This week...

To Google
Using pig manure as compost
aquaponic pump and timer
baker's rack prices
why is my auto waterer leaking?
cupcake in a jar recipes
hoop house roosts and nesting boxes
how much garlic for a year's supply?

To Do
Chicks outside permanently
Sand front of door and recoat
clean workshop out and put peg board up
call buck breeder back
staple hardware cloth to grow boxes
plumbing tape the duck waterer
hammer the t posts in for the compost pile
order bareroot trees from the nursery
plant garlic
wash the apples and begin dehydrating them
pick up buck
Set Pan and the buck (now named Capt. Hook) in a temporary pen pending the orchard being fenced next week
Buy the bins for the barley fodder system
plant the honeysuckle and Lady's bank roses next to the hoop house

Oh, yah. It's also Halloween.

Good thing we celebrated last week. Pictures will upload when Blogger gets around to it.

 As I wandered around K-Mart looking for the right sized ruby slipper for Scrunch, an employee asked me how my week was going. I had no idea what to say so I said, "Fine, thank you." What was I supposed to say?

"Actually it totally sucked. I took the kids to Costco by myself, which I mean... who doesn't loooove a trip to Costco with the kids? So, while we were there my daughter slipped on the food court bench and caught herself with her face. We spent the afternoon at Urgent Care getting five stitches. By the time we got home her brother had an asthma attack and we were up the next three nights with the croup. My littlest one tripped on the patio and has a black eye. I look and feel like a total winner mom right about now. I was pregnant and now I'm not anymore, but I still feel like total crap. But I'm not homeless, unemployed, and at least I have a working anus. How was your week?"

I have so much more compassion for the random K-Mart stranger. You just have no idea what is really going on in someone's life. Every day I vacillate between counting my blessings and wanting to pull the covers over my head and wait for someone else to take over my life, or at least mop my kitchen. Gosh, why does it have to be so damn hard? (Rhetorical question, by the way.)

"Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle." -John Watson

Keeping Busy

"Oooh, Mom! You look fancy." That's the compliment Porkchop gave me because I had make-up on and was wearing something besides my favorite Walgreens fleece lined leggings and a tunic. This week I'm only getting dressed for good causes. Practice for singing in Sacrament on Sunday, taking Scrunch to class, and picking up Grandma from the airport. Oh, and my haircut. Maybe knitting?? The rest of the week it's painting clothes (of which I have several pairs). My distraction project(s) are to finish the playroom and paint the floors.

Have I mentioned the ugly floors in this place? To be fair they aren't actually that horrible and might be someone else's taste, but they aren't mine...so I need to do something to them. I have this great idea that I'm going to paint them.

John has been wanting to take the kids' hiking with his Grandpa. I am not currently up for either a trip or hiking so I'm packing the kids up and sending them with their Papa to visit his family. I will get a little "stay-cation". I can't sit around and do nothing or I'd risk losing my mind so I figure it will be a good time to paint the floors. How else do you paint kitchen and family room floors with three little kids? Only when they are hiking with their Grandpa two states away. My Grandma is flying in on Friday and will keep me company. I will worry and miss the kids like crazy but I'm excited to see if this works. I hope it works. Oh please, for the love, let it work!

I know you want to see pictures of the house in all its "before" glory so after they leave on Thursday I will clean and take some pictures.

Our old, yellow house.

When I'm an old lady and I look back on the last two months of my life I am going to be so sad that I didn't blog more. Should've kept a journal or something, but I type faster than I write. That's the excuse I give myself anyway. Still, there are memories over the last few weeks that I can't imagine ever fading. Still wish I'd have blogged more.

It would have been so much more entertaining to hear about my hauling the goats in the minivan and our drive-through experience if I'd written about it right away. Or my having to stand on the IKEA patio chairs to pound in the t-posts for their fencing. The day we discovered electric fencing does not contain baby pigs was classic. And hauling 16 foot cattle panels on the roof of the minivan in the dark down a dark, windy, mountain road is an epic family adventure. We drove over two hours to pick up my special breed of baby ducks and we intended on only getting twelve, but somehow came home with sixteen, baby chicks. September was assigned as 'Animals' for Scrunch's science and I think we've met the standard.

The milking of the goats is going well. Moira, my star milker, is still a wench, but we are making peace. Sparkles is a dream goat and more obedient and more reliable than any dog. Thankfully, the kids and John love the goats as much as I do because it will be years before the "free milk" pays back the investment we've made.

The amount of work it takes on a daily basis to keep things running is about what I expected it'd be. I've never been more tired in my life, but it is good. It is going to be a slow, and painful process getting the property into the shape we imagine it to someday be in. In the meantime, we are surrounded by pine trees and live oaks. You can stand on either the front or back porch and not see a single house. It took me a while to get used to how dark it gets up here. It makes me laugh that a car driving by such an infrequent event that it is met with all three kids running to the porch to wave.

We have moved a lot since being married- twelve times. And I'd moved quite a bit before that. But for the first time in my life I am living somewhere that I never see myself moving from, and not just because this move went a little less than smoothly. The Master bedroom is on the main floor and I've joked to John more than a few times that I'm going to die in this house.

I can't explain what a blessing this old, yellow house has been to me. It is not without some flaws and majorly ugly floors. It was not even my first pick when we walked through it the first time eleven weeks ago. I had watched it since it had gone on the market several months before. At that time it was out of our price range, but I was drawn to it because it reminded me of our Clearfield house with its dormer windows. It is quirky and showed weird which is why I suppose it stayed on the market. On a Friday the investors who owned it dropped the price by fifty thousand dollars. On Saturday we walked through it, listed our home, and I miscarried.

Making preparations to move and subsequently making plans and researching for our soon to be "mini-farm" proved to be an excellent distraction from the miscarriage and my pain associated with it. I often thought to myself, "You could not do this if you were still pregnant." It was true, and I began to feel peace in the timing. We moved and during it and shortly after I became sick. Now my fifth time being pregnant, I knew what it was before it was confirmed. Although overwhelmed and sick and tired, we were excited and I kept working on unpacking even if at a slower pace than I would have liked. Everything fell into place. Life could not be better, but last Friday I miscarried again at ten and a half weeks.

I have been asked if I was sure I was pregnant. I even questioned myself, so I consider it a gruesome blessing that it occurred in such a way as to leave no question. There was surely a baby growing at one time and it was never likely to survive outside my body. I consider it a blessing to have the confirmation of knowing that there was nothing that could have been done differently- not my activity levels, nutrition, or other circumstances would have prevented the end of this pregnancy. While I don't feel any guilt, I feel sad. I feel sad for me, for my body, for my kids, for my husband. We as a family would love to have more children, but we are also painfully aware that what we want it not always what we are blessed with.

I did not initially like or want this yellow house and yet I feel incredibly blessed to look out the window and see my kids in their swimming suits helping their Papa put the tar paper on the pig house. To have Juju incessantly climbing into the window wells of our bedroom to get a better view of the goats. I feel blessed when I sit on the rock to let the ducks eat from my hands. I feel blessed when I sit on the floor of the bathroom and spread my maxi dress as maxed as it it will go to allow room for all sixteen baby chicks to perch on my leg. I feel blessed that even on the least productive of days to know that, "Hey, at least I milked some goats today." I feel blessed to watch the baby pigs pop their heads up out of the straw when they think I might be bringing them something to eat. To sit on the porch with a view that some have to vacation to see. With all the changes that the last couple of months have brought and even the loss, mostly I just feel grateful and blessed for this old, yellow house.

Hey! Look who found their laptop cord (actually it was the Husband), but is too tired to write.