what's up weekly. (Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Unless we want to drink out of the dehumidifier.)

Hey folks!  Let me start by giving you an update after last week's cliffhanger:  I survived my grocery shopping trip.  It was intense, and if you find that any of your local stores are experiencing shortages, it's probably because I already bought everything.  Sorry about that.  But the good news is that we should be stocked for a couple of weeks.  

Speaking of being stocked, I am still going strong on my canning endeavors.  I don't have any fresh photos to show you, because I like to take a photo of the week's work at the end of the week, and today isn't over yet.  Price Chopper is having a great sale on ground beef, so I'm hoping to pick some up today and get it canned this evening.  But even without that added to the tally, I'll have put up around twenty quarts of broth and meat this week.  Next week I'm hoping to tackle dry beans and potatoes.  Yes, I know these things store just fine on their own without canning, but it is SO convenient to have them already prepped and ready for immediate use.  I think late-term nesting is kicking in early or something, because I just can't kick this drive to squirrel away food.  Here's a current look at my canning shelves (not including this week's additions yet):

I have a casual goal for myself to see just how much of this shelf unit I can fill (or how many of my empty jars I can fill, whichever comes first) by the end of the year.  Last year was my first full year of canning, and I put up about 150 quarts and 30 pints of food, and I'd love to see if I can double that this year.  So far I've done over 50 quarts just in January, so I think it's a reasonable work goal, especially if I do most of it before the baby comes and do the rest next fall/winter; I'm just not sure if I have enough storage space or empty jars to accomplish it.  But I also need to remember that we'll be emptying jars and shelf space regularly as we actually everything through the year, too, and therefore making more space as we go, so maybe it isn't unrealistic.

Anyway.  Enough about canning.  Let me share why I even had a photo of my canning shelves on the camera in the first place: we were taking photos of basement activity, as we seem to have a continuing leak in the book room and everything needed to be moved out of there.  So we emptied the book room of almost everything, and moved the bookshelves to the storage room.  

Since this photo was taken, the bookshelf was moved out, the books were all restored to their proper shelves, and the carpet on the far end of the room was pulled back.  It's kind of spartan and also somehow also chaos in there right now.

The books are now all on those shelves.  The cubbies on the left hand set of shelves contain all my homeschool books, organized by year. The storage room is getting cozy and working hard as a jack-of-all-trades room.

There are random piles around my food room and the back of the storage room as I'm still trying to find homes for everything until we can figure out the water issue, but it actually hasn't been too bad, and I'm really loving having the books all in one place (we already had a few bookshelves in the storage room, so there were books in a bunch of different places).

In addition to plumbing issues in the basement, we had a leaky outdoor faucet that was starting to get out of control.  (Remember all the ice it formed during those two weeks of frigid cold?)

Normally we would just use the leaked water that we caught in the bucket to water the chickens each day.  But as the cold snap continued, it kept freezing before we could use it... and then as it leaked more, it froze more... until we had this monstrosity.  I had the boys chip the ice away from the house and throw it into the yard before things thawed, just to keep it from seeping once the weather warmed up.  The bucket got dumped into the garden bed and melted in there. So it didn't end up damaging anything, but wow - that's a crazy amount of ice.

Last weekend, Todd and a friend got that faucet replaced and it is literally as good as new because it is, well, new.  The photo isn't super exciting, but behind this photo is the satisfaction of a job well done (and a water bill that hopefully reflects that).

What else have we been up to?  Well, the weather has been beautiful so we've spent plenty of time playing outside (and cleaning up the yard - how does it get so trashed in the cold weather?).  The kids have spent ample time playing with Legos, now that they're currently stored in the boys' room instead of tucked away in the book room.

Atticus has been studying for his upcoming driver's permit test, so hopefully he masters the material and passes with flying colors!

Laurelai still seems to be fighting something.  She was sick a week and a half ago, recovered, and then earlier this week her fever and headache returned.  She's had some painful inflammation in her ears and throat as well.  Hopefully she can finally kick it.

And I'm chugging away in pregnancy - I'm currently 24 weeks and getting tired.  I still try to exercise most days, but by the time I'm done, I can barely muster the energy to shower.  I tried to sitting on our little shower bench the other day, so I didn't have to stay standing, but I'm getting so unwieldy that I kept sliding off the seat.  It was a real shining moment for me.  

And here we are - it's February.  We made it through January, which felt long this year but isn't usually my hardest stretch.  February is the hardest stretch, even though it's so short.  So I'm going to spend some time this month dreaming about what I'm going to plant in my garden (and then subsequently neglect once it's planted, like always), and gazing at my February Flowers, which Todd has been so sweet to get me each year for the past couple of years to kick off the month with some beauty and cheerfulness.

And that, friends, was our week!  Happy February!