Light at the End of the First in a Series of Many Long Tunnels...

So, after over 18 months of constant weekend tree-cutting and beam-milling, Jeff and Randy are finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.  A while back, we had the first half of the lumber inspected, which went VERY well.  Although the second half is not completed, it will be in the next couple months.  This moves us from the lumberjack era of housebuilding to the chiseling and cutting of mortises and tenons, and fitting the pieces of each bent together.  Once the pieces are fit, they will be numbered, disassembled, and stored (just like they did with the pieces of the copula). 

So come on.  Ask me when we're going to start our house.

I love that question.

The Workplace

We have a driveway!

Checks are GOOD!

Copula

Copula

Brace

Dry Fitting

A Full Life

Ok, so never since, well, since EVER, have I been so negligent in my journaling.    I have blogged about my kids, my pregnancies, & about infertility treatment.  Before that, I journaled EVERYTHING.  I have written down my thoughts since middle school.  So, why the recent void?

Yes, I am very busy.  Yes, there are a whole lot of kids in my house, and the domestic duties, farm chores, schooling, class teaching, & house building (not that I am house-building myself at this point, but I am pulling the weight for the lumberjack who is!).  But, I think a big part of my absentia has been my mental state.  I just haven't been engaged, for lack of a better word.  At the end of the day, I have so many things in my mind that would be great posts... but the thought of sitting down and forming the words seems exhausting.  I'm not saying that I've been depressed, exactly.  Well, maybe in some way, but not in a "oh whoa as me" depression... more of a lack of energy.  A lack of spark. 

Part of it is the house project, I know.  We have chosen to bite off a crazy project (again), and it all seems overwhelming.  With this timber-frame approach, Jeff & Randy take on all the engineering (REALLY not my thing), tree-cutting, milling into beams, etc.  My job is to hold down the fort.  Later on, things will be in a different gear, but for the past few years, this has been the formula.  After our Bethlehem renovation, and the renovation of my parents' house that we are in, and the Social Circle house before that, I feel like we have just spent an entire adulthood working towards being able to hang clothes up in a closet and have a BBQ...but never getting there.  I know life is about the journey, not the destination.  I know we have learned a LOT.  I know we could not control or foresee the real estate market crashing.  I know, I know, I know.  I just feel a little tired sometimes.  Sometimes, I just want something to be finished and nice, and to unpack my grandmother's punchbowl that has never been able to be unpacked.  We'll get there, or so I'm told.  Basically, this feeling is the same basic feeling that has kept me from blogging.  Just the feeling of heaviness.  I'm just tired.  And, I have cookies to bake, bellies to tickle, and dance-parties to put on in the living room. 

So, I sit here with my music playing, soap curing in the kitchen, a husband passed out on the couch, and a house full of slumbering children... and I vow to try to write again.  Therapy. 

Mother Knows Best

"I don't temember the starting of my life."

-Olive

___________________

 I was (theatrically) singing along with "Mother Knows Best".

Olive said, "You don't really know 'best'. You just know 'okay'."

___________________

Asa: "Can you Google how many steps a hamster has to take to burn 1 calorie?"

__________________

Addison gets home from Aikido at 9:15. He sits down beside me and says, "If they could send text messages during the Fall of Rome, it would have turned out REALLY different."

________________________

"I do NOT have imaginary friends!

I have invisible friends."

________________________

Ivey (said way after bedtime and theatrically) : "When I wake up tomorrow, I'm not gonna do my school.... I'm gonna DANCE!"

__________________

"One thing I like about hockey is that, at home, when I toot, everyone says, 'Olive!', but when I toot at hockey, no one knows."

-Olive

_______________________

Me: "How early do you remember? Do you remember when you lived with Mim & Papa?, and your room was upstairs?"

Olive: "Huh?! I thought we were born to YOU!"

_______________________

Olive: "Simon says 'Smell the shoe.'"

_______________________

Passing back food at the Wendy's drive thru:

Me: "Olive, cheeseburger, plain..... Asa, hamburger with everything.... Ivey, just ketchup."

Ivey: "No! This isn't mine! It's not just ketchup!"

I inspect... it's just a hamburger with ketchup. I then look at her, confused.

Ivey: "It's NOT just ketchup. There's MEAT on this one. I JUST wanted ketchup."

_______________________

Olive: "How did you know how to do that?! Oh... you're a mommy. You know everything....

Except bears.

I don't think you know anything about bears."

The Birthday

Valentine's Trip

I packed up all 4 kids and headed to the cabin for Valentine's Day.  It was a few days of chess, cookie decorating, snuggling, and relaxing (as much as you can solo with 4 kids).  Even solo, it's far more relaxing here solo than it is at home.  This was good.

Anna (in frozen): " ♫ A chance to change my lonely world. A chance to find true love."

Olive: "I think she means 'A chance to get engaged'."

Happy Valentine's Day!

Anti-Warning Label Club

 "We're the anti-warning label club, and we're constantly looking for new members."

-Addison

It's Just Hair

 I was raised to ignore the stuff that doesn't really matter... "It's just hair." "It's just paint." My mom bit her lip when I had fustian hair or wore skeleton tights to take Roland's mom on her birthday dinner. My grandmother didn't bat an eye if any of us had Mohawks or bald heads or were dressed in black head to toe. I have been blessed with unconditional love and eyes that see the heart and mind instead of focusing on things that don't matter.

Down deep, I love that I was blessed with a daughter who, even at 6, challenges me and makes me constantly ask myself "what really matters?"

She wants short hair. Again. We settled for a short bob last time (she saw pictures and liked it), but she wants to go shorter. I showed her pictures so she could be sure (thinking she'd like

the short bob again), but nope. Pixie. She is sick of "hair in my ears".

Playing devil's advocate, I asked, "Are you okay if people say 'Are you a girl?'"

And without batting a big blue eye, she said, "Yes. Cause I AM a girl."

Who knows, she may change her mind (or her Daddy may cry), but good grief, I am proud to be her mom.

(Ivey, showing Gram the treasures she keeps in her boots.)

Sometimes I dis not be nice

 

Bill

 

Me: "We have to run to the feed store."

Ivey: "Do you think Bill will be there?"

Me: "Bill who? Bill who leaves near us?"

Ivey: "I don't know. I don't know what I'm talking about."

Random Stuff

 Olive: "There's someone in a Disney movie who is way too smiley."

Me: "Which movie?" 

Olive: "The one where it is part cartoon and part real. She is way too smiley when she's real."

Me: "Oh. That's called Enchanted."

Olive: "Yeah. Too smiley. I'm not too smiley. I'm not even all that nice."

______________________

Me: "Do you want a cup of icecream, a cookie, or an ice cream cone?"

Olive, with hands on both sides of her head in distress: "Will there be icecream on the cone?"

Me: "Yes. Sorry, I didn't specify."

...and the woman in line behind us laughed.

________________________

We're meeting the scout troop at the middle school that I went to (Whitewater MS). Asa says, I've never been in a school before."

Me: "You wanna go in this one and look around?"

Asa: "Nope. I wanna go my whole life saying I've never been in a school."

________________________

Olive: "Sometimes I just think a lot about how my hands and legs can move."

________________________

Yesterday morning, Olive wanted to play games on the computer, but I was on it. So, she stared at me. Intently. Then, she said, "I'm going to stare at you till you go up to Heavens."

I conceded to the obvious winner.

________________________

Asa says when it's done it "will shoot 11 rubber bands per second."

________________________

Often, Olive's questions throw me off.

(Riding in the car tonight...)

Olive: "If you get trapped by the police, do they trap your kids, too?"

Me: "Um..... No?"

Olive: "What do they do with your kids?"

Me: "Well.... call your grandparents or someone to come get you?"

Olive: "Yeah. I guess they'd want them to live. I mean, they aren't grown up yet."

(An hour later....)

Olive: "Do you have your phone?"

Me: "Yes."

Olive: "You should always have your phone with you. So we can use it to call someone if the police get you."

What the HECK?!