Friday, April 24, 2020

I can’t really remember anything from last Saturday...pretty much all the days are Saturdays around here! 
Sunday was fun, it was virtual school spirit week and Tuesday was semi formal day. Well... of course we weren’t going to dress up for that-but we would for church. So we took school spirit pics in advance! It was super fun, and I learned something: Cannon is 1000 times more cooperative if I let him have the dog in them. Good to know, for this in didn’t matter but I should be smart about this in the future!  I can crop the dog out for a smile!!












It was a beautiful day and we got out for a walk. 
I also got a new calling Sunday. Young Women. Pretty much the one I always swore I’d say no to. I hated young women’s when I was a youth. But I do think it’s really important-Like the kids last shot before adulthood, so I’m glad the Lord trusts me to serve there-I really think He’s trying to stretch me. Too thin? Maybe.  I’m not really sure who thought this through since Isaac is the head of the young men’s...not real sure how Wednesday nights are going to work but we’ll figure it out. And right now it’s all virtual anyway. 

Oh and Sunday I got a Text from my friend that said “drive safe”
Uh? Wait what? 
I know he wants to go...we did get one paper submitted. Wahoo! One more and this whole Coronavirus thing calm down a little and I want to go too! We’ll see. 
I think what really happened was he just checked with the husband about mowing if we go and stay a while. Anyway. It was funny. I just told her I’m always the last to know...anything! 

Here’s our pajama day pics...





Then just normal. Us. Having fun. 


Colts poor teacher broke her leg. Dang! 

And Wednesday I went downstairs to get butter from the freezer and found this...

When he put the trim up (oct/nov ish) one of the finish nails hit the copper hot water pipe. It finally wore a hole in it.  So we had a project on our hands. He’s got helpers though! 







I swear, it’s always something around here! 

And this picture...is that cute little Amish boy playing “crack the egg” with my kids. I am SO EXCITED his dad is going to do our roof, that’s why he was here. But we’re FINALLY doing the roof!!! I’m excited AND RELIEVED. No more Isaac tar patch jobs up there. Yay!!! I’ve wanted a new (metal) roof since we bought this place. It’s gonna happen. 

And Today’s tiger pride pics. Try and get a good smile out of Tanner...



It’s impossible but they sure are cute and I love’m!!
I dunno what else-but I’m done for tonight. 

Friday, April 17, 2020

Easter and such

The only 2 pics I had on my phone from Easter Sunday are the ones Ray sent me. The weather in the morning was nice so we headed out on a walk and stopped s d visited with the Jaggers. They’re awesome we have great neighbors!! We talked family history just a bit too-it was fun. 



In an effort to keep the Sabbath day holy our Easter bunny comes on Saturday...oh man! These little stinkers where up from 1-5AM. I'm not really sure when Cannon slept at all! (I do love that he get so excited about things though.) He participated in the world wide fast with us on Friday though-and a 24 hour fast for an 8 year old is a big deal, so we taught him the finer tricks of fasting like-just have a nap. Well, he this time he took us up on it. So he'd napped for 2+ hours on Friday. When he FINALLY went to sleep. Actually they wanted to all sleep out in the living room, I said "fine" (MISTAKE) Anyway he was so amped up and not tire at all so I don't know when he fell asleep but we laid in on the other boys bedroom and read for a while. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up to move to my own bed he was asleep with the other boys in the living room. Well-I kept telling them the bunny might be in quarantine-but he came! He brought the big boys helicopters and Sethy a little tractor set. No eggs this year but lots of bubble gum and a few kit kats.

The helicopters can "dog fight" so Colt and Cann set up there fight then they give Tan the "Commander job" and he sits on the couch and barks out orders "Right-Left-Foward, now back" its quite hilarious! And that darn Easter bunny thought Ann and Elsie were going to be here too so he even left mom and dad a helicopter! 5 of those dang things! We haven't had an all out dog fight yet. I really haven't even every tried to fly one. In fact mom and dad's are just like spares for the boys because of course they break-cheap-or need to charge or whatever. I do hope Ann and Elsie get them eventually. But whatever.
Bro Speaks needed a little dirt since we still have Grampa's tractor we could help him out. It was fun to get out of the house and visit with Connie for a minute too.

The farmhouse blog is lacking so here it stays. And this right here is the single best thing we've done with that tractor. I love that Isaac is looking at his phone in this pic too. Classic.  But one of the times I nagged Isaac about fixing the porch he told me "its built on an angle like that on purpose so it can drain"
Ummm kinda like the liquid nail made it so he couldn't take the baseboard off until one day when he wanted to take a piece off and took him about 2 seconds to pull it off...yeah it was a load of  _______ you know what. But whatever I was so happy to have it lifted up.

The question is whether it was a 3 week fix...or a 3 year fix (we've already passed the 3 hour and 3 days) I asked him-and mentioned all 4 possibilities- when we did it but he didn't answer. I think he's looking up pillars at Menards on his phone...its gotta be that) but we just ended up shoving some old 4x4's under that old rotted pillar. Whatever, its not sagging as bad, I have to celebrate small successes around here. Our friends that moved to Texas just bought a fixer upper, when she was telling me about it she said "Nothing like the farmhouse..." I literally just busted up laughing as I watched the video chat. Yeah. We're in a league of our own.  Look back up at that picture with a the tractor--that's our closet door on the front porch. I hauled it up out of the basement. We didn't paint it anymore, although it could use it, but he hung it tonight. It might be the right door, it might not be, it kind of fits, but we've lived here almost 2 years and I have a closet door! I'm kind of excited. You can't see that behind the bucket of the tractor that the siding is still unfinished. The last time he worked on that was my birthday. Maybe I already wrote about this but here I go again. He wanted to put in a turn around spot while we've got my dad's tractor "So someone could actually use our front door." I was was like what?WHY? No way! The sidings not done, we don't even have front steps--they're cider blocks-and they porch is a disaster.
Well I lost that one-he started making the turn around anyway...its partially done...shocker. I feel like little rants like this are why I made the farmhouse blog. Whoops. This one made it on here. Oh well. I did start out with how happy I was we'd raised the porch-and I am. Maybe I'll cross my fingers on the steps and siding.
He did finish the side of the house project this week, it looks a lot better and he threw down some grass seed.

Monday I just snapped a few pics of one of brawls...they always start out all in good fun...they NEVER end all in good fun.


And this little Seth-a-roo...I think he's pretty alright! Even if he is my little arm monkey. He's been reminding me the most of Cannon lately-I don't know, maybe its just that he stand by the bathroom door and cries the whole time if I try to jump in the shower. There's other things too, how he east so much of that nasty baby oatmeal, I'm happy about it its good for him, but I don't remember Colt and Tan eating it as much. He's fun.
Part of the "turn around" project involves moving the front hill...but we like having a hill so he moved some of it. Maybe all of it eventually, we'll see.



Of course the boys built a fort! It has a seat for each of'm behind the wall-even Seth.
Then yesterday we woke up to snow! (So much for my garden. Darn. Oh well, I'd jump the gun on that again to have the boys outside and helping and thinking we were being productive.) But we figured it was the last snow so we skipped "school" and played hard.
Snow angels, snowball fights, a snow man (no pic), rode their bikes in it, snow cones...you name it.









It was fun. They finally came in -soaked- Sethy and I had to give up early. Yesterday it was his feet, we took care of that with plastic bag today but then those darn mittens betrayed him. Darn.
Round 2 on snow cones, play dough, having the missionaries over virtually and looking for patterns around the house for Colts art teacher.

Even though they snow melted yesterday afternoon we woke up this morning to more!!! So we opted for a snow fort. It was a fun little "project" I love being out there and playing with them. Sometimes its hard because there is so much that still needs to be done whether its laundry or dishes or Seth was just to cold or tired or whatever but it is time well spent when we all play together!







I kind of made it into the selfie.

Tonight Isaac and I worked on his paper a little bit...and last night too. Ug. I think we'll both be happy when its done.
So its super late. But life is good!



Friday, April 10, 2020

Tanner turned 4!

This kid is ALWAYS climbing up on the table! (Tan was trying to hide his food under his chair. Haha) and Seth can reach the door handle now!!!! Oh no! 



Saturday we enjoyed conference—mostly the boys just like getting “fun bags” 
Bristol came over and I was glad I’d made fun bags for Seth because I just gave his to her. It was pretty cool that she listened to a whole session of conference with us though! 
And Saturday we made Tans cake-he requested chocolate skittles m&ms and bubble gum...I picked the construction theme (cuz it’s what I had) but was a hit! 




Speaking of “what I had” I pulled off his birthday without going to the store. He got a tractor I had bought for Seth and some too big shoes among other things but he’s 4 he didn’t care and he had fun so—win win! Stay tuned for what pull off for Easter 😉
Sunday morning we got up and I swear it was only 8:30 and they’d opened all the presents AND had cake! They couldn’t wait to play with that cake-Tan told me it was more of a playing cake than an eating cake. 



They all had to get their hands on it. 🤣 I love it when they all get excited together. 







It was a fun day and we enjoyed conference and participating the the Hosanna shout. 

We found out school is canceled for the rest of the year-totally saw it coming but still a bummer. I especially love Colts teacher so that’s a bummer...oh well. There are things I love about homeschool but I just thought I’d include this picture so you know how reading with Colt goes... and then Just Cann working to prove we do some school work once in a while 😉


Was I writing on here about Isaac buying topsoil instead of potting soil? (Presumably because it was cheaper.)  Well I had Colt mixing in some dirt but really he just put it on bottom so we have topsoil on bottom and...who knows? They were just going to be out starts anyway—we’ve got stuff in the ground out there too. Who knows?! Time will tell. 

Had a little help on hair cuts 😳 and this was Tanners first time with a big boy hair cut that’s longer on top...we might still buzz it off-he keeps asking me to but only because he wants to watch the tablet. Ha. 


Isaac finished his pipe mess project 



Do you thing the water was supposed to go in the pipe? 
He finished Wed night and Thursday morning our house smelled like poop!!! I was dying cussing every Ison project that ever was!! But he called Bro Speaks and he thought what he had done should have been fine so he just bought caps got the pipes downstairs—as opposed to the rag shoved in there. And it seems to have fixed it. Thank goodness! 
But I can’t cuz every Ison project because I need his help and his project help. We had mice in the van again! 
But he tore into it-watched YouTube and hopefully solved it. He said we will need to get some wire mesh I was like no way we have those baskets we can cut apart and do it NOW!! I find the basket and he says “how much did we pay for this?” Why??????  He says he doesn’t care about $$-not true which why I record evidences such as this here! Anyway I answered “WHO CARES?!?!?! It was 11 years ago (really it was 10) and WE AREN’T USING IT!...cut it up!” So he did. 

Other than that’s its a little bit of work and a whole lot of playing around here! 



Above endless games of hide’n seek—or I spy when they both hide. Below they call “wrecking ball”

Lots of popcorn and building train tracks—


Life is good! 
Oh and today we even did a few Easter eggs 







Sethy found one of the onions I swiped the skins from. Ha! That’s no Apple is it buddy! 🤣