Mooovin' on

At 10:11am on 10-11-12, I texted Greg:
"Calf in the pasture. Dale and I both a little teary. SO proud of that boy."

At 10:12 Greg texted back:
"Me too. Tell him I said so."

Thus ends (for now) a just-over 5-month journey into miniature ranching.  

Gramps was in charge of purchasing all supplies (for which we will reimburse) and originally setting up the fence/pen.  He was also the calf-raising officianado.  Greg was chief pooper-scooper, Dale was head feeder, Alan helped with feedings when he could, and Mimi documented the whole thing through photography.  Yours truly made sure those daily feedings happened, and put up with calf formula and feeding paraphernalia on my kitchen counters for weeks on end.


Everyone over the age of 30 was more than ready to see the calf back in the pasture where he belongs, and where he will remain until he's sent to market next fall, especially with a new baby coming all... you know... any day now.  It was definitely time, and today was the day!

The weak and pitiful creature came into town at the end of April sitting in the floorboard of Gramps' truck.

April 27, 2012

 He wasn't going out the same way.

Tug and pull, and pull and tug, and the critter was finally on the trailer.  An uneventful ride back to the country and....

...he was quite happy with the abundant supply of grass, the wide-open space, and a whole passel of new friends!  

As we drove away, leaving him in his new home, Dale and I both got a laugh seeing him romp and play with his own kind and size.  I turned to Dale to tell him how proud I was of the job he's done, and the hint of tears in his eyes brought big quick tears to my own.

For months now we've gone through several sackfuls of milk replacer, quite a few of starter and calf feed, uncounted scoopfuls of poop buried.

Over 250 bottle feeds, rain or shine, and guess who gave over 90% of those?

It's how he has started and ended almost every day since May.  Not to mention making sure the calf had fresh water at all times, including those 100 degree days throughout August and September.

It's the hardest he has consistently worked on anything, ever.  He took on the responsibility whole-heartedly, and did his job without complaint.  For weeks on end.  And yes, his Daddy and I are very much proud of him for it!

Although I'm sure he'll be glad to be free from the responsibility, I'm just as sure, for a little while, at least, he's going to miss that cow in his backyard.  

And it looks like he won't be the only one....

Unexpected gifts

Is it to the point yet that if I don't post you wonder if it's baby time?

Not this time, anyway.  I got to the end of yesterday exhausted from a monster backache - not labor related, obviously.  I couldn't muster up the brain power or the will power to post.

Thankfully, though, I had a great night's sleep!  Go figure.  I'm not going to question it.  I just enjoyed waking up so rested!

And then we had no internet all day long.  Nada!  The repair man came at 3:00 (after I had spent over 30 minutes on the phone with the company at 1:00) and got us going again.  

You know what I discovered?  I didn't miss that much in those 8 hours.  It took me just a few minutes to catch up on email, twitter, and all the other rounds I like to make.  

Take home lesson?  Leave the computer shut and check it all less during the day.  It will be there when I get there.

My backache is still around somewhat (is that really any surprise?). I did what I could to hold it at bay all day, but it has still crept up on me here and there.  Nothing like yesterday evening though.

It's funny how the timing of things works out.  My dear husband came in from church tonight, helped herd all the kiddos to bed, and prepared to get started on a stack of supper dishes.

But first he disappeared out to his car and reappeared with a bright red and pink gift bag covered in hearts.  

Very Valentine-y, yes?  He reminded me of our Valentine gift-giving gone awry some months ago (it's a weird story, because we tend to be weird people).

So I got a Valentine's day gift on October 10th. 

But wrapping aside, take a listen at what this 8 1/2 months + pregnant woman opened up tonight:
- A fancy bag of dark chocolates (just as my stash has run out, too!)
- Soothing bath beads
- Calming herbal tea

I've already partaken of the chocolates - yum.
I'm sipping my tea as I type, and I guess you know what's next.

February 2012 seems foggy in my mind.  I can't even remember how Valentine's ended up playing out for us now.  I'm sure it was fine at the time.  But I do know I am humbled and blessed by the sweet gifts I was presented with tonight. 

Around the House Monday

In my fridge - 
All the fixings for a yummy homemade pizza!  Italian sausage, mozarella, mushrooms, bell peppers.... can't wait!

In the school room - 
We are having a light week this week, since we have a lot of errand-running to do, and I have a fairly lengthy to-do list these days.  For the first time so far, we are extending our country study into an extra week.  We are studying Italy and we just didn't cover enough last week to suit us! Those pizza fixin's aren't the only thing hanging around from last week.  ;)  Anyway, I cut out Dale's grammar and handwriting for this week, and we are keeping up with most everything else.

On the menu - 
Other than that pizza, I have no idea (yet).  That's something I'll be doing tomorrow: menu and grocery list!  I'm thinking I ought to choose some stuff I can double easily and put in the freezer to pull out in a few weeks when we are in newborn survival days.  Hmm.... any suggestions?

In the baby's room - 
Oh my!  We are just about ready!  The crib is up, and is only lacking sheets.  The cradle and new changing station (same setup we were using for Brooklyn, just moved to a new room) are both all in place and ready to go!  I still need to wash the bouncy seat cover, but that's about it.

On my to-do list - 
 - Pack a hospital bag. Um, yeah. I'm 'only' 38 weeks. 
 - Sew nursing pads. I love the homemade ones I've been using since Dale.  I am planning on making some for a friend at church who is also having a baby, and thought I'd make myself some new ones, too.
 - I'd like to make some activity bags or at least detailed lists of quick stuff to pull out for the boys to do in post-partum days when they need some structured time.  Easy craft projects and science experiments are what I have in mind and saved on the computer.
 - But first... tomorrow is a trip back to the 'city' for Alan's labs and preregistering at the hospital (again... 'only' 38 weeks) and hopefully making it back in time for storytime at the library!

From the camera - 
The big boys living it up on the big bouncy slide at our local fall festival this weekend:

Friday Night Cozy-ness

This is how we've been spending most of our Friday evenings this fall: 

Daddy is away working at football games, so we throw down blankets and pillows and turn on Friday night baseball.

One by one the kiddos fall asleep, usually on the floor, sometimes on the couch, and sometimes they carry themselves off to bed.  Daddy carries any stragglers to their beds after he gets home.

Now that baseball is over I'm not sure how we'll occupy our Friday nights!  Of course, not too many more Fridays and we'll be adding one more kiddo to the mix.  That oughta shake things up a bit. ;)

May be the last to the party, but I finally did it

For a while it was a toss up what would come first: facebook or pinterest.  Or neither.

I held out in the 'neither' camp for a long, long, time.  I fight hard enough as it is not too waste time on the computer.  I sure didn't need something else to draw me in!

Then my mom and sister both got on pinterest, and in their kindness to me, and support of all things homeschooling and child-rearing, started a folder for me in their pinterest accounts.  

Things they thought I would be interested in.  

And they were right.  It was stuff I was interested in.

A lot of stuff.  That board has gathered over 400 pins over the last few months.

I finally decided to get my own account just so I could organize all those great ideas!

I received some good advice from a blog friend to set a timer so as not to get lost!  I may have to do just that.  

But if I don't, I can blame my mom and sister, right? ;)

So far all my pinning is homeschool related.  We'll see how long that lasts.
One of the most recent helpful things they found for me was a post on teaching your child to hold his pencil correctly.  It helped Alan tremendously!

One of the next ones I'd like to tackle is this post on 15 activities to keep your 1 year old busy.  I could use some of that. :)

I am thrilled with having a way to organize and quickly view so many homeschool ideas - and I'll add other categories, I'm sure - but for now I haven't left my first browsing-for-fun love, foodgawker.  Nothing makes my heart go pitter-patter like pages and pages of yummy food to make.  Except maybe fun things to make and do with my kiddos..... ; )

What about you?  Where do you waste time browse?  Are you on pinterest?  What do you like to pin?

Country Studies - Norway, Sweden, Finland

This was a light week in our country studies.

Partially because there is not nearly as much easily accessible information about these countries as about some of the others we have studied.  Partially because it was a week full of other 'extras' for us.

We read in our geography reference books a little about each country: it's location, language spoken, type of government, etc.

Our biggest focus was on authors and stories from Norway, Sweden, and Finland.  We also covered one artist.

Written by Beverly Lewis, this is a Christmas story about a Swedish girl learning the blessing of giving.

Biography of Astrid Lindgren, the Swedish author of the Pippi Longstocking series.
Dale has already read several Pippi books, so we didn't add any of those on this week, but he did read one from another series of hers, the Emil series.



Traditional Swedish story, told/translated by Astrid Lindgren.

We read two more tomten books.  These were by Viktor Rydberg.  I think he was Swedish.  Maybe Finnish?

Dale is still working on this one, about a shipwrecked seaman in Norway who meets Leif Erickson and joins him on a journey.

We studied artist Carl Larsson with these two books of paintings:

We ended the week with a meal of Swedish meatballs, using a recipe from:

Gotta love using the American Girl series with my houseful of boys. :)

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Around the House... Tuesday?

Why not?  It's a one-person meme on my own blog.  Who says it has to be Mondays only?

In the fridge - Groceries!  It is Tuesday, our grocery day, you know. ;)  Orange juice, canteloupe, grapes, and all the stuff for a week's worth of yummy meals.  And leftover pound-cake bread pudding with lemon sauce from Sunday. Mmmm..

On my nightstand -

 - My almost 10 year old copy of "What to Expect".  Yeah, I've about got it memorized, but it's something easy for my eyeballs to look at before I go to sleep.

 - 4 New Reads from library day today.  Next week I'll link up the ones I actually read. :)  Didn't get anything for myself last week and missed having something going!

In the schoolroom - Sit-down academics didn't start until almost 2pm today!  And we still managed to get (most) everything in by 4pm.  I love homeschooling. :)  Yesterday I listed out some of the disadvantages of public school for Dale and Alan: no snacks whenever they want, not seeing each other or Tyler or Brooklyn all day, not being able to talk for long stretches of time, short lunches and limited outside playtime, etc.  Was this a biased presentation?  Absolutely.  Was everything I presented truth?  Absolutely.  Was I happy when they looked at me wide-eyed and said they didn't think they'd like public school very much?  What do you think? ;)

On the menu - Our country of the week is Italy, and we are eating Italian every night (and several lunches!) this week.  We started tonight with Pasta and Bean Soup. It was muy delicioso!  Or something like that.

In the baby's room - Sorted through boxes of baby clothes this evening and have a laundry basket full of 0-3 month things ready to go in the washer in the morning!  Yay!

I thought I was calm, cool, and collected for B's birthday party.
Until I tried to light the 'candle' in her cupcake!