Where have I been!

My brother in law, Jacob, was visiting for the week from Tn. We stayed quite busy, and I have not had time to upload and edit photos. Today is our first day back to school, I am not quite sure how to juggle everything yet! No pictures today, but here is our back to school schedule.

Monday:

Math, Reading, French, Typing
Science/History
Spelling/Handwriting
Writing Strands
Language Arts

Music Practice
Stretching/strength exercises/PE
Swim at 4:15-5:30 with Team

Tuesday:

Math, Reading, French, Typing
Science/History
Spelling/Handwriting
Geography

Music Practice
Stretching/strength exercises/PE
Swim at 4:15-5:30 with Team

Wednesday:

Math, Reading, French, Typing
Science/History
Spelling/Handwriting
Writing Strands
Language Arts

Music Practice
Stretching/strength exercises/PE
Swim at 4:15-5:30 with Team

Thursday:

Math, Reading, French, Typing
Science/History
Spelling/Handwriting
Geography

Music Practice
Stretching/strength exercises/PE
Swim at 4:15-5:30 with Team

Friday:

Math, Reading, French, Typing
Science/History
Spelling/Handwriting
Writing Strands
Language Arts

Music Lessons
Stretching/strength exercises

The End.

Just kidding. That is the school work portion and lessons we know already. Art is independent, music practice is done by themselves, I teach Tad guitar and Nathalie piano. Nathalie just started and I know she doesnt want to do it but too bad. Swim is 4 days a wk until they go into the next team level, then it is 5 days a wk. Meets are on weekends.

The stretching/strength is to help with swimming and tumbling. Tumbling wont start until September, I dont have a day/time yet. Tad will also start diving lessons in September. Nathalie will have monthly orthodontist visits.

The curriculum we are using is mixed as usual. Math-Singapore, Reading-McGuffy readers, French-Rosetta Stone and other supporting materials, Typing-Mavis Beacon, Science-Apologia, History- Story of the World, Spelling-Spelling power, Handwriting-cursive that I write out or give dictation for, Writing-Writing Strands, Language arts-Language Lessons, Geography-videos and books from library of choice and Seterra for maps.

Science/History and Spelling/Handwriting are written this way to denote to the children that they are every other day. They also know that we alternate amounts, one week science and spelling are 3 days a wk and history/handwriting are 2 and it changes up the next wk so each lesson gets an equal focus. We cannot fit every subject, every day. But each time we do science or history, we do much more than the curriculum would have us do per day so we stay more than caught up.  

In addition, we have to continue doing all of our barn chores, outside chores, keep the house clean, laundry done, cooking done and sewing completed. They continue to work on sewing, knitting, animal husbandry and Lego creations. We are training for our first Tri this year as well, running and swimming now and the kids cycle regularly.

Cooking takes up a big portion of my morning time, and I teach while I do this. Today I made bread and tortillas. We need both for the week. For dinner, I took out enchiladas. I do freezer meals when possible, and if not I need to use the crockpot. We are gone from 3:45-6:00 4 evenings a week for swim. I swim at 5:30-6:30 3 mornings a week which does not affect my schedule, just my sleep.

Afternoons are used playing games, cleaning up, sewing, folding laundry and making sure the kids completed all of their seat work, grading their work, and any other chores that arise. I am pretty busy, so I likely wont be blogging as much as I did during the summer. The barn is nearly done, just awaiting trim, doors and windows which we have. The new shed is nearly done, needs siding yet and a bit of roof. It went up quickly especially with all the fishing that was done last wk. I will update with photos later!

Memories

Remember this?

Today we were looking back through the blog to see how we did the roof on the small barn in Ks. I came across this post. I have been reading back through for about an hr now. I need to have a book made of the blog, one for each year. I love to look back and see what we were doing. I love pictures of Ks, more than any other place that I have been.

Camp fire

My son is telling me about power cords, slides, combinations, reverb... and I am lost so I thought I would blog instead while I enjoy the sounds of "a beautiful guitar."

Give a man a camera... He and Tad built our fire area. They made a fire pit and a rock oven inside of this graveled bed. The bed, to me, looks like it may have had a swing set once. the people who built this house though, in 2005, had a handicapped child who could not play at all. Then the 2nd owners, we bought the house from, had no swingset. So I really dont know the intended purpose but we have made a cook out area.

Most of these rocks, the large ones, were hauled in by the last owner for his son to do rock crawling with his remote control cars. We have found uses for some, but really there are just rocks everywhere here.We live on a mountain, if you dig down 1 ft, you come up with rocks bigger than my head. And you wont find much dirt, mostly just rocks.

Tad setting up chairs. They use the wheel barrow to move rocks, wood, each other. Poop. Straw. Feed. Possibly cases of beer. Just kidding.. we dont buy that much at once! My boys cooked salmon, rice and cornbread. They wanted potatoes but we were out. the salmon came out great, Nathalie doesnt like it and I am not super fond of fish.She would probably rather eat a live snake. We have friends who give us fresh salmon, because they love to fish and they have boats so they have too much fish from having so much fun. We like to fish, but we dont have a boat. And NO my son and husband, we do not have the money for a boat. Or a 4 wheeler. Or a 4 seater.

Nathalie is working the bellows. A metal pipe and a trash bag made good coals very quickly which were needed in the stone oven area for the cornbread.

See? This is inventive. I think Frank read this in a book. I dont know why the trashbag doesnt melt. Doesnt the metal tube get hot?

Another book thing, we read a lot of books on living in the wild, surviving, living off the land. They recommend a lot of outside cooking techniques. This is my spider dutch oven, which I love.It made great cornbread. He put coals on the pebbles, put the oven on them, put coals on the top. It took a long time, probably 45 min but that was because our recipe was a bit large...enough for say, 16 people! We had a good time, it is always good to have fires in Ak. Always. It is too hot to have a fire um...never. If it actually reaches 75 and sunny you are lucky as hell and wont be starting a fire, you will likely strip nude and worship the sun in the middle of your yard until a cloud passes over and you are freezing and still vitamin D deficient. And no, taking vit D wont help as the body only absorbs about 10 % of supplements, mostly its a waste of money and hard on your liver. 

A Red Barn

Nathalie's mean face

Tad's I dont care face

We bought a sprayer for this project, stated yesterday evening. Frank and I taped the roof off and started spraying. The whole job took about 2 hrs.

The guy at lowes said for us to roll it after Frank sprayed so this was my job. It makes it work into the siding better.

Tad and Nathalie took turns being gophers, photographers, watching the paint can for when it ran out and sometimes doing the rolling.

Paint can watching. The kids did well, we have been getting them on a better schedule. They always work hard, but they have been tired. They are going to bed between 8 and 8:30 for now, they get up at 6 to get ready to swim.

Finished with side one, I finished rolling it while Frank and kids moved around to front.

Frank painted the underhang red as well, but the facia boards and trim (trim not up yet) will be white. He is out buying 1x4s on his lunch break, when he gets home from work we will paint them. okay no, he called. 1x4s are 5 $+ each, 2x4s are 2.38. So we are ripping 2x4s down which is fine. Much cheaper.

Can you spot the duck? She was not alarmed, she never is. The turkeys are pretty calm too. The goats moved back to the little building and dog kennel until tomorrow morning. They would be paint-eaters.

The ladders have to be adjusted each time we move them, we have 2x6 scraps that we put under the ladder feet as needed.

He did all the hard work...Just kidding, spraying is easy! It went really fast, faster than I expected. Usually Frank is over-optimistic but this time he was right, it went fast.

Nathalie was making faces at me, trying to catch me making an ugly one back but she never did. Ok fine I deleted them.

What the...oh Tad had the camera. All sorts of weird things were photographed. I will save you from the ones that involved poop.

Helping daddy. When we were taping, I said to her "come around here with me, you are mine for this job." She says, "oh but mama, I belong to daddy!"

Sometimes the paint was too heavy so I had to go empty my brush elsewhere, and other times the cracks were not filled well enough. It will take us some time but there will be other jobs to paint as well.

See the red shirt? I look horrible in red so it is my paint shirt, my crap shirt. And yet, somehow it is nicer than some of my NICE clothes.

Accessing and issue. I dont remember what it was and likely I was not even listening when he was telling me about it. But I bet I handed up tools!

We needed the gate open for a bit, and the turkey wants to come out. She often does and goes right back in with us. She is very friendly.

The painting went so fast! It seemed like the moving of ladders, tools and paint operation took longer than each wall. It was a great experience really. worth the money.

"Hey turkey. You know what I am making? I am carving a tiny canoe out of a piece of birchbark."

"See my canoe turkey? You can taste it if you like to. It wont hurt you. "

Nathalie was "helping."

Both of the kids wanted to use the paint sprayer so they did on the back wall. Shortly after Tad began, it quit working! Just quit, sounded like it burned out.

Frank trying to find out why. It is brand new, and its a nice brand! It has good reviews. I would be surprised if it burned up the pump just painting one barn, with breaks in between spraying.

After trying to fix it for some time, Nathalie gave it a try. "Daddy its working. Am I magic?" Yes baby. You be magic.

After her turn, he sprayed quickly and tried to get it finished before it quit again. It quit at about the last 2x3 foot section which was not hard to do by hand. He cleaned it well, and will just have to exchange it. Perhaps this one had a glitch.Glad it worked so far though so we didnt have to exchange it yesterday while trying to get it painted on our ONE sunny day. It is already gray again and supposed to rain all week. As usual. makes hard painting weather.

So there you have it, I need to back off and take a photo showing the green roof with the red barn. The contrast is nice. We did a good job! we are getting there, slowly but surely. Today I am exhausted and want a nap. I was up at 4, awake at 3. I have woken at 3, 3 days in a row. I do not know why I am waking, I just lay in bed. Now this morning was my first day to swim from 5:30-6:30 a.m. I am pretty worn! Will be back to swim again on Friday, and will continue 3 days a week year around.

T

The garden

My tomatoes are thriving, but I think we need to recover the greenhouse this weekend. It is getting close to the 30s at night and that will drop it too low in the greenhouse. We are HOPING to get lots of tomatoes before the plants are frozen! If we can get it recovered, we can possibly put a heat source in there.

Some baby butternut squash, once again I dont know that I will get any before the freeze but I will pick them underdeveloped to at least add to soups and stews or feed to the chickens. Anything that lowers groceries!

My peas are climbing fence, they are full of flowers. Peas grow well here, but like everything grow slow in the cold summer. I have a huge broccoli here that is not heading, disappointing.

These broccolis just started heading! I LOVE fresh broccoli and we will freeze all that we cannot eat right away. This is something I usually have to buy frozen, so if we can keep the greenhouse at 40+ I will grow it all winter. both cabbage and broccoli will grow at about 45 comfortably, a lot faster at 60 degrees though.

This is a bed of butternut squash. These were all started late, all of Frank and Nathalie's squash and pumpkins died.We set them out too early, so I soaked seeds and started more. They sprout faster if soaked. They are late ones, they were put into the bed in late June so I HOPE we will get something out of it. next yr, we know what to do different. Start inside VERY early and build a PVC and 6 mil plastic (double) hoop house over the ENTIRE garden, and make individual hoop houses for raised beds. It will be a good winter project, we wont put up plastic until early may as it cannot handle the snow load. We are hoping to create a southern growing season in this manner. We see other people here doing the same, and I think it will add value to the house. No one would buy this house unless they wanted to live at least sort of the lifestyle we live (I could be wrong) with the barn, winterized greenhouse, fenced yard and barn yard, cold frames in garden. It is very attractive to people like us.

These are my cabbages, they all have heads now about the size of Frank's fist, some a little larger. I am so proud of them! I have never had a fall garden down south so never grew cabbage, it needed cooler weather. These were all grown from heirloom seed, every plant I have on here was grown from heirloom seed. We did buy some plants initially, and they all died. The lettuce that I bought to jump start geese feed failed, but what I planted from seed is thriving, same with the spinach. Well, I didnt buy any spinach plants.

Another squash picture, the winter squash grows well but this one LOOKS like a summer squash. I do think that is deceiving, because I didnt plant any. They would not work well. I hope to have some more summer vegetables next yr in the cold frame but for now I am enjoying the winter bounty as it has been hard to grow it in the past because of heat. The garden is going well, the neighbor says this is an unnaturally cold summer so maybe next summer will bring a huge harvest with a cold frame and warmer weather!

Barn siding

I do not have many pictures of us putting up the siding, it took all 4 of us, or Nathalie was sick and inside resting and it took all 3 of us. So you get finished product...sorry, I am usually good about step by step and humorous captions. Right now I am dealing with a decent sized mouse family that Kitten has moved in as pets, and we are trying to rid our house of them. Mouse potty can be really smelly and hard to clean out of rugs.

Our siding did not end up perfect front center. We could have let it be a mistake elsewhere, but here let everywhere else line up. We are doing a fake "barn" door up top anyway and the trim will cover our error. Our error was in having an 8 ft door that is 8 ft 1.5". That means that 2 pieces of siding are not perfect, and the front of the barn is about 1.5" wider than the back, because well, buildings are not always perfectly square not matter how you try. So the back, is flawless. The front, has one flaw there. Not all of our corners were flawless, but that is the point of trim. Until I remodeled, I had no idea why people wasted their time with molding and corner round. I understand now! Today we are painting the barn red, we bought a paint sprayer and red paint, we will hope and pray for sun! no rain, no gray. We have to have 24 hrs, which does happen up here but no way to know when a big rain shower is coming along,or it may rain for a wk and be sunny for 3 days. It is a crapshoot. After painting, we will measure, cut, miter and fit the trim, then paint it white and nail it up. That just leaves us with doors and windows. We will have two 4 ft sliding doors at the front, and just past the ladder here on the corner of the barn, outside the fence, a regular door. Just like a house door, window part up top. This will be my entry door and we will have a small feed stall when I walk in right there, and a small door from the feed stall into the barn. It is much easier for me to control feeding, and store food without the animals getting in it. Hay storage will be outside of my small door as well. We considered not putting in windows until next summer, but I am not sure that will work. I desperately want light in there,more than just hanging barn lights.

Teeter Totter

Tad taught Nathalie to teeter totter by herself. Oh, excuse me, see saw. When I was growing up, this was called a teeter totter which is what I still think of it as. My sister and I had a metal one, it was light weight and was basically rockers with 3 seats. When my little sister sat in the middle, we were moderate. Alone-we literally had it up on end with one of us vertically up in the air. We LOVED it and would teeter for hours. I think my mom has pictures of us near flying on it before my 2nd birthday.

Nathalie loves it even more than Tad, Frank will often see saw with them, it takes both of them or one of them and a pet rock. Tad chose her rocks well, it scared me. I felt they would roll down and hit her but they do not. He chose rocks with flat bottoms, they are so heavy they hold themselves down. This gives her much enjoyment. She still does not run around much,but she does do this. She is outside sitting on it in the sun right now having her after swim snack of apples and cheese. She fell yesterday running and jumping ONTO the teeter.We all 3 ran to her, I am afraid we all have become a little protective of her and will have to back off to not total spoil her. Credit for both photos goes to Tad as he took them.

Tired

1 sick girl + 1 kitten = full time guardian! This cat sat on her feet much of the time that she was sick. The morning I took her to the ER, I had come out from my bedroom to call the doctor, came back to my room where she was. The cat was on my bed, I said, "baby we are going to the ER lets get some socks on" and the cat jumped down and attached his claws to her blanket over her legs. He is still "checking" on her and following her about a lot.

"Are you threatening her?" He was so cute, being protective. She said it kept her legs warm. The night after we were in the ER he would not stay out of their room, they close their door so kitten wont wake them at night but they had to let him sleep with her and leave the door open. I got up multiple times to check her, and she was fine. I would not have been surprised to have been woken by kitten at my door if her fever had spiked, or she became sick again in any way.

My poor baby...he wont love me for posting this. He has been doing PT on his own for years, and scoring higher on PT test than most of the company, always outrunning younger guys who THINK they will beat Chief. He has now been required to come in for morning PT. As he was able to do PT on his own since he became a Warrant Officer, we didnt expect that and we live 55 miles from base! That means he is getting up at 4 a.m. and he is coming home and working outside until late in the evening. Then he stays up to get the kids off to bed with me. He is worn out, truly. He fell asleep on the couch Sunday afternoon, and woke up to say, "Why did you let me sleep! We have to finish the siding."

He carried on about how he had no cinnamon rolls so long I made a couple of pans. They have been great to go along with cereal and coffee in our early mornings. I put them in his lunch box with his breakfast and today, he ate his lunch for breakfast as well. He is losing more calories every day than he takes in. I mean, unless you add the beer. which is total unreasonable behavior so we will not add that in.

Not an interesting picture, but just one more example of "I have to do EVERYTHING the hard way! We do not have any does in milk, a lady in Wasilla has some lovely Nubians in milk and she will sell 2 to me in late August. she is showing them in Fairbanks first, so cannot let them go. once again, groceries are insane up here and we found almonds really cheap by the pound, they are organic, plain roasted almonds and I can make almond milk. My kids will not drink cows milk, but regardless it is 5$ a gallon. Almond milk is about 2$ a gallon, soy would be 1$ a gallon but no soybeans for sale. I can order them by the bucket, but shipping is cheap if I buy 6 buckets. I do not need 6, so holding out for goats milk by making this. It only adds about 20 min to my day every 4 days or so. I drink it, and it has 50% more calcium than cows milk. I may continue making this to drink, as I do not drink goats milk. I cook with it, use it for cereal, eat ice cream. I just dont like to drink it plain-almond milk may be a milk replacer but it does NOT taste like milk. Ti