I don't know the last time I felt able to sit and write for any length of time. All the recent blog posts have felt so rushed, but I think that is the best I'm going to be able to do until we get through April, at least. There is so much going on that if I don't at least get up some pictures and a few thoughts, my "virtual scrapbook" will be outdated so fast! I sat down yesterday to start this and didn't get much farther than uploading a few pictures before it was time to braid two heads of hair and scurry off to a fun evening with relatives in Stuarts Draft. I'm now up early to get laundry hung and the girls ready for another soccer morning so we'll see if I can get this "to the press" before I need to get to wake up and breakfast duty! We'll start with a little clip of Alida at her first day of mini-kickers.
Last Saturday was our first "double header" soccer morning. Thankfully the girls' schedule has worked out such that their games/practices are within an hour of each other. Unfortunately, some days they overlap such that I kind of need to be in two places at once, but we managed. The pre-soccer rush at home is normally a bit tedious with waking tired kiddos, getting some food in them for stamina, hair braided so it is out of their faces and then their bag of stuff together and all of us to the car at a time that normally at least Kali is still snoozing. I was so glad last weekend that my nausea had been gone for almost a week and my energy was climbing. I was doing one of the girl's hair and trying to scarf down my eggs and polenta, while also greeting Kathy, one of our weekend visitors, who had just woken. Within 30 seconds waves of nausea like I hadn't experienced before hit me and saliva was pouring into my mouth. Before I knew it I was on my way to our new bathroom and our newly installed toilet and lost my breakfast. I now have my "I've thrown up in pregnancy" badge, and this baby has one of its claims to fame. In retrospect I think my error was that, in my hurry, I had taken my vitamins after just eating an apple. My guess is they were not happy being almost the only things in my stomach. I've not been nauseous since...
We had a lovely weekend with Ethan & Kathy visiting - a mixture of fun visiting and hanging out, making pizza pockets over an outdoor fire and chatting until the stars came out, doing some chicken butchering and Jason benefiting from Ethan's help bringing to life his towel rack design (I won't try to describe it!) and then sending them home with some chicks Jason had hatched. It was fun to have Emily and Jonas join us for a good part of the weekend. As most of those times go, it felt like the hours flew by a little faster than would have been our preference, but it also felt like we packed a lot of fun into a short amount of time. When they pulled out Sunday afternoon, we quickly went back to our lengthy project list. We were, at that time, gearing up for the two busiest weeks of my work year, which we are now down to the busiest week! So deep breathing and lots of planning ahead to make sure we've got our ducks in a row. Due to EMU's graduation being one week from tomorrow, I've got a seven-day work week ahead of me - five in the office, one hosting all of CJP for a graduation party and one for the actual graduation ceremonies. It's a week that provides a certain stream of adrenaline as we race to the finish, but also one in which it feels like about every minute is accounted for. Hosting an event for 100 or so folks has us also hoping to meet certain benchmarks on the bathroom project - like having it functional for folks to use! We have almost met our goal - the sink and toilet are now usable and the shower is grouted. We hope yet for Jason to finish touching up the grout in a few spots, get the shower fixtures installed, the mirror on the medicine cabinet on and the toilet paper tube holder installed. I think we can do it!
And of course there is plenty to do outside. The world is bursting with color and things are growing fast due to all the recent rains and warmer temps. We are enjoying lots of winter cress, stinging nettles, chives and perennial leeks and onions with eggs in the mornings. I'm enjoying alfalfa, nettle, raspberry leaf, mint tea daily and am slowly shifting from dried things to fresh (so the tea becomes an even more brilliantly green tea with passing time!). And, spinach! Oh how we are enjoying spinach - by the gallon bag fulls... Our wintered over spinach is going to town! I picked one of the sets of rows yesterday day in preparation for Jason finishing up thinning and got two stuffed canners full. So we now have 7 nice sized containers in the freezer and I hope to add more to the stash soon. It's such lovely stuff!
In the picture above, hopefully you can note not only the abundance of spinach but the ever increasing visible presence of Spark. My spinach processing yesterday was interrupted by our second midwife visit. But it's not such a huge disruption when she shows up at our front door, and Jason can just come in from the garden and the girls are there in the living room with me to listen to our conversation and take part as they wish (they got to hear the heartbeat for the first time yesterday!). When our midwife left yesterday, Jason noted, "this is much more of a sane way to do healthcare." I'm becoming quite fond of it very quickly! After a good amount of pondering, processing and make lots of phone calls, we selected a home birth midwife for our final baby's birth. All of our children to date have been born in different hospitals (and the births have gone amazingly well and quickly) so it seemed like it was worth pursuing a dream of mine and to allow this fourth and final Myers-Benner to make his/her entrance into the world in the comfort of the home we will have been in for a decade upon his/her arrival!
The littlest has just called "Mommy" followed by "I want you!" So that is my wrap up call on this particular blog post. But one final notable happening of our week. On Wednesday of this week, Kali and Alida were out doing duck water when they came rushing into the house exclaiming, "Mommy come see...there's a peacock in our front yard." I quickly checked to make sure it wasn't somehow still April Fool's day and then went to confirm that yes in fact there was a peacock in our front yard. We called our neighbor who rushed home and confirmed that it was not his peacock and that he had no idea whose it was. There was no getting close to it, so we just enjoyed watching it meander around and visit with the ducks and chickens. At nightfall we saw it high up in a tree. It roosted there for the night and hung around all of the following day. We were kind of interested in the prospect of a peacock adopting us, but it appears that it was just here for a two day visit as it has since moved on. What a pretty bird! Speaking of pretty things, I'll end with a few more pictures of the things that are blooming or greening up around here and then it is on to our day! One of Jason's jobs today will be unexpected task: we are very grateful to finally have caught the groundhog that made its home tunneled under Mom and Dad's 3-season room. However, it was not exactly the right timing for making groundhog sausage...
Here's a smattering of other pictures. Alida is ready for breakfast!
Alida's cherry trees in all their glory!
We are rooting for the peaches!
I love the flowering trees all over the place - this is our earliest flowering peach tree that normally does not survive the late freezes. We'll see...
This is a "just for fun" picture of Alida very busy making "paper trash." This girl LOVES making messes!
Love them! The stinging nettles are abundant and Alida would gladly have "nettle eggs" for breakfast daily. She even tried to help me pick them yesterday but one little sting and she decided she wasn't ready for that job just yet.
We have so many lovely types of daffodils!
The red buds in Nora's garden are ready for consumption - and Kali and Alida are happy to be scarfing handfuls at a time.
Come on peas! We are eager for you...
It's not just plants that are growing - she already wants to know when she can play on a "real" soccer team...
And, finally, here's what we'll be doing over the coming months - filling this thing!! Due to our decision to avoid grocery shopping (that we made in December), I successfully got all our food easily into our one chest freezer. I've been able to defrost both freezers and this one is ready to go. So the first fruits of 2015 are in - chicken sausage and spinach. Eager to see the shelves fill up, as they surely will...
I don't know the last time I felt able to sit and write for any length of time. All the recent blog posts have felt so rushed, but I think that is the best I'm going to be able to do until we get through April, at least. There is so much going on that if I don't at least get up some pictures and a few thoughts, my "virtual scrapbook" will be outdated so fast! I sat down yesterday to start this and didn't get much farther than uploading a few pictures before it was time to braid two heads of hair and scurry off to a fun evening with relatives in Stuarts Draft. I'm now up early to get laundry hung and the girls ready for another soccer morning so we'll see if I can get this "to the press" before I need to get to wake up and breakfast duty! We'll start with a little clip of Alida at her first day of mini-kickers.
Last Saturday was our first "double header" soccer morning. Thankfully the girls' schedule has worked out such that their games/practices are within an hour of each other. Unfortunately, some days they overlap such that I kind of need to be in two places at once, but we managed. The pre-soccer rush at home is normally a bit tedious with waking tired kiddos, getting some food in them for stamina, hair braided so it is out of their faces and then their bag of stuff together and all of us to the car at a time that normally at least Kali is still snoozing. I was so glad last weekend that my nausea had been gone for almost a week and my energy was climbing. I was doing one of the girl's hair and trying to scarf down my eggs and polenta, while also greeting Kathy, one of our weekend visitors, who had just woken. Within 30 seconds waves of nausea like I hadn't experienced before hit me and saliva was pouring into my mouth. Before I knew it I was on my way to our new bathroom and our newly installed toilet and lost my breakfast. I now have my "I've thrown up in pregnancy" badge, and this baby has one of its claims to fame. In retrospect I think my error was that, in my hurry, I had taken my vitamins after just eating an apple. My guess is they were not happy being almost the only things in my stomach. I've not been nauseous since...
We had a lovely weekend with Ethan & Kathy visiting - a mixture of fun visiting and hanging out, making pizza pockets over an outdoor fire and chatting until the stars came out, doing some chicken butchering and Jason benefiting from Ethan's help bringing to life his towel rack design (I won't try to describe it!) and then sending them home with some chicks Jason had hatched. It was fun to have Emily and Jonas join us for a good part of the weekend. As most of those times go, it felt like the hours flew by a little faster than would have been our preference, but it also felt like we packed a lot of fun into a short amount of time. When they pulled out Sunday afternoon, we quickly went back to our lengthy project list. We were, at that time, gearing up for the two busiest weeks of my work year, which we are now down to the busiest week! So deep breathing and lots of planning ahead to make sure we've got our ducks in a row. Due to EMU's graduation being one week from tomorrow, I've got a seven-day work week ahead of me - five in the office, one hosting all of CJP for a graduation party and one for the actual graduation ceremonies. It's a week that provides a certain stream of adrenaline as we race to the finish, but also one in which it feels like about every minute is accounted for. Hosting an event for 100 or so folks has us also hoping to meet certain benchmarks on the bathroom project - like having it functional for folks to use! We have almost met our goal - the sink and toilet are now usable and the shower is grouted. We hope yet for Jason to finish touching up the grout in a few spots, get the shower fixtures installed, the mirror on the medicine cabinet on and the toilet paper tube holder installed. I think we can do it! 
And of course there is plenty to do outside. The world is bursting with color and things are growing fast due to all the recent rains and warmer temps. We are enjoying lots of winter cress, stinging nettles, chives and perennial leeks and onions with eggs in the mornings. I'm enjoying alfalfa, nettle, raspberry leaf, mint tea daily and am slowly shifting from dried things to fresh (so the tea becomes an even more brilliantly green tea with passing time!). And, spinach! Oh how we are enjoying spinach - by the gallon bag fulls... Our wintered over spinach is going to town! I picked one of the sets of rows yesterday day in preparation for Jason finishing up thinning and got two stuffed canners full. So we now have 7 nice sized containers in the freezer and I hope to add more to the stash soon. It's such lovely stuff!
The littlest has just called "Mommy" followed by "I want you!" So that is my wrap up call on this particular blog post. But one final notable happening of our week. On Wednesday of this week, Kali and Alida were out doing duck water when they came rushing into the house exclaiming, "Mommy come see...there's a peacock in our front yard." I quickly checked to make sure it wasn't somehow still April Fool's day and then went to confirm that yes in fact there was a peacock in our front yard. We called our neighbor who rushed home and confirmed that it was not his peacock and that he had no idea whose it was. There was no getting close to it, so we just enjoyed watching it meander around and visit with the ducks and chickens. At nightfall we saw it high up in a tree. It roosted there for the night and hung around all of the following day. We were kind of interested in the prospect of a peacock adopting us, but it appears that it was just here for a two day visit as it has since moved on. What a pretty bird! Speaking of pretty things, I'll end with a few more pictures of the things that are blooming or greening up around here and then it is on to our day! One of Jason's jobs today will be unexpected task: we are very grateful to finally have caught the groundhog that made its home tunneled under Mom and Dad's 3-season room. However, it was not exactly the right timing for making groundhog sausage... 
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