Around Here Week 15: 04/10-16

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

 A glimpse into what it is like to live in our home just this moment. 







same dress! me with my mom in 1984 and Olive with her Abba (my mom) in 2022!





























Intentional Outdoor Hours: 59+ hours (of 1000)
Up 17 hours and surpassed (finally) 50 total hours outside for the year. The 1000 hours outside app notifies you of the milestones through badges and when my 50 hours badge popped up on my phone, I gasped so loud that I startled my dad who was visiting. Haha, oh, don't mind me, just geeking out about outdoors like always. 

Reading Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Celebrating Palm Sunday with my parents and sisters/boys. My parents are headed out on vacation later this week so will be out of town for Easter. It was actually perfect to be able to spend the whole day with them and not feel like we were rushing around trying to hit all our families for the holiday. All eight of us made it to church and the whole way through without anyone having to step out with the babies (Palm Sunday miracle!) Then it was lunch at Abba & Chum's house with yummy food and lots of silliness and playing. We even got another Happy Birthday singing and cake in for Booboo!

Writing love poems in my head about daffodils and daisies. Thank goodness they exist to herald in the hopefulness of spring weather! 

Half happy-half disgusted about the kids' current obsession with the giant mud mini pond in the backyard. The ducks have really dug it out as a little swim area, so the kids have been using spare wood pieces to build bridges over it to pretend there is a monster under the mud. Unfortunately, the ducks have also used it as their personal potty - so it's actually not just mud but also gross duck poop too. So, ew. 

Surprised (like always) at how fast chickies grow. Our little baby chicks are already starting to get their feathers and Red and Olive love secretly opening the door and letting all their wood chips out. 

Happy for Spring/Easter break for the kids from school. As loud and wild as it is to have everyone home all day everyday, it's also wonderful. All six of them under my roof, eating my food, ready for hugs at any moment, and asking me 8 million questions. I know that someday I will only want exactly that, so I'll take it for all it's worth right now. 

Prepping for Easter. We dyed hard boiled eggs, decorated sugar cookies (thank you Miss Janell for the kit!), and made sure that everyone's Easter clothes were picked out and ironed. I didn't buy any new clothes this year - we just went with whatever I could find in everyone's correct-sized bins! (win!!) 

Meeting with a window company in hopes of installing new windows in all of the house. It is something that we really need to get done (so many drafts and broken window cranks!) but holy moley - have you ever priced out windows? I would advise having a stiff drink after the meeting, yikes. We are still in the talking/negotiating/thinking & rethinking phase because we have a lot of other project we also need to afford and prioritize (new carpeting, the back porch, farm needs, etc). Being a grown up can be a bummer.

Welcoming duckies to the farm! Because why not? They are really stinking cute and we can hardly stand it. So that's 6 baby duckies, 3 grown ducks, 12 chickies, 14 chickens, 3 goats, 2 dogs, and 2 guinea pigs at current pet count! 

Enjoying playdates over the holiday break. We visited at our house with the Fiore family! The kids orchestrated an egg hunt, played baseball, and basically ran around like ruffians while Kate and I had a ton of time to chat and it was amazing (thank you for visiting us!) Grey had a birthday sleepover (thank you Dails!), and Gemma had a playday and helped make Easter desserts (thank you Lasures!) 

Trying to convince Grey to buy aaaaaanything else besides an Oculus. He's been saving up his Christmas and Birthday money and finally had 300+ dollars to purchase one and I wanted to make sure that he had all kinds of examples of other things he could buy with that kind of money instead of virtual reality. (#sorrynotsorry I hate it so much. There is so much to see and experience IN THE REAL WORLD WE LIVE IN that I cannot get behind this VR crap.) Even after my 6 page Slides presentation (lol), he still picked to spend the money on the Oculus. It was his money, so I let him do it... but you guys - I feel so defeated. We have a family that prioritizes outdoor time, free and wild play, adults who can mentor and teach our kids to do so many awesome skills and activities (fishing, hunting, building, sports), we have so many siblings to play with, so much space at our own house to use, animals galore....and still, it is so freaking hard to compete with technology and peer pressure. But we must keep trying to fight the good fight, parents. Know I'm beside you trying to maintain a childhood for my kids that is wild, free, and rich in real life experiences and relationships. 

Getting a new car battery for Lucille (our 12 passenger), because it's always something with home and car ownership! 

Participating in Holy Friday mass. Grey had some reading parts and Gemma was acolyte. The mass started at 7:30p so I went with Violet while B stayed home with the other three for bedtime.

Trying to figure out a short-term solution of our ShelterLogic shed that holds our hay. The material ripped from all the severe weather (snow, wind, rain) of the fall/winter and we've lost a bunch of bales from the leaking. (farm fact: hay bales that get moist not only grow mold and can't be fed to animals but are also a huge fire hazard!) To buy a new cover is way out of our price range, so B and the kids went through all the bales and took out the ruined ones to the compost pile and then we hung a big plastic tarp up underneath the frame and another overtop the remaining good hay bales. Daydreaming about someday building a real barn/pole building to keep all our hay and farm equipment in! 

Sporting with two baseball practices for Grey and games began this week. He had two baseball games and so far they are 2-0! We had downright miserable weather on Monday for Grey's game (rainy, chilly) and then beautiful get-ya-in-the-mood-for-baseball-season weather on Wednesday (hooray!!) I printed out my Parent letters for my 6U soccer team and the kids were overjoyed to finally got some soccer practices in this week after all the rain/]mud of last week. Violet and Rusty both had two practices and Gemma had one practice. 

Making bbq chicken sliders, beef stroganoff, frozen pizzas, baked ravioli (the kids love this super easy meal!), and burgers, hot dogs, and mac&cheese. 

Keto check in: in week one I lost 6.8 lbs, and even if it is mostly water weight, I'm counting it, man. We had some yummy meals this week: chicken cordon bleu (with leftover Palm Sunday ham), Big Mac casserole, tuna melt zucchini boats, buffalo cauliflower, orange roughy fish with roasted brussels sprouts, shrimp & broccoli alfredo, and I topped some leftover steak with banana peppers and butter and re-roasted it - it was legit better reheated! 

1 comment:

  1. Those two babies sitting on the counter!!! Too precious! And I'm sorry about the lost hay. We had leaking toilets and Josh was like, "We were literally flushing money!!!" I imagine the lost hay feels the same way!

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