving for work, Kenneth caught this picture of the big kids all sitting on the new rocking chair on the porch before I painted it .  It is a great chair!  Thank you Craigslist!

 

Here it is all painted black. 

Half the garage taken over with my projects.  The red table basking in the sunlight to the right is Grant's.  It was the table all of them sat at to do schoolwork last year.  All the way to the left you can also see a t.v. stand I painted (Kenneth got that one on the side of the road for free, too!)

 When I get the basement all organized, I'll take a picture of all of the pieces in their new homes.  Right now it's all still unorganized.  But, at least they are all done!

I bet you all have been dying to see more chicken pictures (all 3 of you who actually read this, that is)!  Well, today is your lucky day.  I took some!  I love these pictures.  These are the best times.  The kids are so happy being out there with the chickens.  It makes my heart happy!

Kate walking out to join the kids at the coop- bucket in hand.

This is a part of the morning ritual around here.  Feed and water the chickens and play in the yard a bit.

 

Happy chickens, happy kids

Speaking of happy chickens, here they are!

Our new chicks from the spring have started to lay! The few eggs we have gotten are very small. Here is a picture comparing it to the older hen's egg:

Isn't it adorable!

 
The kids caught a mouse the other day! Well, the neighbors' cat actually caught it and the kids noticed him doing something in the lawn and went to investigate and were able to use a leaf to get it into a bucket. They loved the little thing and had fun with it for a couple of days, but it didn't survive the injury the cat had given it. Sad. It actually was eating and drinking so I thought is might survive, but alas.

It was a cute little guy.

See?

These three even brought the little mouse with us to a party with some friends at a park to let everyone see him.  Their friends loved him!

Well, I think that's all for now. Here are a few extra pictures I'll throw in for fun: 

Emma had fun dressing Kate up in her sweatshirt and some glasses.  They call her a rock star When she looks like this!

Kate loves this book for some reason.  She's done this a couple of times.  She'll pull this particular book from the Work and the Glory off the shelf, set it down and look through it.

She'll climb on anything, I tell you!

It has wheels?  Unstable?  Who cares?!

As long as it gets me where I want to go!

These kids love games!  Daddy taught them chess, checkers and backgammon this summer.

Grant and Mom  (Tractor, too?) playing Othello. 

Races, Rodeo and Ag Fest

With Summer in full swing, there have been all kinds of activities going on around here.  It's been fun!  Each summer, Kenneth's work hosts a day at the movies.  We go out to the movies one time a year- on that day!  Last year we saw Turbo, which was so much fun for us and the kids.  This year the movie we chose was: Planes: Fire and Rescue.  Hearing the title, I wasn't so sure I'd be into it, but when we watched the preview before we went I was excited.  I thought Grant would really like it and that it would also be enjoyable for the rest of us.  It was great!  They have the showings on Saturday morning.  Kate did amazingly well.  She fell asleep during the last 5 minutes (isn't that always the way?!?), but before that stayed really well on my lap.  I never even had to get up with her.
That same evening, Kenneth's work also got all the employees in to see car racing right here locally (about 20 minutes away).  I really wasn't interested in going, so it was a Father-Son outing.  Grant loved it!  It was a late night for him and we paid for it for the next couple of days (really bad behavior from lack of sleep), but I think they will have good memories of it. 

Happy little guy at the races!

He got to sit in the race car!

He liked seeing the cars up close

He's growing up to fast!

The next weekend, Kenneth took the three oldest kids to the Rodeo.  Kenneth also took them last year and they were very excited to go again.  Emma loved to watch the barrel races with the horses.  She says she wants to do that someday!  Grant's favorite was the bull riding.  Arianna's favorite was the bucking broncos.  They had a blast!  (And I got to go to bed early with only Kate here.  I got a really nice night's sleep!)  No pictures to share, but they had a blast!

The next day we all went to the Ag Fest at a local park.  There were lots of fun things to see and do.  It was a fun morning! 

Tractor pull for kids.  As you move forward, the weight shifts and it gets harder to go.  It was cute to see the little ones do it.  We just watched.

Here are some tractors that AGCO makes (Kenneth's company)

Beautifully restored Oliver tractor

Kate always wants her turn on the tractors, too!

Look at that handsome guy!

Turtle races.  That was cute to see!

In addition, they had a wheat grinding demonstration (not really novel for my children who see it regularly), some miniature horses the kids could pet, a cow milking demonstration (again, not that novel for my children since they see it up close and personal each time we visit Grandma and Grandpa on the farm), a soil truck- so you could see all the things that go on under the soil, and a money grab- like they did at the 4th of July celebration.  The kids got a couple of dollars and loved it!

 

Peaches!

Before we moved to Kansas, I had visions of this being a wonderful place to get all kinds of great, local, fresh produce.  Well, if you're talking about wheat and corn, yes, this is a great place for it, but for a large variety of fresh produce, this is NOT the place to be.  I went to the farmers market one time and was so depressed about what I found (or shall I say did NOT find) that I haven't been back.  We have had a garden both summers we've been here now, so we do get some produce from there, but I really miss the incredible farmers market in California.  At least our local grocery store is pretty nice and there is a great store down in Wichita (half an hour away) at which we like to get produce.   We are all out of home canned peaches, so I really wanted to find a good resource to get a bunch to can.  I wasn't sure I'd find much locally, but I did find a peach farm not too far from us.  They ended up being too expensive to want to buy enough to can, but it was a nice family outing and the few peaches we did get were delicious (and not treated with pesticides!).  I froze a few to enjoy later.  It was great!  Here we are at the peach orchard:

They had an old tractor the kids could sit on.

Picking some peaches (and eating them too!) Don't worry, it was allowed.  The owner was right there with us and offered them to the kids.

Delicious!

The kids loved the play area.  You can see the orchard there in the background.

Grant was in heaven when he saw this massive sandbox complete with construction vehicles galore!

The girls trying out this merry-go-round

Kate loved it!  I was so nervous she would fall off and crack her head open on the cement!  She's so little!

Cool airplane teeter-totter.

Oh- I did find another place that orders bunk peaches from out-of-state.  I should be getting those in soon.  It will be nice to have that supply built up again.