Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!

The kids, my dad and I drove out to the property this morning to get some "before" pictures of the land. It's a beautiful, sunny day and being out there, hearing all the birds singing and seeing the resident hawk soaring around, only intensified my dreams. I can just imagine what next year at this time will be like.

Anyway, here's a tour around the place, for your viewing enjoyment:

This is the long driveway that goes off the main road, back to our lots.

This is still the driveway back. The wire across the road is where the property starts.

This is kind of a panoramic view, driving back to our lot. If you go around the corner to the left, our driveway will turn right off of the road.

Here's our driveway. Needs some work still. The house will be off to the left in the meadow.

This will be our view out the front door.

This will be the view out our back porch. My parents' house will be straight out that way, about 300 yards or so.

Another panoramic view, standing on our back deck looking left (east).

Country kids in the making...

Money worries be damned. I just want to hurry up and get out here!

I Can't Dance

When I was down in Cali at my cousin's house, we watched alot of TV. Not much else to do while stuck in the house wrangling babies. I'm not much of a TV person, except for sports, so much of what we watched was new to me. And darnit, I'm still watching! The last two nights, I've parked my butt on the couch and actually watched TV. More specifically, I watched So You Think You Can Dance. Have you seen it?

I'm not much into reality shows or competitions. I've never seen Survivor or The Amazing Race and have only seen American Idol a couple times. But people gettin' their groove on? Yah, I can get into that. Not sure I'll watch the whole season but it's been fun to see the auditions. Some people I genuinely feel bad for. They believe they can dance, yet in comparison to actual trained dancers, they just end up looking foolish. And I feel bad for them! How humiliating! But kudos to them for trying, I suppose.

I also managed to catch the season finale of Dancing with the Stars while in California and Kristi totally deserved to win. I saw that coming from earlier in the season when I caught a snippet of one episode. Although Mr. Twinkletoes Taylor looked mighty fine too. I have to admit, I secretly would love to take ballroom dancing lessons. I've always been a closet fan - in fact, if you looked on my TiVo at the recorded programs, you'd see all the Ballroom Dancing Championships recorded.

But I have no illusions about me and my moves. I don't have any. At least not any I'll perform anywhere other than my own house or car in the presence of people I'm related to.

You gotta have faith...

I returned home from my trip to Quad-ville to the news that we begin breaking ground on our house on June 6th. As in a week from tomorrow. I can't even begin to describe how I feel about this. It is such a mixed bag of emotions.

We've been working and waiting to get to this point for almost three and a half years. When we made the decision back in 2005 to buy 5 acres from my parents, we knew it would take awhile to get here. In the meantime we've been renting and watching house prices continue to climb, to the point where there would be very little out there that we could afford without peddling vital organs on Ebay. We've been holding our breath, existing in limbo, waiting for that proverbial green light to get started.

And now we're there. And it's causing me unprecedented anxiety.

My husband is usually the one stressing about money, managing it very carefully and conservatively, investing it, watching the stock market, and encouraging us to go without extravagant luxuries (i.e. vacations) in order to save. I've always been the one reassuring him that we'll be fine, that we'll figure it out, that everything'll be okay. Now those roles have been reversed. Probably for the first time in almost 10 years of being together, he's having to calm me down and reassure me that it will all work out. I see those large numbers on his spreadsheets and loan applications and I start to have palpitations. I see bids for things like septic systems and I start to twitch nervously. It all makes me very scared.

As I've told him, what scares me about this project is that we'll end up WAY over budget. Not just a little, but ALOT. Enough to force me to have to work more. And I've already shared how I about feel about working. I just fear being so indebted to this house that it drastically changes our lives. Or else we get it built, can't afford it, and have to turn around and sell it. Which would be very profitable, but that's beside the point. I want to live on THIS piece of property, which will be next door to my parents' property. I want lots more days with my Dad, enjoying life and living out our dreams. I want my kids to have the kind of freedom and adventure that I craved as a kid. Damnit, I want what I want. (Hmmm...spoiled much?)

We went out to the property last night to go stake out the building site and cut the grass, which is already waist-high. The kids had a great time tromping around, playing in the dirt, and catching bugs. On a walk with Grandpa, they discovered a puddle full of "poggywogs", as Zoë called them. I'd packed a picnic dinner for us and my parents, who joined us, and we sat out there and dreamed, talking about where to put the garden and our chickens. After dinner, Sam and Daddy went to play baseball in the grass, and sitting there watching them summoned up the dream of them someday playing ball on a big lush green yard, with me sitting on the back deck watching them in the twilight, listening to the crickets singing and the hawks calling. I also dream of cool fall evenings around a crackling outdoor fire, hearing the owls and the coyotes off in the woods, roasting marshmallows, then hauling sticky, sleepy kids off to their beds. Ach, I want it so bad I can practically taste it.

I told my husband that I want nothing more than at the end of this project for him to be able to tell me "I told you so". I want to live out there, put down some roots, grow some memories and our kids, and not worry month to month about the mortgage. We don't live extravagant, materialistic lives now, but I don't want to lose the ability to go out for pizza on a Saturday night.

So, for now, I'm relying heavily on faith. Faith in my husband, faith in the Good Lord, and faith in myself, I guess. I need to tell myself what I've been telling my husband for years: we're smart, resourceful, hard-working people and we'll figure it out. We're alot better off financially than people who are 20 years older.

It'll be okay.

Still here

So, I'm back!

And the first thing I notice when I'm logging in is that I've written 99 posts. Which means that THIS post is my 100th post! Who'da thunk it? I always thought that for my 100th post I'd write something meaningful and entertaining, or do one of those "100 things about me" posts, but alas, I just don't think it's gonna happen today. I returned from California on Sunday night and then had to immediately go back to work on Monday afternoon, as well as today. So not much time to stew in my creative juices and spew out words of wit & wisdom for your reading pleasure.

I will tell you that dealing with four 11 week old babies is exhausting. The kind of exhausting that you truly can't comprehend, nor could I ever adequately explain. It was HARD. And I was only there for 4 days. It was such a treat to see them finally and be able to love and kiss on them, but the good Lord knew what He was doing only giving me one at a time. And I understand why some animals eat their young.

I have a whole new appreciation for my cousin - if there ever was a supermom, she would be it. Many days functioning on only 3-4 hours of sleep, pumping breastmilk every 3-4 hours, feeding/burping/changing/rocking babies one after the other, while managing to do all the other necessary stuff (like eat, bathe, laundry, and wash & fill 25-30 bottles every day), and still maintaining an impressive level of sanity and patience definitely earns her my vote for Mom of the Year. She's a better woman than I.

For lots of reasons, I was glad to get home to my own family. It was a nice visit (with horribly crappy weather) but it's true what they say - "There's no place like home."

Anticipation

Forgive me, my faithful interwebs, for being so absent lately. It's been a busy, WARM week and I just haven't had the same urge to park my tookus at the computer with so much sunshine streaming in my windows. I still owe ya'll a post about our weekend in Seattle and I'll do my best to get to that. Eventually.

I'm sorry to say that I probably will be absent for much of the next week as I'm hoppin' on an aeroplane and heading south on Tuesday to go visit my cousin and her baby quadrulets! Who are now 2 1/2 months old! Ack. I'm gonna have my hands full. Nothing like jumping from the frying pan right into the blazing hot inferno of molten lava x5. (four 2 1/2 month old quadruplets + one almost-three year old boy = five times the pain) Ha ha, I'm just joking. I'm SO looking forward to this. I know I'm gonna cry like a dork when I actually get to see them. I love those little buggars and I've never even seen them - not even a dern picture other than the newspaper! But I s'pose some lacking photographicalness is to be expected of parents of newborn quadrulets + one toddler boy. I am SO gonna be making up for that when I'm there. They'll probably be begging me to put away my trusty Nikon and leave them the hell alone! I mean, my camera holds 1000 pictures and I'm gonna do my best to fill her up. In all seriousness, I'd love to be able to get some good shots and put together a digital scrapbook for them. This time is probably going to be a hazy blur for them and what parent doesn't want to remember every single little detail of their new babies? But shhhh! Don't tell them. It's a surprise.

I do have to share my latest, newest favoritest website with you. Oh my stars. I discovered this little gem on kirtsy and it's been sucking the juice out of my brain with it's demand for my occular attention. Ok, so if you like to cook food, like to eat food, like to look at food, go check out TasteSpotting. Oh heavens, it's a whole lotta food porn in one tidy little spot. Since I won't allow myself to actually search food blogs (I know they're out there! calling my name! but I'm determinedly resisting! because I have a life that needs living!), TasteSpotting is my new best friend. (Just kidding, Brooke. You're still my main squeeze. To prove that, I'll let you in on the secret that there are blogs dedicated to nothing but CUPCAKES. Go. Look. You can thank me later.) Right now there are 306 pages of pretty food to look at, 48 recipes on each page, so I'm sure you'll find something that will make your mouth water. I practically need a bib!

I'll try to pop back tomorrow with more random mumblings. My brain is approaching critical mass with all I need to do in the next 24 hours so I little blogging might be just the remedy.

"...And a little child will lead them."

I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes. They are both tears of sadness and of pride.

A few minutes ago, my sweet Sam came out of my bedroom where he had been snuggled up, watching a cartoon before bed. He came out to the living room where his daddy & I were, with tears in his eyes and on his cheeks. Apparently, the ASPCA commercial with Sarah McLachlan had come on. And it broke my tender-hearted son's tender little heart. He sobbed in my arms for several minutes, pleading repeatedly that "I want to call that number!"

I cry because I am so proud of his sweet little heart, and that he has the ability to sympathize with creatures smaller than himself. That he recognizes unfairness and cruelty. And I cry because he's been shown some of the ugliness in our world and that a small piece of his innocence and naivety is gone, and that makes me sad.

I struggle to comprehend cruelty in general, but animal cruelty whips my emotions up to a whole new level. I've had pets my entire life, with the exception of about 18 months, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. And they are not merely animals that live in my house - they are furry family members and are treated and loved as such. So how am I to explain to a five and a half year old little boy why some animals are abused, or starved, or dumped, or killed when I don't understand it myself??

So I simply held him, let him cry, and did my best to reassure him that lots of people work very hard to try to protect animals, to care for them, to find them homes and good shelters, and that we would do what we could to help, and say our prayers that God would watch over them all.

It is SO hard sometimes, being the mama.

Time Out

Life is overwhelming me at the moment - which doesn't happen very often, thankfully - so for now I am unable to organize my thoughts enough to share them with you. Hopefully tomorrow when I don't have to work and I have the entire day to create an entertaining post, I'll be able to do so and tell you about the following:

1. Our weekend in Seattle and how I managed to pack on 4 lbs in 2 days!
2. My impending trip to Southern California to finally meet my cousin's quadrulets!
3. My little panic attack about flying and being away from my children for 6 days!
4. The latest progress on our house-building and the rapid rate at which money is flying out of our bank account!
5. My crazy-long To Do list that is screaming for my attention, which I really want to just ignore and do this:

Sleepless in Seattle

In honor of our upcoming 7th wedding anniversary (the 19th), hubby & I are headed to the Big City for the weekend. The kiddos are going to Grandma's and we're going to have ourselves some kidless time. I think our 5th anniversary was the last time we had a weekend to ourselves. And that was only one night. And the train went by, right under our window, multiple times that night. Needless to say, it wasn't a restful night. I think I would have gotten more sleep at home with my still-nursing-repeatedly-at-night 8-month old baby.

This time around, however, there is no train. (I don't think.) And I will make sure to consume just enough cocktails to ensure a sound slumber. Of course, hubby will be consuming too, which will lead to even sounder slumber (aka LOUDER snoring) on his part, so maybe I better ramp up my consumption in an effort to ensure my own slumbering success. (Note to self: Pack the Excedrin.)

Here's to a Happy Mother's Day (hopefully not hungover like a goat - it doesn't take much these days)!

A Helping Hand

It's Wordless Wednesday!

Visions of Summer

With the advent of slightly warmer temperatures and the rapidly approaching end of the school year, my thoughts have turned to summer. I've started making a mental list of all the things I want to do. I live for the summers when the kids and I can be on the go and out of the house. We have our standard activities that we do every year: a trip to the zoo, berry picking, the annual campout of folks I grew up with, 4th of July BBQs, and multiple trips to the local Fair.

My main partner-in-crime, Brooke, is as much a go-er and do-er as I am so over the last couple years we've had lot of adventures together and are already cooking up more for this summer. We are more than ready for some hot, sunny weather and the freedom from school schedules. (We both have been languishing miserably thru this long, cold winter we've been subjected to.)

And this summer our youngest kids, who are only 3 weeks apart in age, will be almost three years old and much more manageable when it comes to our outings. We've been looking forward to this particular summer since they were babies, knowing they would be at the age where they were more independent and easier to drag around. And, like every summer, we'll look forward to "next summer" when they'll be a year older and even more fun. But for now, we'll start dreaming of our lazy days at the lake, picnics at the park, camping adventures and whatever else strikes our fancy.

What are your plans or favorite activities for the summer?

Flashback Friday - May 2004

Every Friday of late I retrieve the CDs with our old pictures from the safe, and then spend entirely too long, browsing thru them, reminiscing and trying to decide which to post. While I'm grateful to have so many pictures to look back on, it's bittersweet to see how much my babies have grown and changed.

Sam was almost 21 months here and my little shadow. We spent all our time together, frequenting the library and the park, playing in the yard, and generally just creating our own fun. We didn't have any stay-at-home-mom friends, and we hadn't yet entered the world of playdates and group activities, but we didn't really mind. We stayed plenty busy and were content to hang out together.

He's always been my little buddy, and I hope that never changes.

May Day

Happy May Day! Good grief, where has this year gone? Somedays I feel like I've missed entire months and then I realize I feel that way because my brain has been suffering from some wierd kind of prolonged hypothermia due to our incessant cold weather. Maybe the fact that I'm more cognizant of the months passing means that we're starting to thaw out up here in the Artic. Lord, I hope so.

I was excited to hear the weatherman share the little lie tidbit that the weather was supposed to be almost 60° here today. And even though I didn't believe him, the thought was enough to tempt me into action and I hustled the kids into their clothes and shoes, grabbed some jackets, snacks and my camera, and we headed to the park for a bit before school. My hope was for a two-fold reward: 1) tire Zoë out so she would nap today at the normal napping time instead of 5:00pm, a time when I certainly can't let her sleep for long yet waking her is like setting a hornets' nest on fire, and 2) burn off some of Sam's endless supply of energy so that he will be better able to focus during school instead of sending him to school "fully loaded".

Being stuck indoors with small children all winter is enough to drive me batty but I can't imagine what it must have been like for people who REALLY were stuck indoors with small children.

(Cue segue music...)

If you look at my book list, you'll see a bunch of books by the same author, Lauraine Snelling. The books are a fictional series about a family of Norwegian settlers that came to America in order to homestead land in the Dakota Territories in the late 1800's. I have somewhat of a passion for and fascination with that time period and setting. I realize that the fictional accounts of life as a covered-wagon homesteader are just that, but it makes me think about the trials and hardships they had to endure. I've also read some non-fiction on the subject and let me tell ya, it was harder than you can even imagine. Scary hard. Kill-you-dead-by-40 hard.

While I secretly yearn for that kind of simple life, I appreciate that my idealistic vision of it is seen through the rose-colored glass of my modern-day life. It's easy to want the pride and satisfaction of growing and tending your own garden, for instance. But it's impossible to know the desperation and NEED with which those pioneers did so. After all, the success of my garden is not a matter of life or starvation. If the bugs destroy my garden, if I don't keep up with the weeding, or it doesn't rain, I have alternatives: go to the grocery store, set a sprinkler. It's easy to lament being stuck indoors because of rain or snow, but I have a wealth of distractions (blogs, anyone?) and physical comforts to ease my wait for warmth. Those pioneers existed in sod houses with maybe one tiny window. And from the accounts that I've read, they were really not that big. Maybe 15x15? Try living in your bedroom. With your kids. And maybe another family. And it's your kitchen too. And one tiny window, a blizzard that lasts for days, with no running water or electricity.

I just can't imagine, nor do I truly want to. One image that has stuck in my mind was a description of the sod houses that people lived in until they could get a wood house built. (Incidentally, the non-fiction book I keep referring to is Pioneer Women by Joanna Stratton. It is a collection of journal entries by women settlers in Kansas.) This particular pioneer was voicing her frustration with keeping the sod house somewhat clean and tidy because chunks of dirt and SNAKES constantly would fall from the ceiling, sometimes ON THEM while they were sleeping. %*&!#@!! Let me just say, the first time that happened would have found me packing my pansy ass up and returning to whatever foreign land I'd come from. I.DO.NOT.LIKE.SNAKES.

And don't even get me started on the grief they had to endure from losing multiple children and/or spouses to illnesses, accidents, etc. They would've had to put me in the ground too.

I guess it's the things I've learned about those early settlers that make me sincerely grateful for what I have. Things like changes of clothing. Toilet paper. My washing machine. Seriously. Even though I have no love for laundry, I thank God I have clothes to wash and a machine to do it. And no snakes in my hair. (shudder)