With the baby coming soon, and the weather getting nicer, I knew I wanted to make the most of the break, so I scheduled all kinds of stuff that I just don't typically have time to tackle when school is in session. We kicked off Monday with some errands, since it's always kind of a treat for us all to get out of the house and go somewhere. We ran to Home Depot to buy some boxwoods for my front flower beds. Then we ran to Price Chopper to take advantage of a sale on ground beef - I bought forty pounds to can. So obviously that was the rest of my day: prepping the meat for canning. I also got a few freezer meals prepped for after the baby comes.
Penelope also helped me by peeling and chopping twenty pounds of potatoes for me to can. Big kids are amazing.
After soaking in water for a bit to purge some of the starch, I laid them out to dry before loading them into jars.
After they're in jars, I just add a little butter or ghee and some salt. No liquid.
Tuesday, the bigger kids had eye doctor appointments in the morning. Later in the day, I kept working on canning the meat and potatoes. (Each batch takes about three hours in the canner total, and only seven jars fit in there at once, so it takes a while to do a big batch like this, and it usually takes me the course of a few days.)
Wednesday, we headed to the yard waste place to get free mulch. Because our only vehicle is the van, we take big trashcans with us to fill and load in the back cargo space, and it took us three trips to get enough to mulch the chicken yard. Once we got that unloaded and spread, and ate our lunch, I had the boys plant my boxwoods. (I won't stop saying it: big kids are such a blessing.)
It doesn't look like much while we wait for the hostas to come up, the grass to fill in, and the trash bags full of leaves to get used up in the chicken run. But it's better than it was - and softer on the kids' feet when they come out barefoot in the warm weather.
All the boxwoods on this side of the flower beds are new this year. Once everything is in, I'll buy some brown mulch to polish it up, but it's already looking so amazing with a full hedge of boxwoods in. The plants against the house are Incrediball white hydrangeas. They've already grown so much from last year! Landscaping is so different from interior decorating, because the things you "decorate" with grow and change, and potentially die, and require specific conditions for good placement other than just "I like how that looks right there," and look different at different times of the year. I still have so much to learn.
Thursday, Todd had a mandatory work meeting back in Columbia, so we all hit the road to go with him. While he was in his meeting, the kids and I went to Natural Grocers and Aldi. (Natural Grocers carries the pickles the kids love, so we stocked up on those, and Aldi carries the wine we love but Kansas grocery stores aren't allowed to sell wine, so we stock up when we're on the Missouri side.) Then we grabbed some crackers, meat, cheese, and juice for lunch and headed over to Shelter Gardens to eat while we waited for Todd to finish his meeting.
Then we headed up north so I could get a few things from the Amish. Todd and the kids stayed at the house of some friends, while my friend Jen and I drove the rest of the way up to the Amish together. I don't get up there as often as I wish I could, so I made sure to stock up for a while. When we came back to the house, Jen had tacos ready for everyone, and she gave me and the big girls haircuts. We left after dinner and got home about 10:30. It was a fun, full, long day.
This is a screenshot from a video on my phone, so that's why it looks stupid and doesn't even include everything. I got two Boston ferns (for $8 each!), 25 lbs of popcorn, 20 lbs of raw sugar, a few pounds of Real Salt, a gallon of maple syrup, 12 pints of raw honey, a pound of homemade noodles, 10 or 15 dozen canning lids, 10 lbs of raw butter, some cleaning supplies and some ding and dent items - mustard and Sterzings chips. My friend Irene also sent me home with homemade pastries and a gallon of fresh milk.
Friday, we picked up the little girls' glasses (their exams were the previous week). We made a trip to the car wash to clean out the van, and we also made a run to Dollar Tree so the kids could buy birthday presents for the upcoming birthdays of Juniper and Penelope. I finished the week's canning projects, and we had a Psalm Sing in the evening. I had Todd drive me and the little girls home right after the singing, instead of staying late to socialize, and after I had put the girls to bed, I also went right to bed myself. I almost never go to bed that early, and I prefer to wait up for Todd so we can go to bed together anyway, but boy howdy, I was wiped out from the week.
This was the largest canning week I've ever done - over 50 quarts! Broth, potatoes, ham, and ground beef.
On Saturday, Todd took the boys to an airsoft war near Kansas City, so the girls and I were on our own at home. We got a lot of cleaning done, which is a relief - the house was really needing it. Penelope has kindly offered to take over vacuuming and mopping for me, since my back just doesn't hold up for that anymore, so she's been doing that on Saturdays, and I got the living room and family room cleaned and straightened out. I'm pretty sure the boys would say they had the better day, but a clean living room and clean floors seem to me to about rival the joy and adrenaline of an airsoft battle. But maybe I'm wrong.
They do actually look like they were having more fun than I was having dusting.
Rocco and Atticus. Rocco didn't spend much time engaging in the battle: the rules were that kids under 10 could only participate if they would promise they wouldn't cry if they got hit, and he wisely said he couldn't promise that. He did attempt this zombie round for a little while, and then graciously bowed out.
We had brinner for Sabbath dinner that night (which is always an overwhelming hit at our house - the kids get so excited!), so Callista helped me make a triple batch of pancakes, so that we would have plenty on hand for Juni's birthday breakfast in a few days.
Pancakes and wine? Don't mind if I do.
After such a full week, I was actually feeling really ready for a normal school week this week. We are in the process of wrapping up the school year, so we hit the books hard, but that was basically all we focused on so it still felt calmer than the week before. Atticus had a number of mowing jobs, and is working on the farm today, so his week has been full of work, as well as fitting his whole school load into fewer available days. But three of the four grade levels finished up read alouds yesterday, so things are definitely lightening up for most of them already.
Callista finished all her work this week, and she got this certificate for finishing her whole math book!
This past Monday was Juniper's birthday! For meals she requested pancakes for breakfast, hot dogs and zucchini for lunch, and macaroni and cheese with ground beef for dinner. Super simple food to prepare, which I was grateful for!
She is five. She is rascally. She has a deep laugh and finds so many things funny! The kids have been really into clips of WWE that Todd finds on YouTube, and she has taken a special liking to Sting. She loves to cuddle, loves to play with Oey, and loves her daddy. She sucks her thumb while she sleeps and still loves her Chewy (ratty old tattered pillowcase remnants). She is so sweet and we love her to bits.
I MEAN JUST LOOK AT HER.
She told us that what she reeeeeeally wanted for her birthday was to have her face painted like Sting, so Penelope obliged her.
I haven't been exercising - my midwife told me to stop so that I could use all my energy for just gestating, and I have actually felt a lot better the last couple of weeks as a result. My energy is higher than it was. I also stopped taking most of my supplements, and that has also helped me feel better. I always end up with tons of inflammation, and even arthritis-like symptoms, if I take supplements too long, and I think that's where a lot of my back pain was coming from. Once I stopped with those, most of my back pain went away and I felt a lot better. I still have a lot of weakness and tiredness, but I feel better in my body for sure. Who would have thought that not exercising and not taking my vitamins would be the key to feeling better?
Once school is officially over, I'm planning on rearranging the bedrooms and pulling out the newborn clothes. Just a little over a week and the really-real baby prep will commence!
Once school is officially over, I'm planning on rearranging the bedrooms and pulling out the newborn clothes. Just a little over a week and the really-real baby prep will commence!
And just because our good life keeps trucking on, here are a few more photos from the week to send you into the weekend:
Oey got bonked, so the little girls set up an infirmary for her to recover in: her milk, her blankie, her favorite "ice" (she is addicted to chewing on frozen teethers, even though she's not teething), and a princess dress. She felt better in no time.
Ignore the patchy grass (it's that time of year) - we had a bonfire.
While my potatoes took up the entire table, the kids had a picnic on the floor for lunch. They don't look too mad about it.
This girl had quite the week. She fell over backwards out of a wagon and bonked the back of her head. She was being pushed (too quickly) in the umbrella stroller and faceplanted when the stroller hit an uneven spot on the sidewalk. She picked at a spot on her face until it scabbed over, and suffered various other, more mundane indignities inherent to the toddler stage. BUT she got to wear her first ponytail out in public, so she was willing to forgive us all.
The kids set up a campsite/checkpoint at the bottom of the stairs.
And that was a very full two weeks to report on! Today Atticus is working, and Todd is not working (he had to use up some vacation time), so it will be another strange day. I'm going to take Todd grocery shopping with me to show him the ropes of large scale hunting and gathering, and then he said he'll lay some mulch for me in the front flower beds. I'll do some read alouds with my remaining school kids, and then clean up the kitchen to head into the weekend. (We always order pizza on Fridays, so in the afternoon, I give the kitchen a really good wipe down since I don't have to spend that time cooking. I feel so much better in a clean kitchen.)
Laurelai is hoping to watch Order of the Phoenix after the little kids go down for bed, so we'll see if I have the energy for that. AND THEN I WILL HAVE EARNED MY WEEKEND AND WILL THEREFORE CONK OUT. THE END. GOOD DAY SIR.
