Will I ever catch up??

I cannot figure out why I always feel like I am running behind. I swear I do not just sit around and eat my bon-bons all day (well, at least not most days). Most days I work pretty hard. Even with that though, I just have so much still to do.

The garden is kicking my hiney. I am still trying to pull weeds from when the garden was first planted like a month ago. I am finally almost done, but I am out there almost every day. Now, I like my garden and I enjoy being out there for the most part. I just can't work out there for longer than 30 to 45 minutes though because of the kids. In spite of my lack of care in some areas, the garden looks good. Things are growing beautifully for the most part. Some of my lettuce/spinach looks ratty. And since it is my first year growing it, I have no clue why. I have been keeping up with the weeds on everything but the melons/squash. We got our first cucumbers a couple days ago and we have lots of tiny green tomatoes on the vine. I will snap a picture as soon as I get the weeding finished.

The girls are getting new beds. They are still sleeping in their toddler beds, but the time has come to put them in real beds. I have a twin over full bunk bed set sitting in my garage ready to be assembled. I also ordered them a new dresser and we are tweaking our dresser situation upstairs a bit. You really have to maximize space with 6 (well really only 5 right now, but Asher's clothes are all upstairs) kids in 3 rooms. That isn't terrible I know, but it is tricky. The girls are excited and so am I. Their room will look very fresh and put together when we are done (I think).

I am putting together another baking/cooking day. I am aiming for Friday as the "big" day. I need to get my kitchen/freezers organized and I want to be more prepared when it comes to meals. I still hope to do a bulk baking day with a couple other gals, that sounds fun to me. But I just feel like my life is so wishy-washy sometimes. Like even though I plan to cook/bake this Friday, I would not be surprised if that gets bumped or moved. It is hard to essentially take a whole day off from everything else. I am really trying thought to get in a better routine of making things from scratch and eating more "real" foods.

My sister and I picked raspberries last week (in the smoldering heat), so I got some of those put in the freezer. We have also had a good deal of wild raspberries along our fence rows. This is good, but dangerous because there's also lots of poison ivy. I did get enough though (after thoroughly washing them) to make a cobbler and to eat off of. Our friend and neighbor down the street has an excess of red raspberries every year and she offered to let me pick her extras. Yeah! I am going to do that today. Oh, and our apple tree (tart, early apples) is actually bearing usable, not too buggy fruit this year. I put up 8 quarts of applesauce yesterday.

Well, my next post will have pics of my niece's dedication and my nephew's baptism. We went to church I grew up in last Sunday and to see those milestones. It was a good thing!

Julie

Good to be home.......

We've been home for almost a week and I am still feeling it is just good to be here. I love my home and maybe that is silly to say, but it is true. Ryan and I have always thought we would build a new house at some point. Now we aren't so sure. The more time and effort we put into this old house, the more endearing it becomes to us. Don't get me wrong, there are some things about this house that daily irritate me, but the great things about it are really starting to outweigh those frustrating aspects.

I have so many projects that have piled up over the last few weeks. Slowly but surely they are getting done. I made a "master list" of to do's and put it on the fridge. Only one or two are done, but there are some big things on there, so it will take time. Our barn is burning as we speak (#4 on list). We are hoping it is completely gone by the end of the week. The guy tearing it down for us dug a very large pit to bury it in. That is where the fire is at. Ryan and I were out there last night and we very quickly became frightened that one of the kids would fall in. It is very deep with very hot/smoldering rubble. Pretty much the kids will not be outside until it is gone, but even that is hard because one kid in particular doesn't always listen. If a child fell in, they would surely die. I will be happy when this part of the barn removal is done.

Our chicks are coming this week. We have 50 meat birds being shipped tomorrow. We will probably get them Thursday. 6 of these birds will be our 4H fair birds for Leah and Logan. It should be interesting. It will be nice though because it is warm enough (and then some) for the babies to be out in the coop from day one. Yeah! No messy garage for us (at least no more messy than usual).

The rest of the summer should be relatively low key for us. Leah and Logan both have camp next month, plus some of their 4H stuff will be due for judging toward the end of the month. Our local fair is the 7-14 of August and since that is when the chickens will show we will be there most every day. We also have a weekend trip planned for weekend of the 14th. It is our annual family reunion in West Virginia. That will be it for summer though, no where near as crazy as the last few weeks. We have a camping trip planned this fall and Ryan and I would like to take off with the kids at some point for a long weekend. Soccer starts in August though and we can't really miss a game once they start, so that will limit things. Our 3 little ones are old enough to play and I think I am going to try my hand at coaching their team. Yes, I know very little about soccer, but hey, they are just 4 yr olds, right? I have to know more than they do......

Here are a couple recent pics. Asher is just all over the place any more. He got this little ride on toy for his birthday and he was pushing it all over the kitchen like this. I am not sure how he was moving so fast pushing from the side like that.

Look at these yummy berries. These were all picked on Sunday by Anna, Madeline and I. Not a bad haul for just on our property. Plus we have about another pint full that Leah and Logan picked yesterday. We also have lots coming on. I am still planning to pick berries at our local berry place (they have huge, delicious berries) and I will freeze/make jam out of those. Our wild berries though are great for some immediate satisfaction. We pick, we eat! Oh and I had to add the flowers in this pick because they are almost always gracing our counter in the summer. Anna, Gee and Madeline pick them for me all the time. Aren't they beautiful!

Well, before I go, I thought I'd give a friend update.... As of Sunday, their little guy was still hanging on. At that point he had not eaten in over 4 days. I know they know he will not be here much longer. I cannot imagine what they are enduring. Please continue to pray for strength and peace.

Julie

Prayers needed still....

Please just cover my friend and her family in prayer if you can. Their sweet little man is starting to go downhill. I didn't get to post this before but I was able to visit him and the new mama last Thursday before we left. He is just so beautiful and precious. The thought of him being gone just breaks my heart. It just seems so wrong. I know that God is in this though and I am covering them in prayer as much as I can. Even though you probably do not even know them, they can use all the prayers they can get.

Thank you so much.

Julie

Tons of pictures and critters (yuck!)

We got home last night about 9:00ish. It was a great trip. I really love Gatlinburg. It has increasingly become one of my favorite spots. I love how local it is, I love the beauty of the area, I love the shops, everything. It is like you get the best of all worlds. I have never really pictured myself being the type of person that would want to visit a place over and over again. I mean there are so many places in this world to visit. Sometimes though places get in your heart. I think Gatlinburg is becoming that for me. Florida is one of those places also I guess.

Here are some recent pics.......

Leah came home to her room looking like this:

And this........

I think Leah and Aunt Chrissy have a little thing going. Something about $2.00...... I think this will be going on for a while.

While in Gatlinburg we took the kids to this go cart/ride place. They had lots of kiddie rides. Everyone had fun. The little kids really wanted to ride this train, but I think after about 2 loops they were less than impressed.

Daddy and Maddie swimming in one of the beautiful river mountains.

Asher was fussy/tired at the amusement park, but he managed to crack his gorgeous grin a couple times.

Logan and Ethan at the river.

Gee can be so cheesy sometimes. I love this silly smile though!

You can't tell real well in the picture, but check our Leah's short hair. We cut off a good 5 or 6 inches before we left.

Asher's looking not too impressed here. Again, he was very tired. It seemed that much of our travels were during his nap time.

MaMa and Asher.

Eating breakfast at our very cool vacation home.

Rock jumping.

A hot day + no swimsuits = little girlies in their undies.

Asher can pull himself up on everything these days. This is how I found him after a nap one morning last week. He was quite proud of himself!

Leah has become quite the baker. She is starting to really know her way around the kitchen. I think one of her favorite things to eat though is your basic box of brownies. She fixed a batch last week and before I knew it, this is what the pan looked like. I guess she doesn't care for the edges (my favorite part). Plus, look at that massive piece. I swear that I try and teach them portion control!

So our barn is definitely coming down. Here is a picture from like a week ago. It is even flatter now.

Here's the loft before:

And, the barn:

I am both sad and happy to see it go.

Now to the critters.....

Living in the country you expect certain things. Critters are one of them. Field mice are a common thing around here. We had them bad once at our last house and I was determined that when we moved here I would never let them get out of hand. I have been pretty successful with the use of mouse poison bars. I always keep them out of reach of the kids, usually just down in our basement. A couple weeks ago I noticed what appeared to be mouse droppings in our living room. Very gross. For 4 or 5 days straight I cleaned them up and before we left for Canada I re-poisoned our basement. I came home to more dropping, in the exact same place as before. Unfortunately the droppings weren't green (indicating that they had eaten the green poison) and that baffled me a bit (this poison always seems to work). I decided to put a poison bar out right where the droppings were before we left for Gatlinburg. I check it last night when we got home and was very surprised at what I saw. There were 3 baby bats in our living room. Apparently from the Chimney (which is where the droppings were) One was dead, but two were very much alive. They were almost cute. Ryan threw the alive ones outside. It would be great if they were old enough to survive, although I doubt they will. They eat tons of mosquitos.

So, I went to bed thinking that this critter problem had been taken care of. Well, I woke up to more dropping this morning, in the same place. Now I don't know what to do. Maybe the mama bat? If so, how is she getting into our living room? And bats fly, why would their only be droppings in that one little spot beside that chimney. Ryan said we should start our wood burning up and that should kill anything in there, so we will probably try that soon.

Julie

Friend update...

I wanted to give an update on my good friend that I asked prayer for earlier. She did indeed have her baby last Thursday. A little boy, 7 lbs and 15 oz. The c-section was very hard on mama. The baby was born crying and using his little lungs. He also ate from a bottle shortly after birth. An ultrasound has confirmed what the ultra sound in utero saw. Pretty much a situation that historically has not been compatible with life. The family came home from the hospital on Sunday, providing comfort measures to the baby. Yesterday though, I talked to grandma of the baby and they said at that point the baby seemed to be gaining strength. He went through a spell where I guess his temps were dropping and he seemed pretty weak, but apparently he has bounced back from that point. I saw a glimmer of hope in grandma's eyes yesterday, although I know they are still fully aware of the possibilities. But you know, God performs miracles every day. Really it is miracle that this baby even made it through delivery. Would you please pray that God will continue the miracle in this little guy. My heart aches for them and I deeply want to see this little baby make it through these incredible obstacles. God is the only way that will happen. Thank you so much!

Julie

Updating the blog and bit and our Garden.

So I tweaked my blog a bit. I added some links that I frequent and deleted some links that I barely visit. I also deleted a few blogs that I don't really follow anymore. I have found that this blog has become a good spot for me to "have all my ducks in a row." I usually have internet time in the morning, often times before the kids are up. It is nice to be able to come to my blog and have all my links right there.

I added a few recipe blogs that I really like. As for site links, especially check out values.com and showhope.org. Very cool sites. I get the "quote of the day" from values.com (actually I get it twice for some reason). and they are great and very encouraging. I found showhope.org off of one of my blogs. It is a store that supports orphans. The feature family this week is a blog family I have followed for years. They adopted a little girl from Guatemala the same time we were adopting Anna and Gee. Check it out if you can, there's also another "famous" family in there. Oh and I love the products they sell. Super cute and how can you go wrong when some of the proceeds go to orphans???

Ok, so we barely had our garden planted when we left for Canada and we came back to this:

Oiy. Our plants are doing incredible, not that you can tell due to all the weeds! Aparently we had a very lush week of rain while we were gone. We are slowly making our way through and it should be all weeded before we leave again. I will try and post an after picture.

Can you see the little kids' gardens in the right bottom corner? Gee has green beans, Anna has pumpkins and Madeline has tomatoes. They planted them from seeds and they are growing well, although sporadic.

Ryan picked me up an Arbor from Lowes yesterday. I am so excited about it! We bought grapes like a month or so ago, but had nothing for them to climb. I hope it isn't too late to plant them because we finally have something for them to climb. We played with a bunch of DIY arbor ideas because we aren't typically the "just go buy it" type. Ryan and I enjoy making things. However, we just couldn't find something we loved that didn't take a bunch of time (that we don't have right now). This arbor is quite attractive. I hope to assemble it today.

Julie

Home from vacation.

We got home last night from our annual fishing trip. It was another great trip. The fishing was good, maybe not as great as some past years for us, but still good. I really enjoyed being with my family and having a week with them. Times have changed though. Our cabin is bigger (for all the kiddos), but it is a little further away from the other cabins which made it tougher to spend time together as a family. We made time though and it was just a good trip!

Asher did pretty on the boat. Really, better than I thought he would.

Anna got her hair cut at the Walmart in Canada. You can kind of see it in this picture, even though it is pretty wind tossed. I think I am going to get it trimmed a little shorter though. The stylist layered it and her hair is pretty straight, so you can really see the layers. Anna wanted it cut though. I asked all three of the kids if they wanted their hair cut. Gee and Anna shouted "yes" and Madeline said a firm "no." Anna said she wanted her hair as short as Gee's. Umm...no. We cut a good 2 to 3 inches off though.

So, guess which kid fell in the water...... Yes, Madeline. The water was only 2 or 3 feet deep. We are seriously careful with the kids on the boat and their are major rules that all the kids have to abide by. However, some times things just happen (hence the life vests). The kids were grabbing reeds in the water and all of a sudden I heard a splash. I was only 2 feet away. The weird thing is that the splash I heard was Ryan jumping in after her. He was standing right above the 3 littles fishing. She was only in the water for a second, but she went under and it really stunned her. It scared me to death. I was so proud of my man for his quick thinking. He is such an amazing daddy. Not just because he jumped in after Madeline, but because of his constant adoration for his kids. I really get to see this when we spend a week together like this.

Here's Maddie about 3 minutes post dip....... My poor baby.

Gideon, he is such a funny little guy. He is petrified of spiders, but he kissed every fish we'd let him kiss. Bryce, my nephew and often times our boat buddy, got Gideon started on this. Dude, do you kiss your mama with those lips?

A nice sized small mouth from big daddy!

This picture was just funny to me. I am not typically a squeamish type of gal, but I look like I am in this picture. Ryan pointing cracks me up also. I guess he is giving credit where credit is due. It wasn't a great fish, but I only caught maybe 10 or 15 the whole trip, so you take what you can get.

I always ramble on about how cute the little kids are, but I have some major adorable big kids also!

This is what the little kids looked like pretty much every time we took off. Every boat needs a princess, right?

Going back to the cabin one evening.

Gee and his spidey glasses. He loved them. Sooooo cute!

Anna fell asleep on the way out to fish one day. I think the boat made her sleepy. She almost fell asleep a couple other times. Such an unnatural position (daddy layed her down shortly after this picture).

Leah and a really nice pike.

Logan caught the biggest Walleye on the trip. It was very yummy!!!

It ended up being much hotter than we expected, especially the first few days. It was obviously swimming weather!

Uncle Jason and Daddy made this "boat bed" for Asher. Really, he seemed to like it. Even after he'd wake up, he would just lay in there and play. How sweet is he?

Now that vacation #1 is done, we are getting geared up for vacation #2. We are leaving in 4 or 5 days for a long weekend with Ryan's family in Gatlinburg. We love going to Gatlinburg and we are looking forward to it. It will be a very busy week, but it will all get done. Right?

Julie