Dreamseekers and Company

A few things I’d share with my friends on facebook if I could log in. (Not logging in until 2015)

Really neat man from Bulgaria, Jordan’s birth country: http://themetapicture.com/definitely-one-of-the-best-people-in-the-world/

Baby Blues for today, Sunday the 23rd has had me chuckling all day! (there’s a drop down list for viewing different days): http://www.babyblues.com/

I have a large amount of new scrapbook embellishments (stickers, rub-ons, etc.) that I’ll be selling to benefit the Claus and the DeRoss families – to cover some of their adoption expenses. It starts March 1st here: http://scrapbooktreasures.wordpress.com/ (free shipping)

This sounds great!: http://www.makeitmissoula.com/2012/07/eliminate-the-cost-of-chicken-feed/ Anybody know whether Brian is likely allergic to mulberries? He’s very allergic to grass.

We may be having fence built on our property sooner than expected. That’s exciting and expensive all at the same time. haha

Some scrapbooking stuff:

Dear Mom and Dad,

I got to talk with Melissa on the phone today! It’s hard to believe that she is in the last stretch before giving birth to her fourth baby. She says she is beginning to feel tired and I believe it! We talked a little bit about how appealing it sounds to live in a time and place where we are a short walk from other family members’ houses. To be able to drop in on each other for short visits and have that community and family availability. As it is, it’s been since Christmas that we’ve spent time with each other. We made plans for an early “cousins” birthday party at the end of March. It’s early for all of the April/May birthdays (of which there are many!) but her due date for the next April kid is too close to have more parties in April this year! 🙂 Anyway, we decided to gather at our house, forego the gifts, but make peanut butter balls, let them choose their own favorite meals, watch a full-length move (a treat for the kids), and take the two oldest birthday kids out for something special without the younger kids. Don’t tell Melissa, but I’m going to give her some disposable size 1 diapers too since I’m sure she will enjoy a little less fuss in the first month with her new baby. I wonder if it’s a boy or a girl!!!?

President’s Day at our house isn’t a time of thinking about Presidents. However, since Brian’s work gives all federal holidays, it means we are all home! So, today, Brian is butchering roosters. Our poor hens. I thought we had four roosters… which is bad enough. But I recently discovered that a few of the chickens I thought were hens… are indeed roosters. So, it is high time Brian went a-butcherin’! I don’t know why, but it takes forever. Brian does a good job so I suppose it’s just practice that will help us be faster. Although, I do stay as far away as possible. haha! I dressed the the first few roosters we butchered, but the smell and feel of a warm dead bird were just too much for me.

Brian repaired our pellet stove! It involved pulling it out, cleaning out the pellet dust in the hopper, repairing the connection to the vent pipe, cleaning the vent pipe, testing the electrical components and buying a fuse… basically just being awesome. It works really well so we are enjoying the warmth of a wood fire with almost none of the hassle. Sure, it doesn’t work when the power is out and the pellets are not free, but it is really convenient and comfortable. (The power went out for 2 hours last night – it was wiiiiiiindy!) I am rather liking the placement of the pellet stove in our house too. You know how it’s in the room to the side of the house rather than central? Well, that means I can keep this side of the house nice and warm, but turn the heat pump way down (to 63) for the rest of the house and we’re all comfortable. I really hope it helps save us money on the utility bill. It was really getting up there. Something like $350/month for electricity. I don’t know precisely off the top of my head… I just know that the number continues to shock me. And we have a great electricity rate and efficient heat pump too.

We have made some new friends! Wendy and Tim have four kids, 9-17 years old and live just about 20 minutes from us. But they’re way up in our neck of the woods, so it doesn’t seem far. I have prayed for a local friend who would be a spiritual and parenting mentor to me for a long time and I believe God’s answering my prayer. We visited church with them yesterday and then hung out at their house for hours afterwards, eating lunch together, exploring their farm and trying to talk between the interruptions of our young family. Jordan only broke one thing (a mason jar full of pickle juice)… :-/ Sorry, Wendy! And we got home to find Maggie with a 101.9 fever, so it’s amazing we did so well! Carolyn also screamed full blast three times in service as I tried sitting down with her again three times…. oh my, was that ever embarrassing! I did eventually take her back to the nursery where she did fine.

I am having a wonderful time planning a garden! There’s deciding which plants to try and grow and ordering a few seeds from Territorial, but there’s also… you know… planning and trying to build an actual garden bed! Brian and I made good use of your pickup (which is still nice and dry inside) by hauling a whole pallet of cheap cinder blocks home in it. I did some tricks to get the cost down too. I bought a 10% off coupon off ebay for $5 which saved us $40 off our big purchase of things garden related. (We bought some drain pipe too – should tell you about ditch digging) Then, I went to cardpool.com and ordered some Lowe’s gift cards that were discounted 9%, so I paid for our purchase with those and felt pretty awesome for saving almost $80 by my easy efforts. (If anybody would like to order gift cards from cardpool.com for the first time, if you go through my referral link, I’ll get $5 towards my next gift card: http://refer.cardpool.com/v2/share/5981437811919490747

So yes… ditches. Turns out if you can get a dry day in the middle of winter, ditch digging by hand is not such a horrible thing! I found it rather fun. Maybe it’s just because I was outdoors in the sunshine and having uninterrupted work time, but I was sad when my hands got sore, my arms got tired and I had to stop. The first place we started a ditch (which needs to be enlarged before it’s done being dug) is along the side of the chicken coop. Their coop doesn’t have gutters and it has water runoff problems from the hill above it too. So I just dug a straight ditch along the uphill roofline that drops off the side of the hill. When it’s done, we’ll put in some of the drainage pipe we bought and then fill it with gravel. At first, we’ll get gravel from our front yard where a lot of red lava rock was spread for how nice it looked.

The second ditch we’re digging is on the “garden hill.” You know, where it’s terraced a bit? We’re decided to do another big project this spring and we’re going to plant 30 nice blueberry bushes. That means we need to put a ditch all along the uphill side of the row, and add peat moss and sawdust to the rows… and lower the pH. And do a drip system. And we’re going to make one large raised bed in our front yard for vegetables this year. I’m sure four large garden beds is closer to how much food I want to grow here, but we are listening at least a little bit to our limitations. ha!

So I think that’s what’s been going \on lately! We do school most days, have some fun, read lots of books and spend time with friends.

I love you!

A few pictures:

After the storm

Building snow forts and sledding!

The snow was still pretty powdery, but packed a little this day. The next day was the last day of snow play and was the best day for snowballs. 🙂 Now…. now it is raining up a storm!

Much hot cocoa was had over the four snow days!!!

Giggling as Papa throws snowballs at them.

The giant snowman!

Carolyn was laying on Smoke for a good minute til I took out my camera. Then she started crawling off him and Smoke stood up.

Wish this had turned out. Carolyn loves to feed her snacks to Smoke. She will sit and feed him one Cheerio at a time.

Ah…. puddle days!

This little one is such a mess maker!

Jordan needed some fun time since he doesn’t like snow and I don’t usually let him loose in the rain.

Yay for water play!

Why are my rags never folded any more?

Helping!

Brian wanted to take a picture of Jordan. Jordan wanted supper. (He is signing “eat”)

Teaching Smoke and Carolyn bad manners at once… for the sake of a cute video.

Puddle stomping!

Giggling at snowballs… both Carolyn and Maggie were yelling “Paaaapaaaaa!” til I go the camera out:

1. I eat my toast like my dad… with natural peanut butter stirred up with honey before spreading it onto the toast.
2. I’m selling scrapbook stuff to benefit a couple adoptions… and it is sooooo tempting to keep for myself. I confess I bought a huge stack of the paper just to let the kids use. And… I haven’t told them yet, because I’m secretly wanting it all for myself.
3. I have developed a budget program for our family by using a mish-mash of Microsoft Money (yes, from the 90’s) and Microsoft Excel…. a ridiculously complicated excel spread sheet. And I love it.
4. I have my very first touch-screen phone and I feel so old learning to use it. I’m 30, people… just getting used to being behind in understanding how to use modern gadgets.
5. I love little more than a tidy list and a tidy desk. And yet, my desk is the last place that gets cleaned.
6. Smoke is the closest thing to a horse we’ve owned since I was in high school and I am LOVING it! He is intelligent, laid back, furry and cute. The kids crawl over him without him batting an eye and Carolyn likes to feed him her Cheerios… one Cheerio at a time.
7. I don’t like peas or green beans. They are so yucky! My family rarely eats them. I do like okra and especially brussel sprouts.
8. Brian wanted three kids by the time he was 30 and we barely made it…. and ended up with four somehow!
9. I regularly see the faces of children who need a family. Desperately. And I desperately crave to fill that need. Don’t tell Brian.
10. I have finally begun to take some specific baby steps to address the attachment disorder that exists for me and for Jordan. It feels good to finally have the inner strength to be pursuing him like he deserves.
11. I have not slept through the night without waking either multiple times or for extended periods…. except for maybe a few weeks worth in… umm… 2 years. It’s improving lately.
12. We might drive the many hours to Spokane in a month and a half to go to a fancy hotel with Brian while he’s at a work-related conference.
13. I used to belong to a church with no name.
14. I have worked as a barista/baker, leather-worker and bank teller. The first two I enjoyed and the last I would have enjoyed if I had been more mature and the position didn’t require sales.
15. We’re getting a ton of pellets delivered today to use in our pellet stove. My husband is SO AWESOME! You know, he fixed the thing himself!
16. The people I miss most who have passed away are my two grandpas and my great-grandma Hornibrook.

So it wasn’t all about me, but it was fun to sit and write a few minutes. Time to get dressed and start school for the day!

Great-Grandma on my wedding day

Something I made.

Something else I made.

Two beautiful women.

Grandpa.

Missing these two goofballs too

Come to think of it, I miss our old doggie too!

Grandpa and Grandma

Sure have a lot of great memories… I could go on. 🙂

It’s hard to see the trees at the back of the property. And when the snow blows in a wind gust, it’s hard to see anything. PRETTY AWESOME!!!!

So glad we’re all home now. Only had to push one car up the hill by our house and Brian was glad to have chains in his car as he left work early and it was still too slick.

A beautiful frosty sunrise a few days ago.

Snow is falling!

Throwing snow at Smoke that he tried and tried to catch.

Fun!!! And yes, it was about 20 degrees with a brisk 10 degree wind chill or something like that. I didn’t think they’d stay out… but stay out they did!

It’s very cold outside (20F) and the snow is powdery and not packing… so the girls got buckets to collect the snow to make a “sand castle snowman”

Buckets of snow!

Looking out at the girls who were surprisingly not too cold out in the freezing cold with a strong EXTRA cold wind.

Adventure!!! The girls played outside FOUR times today!

Bored inside. 🙂

Looking out the window.

It’s much deeper this afternoon!

Eight inches here!

Wish you could see what the snow looks like… drifting and blowing.

Jordan and Carolyn stay inside with Mama.

First of four playtimes outside:

Playing with Papa outside… the girls came in with icicles on their hair… they collected snow and put all the powder in one place to make better sledding. It has snowed several more inches since.:

Jordan looking out the window mournfully:

There is snow, there are many pink cheeks and smiling faces, I caught a cold, I have taken pictures and pushed just one car up the hill. Will share more sometime… lots of good stuff and lots of “real life” happening amidst our family and friends. Pray I don’t get sick for two weeks straight like Anna did!