Seventeen and a puppy...

This morning I did my cleaning job and came home to 17 children at my house! Sounds like a crazy lot to some but I've hardly heard a peep out of them except for a few stragglers who come to tell on someone. My dad from Wisconsin stopped by for about an hour on his way to his sister's to pheasant hunt and dropped off our new puppy. He is so very cute and soft. He's already on his way to being trained. He's kennel trained and leash trained. I think Grandpa Rich has had him 3 weeks now? He's 12 weeks old. The pictures we took so far aren't great but here is what we have. He wouldn't stand still to get one of him by himself. We may call him Dakota. All but one kid wants Dakota and that one kid wants Butter but we have some definite no's to Butter. We have a dog! I'm not sure I'm prepared for this especially a chew-on-everything puppy :)

A bit better...

So I veered from my normal work-oriented day a little but not really until the end of the day, say 9:30 p.m. ?!?!!! After breakfast of eggs, toast and juice we cleaned up and went outside to rake up leaves in the back yard and burn them per Kevin's request. It was probable rain today. After lunch of 1/2 an apple and cheese pizzas on English muffins we went to Mrs. B's this time to pick up apples off the ground for her. She said if we came and helped her clean it up we could have some apples. She's been so good to us over the years, always calling when she had extra apples, tomatoes or anything. The kids had fun playing with the dog Bingo. We got home and I went to mow the extra yard we mow, kind of next door. No-one lives there but she comes out once in awhile and likes the place mowed and neat. Em came and helped me finish it up while I started mowing the leaves in the ditches up onto the road. The kids all grabbed rakes and we raked the leaves in big piles on the driveway and then burned them too. One more job done for winter and before the weather turns cold. Then into the house to get potatoes in the oven, chicken on the grill and apple crisp in the oven too. After supper clean up I took out 7 of my favorite books to read aloud and read 6 of them. The books were (for anyone wondering about a good book to read) Bein' with You This Way by W. Nikola-Lisa, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff, The Gingerbread Man retold by Eric A Kimmel, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr., The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood and But Where is the Green Parrot by Thomas and Wanda Zacharias. The kids sat interested through each book. It felt good to read like that. We watched a Little House on the Prairie and I was going to go wash apples and get ready to do applesauce tomorrow but I sat and watched the whole thing! Laura bought a goat! No need to say more :)

I am going to keep working on adding more of these non-work oriented moments in my day. Of course I spend all kinds of time with kids working on their school so they aren't lacking for time with mom but it's different than playing a game or something. I promised the kids a craft tomorrow. They were so excited they wanted to do it right then at 9:30 p.m. I plan to make applesauce tomorrow though. If I can get 56 quarts again like on Saturday I will be done with applesauce this year and nearly done canning, which will free up some time:) I will also be out of quart canning jars. If anyone knows of a source let me know. I don't need too many but maybe 30-40 would be good.

Do any of you have an area of your life you need to work on? I am tackling it one little bit at a time. Being less impatient is my goal and being more joyful around my kids.

Second chances...

Do you ever wonder how many times you get to mess up your life without getting zapped out of here? I think that God is going to say, "That's it, you just don't get it. You are out of here." Thankfully, God doesn't work that way. I would have been gone a long time ago because I mess up way too much. I am an impatient person and because of that I come across annoyed with my family. I don't want to be. I want to be joy-filled and joyful. I feel that way but my actions tell a different tale. The many, many, many chores weigh me down. I have forgotten how to play, laugh and enjoy. God has given me an opportunity to keep practicing. We've had some extra people staying with us off and on for awhile. I try to look forward to each day and how I might better serve the Lord by serving others. I enjoy serving new and interesting meals, I enjoy getting all the laundry done in the day, I enjoy going to bed with my kitchen clean but there is more to life than enjoying being caught up for the day and I need to discover that again!

Pray for me to find that joy of life that doesn't include canning 56 quarts of applesauce in one day! Pray for me to see other things in my day besides what there is do get done! I already have my mental list of what to do tomorrow: go to Mrs. G's and pick apples, wash 49 quart jars, make breakfast, lunch, supper, wash last load of laundry, wash down freezers outside, vacuum living room, cut apples for the dehydrator, make yogurt... I want to play soccer with the kids, I want to make home made play dough and play with them, I want to read them about 10 of my favorite read aloud stories, I want to get out Mousercise and exercise and I want to make a fun craft. We'll see how I do tomorrow. I always think "after I do "this" " so I have trouble with the follow-through. I'll let you know how I do :) God Bless and have a good week.

New Stove...

Yesterday, amidst an already busy morning, my stove decided to blow. It gave more like a little pop but it did blow the whole thing; stove top and oven. I was making up two egg bakes; one for the kids staying home to bake for lunch and one for the kids going to town with me to have for lunch. Well, I left the kids at home with no oven because I wasn't prepared to take everyone with me. It worked fine since we have cheese, crackers, and fruit. Their supper was hot dogs on the grill, fruit salad and a lettuce salad. Thankfully, this worked out and was a load off my mind being gone all day.

After the stove blew, I had 15 minutes to leave for town for lessons and for Jordan to teach lessons to her students. I got online and looked on Craig's list and found a "new" stove, wrote the number down and called while at Em's violin lesson. The first stove I called about was 13 years old and only owned by a retired couple. I made an appointment to see it last night and Kevin finished installing the stove at midnight. He had to take the cord off our old stove and put it on the new. It was so clean and neat. You could only describe it as "like new". The first owners were gone 6 months of the year south somewhere. The second owners whom we purchased it from didn't use it much and had an immaculate house. It is so clean, I'm afraid to use it. When Kevin was loading our stove on the trailer I told him to make sure to tell the guys at work that he took it from a customer's house! :) :) :) It was very dirty and a bit embarrassing. Yikes! I have pulled it out to clean it before but not for awhile. The kids dish up food from the stove top and spill all the time down the sides. I am sorry to say but I have other things to do than keep that clean :) Truly, I do not want to start canning applesauce on this new looking stove. I want to go on Craig's list and find a cheaper used one and put it in my garage and use that for canning. I'll try to be careful instead.

We are having an easy day of school and canning apple pie filling. I've done up 28 quarts already this week and the boys want to help me today. I do have sick kids though. My poor Gid John is throwing up. Pray for him and for the rest of us to be spared! We have some extra kids at our house and two of them have been sick too. Gid got sick on Tuesday and is having some sort of relapse after feeling good yesterday. I was hoping for a 24 hour thing. I like them better, predictable! God Bless and Have a Great Weekend!

Home grown...

Home grown meals are an exciting time for our family. We make a really big deal over meals made entirely of our own produce. Tonight we had Snowflake roast (Kevin brought home 2 roasts from our butchered goat) roasted with our own onions, mashed potatoes the boys dug up last week with gravy made from the roast, acorn squash sweetened with local honey and store butter, cantaloupe and watermelon picked yesterday, grape juice we canned last year (from grapes about 11 miles from here), sauerkraut made from our cabbage. It was filling and delicious. The roast was very moist and tasty. Kevin wanted to try it so he would know if he should butcher the other new goat. She gives him so much trouble! I guess she'll be going to butcher! :)

In the picture are our pumpkins and gourds! The boys have been invaluable at helping me in the garden during harvest. One day they cut all the squash, another day they cut all the pumpkins and gourds and watermelon and pulled all the squash and pumpkin plants and disposed of them. Today, they picked all the peppers left and pulled those plants. Each day something gets cleaned up and I get to spend my time washing and preparing it. When I had 6 kids under 7 years old it seemed a long way off until they would be helpful enough to take some of the workload. Any young mothers out there, the day does come! A special treasure for me is their enjoyment of the produce. One day I asked Caleb what would it take to have him pick me a big bowl of raspberries (I was going to get him a candy bar). He said I didn't have to pay him because he was going to benefit by eating them this winter :)

The Marathon...

I feel like I am running a race with no finish line in sight. Last week was another one of those weeks where I ran a particularly arduous part of the journey. Wednesday, AWANA started and after we got home at 9 p.m. Jordan and I got to work cutting up tomatoes for making soup the next day, making up the meat mixture for enchiladas and planning lunch and supper for the next day. Jordan taught lessons all day the next day. When we got home the real race began. About 9:30 p.m. we unloaded groceries and started work. We were going camping the next day so had to prepare that food, load the camper, and can up the food stuff I had started. 14 quarts of tomato soup, 7 quarts of stewed tomatoes, 7 pints of raspberry jelly, crock pot enchiladas, frog-eye salad, cookie salad, zucchini cake, tuna sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, grapes, one-cup cookies and the hundred other little details later we were able to pull out of our place Friday by 1 p.m. I ended up in bed at 3 a.m. after taking the last jars out of the canner. Tomatoes are too precious to waste for us (thanks again Jan for the bountiful gift, we cherish them). We didn't get enough in our garden to mention so we are still in need of tomatoes for anyone out there who knows someone who is tired of tomatoes :) We could also use a lot of apples!

We had a great time again fellow shipping with other home schoolers and brothers and sisters in Christ (this time in South Dakota). The boys found some other boys that like sword and gun play and that's pretty much all they did for the 3 days we were gone. Several dads shared their insight into a couple chapters in Ephesians. Another dad share his knowledge of "digging for treasure" in the Bible. There were 2 hayrides, food, campfires, apple dunking and caramel, candle dipping, children's story time, and late night card games. We have been going to this particular weekend for 9 years only missing once when Rebekah at 8 months old had the chicken pox. Today, we are washing up the clothes since everything else is put away!!!! The kids did the job of emptying the camper and getting the stuff put away last night. We plan to do a bit of school today but no pressure since we are all a bit tired. Hope you have a good week. About Wednesday the marathon gets strenuous again but thank the Lord for strength and joy to keep going on.