summer

People tried to prepare me for the southern summer kicking my trash. They said, “No No! Humdity is different! It’s worse!” I call shenanigans. Yes, it’s humid. Yes, I’ve discovered that while some women glisten, I sweat big, ugly farmer drops of sweat straight down the tip of my nose. However, I’m still waiting for the inevitable trash kicking people said was coming my way. I’m pretty sure my garden growing out of control makes up for any extra sweat I’m exuding this summer.

I find myself more and more looking forward to December. Not as a respite from heat, but as a respite from busy-ness. Don’t get me wrong, I love what life is dishing out right now. 2+ hours of outside work a day, plus homeschool, and birthdays, a big church project and and and. It’s a pace that actually really suits me. But it also makes taking a month off of all of it, something I’m wistfully looking forward too. In December, the garden will be asleep for the winter. Canning should be done, pigs processed, Mei bred but not in milk yet, and chickens settled into a routine. It will be a time to rest. And for now, in the midst of the crazy it is a happy thing to look forward to.

Speaking of chickens…look who’s laying eggs a month and a half earlier than expected! Huzzah the Fowl! Oh and I have a fun story for you about our delightfuly precious poultry. So we have been working their tractors slowly back to Mei’s yard where we decided they will take up residence. A new coop is being prepared (More on that later! It is a tale of trees and chain saws) and after going back and forth we think it will be better for them. After our success with Mei and electric fencing we researched and were told that a few lower strands of hot wire (electrified wire) would keep chickens in a yard. Awesome we said. Perfect we said. And the extra strands were installed and lit up. The day came and we moved the heavy tractors into the yard and cut off a panel of chicken wire to let them out. They were thrilled! And Mei was beside herself with curiosity and new creatures to investigate. Then the first brave bird approached the fence. We giggled a little because no matter how mature and compassionate you are, the thought a chicken being lightly zapped is kind of funny. Um NO! They didn’t even notice the wire on their bellies! Neil tested it to make sure it was still hot (it definitely was) and turns out our chickens are just immune. It’s darkish by this point so we hope they will just go inside their tractor coops and go to sleep and we’d deal with them in the morning. Nope. They followed us up the path. We gave up and went in the house to check on kids. Neil went back out and 20 min later I found myself in a hummid North Carolina forest, drowning in bugs, chasing chickens. Some of them fell asleep where they stood so we just had to track them down in the brush and put them back on the roosts. Oh. My. Gosh. Well we manged to get all but one (thank you cell phone flashlights!) and get them secure at least for the night (we also had to move the tractors back out of the yard because Mei kept messing with the makeshift cardboard panels. Dumb cow). So the current state of our chickens is that they are secured but in Mei’s yard. We will be letting them go free tomorrow night and we will see what happens. Theoretically they should stay close to their food, water, and nest boxes, but we shall see. In the mean time, Eggs!

Our first 4th of July was a low key affair but it was perfect. I canned, we grilled, there were sparkles.

Expert corn shucker and grill master in training.

Pretty sure if they were casting “Expecto Petronum” this is exactly what they would both look like, respectively.

If you have to move across the country and are the type to miss your family, the best thing to do is just talk them into moving with you. It worked for us! Grandparents are moved in, my mom is settled in New York, and my dad will be here as soon as he retires (can. not. wait.) But before mom headed north she took the greatest family pictures…here are just a few:

Have I mentioned how much I love living here? here’s a list of what to expect (hopefully soon) here on comfyposy: 10th birthday party, pig/chicken shelter from our own trees, harvest summary and fall garden plans, and 3rd birthday party, and possibly blueberries and fig trees!

 

Independence Day

Leading with your strong points is always good advice. So I’m leading with the best family picture we have had in a while. I love color coordinated holidays!

  

Can I ask for a moment of silence, in my behalf, as we have reached this stage? There never were two more contented partners in crime…

  

He looks all growed up with his hawk and skate shoes and he was lighting off fireworks like a pro. It was apparent that he has begun a life long love affair with all things fire.

  

Food and Sparklers. Life is good.

 

At least she has moved from “fireworks will cost you therapy bills in the future” to “I kind of like them sometimes, but mostly I’m still terrified of them.” Grandma was a champ and sat with her on the porch where they could barely see the occaisional sparkle. Progress!

  

This is us being profound and patriotic. This is CoCo eating a popper. Which is basically the same thing.

I rocked the responsible parent thing this year, and we read the Declaration of Independence out loud to the kids. Honestly, the state of our country and the direction it’s headed makes me want to run away to North Carolina (oh, it’s going to happen) and hide on my perfectly self-sufficient off-the-grid farm (I’ll knit my own clothes, dang it!) and it makes me wonder if we could ever be that great again. I love my country and everything it stands for and was meant to be. Sigh. For now though I can look at my family and situation and feel a deep sense of gratitude for what we have accomplished and the fact that we could not do what we do in any other country in the world. I cried when I read the last sentence of that amazing document and reminded my kids of all those who died and currently fight to give us those freedoms.

 

 

Happy 4th!

Really the only problem I have with blogging, is the fact that everything (especially holidays) are blogged a few days after the fact and that’s if I’m very on top of things, which is usually not the case. Oh well. Was your holiday everything you hoped it would be? Mine was. And it wasn’t. I had a great time, don’t get me wrong, it’s just this holiday (even more than most holidays) brings out the homeschooling mom guilt something fierce. We read the preamble for the Declaration of Independence Monday night for our family night. That was it. No craftiness, no in depth unit study of the Revolution, no memorization or reenactments. But here’s where the guilt happened…I’m totally good with our lack of academic exploitation of this holiday. However, I was feeling the guilt enough to make any homeschooling mother proud, until my 6.87 year old and 3.5 year old stood up, put their hands over their hearts and belted out the National Anthem. They know it and they understand it. It got me to thinking that they know how much their Mom and Dad value and love this country and that’s enough for now. We don’t need to do more if we’ve got that covered. Guilt overcome!

Here is a run down of the highlights.

 

We swam. And by swam I mean “wade in ankle deep pond water while Daddy emptied the pool with a 5 gallon bucket.” Refilling and running the filter might just make the pool swimmable for me again. I say for me, because the rest of my family doesn’t care about silly things like being able to see your feet when you swim.

Grandma hosted the BBQ and we figured since it was so stinking hot, a movie would be nice. “Wreck it Ralph” is one of our current favorites, (go see it!) so we piled on the couch and watched a bit of it. Uncle Ian is our family game master so he and Neil got their geek on and played “Boss Monster,” which is every bit as gamer geek as it sounds. Also the munchkins loved it. Especially Layna, who knows that cards of any sort are meant to be eaten.

 

 

My little pyromaniacs-in-training. My big pyromaniacs teaching the rising generation.

 

This one. Sigh. Little little girl cried, giggled and clapped her way through the fireworks. Mostly cried, and clapped when they would stop. But she loved the “jumping jacks” and ground spinners that made silly noises so the evening wasn’t a total trauma fest. She’ll learn to love them, right?

 

 

Sparklers, ground spinners, and things that launch in the air and make noises…the cheapest stuff we bought…were the favorites far and away. You’d think we would know this now as veteran parents. The fountains were fun, but after 3 minutes you start wondering if this burst is the last one. But they are beautiful, especially the crackling star burst ones. All in all though, it was a nice holiday. I just need to sort out my guilt issues.

Good food, good people, and my husband turned 12 again…that was my favorite part.

Very Serious Business.

My husband is the king of excel spread sheets. He has used them for everything…responsible uses like our budget/ledger and less responsible uses like possible element combinations in a computer game (there were about a billion and I don’t know that I have ever seen a greater waste of time than that game). Last night I knew our discussion of which fireworks to buy today was serious business. My husband had busted out Excel.

We love fireworks. Living in the desert is kind of a downer in that regard…you know, all that flammable brush. All aerial anythings are illegal. But we soldier on, doing what we can to eek out the most awesome Fourth of July experience possible within the confines of our stupid county laws. Sigh. Anyways, spread sheet shopping list and coupons in hand we headed out of the county this morning to buy fireworks.

 

After we shopped (and I chased Miss “I’m two and have my own agenda so back on off Mom!” all over the store) we stopped at a McDonald’s play place to use up some energy before getting back in the car to go pick up our new rabbits (That story is coming soon). See that picture of Garyn? That is some nifty photographic foreshadowing right there.

 

That is Naomi’s scared fairy face. She was a fairy and as we all know fairies are afraid of humans. And who knew that the coolest play place ever was in a tiny town in Nevada?

 

It was a apparently too long a drive (one hour there and one back) out to Pahrump, the home of our closest Phantom store. Little man and Little girl were about to strangle each other on the way home and Little Little girl took the easy way out. But we made it home with our loot and two new additions to the farm!

 

Here is all of the stuff we got. Since we are limited to fountains, we decided to do what we did last time we bought fireworks at an awesome store…we split them between 3 events. I mean, you can only watch so many fountains before they blur together. So this stuff is going to be for this Fourth of July, this New Year’s Eve, and next Fourth of July. I’m so excited!!! And we may or may not have set off some ground flowers. Tonight. Right next to our rabbit run. Because we are responsible adults like that. Oops.

Fourth of July: Fireworks

 

The day started early with poppers. Naomi was not a fan of pulling them herself because we kept correcting how she was holding them, the string was too hard to pull, and the one time she did do it (left) it burned her. So she happily “helped” Daddy pop poppers the rest of the day.

 

I debated stocking up on these because Garyn loved them so much. Just to have them to bring out if he was bored or had done a good job at something (You cleaned your room? Awesome, 5 poppers for you!) But then when my font room looked like this times 10 (right) by the end of the night, I thought better of it.

 

For the most part these guys are buds. It makes me smile really big.

 

I really don’t know why Dads don’t get as much credit for multitasking as Moms do. Little girl loves her some flashy lights.

 

Guess who threw a fit and refused to wear her dress and was adamant about her foot-wear choice? Guess who will be wearing his Fourth of July outfit for the next five days straight if I let him?

 

For the next few years Fourth of July will be easy. A mega pack of poppers and snappers, a few boxes of sparklers and a few fountains will be all my kids want. Then we can sit on the back porch and enjoy the Strip fireworks (we have a perfect view) and our enthusiastic neighbors with their illegal fireworks. We will have to deal with three terrified goats and a cranky rooster, none of whom had any qualms about loudly voicing their dismay at the fireworks. Especially Will…he tried his hardest to assert dominance over the noisy fireworks but lost miserably, poor rooster.

Fourth of July: Food

Because really this holiday is about two things, once of course you get past the reading of the Declaration of Independance and having a nice long chat with the kids about how our country rocks hardcore and how hard men and women have worked to make it so awesome, but I digress. Two things…Food and Fireworks.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about using holidays as an excuse to eat food that is ridiculously bad for you, goodness knows I ususally do. However, since we were on our own this year (all of our in-town relations were…uh..well…out of town), I thought we’d shoot for a bit healthier than normal. Goat milk yogurt with berries and cool whip. I did say a bit healthier.

 

We don’t have a barebeque, plus is was raining anyways (I know. The one day in June or July that it will rain and it was on the Fourth), so I did Sloppy Joes for dinner.  It was a big hit and watermelon is like candy so no questions there.

 

I’m sorry. Did I say it was a big hit? Wow, what an understatment. I knew I’d have to clean her and her chair whether I fed her or not so I thought I’d let her have a go at feeding herself. We laughed for about 5 minutes straight just watching her. Best Mom choice of the day! And the sink was closer than the tub. Best Dad choice of the day! I love it when my husband has awesome ideas like bath-ing the baby in the kitchen sink.

 

In the name of journalistic integrity or something, here is what our apple pie really looked like. I wish it looked prettier, and it probably would have had I listened to Neil and waited the correct amount of time for it to set up and cool. But meh. It was going to be eaten and no one else was ever going to see it so I gave in and we ate warm gooey falling apart pie.

I hope your day was also filled with delicious food and cute people to eat it with. Happy Independance Day!