Mother's Day walk in the park

It was a wonderful Mother's Day.  I was given the opportunity to get some needed organizing done.  We have yet to start our third semester of our school year, for many various reasons.  The number one being all the illnesses and bugs!  But being unorganized was up there at the top of the list.  I can assure you that trying to get schooling done when we can't find our books makes it a bit difficult :-)

We had time later in the day to go to a local park and take a family walk.  Half way through it started to rain, but we still had fun.

Saoirse made this wonderful 'crown' for me.  I wore it for the better part of the afternoon.

Trail marker at the park.

Jedidiah is our bug man!  He came prepared with his net, bug box and bug book (written and illustrated by Moira).  I am very thankful that I laminated the pages today.  At first Jedidiah freaked out.  I think he thought the pages were going to remain in the wrong order.  But once I cut the pages out, and assembled it, he was very pleased.  Had I not laminated it the book would have been ruined in the rain.

Consulting his book.  The whole walk was dedicated to finding bugs.  He found a couple of beetles, a couple of bees, a lizard and a spider.

Aubrey was very pleased to be able to walk the entire way.  He did a great job!  He was very amused at the spotted ground when it first started to rain.

I was blessed with many flowers along the way :-)

Some from Saoirse.

Aubrey followed suite and picked some flowers, except he threw his on the ground.

I had a growing collection.

The girls had wanted to play "horse".  They took the opportunity to run through the fields as wild horses. 

I swooped up Aubrey to show him the plane flying over head.  I used it as an opportunity to have our picture taken as well.

Daddy and Jed were lagging behind...they were searching for bugs.

Trying to get everyone to look at the camera at the same time proved difficult.  It may have to do something with it raining out at the moment!!  We shall try again later.

Have a wonderful day!

porcupine livers

First off, I want to say a "Happy Mother's Day" to all the wonderful mommies out there :-)  Yes, it's Sunday.  And yes, we should be at church by now, but we're not...buggies ya know.  Ugh.  I'm taking a bit of a different approach which I will recap at a later time, if it pans out. 

But on to porcupine livers.  I can assure you its not what you think.  No homeschool experiment, no science documentary...no, just selfishness.  Oh, yes, selfishness.  So what does porcupine liver have to do with selfishness.  You see whenever I get myself a little something to eat, no matter how quietly I do so, every child seems to know I have food as soon as I sit down to eat!  This morning was no exception.  I made myself a wee bit of chocolate frosting and grabbed a handful of crispy walnuts.  And like clock work as soon as I sat down....little boys appeared :-)  Jonah and Aubrey were partaking of said chocolate and nuts.  Jed came along and asked what I was eating.  In an attempt to save some for me, I told him, "Porcupine livers."  To which he said, "Oh, porcupine livers!" And he dug right in :-)  After awhile I asked him, "Hey, isn't it amazing that porcupine livers taste just like chocolate and walnuts?"  No answer, his mouth was full.

Yesterday we finally celebrated Saoirse's birthday.  Well, sort of.  Half way.  We at least had a birthday dinner, and the cake was half way made.  But by the time we got done eating the dinner everyone was stuffed so we decided to hold off on the cake until today.  For Saoirse's b-day dinner we had pizza.  NOT GAPS legal pizza either.  Oh, no, it was the real deal....homemade, with wheat!  It was a compromise.  Buying some cheese and pepperoni is a LOT cheaper than going out to eat (which she requested).  Funny thing though.  Jonah remembered that pepperoni tastes yummy, but he didn't remember the name of them :-)  When he saw them he said, "Oh, I want some of....of...that!"  I asked him what they were called, and he couldn't remember!  Too funny.  And the baby. Well the baby doesn't remember me cooking with grain and was perplexed as to if it was ok to touch.  When I gave him a slice of pizza he kind of looked around to see what everyone else was doing with it.  He took one bite and didn't eat any more!  What?!  A child of mine not liking pizza?  We must remedy this.          

hair pics...take 2

I've been working hard all day today.  Come to think of it, I've been working hard for many days now :-)  Hair, hair, hair.  That is our mantra :-)  I have to say that having our hair cut shorter has made combing, washing and treatments much easier.  I finally took a break to eat some lunch and grabbed Flannery's camera to see if I could get a couple more pictures of our new haircuts, at least for Isabella and myself.  I quickly did a couple of edits in our new favorite, free, online editing tool.  The girls were very fond of piknic, but they just closed down last month.  Thankfully we found another program that works pretty much the same way, with the same easy to use features.  I took some liberty to add a few effects, because I get that craving to do something different every once in a while :-)

  

 I have had the front of my hair almost as short as it is now, but the difference is that it angles to the front, which I much prefer.

 

 The back is much shorter than I have ever had it.  It's pretty funny to wash it, there isn't much to wring out!  Not to mention I use a lot less shampoo, and it takes a few seconds to wash up. And the drying time is cut by 80%, at least it seems that way.

 Here is Isabella.  I really love the way the layers turned out.  It is really short in back, with the longer layers in front.  I think she is the only one who could get away with that as the rest of us have straight stick hair. Well, Flannery has some natural wave to hers, but nothing like Isabella's.

 The back view.

The baby was getting fussy (he has a cold and happens to be cutting at least 5 teeth!!) so I had to finish up fast, hence the blurry picture.  But I think you can get the idea :-)

Alrighty, off to finish more work. 

We are still alive :-)

Alive is good, right? Ha, ha!  Like I mentioned a few posts ago we've been dealing with lots of health issues.  The latest of which is lice.  Oh, can we say, "fun!".  So I've spent the last few days trying to get on top of the laundry and keep up with everyone's hair.  How is it going?  Well, with our longer hair, it takes one hour to do one persons head.  Seeing as how every female in our family had lice now, that equates to me spending 5 HOURS A DAY doing hair!!!  People, I don't have 5 hours in any given day to devote to something like this, let alone for days on end.  So we've found a few things that we decided we would do for our family to get us over this infestation. 

The first, I will only resort to the insecticide solutions as a last resort.  We've decided to try natural, or non-toxic means.  There certainly has been a big difference in the population with the special comb we are using.  But I wasn't willing to leave it at that, as that alone is very time consuming.  Anyone that has dealt with lice before knows that you *have* to take care of the nits (the eggs) or you will continue in the cycle.  So combing is a must, but I wasn't willing to comb for two weeks and to find out it didn't take care of it!  So here is the list of things we are or will be doing:

We bought LiceMD.  It is a silicone product, something that is not supposed to be absorbed by the body.  It suffocates the lice, the adults and eggs.  However, the concentration, compared to brands available in Europe, is small.  It looks like we will have to re-do the application in another week.  I will be applying the solution tonight or tomorrow. 

Between the two treatments we will be rinsing our hair with salt water.  Apparently the salt dehydrate the lice.  I put some on last night and found a dead buggie this morning.  So I guess it works.  Totally non toxic :-) 

Moira and myself have been getting bitten on other parts of our bodies.  As a matter of fact, even though I have the lice, they have not been biting my head!!  They have been munching on my upper chest and upper back.  Go figure!  Wasn't sure how I was going to deal with that.  After thinking it over and doing some reading I decided on coating my skin with diatomaceous earth(DE).  DE is a fine powder that is made of fossilized diatoms.  It feels like a soft powder, but under a microscope it appears as mini razor blades.  For humans it poses no risks (although breathing it in will cause lung irritation).  BUT for little bugs, like lice, or parasites or bugs in general, it is torture.  The mini razor blades cut into their exoskeleton, which then dehydrates the nasty critters.  I just mix some into water and apply.  It dries into a chalky coating.  Lovely to be sure.  You can see it clear as day in the below picture.  I tried putting some in Flannery's hair.  Um, that doesn't work too well. I had to abandon my attempt to kill the bugs off in our hair with the DE.  I thought of putting the DE into some coconut oil, but not sure if it would work the same.

On top of the measures above, we will still have to clean all cloth items, or store them away for the next month.  Oy!  This has been taking forever.  I am hoping to really, really get that done tomorrow as it is imperative we try to make sure we don't pick them back up from our environment.  Things have been slow going due to my dryer being on the fritz.  The two automatic settings no longer work, well not unless you want to reset the dryer 3 times before your clothing gets dried.  The timed setting works, but if there are bulky items, like towels, it takes another cycle to finish.  With all the washing of hair and what not, there are a lot of towels.  And let us not forget that we have to wash *ALL* of our bedding, *EVERY* day.  We've been able to live without AC at this point, which has helped us in the laundry department.  How?  Well, we only need a sheet to cover up, instead of a blanket, which would take up extra loads in the washer. 

To top all of this off, I decided to take a really drastic step....Cut our hair.  All the girl's, including me, got a hair cut.  There was just no way I could keep up with everything that needs to get done if I am spending 5 hours just combing hair!  So it was snip, snip, snip.  I went to the local walk in hair cutters to get  mine done.  After observing some of the techniques that the stylist used, I set to work on cutting the girls hair.  I got all four girl's hair cut today.  I wish I had the energy to put in the gel treatment, but it is going to require...combing.  That means time, which will be shorter than if we still had our long hair, but I am simply worn out!  So tomorrow we will be walking around here with shower caps covering our gel doused hair.  We will be bagging, and cleaning, and spraying (DE).  And let's not forget that pile of laundry while we're at it :-)  Below is the result of our hair cutting frenzy:

Saoirse reminded me to take a before picture.  I had already wet her hair down and was about to pin her hair up to get ready for cutting.

The back of Saoirse's hair...before.

A side view...before.

After!  I have to say, I think it turned out really cute!

A half way decent back.  I usually always have a lop side with every hair cut.  But this time it turned out really great.

The side view.

All of us, including your's truly covered in DE.  Hey, I didn't say it was pretty!  The pictures were taken with Flannery's camera. These pictures above came out half way ok, but I have to honestly say the girls hair looks a lot better in person. 

Not the best picture of Moira, but the only one I have so far.  For some reason the angles Flannery took these at, along with the lighting, really skew how Moira really looks.  The same goes with the picture below of Isabella.  Weird!  Moira had a bit of layering around the back.  I was using a technique we saw online.  She asked me something and I said, "Oh, I don't really know what I am doing, I'm just copying the video we saw, and what I saw my stylist do today."  She then said, "Um, mom, I think you should stop cutting my hair and take me to see someone who does know what they are doing!"  ha, ha!

I'll have to get a better picture of the side and back view of Isa's hair.  She wanted to try a technique we saw online to add layers in.  It didn't work as we thought and so we had to take matters into our own hands :-)  With her natural waves her hair looked really neat.  In the above picture she had brushed out most of her smaller waves. 

Poor Flannery didn't want her hair cut short.  So we made a compromise.  After I cut it she decided it was too long!  Silly girl!  She decided against any layers.  I think with her natural light wave the layers would have worked in her favor.  But it's still really cute a straight cut.

I may decide to buzz the boys' hair.  They don't have the bugs, but I certainly don't want them to get them, and start this whole thing all over again.  We'll see.  I've been checking their hair daily and so far so good.  Tomorrow is a big day.  Lot's-O-Cleaning.

*all* goat babies have arrived

That last wee post was from one of the girls :-)  Everything went great.  We had a bit of a surprise thrown into the mix.  We knew that two of our goats were expecting.  One of our (my sister's really) goats, Pipi, was not supposed to be pregnant.  A goat can be bred when they are at least 8 or 9months old and weigh at least 80 pounds.  Well, when it came time for breeding we felt that Pipi was just not big enough.  She was still on the small side, so we thought she should have another year to grow.  We recently found out that she is a genetic dwarf, so she is full size for her, just not to the usual standard for her breed.  That was good to know.  So fast forward to the other day.  We all went out to watch Honey give birth.  We were told by our vet that she was pregnant with one really large baby.  Hmmm, I was doubting that as she was only 3.5 months along (out of 5 months) and if the baby was already big she was going to be in trouble come labor day.  I was thinking she had multiples, but only time was going to tell.  I was in the process of putting a little birth kit together when the girls had come to the window to tell us she was in labor.  The kit included some dixie cups, iodine, dental floss, scissors, and dewormer.  As I was walking over to the barn the girls were shouting with joy...darn, I missed it!  No worries, I was there to see the *second* one being born :-)  Isabella thought a third one was on the way as there was another bulging.  So we waited...and waited...and waited.  Hmmm.  The afterbirth was not coming out (it was partially out), which wasn't a concern as it can take some time for it to do so.  But if there was another baby in there it shouldn't take too long before it follows it's siblings.  And it is possible that a kid can be retained, which means death to the kid, and possibly the mother.  We could have gone "in", but that would have required giving the mama an antibiotic, which I really wanted to avoid.  So I did the next best thing, got a homeopathic remedy that is supposed to help with a stalled labor.  If nothing else it should help with the retained afterbirth.  I gave her the remedy and about 1 or 2 minutes later she had a very noticeable contraction, which expelled the placenta.  Coincidence?  Could be.  We waited some more with nothing happening, so I gave her another dose, and again a very noticeable contraction and only a small bit  more afterbirth to come.  By this point I was pretty sure she was done.  After a while I went inside to get some things done, you know like start making dinner :-)  Important stuff.  Jeremiah needed to run some errands and decided to take all the kids with him.  I had not slept well the night before and was falling on my face!  He thought I could use a little quiet :-)  As he was leaving he suggested that I check in on Honey, just to be sure she was really done.  Off they went.

I wish I had energy as I would have been able to get a lot done, with all the kids out of the house, but sadly I was trying my best just to stay awake.  So I puttered with a few things.  I remembered that I was supposed to check on Honey.  Oy.  The barn seemed soooo far away (it's not at all in reality).  But I got myself a hat and went out the door.  All the animals were calling to me and acting like they hadn't been fed....like ever.  Ha, anyone with goats and chickens knows what I am talking about.  However, with all the excitement of the new babies I thought it was possible that they were not fed.  I decided that I would give them a wee bit of food, at least to tide them over should they have not been fed.  If you don't have goats then it may be hard to imagine the chaos in which it is to feed a mass of completely starved animals (I think in the goat world the definition of "starving" is to not have had food in the past 30 seconds or so).  I had to fend off one of the dwarf who jumped the fence that is around the storage door.  I finally poured the food into the containers.  I went back in to get some chicken feed.  As I was sprinkling that on the ground for the chickens I noticed that Pipi was not present.  That would be a BIG RED FLAG!  Goats will do anything to get food, and for one of them to not be there sent my alarm bells running.  I was looking around to see if she had escaped, or was hurt, or....just then I heard this "maaaaaa" that had a definite grunting to it at the end...you know like as if that goat was pushing out a baby!!!  The sound was coming from the other side of the barn.  I made my way there as quick as I could to see wee Pipi with a bulging sack/head sticking out of...well you know where.  Yikes!!!!  The girls kept thinking she was pregnant, these past two weeks, but I wasn't buying it.  I ran to the chicken barn to grab an arm load of fresh straw.  I threw it down behind Pipi as the ground below her was just dirt.  It was apparent that she was going to need a little help getting the baby out.  So I gently helped her and in another two contractions she had herself a cute baby boy!  We had to help him nurse as she was a bit freaked out over him trying to suckle.  But she is doing fine now.

The following day Jeremiah took a few of the kids on another errand.  Flannery and Saoirse stayed home with me.  I had more energy and planned on getting some things done.  The girls wanted to go outside, which is where they will spend most of their time in the next few weeks, to play with the baby goats.  As Flannery was heading over there she yelled out...."Lily had her baby!!!".  Once again we missed it.  She always gives birth when we are not looking :-)  She had a baby girl.  Phew, three mamas, 4 babies, all within 24 hours.  Hey, at least it's all over in one day!  Lily had her baby out in the yard, where it is just dirt, so we had to wash the cord as it had gotten dirty.  Other than that all went well.  Some of the mamas are being nasty to the other goat babies, but I am sure it will all calm down in a few days. 

And this means that in another three weeks or so....MILK!!!  Wooo Hooo!!!  Bring on the cheese, the yogurt and kefir!  YUM!!

Honeys in labor!!!!

Are goat is in labor!!! Will have pics soon!!!!

Prayers are good :-)

So, with all this time away from the computer, one would think I have been able to accomplish my long list of "to-do's".  Ha, well you would be wrong if you thought that!  For some reason I see this as a repeat of last year, but the truth is the truth, we have been 'plagued'.  We've been dealing with a LOT of issues around here, all of which have seriously thrown a wrench into my plans.  Although it may be "my plans" which is the reason all of this is going on.  I am sure that is part of it.  Either way we've been swamped.  Here are some of the issues we've been dealing with:

thrush
ring worm (on two of the children)
head lice
sinus issues
new allergies (Isa came down with a serious peanut allergy this past month, and now Flannery is reacting to eggs)
tear ducts swelling
UTI's
severe menstrual cramping (that was getting better, and is now worse)
some strange itchy mouth sores for one child

I know there are more, but those would be the major ones.  That doesn't even account for our animals.  With the warmer winter we had we are inundated with all sorts of bugs!!  We have never had a problem with lice before, but most of the animals have it (which is different than the human kind).  This morning the girls ran over to the window (they were outside) to announce that one of our goats is showing signs for labor.  This goat has had her babies around 3 o'clock in the afternoon the past two years.  This means she will be giving birth sometime tomorrow I suppose.  Please pray that all will go well.  Too many bad things have been happening here.  Last year we lost half of our milking season due to the goats getting mastitis repeatedly.  We really can not afford for that to happen this year.  I plan on making cheese this year with our milk.  We have been making a ton of yogurt and kefir as well.  I am not sure if our dwarfs are with kid, so I don't know if we will have milk during the winter like we were planning.  Only time will tell.  I am really trying to work hard on keeping within the grocery budget (with food at least) and having this milk available to us will be a big help.  Just yesterday we had our shopping day and I spent almost $30 in milk alone.  And that was with me trying to be ultra conservative, because we really could use 4 more gallons on top of what I bought. 

I need to spend some time making up some new chore lists.  After doing some research I've come up with a new plan of action to take care of the animals.  Our food can only be as healthy as the source it is coming from.  With that in mind we are going to try to make a big attempt to get our animals as healthy as possible, with in our means.  This will involve more work.  On top of all of this I am still trying to get what little bit of organizing/decluttering done here inside the house.  That proves difficult with three little boys getting into everything.  Only once did I put on a video.  That was a REALLY bad day.  The girls are capable of watching them, but they've had their own work to do. It's definitely a season of treadmill running, and I am not talking about exercise!  I mean I keep running around here without getting anywhere :-) 

Alright, enough of the fussing.  The baby just went down for a nap, so I plan on trying to get a few things done (we can't go to church due to the lice :-(  ).    

Now, not all has been a lose.  I've gotten some things done.  I am hoping to steal borrow Isa's or Flannery's camera to take some pictures of what I have accomplished.

A Check In

Sitting up on the porch, watching kiddos scrounge for critters.  Isabella found a toad.  Flannery found a small snake, and Moira found some crickets and a tree frog.  They are all looking for more "pets".  Jed has been a wee bit obsessed about critters.  So much so that I bought him a bug net and bug box.  We've watched crickets eat some salad, and see a cricket get eaten by a lizard.  Fun stuff :-) 

I finally found the reason for my inability to cope with life last week :-)  No, not pregnant!  But I am thankful to know that I am not going crazy.  Phew! 

We did not get much done in the way of spring cleaning last week.  Bummer.  I am going to try to get it done this week.  I am sure emotionally I will be in better shape.  I thought I would catch up on some of the things that have been going on around here.

::  The girls and I have been participating in the "no shampoo" craze.  It has been a trial and error process, but I am glad to say that I have finally found the correct ratios of ingredients for my hair.  I made up a chamomile tea concoction for the 'conditioner'.  However, my hair was *extremely* unmanageable!  I finally tried the recommendation of using a lot more apple cider vinegar.  What a relief!  Now my hair is smooth and manageable.  It is true that you can go days between washing your hair, once your hair adjusts to the new routine.  My hair feels thicker as well. Very odd.

::  Ever since our bout with the Norovirus this past winter my stomach has not been the same.  My leaky gut, which I was not having any problems with, grew worse than it was before we started GAPS.  Not pleasant.  As a result I will be re-doing the Intro stage starting in the next few days.  Isabella is faring far worse.  She has developed a peanut allergy, which is truly scary. It started a few weeks ago when she noticed that the roof of her mouth started itching after eating peanut butter.  She didn't mention it to me for a couple of weeks.  The itching was severe.  I told her she shouldn't eat peanut butter any more.  I am VERY thankful that she obeyed!!!  Just a few days ago she was cleaning up the kitchen.  She was wiping down the counter, which had some peanut butter on it.  Unbeknown to her, she got a small dab of the peanut butter on her finger, and passed it on to her lip. Within a couple of minutes her lip had doubled in size!!!  It ended up tripling in size before the allergy meds kicked in.  I can't imagine what would have happened had she swallowed it.  Isabella will be joining me in re-doing intro.  I may have to take her to our alternative practitioner to see if we can help her over come this allergy.  At this time everything I cook is from scratch, so I know that there isn't any peanut content in our food (save actual peanut butter).  But we are not planning on eating this way forever (though we will be eating whole foods), and should she be out and about and grab something to eat.....well, that's just a scary thought.

::  Juice fasting.  All of us did a juice fast, except the baby.  The younger kids only juice fasted for 2.5 days. Moira did so for about 4 days and Jeremiah, Isa and myself did so for about 6 days.  I have been battling a sinus infection for weeks now.  I knew I could kick it with a fast.  However I really needed to do one for 2 weeks.  I was hoping that 1 week would at least help.  I believe it did.  I did have to start taking my GSE/oregano oil blend.   Plus I added in some nasal washes (some with GSE in it and some with probiotics added to it).  Thankfully I am making some head way!  Plus the juicing gave me energy!!  Finally, after years of low energy, it was such a blessing to be able to function.  But, after the fast, which we came off slowly, my egg intolerance is worse than ever!!!  So I changed my plan of action.  I was planning on doing a longer juice fast, but instead have decided to re-do intro.  By re-doing intro I can reestablish my gut flora.  After that is set up I will then do a longer juice fast.  Only myself, and possibly the older two girls will be fasting this next time around.  The girls will only be doing a short one though. 

Now, some people will say that children should NEVER do any type of fast. I would agree with that for the most part.  But for us, it was a needed step to better health.  Since they were only fasting for 2.5 days, I wasn't concerned.  After all, nine months ago, when they had that horrid 5 day stomach bug I can assure you they were in much worse shape.  With the 2 day juicing fast, they were completely hydrated and obtaining a ton of micronutrients.  And since we have already done some detoxing from the GAPS diet I wasn't too concerned about any big detoxing.  Jed did great, and he really enjoyed the juices.  As a matter of fact after they were done with their fast, while the rest of us were still continuing on, he kept asking for some of our juice. 

Nursing and fasting are not recommended.  Again, for good reasons.  But sometimes you got to do what ya got to do :-)  I did not go in to this without doing my research.  I outlined a whole routine for my body to handle any detoxing as efficiently as possible.  Did it work?  Well, I believe so.  I felt yucky that first day (but it was also the day I came down with my sinus infection), but after that I felt great.  Also the baby was not fussy (something he would have been had I been detoxing into him).  In order to minimize any toxins passing on to the baby I did the following:

AM-take 1 TBS of bentonite clay
Mid-day take one tablet of chlorella
PM- take 1/2 tsp of diatamatious earth (DE)
PM take a warm bath with 2 cups of epsom salt and 1 cup of baking soda
Daily- 15 minute T-Tapp workout
Daily- skin brushing

Yes, that is a lot, but I was trying to give my body ways in which to process the toxins.  The clay, chlorella and DE all have the ability to draw and bind to the toxins.  This prevents them from being reabsorbed when they get into your intestines.  T-tapp helps get your lymph pumping.  After a workout I would then do some skin brushing which helps stimulate your skin to release any toxins.  The bath with the salt and soda helps your body to give off toxins as well.  My goal was for the toxins to be taken care of safely and not be released into my milk.  I am sure some did, and for insurance I gave the baby some clay as well.  So if he did get some toxins, he had a way to deal with some of it. 

Well, I am getting very, very sleepy.  Time to catch some z's.  I wish I had some pictures.  That will have to wait.  Until?  That's ok, life happens.  We are trying to be careful.  We are making emergency preparedness a priority and as such some things will have to wait until we have obtained some needed supplies.  Man I wish money grew on trees :-)  Ha, ha!!  There are so many things on my wish list and it can be hard to leave that list in God's hands, for His timing.  For example, besides my camera, there is a homeopathic course that I really want to take.  Not only is it a year long, but you also get to have personal tutoring with the homeopath.   But God knows this, I am sure He can make a way, should He really think I need to take the course :-)  I am at peace with this. 

Ok, off to get some sleep.  I'll need it to tackle our spring cleaning.  Thankfully we will be headed into our day with at least a decently clean house.  That will save us time, so we can jump into decluttering, organizing and deep cleaning.  Can't wait!

powering down

I know, I don't write in ages, then two posts in one day.  Actually I am hopping on here to say that in a wee bit I will be powering down our computers for a spell.  We have so, so, so much work to do around here and the computers are a temptation to all.  I've been doing a bunch of dehydrating, the kids and Jeremiah have been doing a bunch of outside work, and in the process our house is a heap of a mess.  It has become evident that we do not have a firm foundation in chores and diligence.  There will be a ton more gardening to do, goat babies are due to arrive in two weeks (MILKING soon, woo hoo!), more dehydrating, and I am hoping to try my hand at pressure canning meat.  We are taking an early break from schooling to jump into more decluttering and totally devote ourselves to working on being diligent in the everyday small stuff.  I will probably be checking email here or there, but I am really going to try to stay off till we get our house in order. 

My main goal will be to get the girls working on their own, without me having to stand over them.  I think it will help if we have set times during the day that the work gets done.  Although they each have an assigned room, things like laundry and dishes have been a hassle.  Not to mention that they would be involved in something when I call out it's time to to tidy their rooms, making the whole process take forever because they would want to finish up what they were doing.  There are a lot of things they want to accomplish, but we keep putting time in nonessentials, there by decreasing our time to put towards the things we really want to get done.  Not sure how this will all work out.  I do have two sheets that divide the work of the dishes and laundry between us.  Set days/ or times to accomplish those tasks.  Plus, for a time I think I am going to box up a bunch of stuff to put in the attic to make cleaning up an easier task.  It is obvious that the decluttering I have already done was not enough, since we are not taking care of the things that were left down here.  So box, box, box.  Or maybe bag, bag, bag as I do not believe we have any boxes on hand. 

I am looking forward to this time.  It will be difficult, but I am sure it will pay dividends in the long run.  Please, if you think of it, do pray for us.  This is going to require a LOT of work on my part.  I am ever so thankful I have more energy, due to taking a week to do a juice fast.  Seriously, I was thinking I would never have energy ever again!  GAPS has done a lot for my health, but having energy wasn't one of them!  I will write more about the reasons, and how we handled the juice fasting (Jeremiah and myself).  I plan on juice fasting every other week for a couple of months.  I wanted to do just one long juice fast, but that is not financially possible.  So far so good.  I've been making sure to do a LOT of detoxing supplements to make sure they do not get recycled.  I am assuming it is helping as only the first day of the juice fast was hard.  After that I was fine, more energy by the day.             

Interview over at Gaps Diet Journey

So a few weeks ago I received an email.  It came from Starlene, who writes over at GAPS Diet Journey. Her blog was one of the first one's I came across, writing about the diet.  I was in full research mode, trying to read all I could about other people's experiences.  So it came as a surprise, a delighted surprise, to see an email from her asking if she could interview me on our family's experience with the GAPS diet.  We chatted this past weekend.  It went well, I had a lot of fun talking with her.  We had a lot in common.  I learned a few more things as well.  She passed along an awesome pizza crust recipe (GAPS legal) that we tried out yesterday.  Yes, we did have pizza for Easter.  It was wonderful, though I do feel bad that we were lacking any sort of tradition for this holiday.  I need to get on the ball with that, you know, before all the kids leave home.  Sigh. 

Anyways, on to the interview.  You can check it out HERE.  Starlene wanted to know how a large family managed GAPS.  By the way, she happens to be the oldest of seven :-) 

He is Risen!

HAPPY EASTER

It is early here, only a few are awake.  I thought I would take a moment to wish everyone a wonderful Easter.  We do not have any plans...at all.  I feel poorly about it all, since we usually do a little something special for Easter. But the past month has been a very busy one.  Which evidenced itself with my lack of blogging.  Believe it or not, I took maybe two pictures this whole past month!  No crafting either.  Wow, what a sad state of affairs.  Things were just a wee bit busy in other areas of life, and so a necessary break for the above mentioned activities.  As a side note, my camera is not working :-(  It threw me an error code a week ago.  From what it sounds like, it may be an expensive fix.  There is no foreseeable way for us to get it fixed as there are so many other more important things that need money to go to, the camera isn't one of them.  Thankfully I do have the family camera, but that just means no more bokeh :-)  There is much to catch up on, lots of things that we have accomplished.  I will wait till another day.  Plus I have to share with you all about  my interview with Starlene from "Gaps Diet Journey"!  Lots of fun.  She has opened the door to new recipes!! We were in need of some new recipes around here.  I try to keep cooking simple, so that throws out a lot of possibilities with many GAPS recipes.  We only use common ingredients, and quick prep times.  I'll link up to all of that tomorrow.  Until then, have a blessed day.  

Flannery's birthday

Finally!  Flannery's birthday post!  We had an wonderful birthday bash for her.  Unfortunately as we were leaving my stomach felt unsettled.  I thought it was the cake that Isabella made, as she decided to put some whipping cream in the frosting.  Ever since we got the Norovirus a few weeks ago my stomach has been reacting to eggs and milk.  However the following morning a few other kids were complaining of being sick to their stomachs.  Hmmm.  And then the following two nights I was up in the middle of the night with sick children...the dreaded tummy bug!!!  So this post kept getting pushed off.  I had tried to correct a few pictures in PE as the white balance was off.  Flannery loves this one setting on my camera, but when you take pictures in the dimmed light...well everything is yellow.  Something is messed up with my PE because it wouldn't let me edit the white balance!  So below you will see a lot of yellow pictures.  And like the recent few posts I've had, Flannery has taken most of the pictures. 

The birthday girl!  She was to BIG 10 this year.  Double digits.  A big deal around here :-)

This year she asked for a birthday party with friends.  She has never had one with friends before so we said, 'yes'.  With being so ill for so many weeks that left little time for making things up ahead of time.  I wanted to try to stick with our budget so we had to get creative with what we had on hand.  We opted to make our first batch of soap, crochet some wash cloths, put together some note pads and package it all in some cute handmade bags.  This was all done the night before and the morning of the party!  Above is the beeswax we used in our soap.

The handy dandy stick blender.  This made the soap trace in about two minutes time!

  The scale we used to do Jed's weigh in's has found a new use :-)  Soap making ingredients need to be measured by weight (with the exception of the water/milk).

This step I messed up on.  The beeswax was the only solid fat in the recipe I was using.   I melted the wax on the stove and when I poured it into the other oils it instantly solidified. I thought that the heat of the crockpot would have remelted it.  I was wrong.  After giving it ample time to melt I had to take it out along with some of the liquid oils to remelt the wax.

Flannery helped me with everything except the steps that included working with lye.  Here she is filling the molds with the soap.

Our soap came out very rustic looking :-)  All those lumps and bumps were in the finished product.  But hey, soap will still work no matter what shape it is in.

The following morning we pulled the soap out of the molds, just waiting to wipe off the extra oil (used to make sure it didn't stick to the mold.

All cut into bars and ready to be packaged.

These are the bags we made to put the soap, wash cloth and paper pad into.  I thought they came our very cute.

We put the recipients name on the draw string with beads.

Just a neat picture by Flannery.

 Isabella made the cakes, and Flannery got to  help decorate them.  The frosting is melting a bit as it is made with a ton of butter.  The party was also located at an indoor pool, so it was a bit on the warm side.

Jonah was waiting ever so patiently to cut into the cake.  We let them have a juice 'box' thingie.  My kids were goo goo over them :-)  Sugar is so very addictive!! We have other pictures of the party but none with just my kiddos.  I try not to post anyone else's family if I haven't asked permission. 

We all had a wonderful time.  We were all wiped out afterwards!  I am sure a lot of that was due to us having the beginnings of the illness in us (without our knowing).  We are starting to feel better today.  I plan on going around spraying everything with thieves oil.  I think part of the problem was that I was so worn out from being up all night with sick kiddos that I wasn't on top of wiping everything down like I needed to be.  We shall see.

The Truck Fiasco

Before I get to the truck fiasco I thought I would write about the progress we are making in our garden areas.  Mostly because I started to upload the pictures in the wrong order :-)

Isabella is our go to hard worker.  She and I were clearing the jungle we call the back yard.  Yesterday,  while I was out front working, Isabella said she wanted to continue in the back.  I didn't think she was actually going to do the above!  This is just a small little thing above, but she ended up cutting down two of our smaller trees!  By herself.  They were only about 4 inches or so in diameter.  A lot of progress has been made by her alone!

See these?  This is what we have been up against in the back yard.  Like I said the other day, the picture that Flannery took was of the easy stuff we were digging up.

 Doesn't she look like she is having fun?  Actually my girls much prefer to work outside than inside!

 Saoirse did a wonderful job of hauling off the stuff we chopped down.

The goats did their best to help :-)  You see all that brush in the foreground?  That's the stuff we were up against. 

 How does one get any work done with little boys who want to run off?  With a port-a-crib!  Life saver I tell ya.

 Flannery requested that I take a picture of her shoveling.  She was helping to keep the dirt coming so my newspapers wouldn't fly away. 



I'm standing over at the dirt pile, and from there you can see how the boys are doing.  You can ever so slightly see the newspapers off to the left.  Our front yard slopes down, away from the house.  

 This dirt pile has been a blessing in so many ways.  Not only for the dirt itself, but it keeps the older two boys occupied!

 This is something that Isabella found when she was clearing the back yard.  Anyone know what it is?  We find the strangest things around here!


 

 More dirt fun.  Too  much dirt fun actually...

This little hand is responsible for losing this....

The boys decided it would be fun to hide their petshops in the dirt.  Um, yeah....now they don't know where they are!!  We found three of them today.  I'm not sure how many are still left.  

The found petshops needed a bath :-) 

 Oh, look, more things found!

 This picture is too funny!  Flannery took all the pictures in this post, but two.

 She was trying to get a picture of the frog in mid jump.  She came close.

 My work in progress.  The row is over 36 feet long!  Today I got far enough to make it past the smaller trees, so the current rows are probably 48 or so feet long.  This is where the fruit trees will go.

A free tip....don't let your newspapers sit out and get wet....it makes it a LOT harder and more time consuming to work with them.  Ask me how I know.  I am sure this could have been done in half the time.  I almost thought of scraping the wet papers and starting with fresh ones, but that seemed like a waste.  I am happy to say that we only have about 20 newspapers left!!!  I'm definitely going to have to make a run for more.  As of last night, we now have two loads of mulch on top of some of the papers.  Many more loads will be needed to cover it to the depth we need it at.

 Jed, climbing the 'mountain'.  We've had lots of baths going on around here.  But dirt is good, right?




 Ok.  On to the truck fiasco.  A few days ago Jeremiah brought back a load of mulch while it was dark out.  The destination for that particular load was in front of the goat barn.  I had explained that it was like quick sand back there.  Jeremiah thought I was only talking about the area right in front of the goat barn.  He found out the hard way that the whole middle area was like quick sand as well.


  

 It was forcasted to rain the following day.  We tried to get it out that night, but it was stuck tight!  The under belly of his truck was resting on the ground.

 After asking our church group if anyone had any chain, we had to go out and buy some. One end secured here...

 ...the other to my van.  Now, I know our van has some V-8 engine or such, but I really, really didn't think we were going to get it out of there.  At least not without a lot of effort.  I was wrong.  Jeremiah told me to go really slow.  I can't believe how easily the van pulled it out!

 You can see the tire coming up.

 Now it's out, and I just had to pull it to the gate.

 From my view I could see we were making a big mess of the yard!  Not that it isn't a mess normally.

 Yay!  It's free!

That's a whole lot o mud.  It was easy to pull out, but now Jeremiah's truck is kind of shaking when he is driving.  There wasn't much to do about that.  There was no way for anyone to get behind his truck to pull it out as they would have sunk as well.

That's a day in the life of us :-)