Every project we’ve done so far in the “yard” has been geared towards something that produces food or is food. So far projects have included things like the barn, fence, chicken coop, electric to the barn and coop, water to the animals, etc… The only thing I’ve done to the yard is to cut back the brush and let wild grasses grow in. Not much of a yard, and not particularly good at keeping the mud down when it rains.
Now that some of the major projects are done, and all the animals have homes and water, I decided to … Read the rest
Sydney got a new piano teacher recently. For several years, she’s been tolerating lessons from Liz, but wasn’t making much progress. About six months ago we decided to try farming her out to an outside teacher to see if taking Mom out of the mix would help. Two teachers and several months later… boy did it ever!
Syd has found her soul-mate in the music world, and is enjoying learning and playing. We almost can’t get her to stop practising. Her teacher is working with her on creative stuff like improvisation and arranging pieces herself, which has really touched off … Read the rest
This was the most dramatic northern-lights display I saw in Alaska. It happened on Valentines day 2012. The kids and I spent almost an hour outside at 30+ below zero watching this because it was so beautiful.
Can’t sleep tonight, so I’ll upload a few older pictures from the time-frame when we weren’t updating the blog. These are from when Isaac and Sydney tested for Green-Belt in Tae Kwan Do. The instructor frequently had them spar each other until Sydney learned to fight back instead of just try to run away from her little brother.
Nippa, the milk machine, generally produces almost exactly the amount of milk we tend to drink every day as a family. However, when one or more of us aren’t here, the milk can begin to pile up in the fridge. Recently I spent several days out of town for work, and Sydney had spent a week at summer church camp. That translated into a couple gallons that were threatening to go bad if we didn’t do something useful with them. To add to the problem, Liz had bought a half-gallon of cream from the dairy down the street, but had … Read the rest
Liz has never really liked the idea of an “inside dog,” coyotes were wreaking havoc on our chickens, and we were planning on going on a family vacation for two weeks and leaving the Dog outside to “protect” the other animals and to make it much easier on the family who was going to be feeding and watering the animals. The dog would need somewhere to get out of the weather. Because the barn is behind the back pasture fence and I don’t like the idea of the dog hanging out in the chicken coop I decided the best option … Read the rest
Liz came home the other day with a new definition. I doubt it would show up in Webster’s or any other authoritative dictionary, but anyone who has ever had boys will almost certainly recognize it.
I’m not sure why, but Liz and the Kids keep seeing faces in our food. Just for fun, I’ve decided to share a few that they’ve taken pictures of…
Happy hens make happy eggs apparently. I don’t honestly know if these eggs were from our flock of backyard chickens or if they were from one of the last dozen or so we purchased at the local meat market before our buzzards started laying. I think this is just before we started getting our own eggs. The ones we’ve been getting have yolks so orange it would look unnatural if you … Read the rest
UPDATE: Apparently someone who loves us read this and assumed the accident happened the day I posted the story. For clarification purposes, and to avoid any more panicked phone calls, this is the accident we were in back in early November 2013. I know I’m bad about telling y’all about stuff that happens, but you can be sure that if I end up riding in an ambulance again, you won’t hear about it first through a blog I keep mostly to please myself and write things in a format not dictated by my employer.
Since we took a rather long break posting updates, I’ve decided to go back over old pictures and pull a few out to share. A little over a year ago, I took the two boys and went hiking in a large natural area not far from where we were living at the time. Michael, being two at the time, wasn’t much of a hiker, but had fun when we stopped and he could get down and play around.
