Camp and Crud

 I have been planning on blogging about camp since we rolled back home on Sunday night. JD was leaving the next morning for San Diego, so we needed to turn around some laundry so he could repack. Then Tuesday was our final week at CC, which meant I had planning to do. 

Of course, when the schedule is packed is when some child crisis happens. It didn't really happen on Sunday, it was just discovered on Sunday. To put it bluntly, we are at about the 18 month mark with crisis after crisis due to incredibly poor choices our one teen son chooses to make; then many of the times, the other teen son isn't wise enough to not follow suit. I'm tempted to just tell you the whole story, as it really is quite entertaining if you don't live with the sneaky dishonesty on a daily basis, but I'm hard pressed to find much humor in any of it anymore. Let's just say that the end result is that both boys have a nice hole in their RIGHT ear since they had never heard the connotation about jewelry and gender identity, and unfortunately, their 50% odds didn't fall in their favor.

My conclusion is that I really need a wardrobe of t-shirts to wear that say "Remember, I really am not as stupid as you think I am;" and then when I hear a story that may be as ludicrous as a bug bit me in the front of the ear, and then flew around and bit the back of my ear.....oh, and the same happened to my brother, I can just point to the shirt (and turn red, but not say something along the lines of "that is the stupidest lie I have heard to date - congratulations, you have really outdone yourself"). Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Anyway, we really did have a lovely weekend at camp; even the laundry wasn't too bad.

Moriah came this year. While this is a lovely picture of her and her father -

here's the real reason she came, Chris was invited too. We like Chris and he enjoyed the camping things much more than Moriah. See her being super supportive of his fishing?

We enjoy the lake time.

The kids also enjoyed the games and sports, especially rock climbing.

And we are blessed with a taste of African culture during African drumming and dancing.

 

So, here's where JD is - San Diego with all of our favorite baby boy. The cool thing is Nathan was thrilled to see him since he Face times us regularly since leaving in January. I can't wait to see the little buddy live!

More Walls

 We were supposed to have a church men's event at our house on Saturday, but it was too cold, windy and rainy. Since it didn't really rain, JD took advantage of the day and started retaining wall number two. This one was pretty deep and required a large drainage line to be installed under it.

 The highlight of Saturday for Elijah was the trip in the tractor all the way to the gas station. He came home smiling and drinking a root beer.

Elijah is demonstrating his version of planking on the first built section of the wall.


Today JD and Ben continued the wall into the curve. JD did the math - they lifted 142 blocks just today at 61 pounds each for a grand total of 8,662 pounds of lifting. Better than the gym I'd say. 


Wall one and two define the level to get into the first two garage bays. The next section will be lower for the larger door and a trailer pad next to the garage. The third wall will extend from the front all the way down the side and around the back; yikes.

We have been letting the baby goats out with Leia to socialize. There really isn't much cuter than baby goats running and playing. Fiona is more than happy to assist Leia with goat tending. 

Selah is the number one animal kid at our house; she spends hours with the baby goats and baby chicks each day. Here the little goat is running behind her. 





Spring Break and Beyond

 I planned on doing a spring break review at the end of spring break, but amazingly, that has come and gone. We had a big day at CC today as Tori did her history paper on King Solomon; she dressed up as him and read the paper out loud to the class.

However, working in reverse, I feel like we accomplished a lot over spring break. I swapped out all of the children's spring clothes for the winter ones. It's never a fun job, and I'm really over it on about the 5th child; thankfully, I only do about six of them now. (And we are ignoring that it is freezing out again!)

We had 22 pallets of retaining wall blocks delivered. JD is tackling this part of the building project himself, in spite of not doing the current ones around our house that seem much smaller than what these are going to be. There are three in the front and two long ones that will go from the side all the way around the back. The side of the garage area drops many, many feet down to where the future cow pasture will be.

 Here's the first one completed, other than the mess around it cleaned up.

Today we had two loads of driveway rock dropped  for the part of the driveway that will continue into the garage doors. Oh, how I wish we could pave it all, but it will not be for some time, if ever.

We had baby chicks hatch over spring break; the problem was that it was the worst hatching we have ever had. I think I figured out the problem with the humidity in the incubator, but we ended up with five hatched and four of them dying. So, we went to Tractor Supply and bought our lonely chick a half-a-dozen friends. Since I have polish chickens on order, I only wanted to purchase two, but there is a Virginia law that chick purchases are a minimum of six. I bought two Asian and four pullet mystery breed, since Tractor Supply didn't know what they had after the signs all got pulled down.

Today as soon as we arrived at school, I got a text from JD that Leia had her babies. We came home to find healthy twin boys. I definitely am not keeping any of this year's babies, but we sure will enjoy them while they are here.

Selah is quite the animal lover, but all the kid attention guarantees sweet, tame goats.

Bella

Selah

Julia

 We also had a cow knowledgeable friend over to assure us that Mooster is pregnant. Her delivery could be as soon as two weeks.


Late Easter

I'm disappointed that I didn't take Easter pictures of the kids in their Easter finery, but here we are back at home and in our casual clothes -

Tori

Bella

We hid Easter baskets inside and the eggs outside. I give them a number to find and they quit when they have that many. It keeps the "I'll beat you to the candy" mentality in check a bit.

Elijah

Moriah's boyfriend, Chris, provided some egg hunting counsel.

Selah is always super enthusiastic about the festivities.

Deb stayed home from church sick, but got up for dinner. Thankfully she felt much better the next day when she and Joel needed to leave for Chicago.

Here's an example of when we tell people to look and smile -

Here's an example of when we don't warn people that we are going to take a picture. (If this disappears, you will know Moriah read the blog!)

Next blog post will be retaining walls - what can be more exciting than walls? So, be sure to check back soon!

All in a Day

 JD was on travel all last week, so I had seven little people with me the entire week. By Friday, I knew that I needed to face the reality that I had children that needed clothes and shoes for Easter; so I loaded them all up and headed to three clothing stores. We finished our shopping out with lunch and a "quick" $600 food spree at Costco - all these kids do is eat! I was feeling like I had run a marathon by the time I made it home.

On Saturday, I planned on spending much of the day corn-rowing girls' hair and swapping for spring clothes, but instead I found myself dealing with Rooster poo in the barn loft. The roosters that took up residence in the barn over the winter spent way too much time upstairs and pooped on everything. I also have a barn cat that feels the need to pee on tarps and cardboard that is in the barn. My sister has quite a bit stored up there, so I spent over five hours repacking things and cleaning. Here is a horrible before shot; you will have to believe me that it is clean up there now!

JD went on an urgent hay run - two new round bales for the pasture. Hopefully that will keep us going while the grass grows!

I still debate daily if I can pull off this whole cow thing; she isn't very easy to handle, so I can't picture milking her. Her cow harness just arrived so I'm going to start working on putting that on her tomorrow.

Leia is definitely pregnant, so that will be fun; I think she is due in May.

We also had a delivery of 22 pallets of retaining wall bricks! They are for the steep hill around the side and back of the new garage and apartment.

I don't believe I ever showed our big purchase back in the fall - I remember blogging about the trip to get it, but not the item.

We bought a camper! Gabriel and Alayna are going to move to Florida in the early fall, so we are going to be doing a few beach stays in the camper. The kids are pretty excited. 

Happy Easter - I will catch up with that in the next few days.

Best Garden Start Ever

 So, this is my best garden start ever, because my sister's boyfriend is here for seven weeks after moving back from Asia. The awesome garden link for me between Joel and the garden is that he is a horticulturist and can answer all the questions I have, as well as suggest better ways to do things. I didn't get pictures, but the first gardening task he did was to prune my long neglected fruit trees!

It was beautiful outside today, so Joel helped me plant three of my seven beds with spring crops. We planted kale, spinach, lettuce, broccoli, onions and snap peas. The minute it is over 70, the children have to be in the water to "survive" the heat.

Bella

 About a week ago, we shoveled this years chicken compost into the garden beds and JD tilled it all in. Today we finished weeding the first three beds before we planted. Even Debra participated in that least fun task.

 I don't think Joel had a clue that I took these pictures, so you can see how a dedicated horticulturist focuses on the task at hand!

The girls are actually quite helpful



Elijah just hangs out and talks!

I also have more seeds planted in milk cartons than that are going to fit into the remaining garden beds; so I am turning the middle layer of the back yard into a huge garden area using the Back to Eden idea of gardening. More on that later.