4-8-11 Oregon

Oregon?

Well, that’s where our chicks are.

Oregon???!!

Go figure. After wondering and waiting for two days, after several phone calls to track them down, we finally learned we won’t be getting our chicks this week. For some mysterious reason which no one can explain, our chicks ended up in Oregon. I’m fairly confident that at this point, being hatched and shipped from Iowa on Wednesday, they are not very lively if they’re alive at all. Sad but nothing we can do about our 200+ dead chicks in Oregon. Pity that poor post office, though – by now those boxes aren’t smelling very nice. Ugh.

Anyway, I guess we’ll be getting them next week instead. Stay tuned.

Aunt Sarah came out to walk and brought Jewel’s birthday bars. Yum :)

Grandpa Steiner stopped by to share the cookies he was given in honor of his 100th gallon of blood donated. I’ll rephrase that: Grandpa Steiner has donated 100 gallons of blood in the last 40 years…that is amazing!!!

 

Grandpa wrote this a few years ago and the staff there pulled it out of a file and read it to him today.

And the cookies were delicious! Joshua says, “Dooty pace.” :)

The storm last night blew the grill over and somewhat apart. One of today’s tasks was to clean it and put it back together. Sarah was a great help!

The buckets of soapy water dumped in the grass forced lots of worms out. Just loads of fun, you know.

 

Hard at work.

Pretty good self-photo!

Medusa.

 

Close enough for me.

Good night.

4-7-11 Creation

As always, a picture hardly does justice to the real thing. Beautiful, just beautiful. And – made me think of another hymn.

Creation (Hymns of Zion #207)

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.

Each little flow’r that opens,

Each little bird that sings,

He made their glowing colors,

He made their tiny wings.

The rich man in the castle,

The poor man at the gate,

God made them high or lowly,

And ordered their estate.

The purple headed mountain,

The river flowing by,

The sunset and the morning

Which brighten up the sky.

He gave us eyes to see them,

And lips that we might tell,

How great is God Almighty,

Who has made all things well.

Levi had a good day at work; he said he was up half the time and doing seatwork half the time. Hope it keeps improving. Nothing special here – just school (what’s left of it) and working around here, of course some play too. Joshua was pretty fussy with a constant runny nose and maybe a touch of fever but not real bad. Hopefully by the weekend he’ll be on the mend and feeling better. He’s pretty happy here…

…and here…

…and hopefully tomorrow we’ll see more smiles yet.  Sarah had an earache this evening; hopefully the 24-hour trick will work and she’ll be over it soon. Looking forward to 80 degrees again this weekend!!

Good night!

4-6-11 Fulblastic Again

Well, Sunday we made it to church for the first time in four weeks (meaning the three littlest and me) even though some still had some coughing going on. And wouldn’t you know it Joshua started up with a full-blown cold again on Tuesday. Sweet. Hopefully these nice spring days outside will prevent the spread of his germs and the rest won’t get it either, although at any given time somebody is coughing up a storm.  So it goes.

Levi report. His sprained/strained ankle was healing nicely all last week, rather like we expected it to; he was back to normal activity, walking with a slight limp, by Thursday. However. Looking back, we’re thinking that it wasn’t the wisest to ask him to walk fences and help cut firewood in the south grove on Saturday, as that evidently exacerbated an already compromised ankle. At any rate, he kind of ignored the extra pain on Monday morning and went on his way, but by late Monday morning it was hot and swollen again, and so painful he couldn’t walk on it. We went for an x-ray which turned out fine, and he spent the rest of Monday doing the RICE routine again: Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. He was painkiller-free all day until suppertime when he had been on the couch with the kids; he simply stood up to walk to the table and in that short distance was hit by extreme pain again (8 or 9 on a scale of 1-10) (which is high for him because he has a pretty high pain tolerance). Which is part of the problem, because he said it hurt a ‘little more’ on Saturday, but he could ignore it. Uh-huh. Not the best thing to do, right? Because if you don’t listen when your body whispers “Pain!” it will just shout real loud the next time, right?!  Anyway, we’re speculating that the blood rush did it at suppertime, but at any rate we went to see Dr. Cross yesterday morning. Despite being impressed with the rainbow array of colors of the ankle/foot (thanks to coumadin), he’s pretty convinced it’s just a bad sprain that wasn’t treated with the respect it needed. He didn’t think it was a torn muscle/ligament but said if it was, surgery wouldn’t be done until the swelling was down anyway. So he said go home, put weight carefully on it as tolerated (no hiking, basketball, skateboarding, hay baling, etc.) and wait for the swelling to disappear. He suspected in a week it would be well on the mend again, but if not we’re to call him back. So today Levi went to PP with Jesse at 1:00 and was there until 8:00 or so, but he did spend a lot of his time there working while sitting. He’s had no recurrence of the extreme pain of Monday/Tuesday, so hopefully if he’s a little more careful he can mend for good now. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, the rest of us have been enjoying this week of sunny and warmth, hoping it lasts awhile now, and very glad the end of cold/flu season is near.

Quality studying time.

(not!)

WARNING: THESE NEXT PHOTOGRAPHS ARE NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.

But they are very much a part of our life (some would say an important part), so I must include them in this journal. But I’m not looking at them very much because I’m afraid I will have bad dreams. They give me the squeebies even though they are just little garter snakes.

Really. These are a big deal around here.

Ask me if I like the smile of sheer delight on her face. I don’t. Well, I like the smile and excitement, but not the reason. I mean, come on, she’s a girl!!!! Girls aren’t supposed to get excited about snakes!!!  Oh well. Not much I can do about it, so I guess I’ll just try to enjoy her enjoyment. Notice I said try.

Now this is more like it. Looking west…

 

…looking north.

Don’t ask me why I didn’t do a panoramic shot. I just forgot I could. At any rate, it was a beautiful evening!! Reminded me once again of  -

Sunset (Gospel Hymns # 812)

When shadows grow long in the evening,

When birds wing their way back home,

I get a heavenly feeling,

It's sunset, and I'm going home.

God paints the clouds in the evening sky,

To show me the way to his palace on high.

And stars mark the pathway lest my feet should roam,

It's sunset, and I'm going home.

The burdens I’ve carried were heavy,

I’ve prayed in the garden alone,

But there’ll be no crosses up yonder,

It’s sunset, and I’m going home.

God paints the clouds in the evening sky,

To show me the way to his palace on high.

And stars mark the pathway lest my feet should roam,

It's sunset, and I'm going home.

The harvest is over and gathered

The summer is ended and gone

The laborer longs for his coming

It’s sunset and I’m going home.

God paints the clouds in the evening sky,

To show me the way to his palace on high.

And stars mark the pathway lest my feet should roam,

It's sunset, and I'm going home.

Simply beautiful.

4-4-11 Way To Go, Ben!

4-3-11 Happy Birthday Kaitlyn

There once was a young girl named Kate.

Who turned eleven on this date.

Smiley she is mighty,

And yes somewhat flighty,

But we really do think she is great!

Yep, our Kate is eleven now. Hard to believe but true. I still remember like yesterday how excited we were for her to arrive. After Jacob was born, I had had a miscarriage; it was my first one and we were pretty upset by it. Of course we were thankful for our four healthy children and would have been ungrateful to complain, but the loss of a baby is emotionally traumatic plus naturally we wondered if we would ever have any more children. Five more children and two more miscarriages later, we know better, but back then we didn’t know. That first miscarriage really shook us up and woke us up to God’s view of the value of a child; we did some intense Bible study on it, and we’ve never thought of children the same since. Anyway. When we were expecting Kate…oh, how much we anticipated her birth. The four older kids were thrilled with their new baby sister, and she was by far our easiest baby. Someone loaned me a copy of Babywise, which I read and loved because it explained so much about babies’ needs and make-up; I wished I had had it for our other babies, although they seemed to survive fine without it. Kate was a very content baby, which meant she was very predictable and happy, unlike some of our other babies. Back then I also read a book about infant potty training, and I gave it a try when Kate was four months old. It worked pretty well, as I changed no messy diapers after about eight months (who wouldn’t like that?!), and she was out of daytime diapers by the time she was 18 months old. I wouldn’t say she was completely trained, though, because she wasn’t telling me and I still had to take her or we would have accidents. But it was fun at the time and I enjoyed doing it although I’ve never done it with any of the rest of the kids due to various other circumstances. Well, so Kate was our model baby and grew into our model toddler – she was a sparkle child, dancing through life with smiles and chatter for everyone, generally happy and content for the most part. We never noticed teething distress, she was a good sleeper, and even when she was sick she just wasn’t very fussy. We’ve since learned that it’s NOT because we used Babywise – that was just how she was made. Some babies are naturally Babywise babies and some aren’t, and we’ve had both. So Kate grew up, charming most everyone she met, and especially her older siblings doted on her. She’s our chatterbox who was wearing too-long pajamas as a little tyke; they covered her feet and she didn’t like that at all. “My peet pall off,” she said, and oh how we laughed. Kate has always been a helper; as soon as she was old enough she was wanting to sweep, empty the dishwasher, fold laundry, and so on. Of course some of that enthusiasm has waned over the years, as other activities have gained priority in her life, but she still loves to pitch in and do a good job on whatever it is she is to be doing. I must be real and add that her energy for outside jobs is about ten times her energy for inside jobs – she’d rather scoop manure for an hour than empty the dishwasher for five minutes. We’ve had some wonderful character training opportunities with that, as she tends to get easily distracted from her mundane boring inside jobs, which makes them last three times as long as they should. See, she’s hoping Mom will take pity on her or get impatient and do them herself, and alas, sometimes that happens. But really that’s not good for Kate, so Mom doesn’t give in very often, and Kate is learning that when she buckles down and focuses on her detested jobs, she can wipe them out fast and then she can move on to the fun stuff, like hauling manure and chasing rats. That’s a good lesson for all of us, as the detested jobs have to be done too, no matter what!!  Every morning, Kate is responsible for picking up her clothes and making her bed (as all the kids are), and after Tori makes and serves breakfast, Kate is our k.p. captain. The other kids clear their dishes from the table, but Kaitlyn loads the dishwasher, puts leftovers away, sweeps/spotscrubs the floor if it’s needed, empties the trash if it’s needed, and wipes off the tables and counters. Sometimes I will help her as it can be a pretty big job, but more often than not I am doing other tasks and she does a fine solo job (usually, that is. Sometimes she forgets things and gets a call-back, but that happens less and less as she is getting older).  Kate’s afternoon chores consist of helping Jacob feed gluten to the cattle across the road and feeding and watering the brown chickens, dog, and cats. Inside, she puts away the high dishes from the dishwasher and gets down dishes so Jewel can set the table. Then she puts laundry away for Tori and makes ice if we need it. Kate takes turns with Tori making bread, she makes supper solo on Wednesdays and with Jacob on Fridays, and would make cookies or bars for us every day if I would let her. She often will help Jacob on his job list from Dad AFTER she is properly finished with her inside jobs for me. I say properly, because sometimes Kate races through her inside jobs so fast that they don’t really get done at all, and she gets to do them again…and sometimes a third time! She’s learning that short cuts usually aren’t. But as careless as she can be with her inside jobs, Kate isn’t that way with her schoolwork at all. She does best when she gets up early and digs in to her assignments when the house is quiet and littles are still sleeping; with an end in sight, she works hard and carefully until she’s done.  She would say otherwise, but she doesn’t really mind school, and overall it’s pretty easy for her. In her spare time, Kate loves to read. Horse stories are probably at the top of her list, but she also likes any of the Childhood of Famous Americans Series, as well as anything else she can get her hands on. Being a fast reader, she can whip through a lot of books in a short time. Not that she spends all her time reading, oh no. She also enjoys Chess with a sibling or on the computer, and she’s always up for a game of Speed or Dutch Blitz.  When it’s nice out she can be found on her bike, on the trampoline, or involved in anything else that’s going on, work or play. Work and play, Kate does it heartily, that’s for sure, with an abundance of smiles, laughter, and chatter. I don’t know what we’d do without her. Even though she prefers to be outside working, she’s learning that inside work isn’t all that bad either. Kate, we are sure glad you’re part of our wagon train…you’re a lot of fun and we love you bucketloads!!!!

From sparkly sweet baby…

 

…to beautiful young lady…

…in eleven short years!!

Happy Birthday, Kaitlyn!

Today was a first for Kate, I think – over 80 degrees on her birthday. It was also very windy but no one seemed to mind. We were loving it!!!!

Proof!! that we have the greatest teenage boys in the world!!!! See those smiles?! And aren’t their aprons cute?!!! No matter what “they” may say…life with teenagers is too much FUN!!!

“Pane, pane!”

And isn’t he just too cute??!!!

Soccer weather!!

Spectators.

Dean & Amy stopped by and stayed for a little while, which was fun for all. Joshua and Jackson were both two in January…precious little farmers!

Anne just turned seven, and Sarah will be seven next month. They had a good time together.

It was a fun evening with a lot of tired kids by bedtime (parents too).

And that’s it!

4-2-11 Hey Kids…

It’s fence fixing time. We walk around the pastures checking all the fences, making sure they will keep the cattle in. Some parts are really easy and obviously need no repair. Those are the new sections we just put up in recent years. Some parts need a little more work - just a few adjustments and they are good to go. But. There are a couple of short stretches that were extremely difficult. It took a lot of time and we covered very little distance.

Why?

Because the wires were broken, the posts were rotted off, and the anchors were rusted through. We hardly knew where to start with such a mess. Oftentimes we would rather tear the entire thing out and start all over. But usually we just try to get by with what is there because we don’t want to spend the amount of time and effort needed to fix the thing up right.

And that works, until the calves start pushing the wires; and then, what do you know? They’re out. And Dad has to come home from work and track the critters down, get them back where they belong, and then spend a lot more time and effort fixing the nasty fence again…hoping it won’t happen again, but knowing full well it probably will.

Making fence is similar to the way life is. We make decisions about investing in something based on the required time and effort. And that applies to a lot of things in life, not only fence fixing. It also applies to improvement projects…

Like when we finally gave up on trying to make the old green shed usable and tore it down. We’re not a bit sorry we built the new red shed there even though it took considerable time and effort to do it.

Or like when we threw in the towel on repairing the red barn. We took the plunge and invested the time and effort to put new steel on. We’ve never been sorry we made that decision.

Or like when we replaced some of the old windows in the house rather than continuing down the futile path of repairing, painting, sealing, and cleaning 40-year-old windows. A lot of work, but a good choice.

Remember the livestock trailer renovation? How many times did we scab old boards over older boards to patch the floor? We finally ripped out all the old boards and started over, and also replaced the old rotting steel with brand new pieces. Yes it was a lot of work, but nope we’re not sorry we did it.

Good things always take a lot of time and effort, and we’ve noticed this truth even applies to relationships.

Like when we see bad attitudes and actions in you kids, we get frustrated and wonder why. Then we realize we’ve been too busy to meet one-on-one for awhile; we haven’t spent that individual time with you, talking, discipling, mentoring, discussing your particular struggles and needs. That soon shows, but it’s not your fault when we don’t take that time and make that effort. It’s our problem. Remember that when you’re the Dad & Mom.

Also sometimes Dad & Mom aren’t in step, and you kids know what that means. You see disagreements, heated discussions, frustration and discouragement in our interactions. And where does that come from? From the amount of time Dad & Mom aren’t spending alone together. A good marriage takes time and effort and lots of it... talking, and talking, and more talking. Sometimes late into the night. Lots of nights. Nope, never been sorry for putting forth that time & effort. Never forget that, kids.

Good things always take a lot of time and effort. Period.

Keep on keepin’ on.

Dad & Mom

4-1-11 April

I guess it’s true that time flies when you’re having fun, because it’s hard to believe it’s April already!!!

I was all set to write that our spring cleaning is done, but Tori told me tonight that there are a couple cupboards to do yet. Oh well, that certainly won’t take long tomorrow, and THEN we’ll be DONE!! Just in time for garden season :) Yay!!

Josh got to help on another cupboard.

??? I claim ignorance on this one. I’m not sure where I was, but I caught the tail end of it, with Joshua coming out to the kitchen with wet hair and traces of soapsuds on his face. Jacob & Kate were making pizza for supper, and I suspect this was pre-supper dishes that went awry (kind of), with Jacob involved (I think he took the pictures).

 

I’m sure you know who started this tussle!!!!

Practicing a stunt for the circus, perhaps??!

???

 

Good night!