Bunnies

Rodrigo and the boys built another Rabbit Ark for our pasture raised bunnies. The littles where very excited to go out for a visit. I was so glad to see this litter of bunnies go outside! Their mama was killed tragically when they were just 4 days old. So I brought them into the house and had to bottle feed them for the next 5 weeks. That was a lot of work! And bunnies are very cute, but 8 of them in my sewing room was a bit much.

Rainbow

Yesterday morning quite by happy accident a very vivid rainbow was discovered downstairs in our den. I took the mini-blinds that were on the windows down and the sun came in to shine through our large aquarium. The glass and water made a perfect prism and created one of the very brightest rainbows we have ever seen. The kids played downstairs in the light for nearly an hour. Claire was especially thrilled with her multicolored reflection in the aquarium glass. Yay for sunshine! 

Knitting and Reading

I am so excited to be joining along with Ginny's Yarn Along for the very first time this week! I have wanted to learn to knit for years, and it always seemed so very complicated. And now, I present to you... my KNITTING!!

During our "homeless" period when things felt really dark, confusing and more than slightly scary, I had a good friend who saw my need and wanted to do something to help. She is a fellow homeschool mom, cool thing is she even homeschools grown-ups on occasion! One day, during that time, I was visiting her I told her how I wished I had brought something with me to my parent's house to occupy my hands while my mind could rest. Creating something pretty is such a wonderful thing, one of the best sorts of therapy I think. I had packed away every single bit of crafty/art supply type stuff I owned because I was sure it would be boxed up such a short time that I wouldn't even have a chance to miss it. Well she declared that I should learn to knit, and proceeded to teach me!

 It was wonderful. Seriously, I had always thought knitting was so scary and had to be just perfect or the fabric of the universe might come apart at the seams or something equally disastrous might happen. She said no, that if I realized I messed something up all I had to do was un-knit it to back before the mistake, and hey, she was teaching me to knit a square washcloth. Even if I frogged that thing 16 times, all the way back to the very beginning and rewound the yarn into a ball, no harm done, I'd just have an everlasting knitting project that way! :-) I think I knit that very same washcloth 8 or 9 times. Every time I started to feel overwhelmed with stuff, I'd grab the needles and start knitting. At one point I had a 2 foot wide washcloth, when I was super preoccupied and not paying any attention to casting on.I never did worry about finishing that thing, it was purely for the joy of the movement.  So I decided once we moved that it might be time to branch out! 

I found a simple shawl pattern on Ravelry that could be tied in the back. I love those! My notes are here. So far so good. The lovely yarn is one I won from a giveaway on Frontier Dreams, from her sponsor Luna Grey Fiber Arts. It is super soft and feels so nice to knit, and the color is gorgeous. Not at all difficult to handle, even for a total novice like me!

And I am reading An Everlasting Meal, Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler. It is sort of a cook book, sort of a compilation of cooking essays. I am really enjoying it, and I very much like her style of writing, but it makes me extremely hungry. Lots of talk about good crusty bread and olive oil and garlic on most everything! It's a book about good simple food well cooked.

Tiny Helper

Please excuse the dim, blurry photos. The moment happened so quickly that I barely had time to run for my camera and get it turned on before he disappeared from view. 

The big boys brought in a bunch of fire wood and deposited it just inside the back door. Once they had a pile in the house, and the door shut against the cold they started carrying it downstairs to the fireplace. 

Emmett was nursing but when he heard the commotion he got off of my lap to investigate. He wants to try everything the big boys do so he grabbed a log and started for the stairs! 

I only had time to snap a couple of pictures before I had to stop him from attempting to go down the stairs either carrying the log, or from throwing it down and sliding down them himself on his belly. (His usual way of going down stairs when we don't keep the safety gate latched shut. He was very proud of himself for being such a big (little) helper. 

He is 17 months old now, my goodness, it goes by in a flash. 

Yesterday, Rodrigo and I were talking about our kids. We both always knew we wanted to have kids, and we both even always wanted a big family. But something that has taken us both completely by surprise is how much we really do enjoy our children. It amazes me almost daily, that I have these awesome little people around all of the time. Our favorite place in the world to be is home, with them. We love them, because they are ours, but we have discovered something wonderful over the past 15 years. We like them, I mean really like them, spending time with them, talking to them, teaching them, watching them discover all kinds of wonderful new things. I am so happy about that. It takes a lot of work, being a parent. And lest you think that we simply have perfect kids (Ha! I'm sure those who know us in real life would be happy to add in here...) we don't! Occasionally they are naughty, they fuss, fight, whine, pee in the floor, hit each other, talk back, etc. Teaching them to be good, decent, grateful, happy, Godly human beings is a daily thing, and then there is that whole home-schooling thing... We have by no stretch of the imagination, got it "all figured out" But we do

feel like we have great kids, and we really like them a lot, which is pretty darn awesome. Just sayin'.

Weekending

This weekend we: 

:: Played "Nosey-Nosey" 

:: Built her very own balance beam, Danced around for the sheer joy of having done it herself, And then walked back and forth across it for almost an hour

:: Went on very important adventures through the dry leaves

:: Climbed the "tallest-tree-house-tree ever" *otherwise known as a bush* and marveled at her baby brother all the way below her *about 3 feet down!*

:: Enjoyed a few hours of leisurely reading

:: Got breakfast ALL BY HIMSELF...

:: Shaped the stone by hand and made himself a real tom-a-hawk (Matthew)

:: Played for hours in the very cold sunshine on the new swing their Daddy hung from the giant old Oak tree in our front yard

:: Cuddled up all together in front of a beautiful fire and watched the rainbow colored flames. 

:: Enjoyed just being, together and happy, in our home.