Written Update

All is going well here.   We are prepping for winter.  We just bought 200 bales of hay and I’m building a hay feeder so the sheep won’t waste as much hay.  I’ll try to post a picture when I finish it.  We are starting to halter train the friendliest of our ewe lambs, Luna.  If we can halter train a couple of the ewes, then we can take them to the school at some point in time for the kids to show their classes.  We gave up on breeding Rhea for a couple of months.  Borrowing the neighbor’s cow to check behavior for when she is in heat didn’t work and since she isn’t halter trained and we don’t have a headgate yet, it would be difficult to do artificial insemination.  We are planning on waiting a couple months until the timing is better (we wouldn’t want the baby born in the middle of July) and then we will build a headgate and try AI.  I’m glad the other cow is gone.  It was a pain.  Much too aggressive and it ate a lot more as well.  Bad timing since it has only rained 3 days in the past couple months.  The grass hasn’t grown at all which means we are running out of forage.  We’ve had the ram and the cow on the front 5 acres which is basically just weeds.  They aren’t too thrilled about it.  We are going to end up starting them on hay in the next couple of weeks instead of waiting until there is snow on the ground.  We will also combine both sets of animals in the next couple of weeks.  Deimos will be excited to finally have access to his girls.  J  Our little Dexter heifer should be arriving in the middle of November.  And the one ewe that we think is pregnant should be due around Thanksgiving.  Our plan for the chickens is to put the coop inside the barn up against the wall of the lean to.  Then we are going to cut a hole in the wall and install a small doggie door.  That way they can go in the barn to get out of the snow and wind, but they can still free-range outside as much as they want.  It also allows us to put the food outside so we aren’t trying to crawl inside the coop to reach the food and water like winter.  We’ve been using cattle panel as a sort of “creep gate” to keep the sheep from eating the chicken feed this summer.  It works well.  Hopefully we will get everything in that corner of the barn moved out of the way and the coop installed within the next couple of weeks. 

We are still eating tomatoes from the garden which the kids love.  We have also enjoyed our first batch of potatoes and red onions.  Jonathan’s homemade salsa was divine.  Luckily, he put a bunch in the freezer.  We tried homemade spaghetti and pizza sauces this year as well.  The kids love it when we eat stuff from our garden.  We had grapes, but the birds ate them all.  Next year we’ll try putting up netting.  We plowed up a small section and planted some winter wheat.  We don’t think it will work well but we wanted to get started on our learning curve.

The kids are doing great.  We had Pioneer night Monday which they always love.  We haven’t decided on Halloween costumes.  The kids are upset because “Beggar’s Night” in Iowa (the night for Trick-or-Treating) is Sunday night this year.  We’ve already told them sorry, but we don’t think it is an appropriate Sunday activity.  Luckily the Ward is having a Halloween party Saturday so that should appease them. 

Isabelle is doing well in school.  The teacher just sent a thing home this week recommending that she be tested using an 8^th grade test to check her levels.  Obviously she won’t do well since she hasn’t learned the stuff yet, but they said it would let them see what she is ready to learn and not just what she already knows.  She has gotten much better at home as well.  She stills gives attitude and can be defiant, but she is maturing enough to know that it is bad and sometimes she can stop herself.  Someone in our ward has pigeons and doves.  Jonathan went to his house to do a service thing and took Isabelle with him.  She fell in love with the birds and wants some of her own.  The owner has generously offered her any that she wants (he has lots in all different varieties).  We discussed it with Isabelle and decided she can have a couple , but she has to take care of them completely on her own.  She also has to pay for their feed herself.  She has agreed to our conditions and has already started doing extra chores to earn money for the food (she gets paid $2/hour right now but that will increase as she gets older).  We are going to his house this Sunday to look at the birds so she can decide what type she wants.  She seems to be the most interested in the ones that do tricks (rollers and tumblers) as opposed to the birds that fly fast or far, the birds that are just pretty, or the birds that are worth a lot because they are more rare ($150 each).

Miriam is cute as always.  Her greatest wish is to have a cell phone “so I can text people whenever I want.  I just really, really want one Mom.  I love them so much.”  Obviously, that isn’t happening any time soon.  But what she doesn’t know is that Jonathan got a hold of an older cell phone that works but has no plan to give her on her birthday so she can at least pretend to  text people.  She is finally starting to make some strides in gymnastics.  She has also said she realizes she gets distracted too easily in class and that it isn’t a good thing so she wants to do better at that.

 

David is in a stage right now where he repeats everything everybody says.  It gets pretty annoying.  He also says “why” in response to everything.  Jonathan and I decided we needed him (and all of the kids) to realize just how much they say it.  So now if they say just the word “why” then they have to touch their head and count to 3.  If they ask using a full sentence (showing that they are asking sincerely and not just automatically) then they don’t have to touch their head.  We also made a rule that they have to touch a doorknob every time they say “it’s not fair.”  They touch doorknobs fairly often as well.  But they are learning and the incidences are going down without any actual punishments which I’m happy about.  They usually just look chagrined and laugh at themselves.  David is surprisingly good at gymnastics.  While he can’t do much, he is anal enough that he does things “exactly.”  Like on the bar he can only swing his legs, but he keeps them straight and tight and points his toes. 

Emily is great about letting me sleep in each morning.  Jonathan puts a video on as he walks out the door and she watches it for awhile and then she plays by herself until Zac and I wake up.  She is really into puzzles all of a sudden.  She can do David’s 84-piece puzzle by herself and she is learning Miriam’s 100-piece puzzle.  She still needs some help with it.  She and Miriam are also best buds right now which is good since they are sharing a room.  Unfortunately, neither one is neat so their room is constantly trashed.

Zachary is crawling now.  His favorite places to play (to my chagrin)  are the bathrooms and Eli’s food and water.  Obviously we are working with the kids on remembering to close doors.  He is also a pig like all of our children.  I’m already starting to supplement him with formula once in a while because he is draining me too much, despite being on 3 full solid meals a day.  He is probably my biggest child of them all.  He is 7 ½ months and wears 12 and 18 month clothes.  He is perfectly proportioned and normal, he just grows fast.  I’m predicting he will be our tallest child as an adult and I predict Miriam will be our shortest.  He loves sounds and music.  He is very active and independent.  The first week after he learned to crawl I set him down in Sunday School and he was off like a shot and halfway across the large room before he ever looked back.  Luckily, Eli is very tolerant of getting his hair and ear pulled.  Eli is also good at cleaning up spilled cheerios and baby food.  J  Zachary’s first tooth came in this past week and a second one is trying to come in.  This is making him crankier than usual and he isn’t sleeping well either.  Which means I’m not sleeping well.  Arg.

Jonathan is going on his annual walkabout this weekend.  He’s excited.  I’m resigned.  The kids and I will have some fun after chore time though.  This summer I started a system where each day we have family chore time (each kid has 5 minutes per year they are old; less on school days) followed by family fun time (an hour of us all playing together) .  It gives them an incentive to get their chores done, it forces me to step away from the computer or whatever I’m working on and spend quality time with the kids, and it helps all of us bond.  I’ve noticed that the kids play together better since we started doing it and they argue less (except Emily who still gets a kick out of pushing David’s buttons).

As for me... I'm fine.  My broken toe is finally healed (mostly).  I love that Jonathan is more available now that his Seminar is done.  I love that he gets the kids off to school in the morning so I don't have to get up at 6am.  I'm busy with my callings (YW 1st Couns. and Self-Reliance Specialist).  I love peaceful nap times now that the older kids are in school.  I'm still addicted to the computer (currently researching BDay and Xmas gifts, sheep supplies, random odds and ends, and starting my year-end medical and financial analysis).  I'm enjoying working on the farm.  And of course I still have my pile of books that I'm working my way through.  :)