Spring is coming

Last weekend was a joy. It started on a sad note as we had to attend my husband’s grandmother’s memorial, but it was really a beautiful time. The service was really beautiful and full of family and love ... what is not to love and be joyous about that! The food served at the church was really amazing and the family time was just great. Our kids looked adorable in their dress up clothes and I enjoyed watching my husband point and name each kiddo to family and friends who he hadn’t seen in years or had never met. He kept saying yup these are my kids and then stop after naming several and go, “Well this isn’t all of them…over there those are ours too…”

Last week was a bit of a bummer when we learned our big Excursion (8 passenger) needed $3000 worth of repairs on it! Ugh! But we just didn't let that spoil our good mood. We also were practically forced to rent something to get to Ricky's grandmothers memorial. But as usual we made the best out of the situation. We rented a pick-up truck bought a bunch of stuff that we could because we had a pick-up truck.

Since we had the truck we finally bought our first “lawn tractor.” Last year we bought a tiller this year lawn tractor. Yee haw. We are excited! I am officially excited for spring now. I have tomato starter plants germinating and the tulips Ricky bought me for Valentine’s Day last year are starting to come up! We were blessed with an easy going February and I’m ready to jump feet first into March. I think that groundhog knows what he is talking about! This is the first time in a while that he didn’t see his shadow and I think he’s right; spring is on the horizon!

Anyway, back to last weekend, it was a fun 3 day weekend where my lovely hubby and I paraded around town buying up hay, cleaning the chicken house out, raking up leaves and watching the kids enjoy some outside time. Those are the things that make us happy!

I have been working on painting and fixing up our basement in my infrequent spare time. It’s looking SO CUTE. The idea is to make it a friendly colorful space where the kids can play and the grown-ups, when needed, can also sneak away and relax. Mostly it’s for the kids to play and for us to say “GO DOWNSTAIRS AND PLAY” ;) I am making it colorful and whimsical. I can’t wait to post photos! It’s still a mess though. We are also making it comfortable for overnight guests, sleepovers or just hanging out. We have (or will have) 2 futons, 1 love seat hide-a-bed and 1 day bed with a trundle down there. So, total that will sleep 7 people. I also want to hang some hammock chairs from the ceiling.

Lately in homeschool land we have been studying a world atlas, learning map skills, reading a science book (overview of lots of basic stuff), keeping up with Time4learning.com lessons. I tried out spellingcity.com but it’s not really what I wanted. I do like all the games though. I’m still trying to figure it out and getting the kids going on it. I really should have kept spellingime.com. We may go back to that; it was easy and very effective. (Just more than I want to spend per kid, and right now I can’t spend much since we have money going out faster than it’s coming in!)

Penelope (4) and Sebastian (2) are in the kitchen playing with Moon Sand. If you know what Moon Sand is you know I’ll be sweeping the kitchen floor soon. Some one thought two things about moon sand: 1. How can we make play doh even messier and 2. How can we play with sand indoors? Wa-lah…Moon Sand was born!

cooking and eating of odd things

I’m disappointed I don’t want to cook our beef tongue. I just can’t do it. My dear husband loves tongue sandwiches. He tells me of a place down the street from his work that apparently has the best smoked beef tongue sandwiches on earth. He cannot believe I won’t try it. (I've never even seen them, so I don't even know what they look like.)


I eat all kinds of things. I’m a huge fan of sushi. I’ve eaten escargot more than 3 times. I’ve cooked weird octopus/squid seafood chowders (oh God the smell is bad). I love raw oysters. I’ve had alligator, buffalo and elk; Yum, Yum and Yum. I tried frog legs and squirrel; despite what my husband says neither tastes ‘similar to chicken’. (yuk)

As you can tell I’m not afraid to try things. But this beef tongue thing gives me the hebbie-jebbies. He didn’t understand when I tried to explain about feeling the texture of tongue on my tongue. He says the smoked ones he eats are sooo soft. Um, my tongue is soft too. Yuk! I’m curious but I just have reservations. I think I have it wound up in my head that biting a tongue is going to be thick and moist and fleshy and soft –like biting my own.

Maybe it's like placenta. Did you know you can eat placenta? Maybe that's TMI for this blog. Or is it..humm?

We have a beef tongue in our freezer from our cow amoung other things. I’ve never tried liver and onions so maybe I need to fry that up first. Ease my way into the tongue. We also have ox tail. And I was all jazzed about making ox tail soup when it went in our freezer a year ago but now I have my reservations. Again my imagination is running away with me…I picture this hairy piece of tail that I’m going to cook down into a sweaty broth of a soup. Aren’t imaginations fun?

I tried the turkey’s heart at thanksgiving. There’s a reason kids fight over the wishbone, wishbones are fun. Turkey hearts and giblets are pasty and gross. :)

Life in January

fatty rolly polly baby

New hair cut --self done (hubby helped with the back!)

Kids get some fun stuff in the mail from Aunt Christy!

Playing smoochy in the snow :)

Chickens DO NOT want out at all...and their hen house is a MESS.

Oh-my-chicken-poo-god is there going to be a lot of fertilizer for the yard this spring.

We usually clean out the house seasonally and it doesn't get too bad because they are outside 99% of the time.

Since it's been so snowy though...this is bad...

 

We could NOT get Sebastian to sit down for this family photo.

We kept asking him and asking him. So i decided to seize the

moment. This is real life after all.