Happiest girl in the world!

Look who has come to live with our sheep! She's a miniature horse named Darlin', she is from Grey Fox Farm and she's the sweetest little mare I've ever met. She happily follows Kaia around the yard on "tours" and doesn't mind the kids being led around on her back. Rowan loves her too, and can be heard shouting "I'm a cowboy! I'm a cowboy!" as he rides.

We have her on a foster program, we're not ready for a permanent horse yet. She'll stay with us until right before her baby is due in February, then go back to the farm to have the baby. I know the kids will be sad when she leaves, but I think that will be somewhat mitigated by the promise to go see the new baby.

I'm teaching Kaia to groom and about all the parts of the horse. This is a great lesson for our home education project!

Papa is home safe!

I'm a little late in blogging this, but my dad is home safe! He was in a war zone, working as a civilian, for the last six months. Much to everyone's relief, he chose not to stay a full twelve months. Do these kids look glad to see their Papa or what?

RIP Lightening...

It's been an eventful week. Poor baby ram. Raising sheep shouldn't be this hard. Lightening McQueen was dead last Thursday morning, the kids and I found him in the back part of our lot as we were leaving. I *really* couldn't do anything about him then, I left his body in the woods and called Wesley as we were pulling out of the driveway.

Me: "Um, honey? Lightening McQueen is dead."
Wes: "Huh?"
Me: "You know, Lightening, the ram. He's dead. He's in the woods. Do I just leave him there, or what?"
Wes: "But what else would you do with him? Maaaan, he's going to stink this afternoon."

Sorry friends, no pictures of this one. Lightening had a decent burial after Wes dug a very nice hole that afternoon. Thank goodness we got him in the ground before Tropical Storm Fay hit. Our back lot went from dry woods to swamp pretty quick. More on that, with pictures, later.

He's so clever

One of the things that makes being married to Wes both interesting and challenging are his contraptions and ideas. It's wonderful that he can create just about anything and solve many problems for me, but he frequently makes me nervous.

For instance, check out this setup. Wes says it's based on how the Egyptians moved stones for the pyramids. That's the kid's fort, and he's trying to get the clubhouse part back up on its legs. He's usually the only person working on these sorts of projects, so he has to find a ways to lift and move heavy pieces by himself. Wes is great with a lever, and has moved lots of things I thought were impossible for one person.

Here, he has the clubhouse counter-balanced with a 50 gallon drum of water. He tied it all up, then turned the hose on and had it on the legs in no time! He just has to put up with my worries -- what if the rope breaks? Don't let the kids near it! Careful! How are you going to make it stable? He says "Don't worry, it's fine." I guess we make a good pair, Odd Couple style.

And this, my friends, is how we mow the yard

Katahdin Hair Sheep. The kids named them. The one closest to the camera, with horns is "Cookiepie Sweetie Face," the youngest ewe. Behind her is her big sister "Marshmallow Christmastreecake Bouncy Girl," and the white one is a ram called "Lightening McQueen." Can you guess which child named which animal(s)?

Sew and Show - "Jayme" Tanks

I used the pattern for the "Jayme Dress" at Sewingmamas to make some new tank tops for Kaia. The largest size I could find in the downloads was a 4T, so I used the general shape of it to come up with a size 7.

My first attempt isn't shown here, as it was in the wash, but it wasn't a great fit. It gaped in the front and back, and the straps were waaay to long. I hacked a few inches out of the straps on that one to make it wearable, then modifed the pattern again. The shirts shown here have 1/2" taken from the center, then added back to the sides to keep the shirt from being too snug. 5 3/4" straps seem to be the right length to keep the shirt decent. None of them are getting hemmed, my theme here is "quick & easy," and it doesn't matter so much with knits anyway.

The shirt is a baby rib I think I got at Fabric.com ages ago, you can't see the print, but it's ballerina bunnies. Kaia loves it, she has a nightgown from it too. I used FOE (foldover elastic) for the straps. I promised she could do a special pose after one normal picture. :-)

And of course, Doug had to get in on the act!

Last two shirts have fabric straps, and I like the way these turned out too. I just hate ironing the binding strips, I manage to burn myself everytime I use the iron! I was talking to my friend Lisa as I finished them, and she reminded me that I have a gazillion iron-ons. So, they says "Flower Power" and "Chicks Rock." Kaia was tickled pink by the chicks shirt.

If the shoe fits...

I have not taken very many good pictures since we got the new camera. Hopefully, I'll have time to read the manual and figure the darn thing out sometime soon. Now, being high-strung and melodramatic isn't really a character trait we want to encourage in our little girl, but some things just can't be helped. This is the kid that screams bloody murder for the slightest owie after all. And God forbid she gets a splinter, getting it out is more painful for my eardrums than for Kaia's finger.

When I saw this fabric, I *knew* she had to have a dress out of it. So, here it is -- my little Drama Queen's new dress. I would have fussy-cut the front to have the words in the middle, but I had barely a yard this fabric I swiped from Wendy. The neck and sleeves are black hemp jersey, and I went for the lazy, ahem, trendy, deconstructed serged edges instead of a hem.

Aw maaaaan

I just saw a roadkill grey rat snake in the entrance to my neighborhood this morning. It was two big to be the one I posted about earlier, but I'm still bummed. Rat snakes are so cool & useful, that I'm sad that one got creamed. Hopefully, the little guy we let go in the backyard will stay out of harm's way and gift us with many offspring.

Two more boy pics

Doug is at a particularly yummy age. I could just eat him up with kisses. Two years old is just so fun! Wes and I still aren't very happy with the quality of the pictures we get with our new camera, but it probably has a lot to do with our learning curve. I thought these two pictures turned out tolerably well though. Dougie gets called "her" and "she" a lot by strangers in public, but we just love his curls. We discuss cutting his hair on a daily basis, but somehow we continue to procrastinate. Maybe when he turns three.

It seems like Doug is talking so much sooner than the older two kids, I think he is trying to keep up with Kaia and Rowan. He can tell us just about anything he wants, from "more juice please" to "I hidin'. I hidin' [from] you," and he enjoys singing lots of songs.
He lives to go outside, and will sneak out any chance he gets. He's the reason we now have alarms or chimes on all of the doors. Douglas can't open them yet, but I need to know if a big sibling has accidentally let him escape.


Dougie amazes us with how much food he eats. There are times when he eats more than his two siblings combined at one meal. We're not sure where he puts it, I fully expect him to sprout up to six feet tall in the blink of an eye one day. His current hobby is taking the green "balls" off of my tomato plants and trying to eat them. Hopefully, he will miss some and we'll enjoy some ripe tomatoes soon.

Happy Kid

Is this a happy boy or what? I finally took the Lightening McQueen fabric he's been dragging around for months and turned it into a new camp shirt. From the Ottobre best shirts supplemental pattern, size 110. Me boyo is getting BIG.

Hello Friend

My mother-in-law called us within 5 minutes of leaving our house the other day. Wes answered the phone to hear "There's a SNAKE on my car. I'm turning around and coming back because I can't drive home like this." She's usually pretty unflappable and calm, but snakes squick her out a bit. She wasn't in a panic, but it certainly the snake was an unacceptable hood ornament for her drive home. Wes told her he'd be right out, obviously forgetting that I'm the official critter getter in the family (well, he can take care of the really gross stuff, like cockroaches and mice), so I had to race him out the door to rescue mom as she pulled back in the driveway.

When we got out there, we found a cute little Grey Rat Snake (or White Oak Snake, depending where you're from), just slithering down the side of the car. I gently scooped him up and ran off inside to show him off to the kids. He didn't try to bite me, if you catch rat snakes very gently and carefully, they generally don't freak out and bite. He did musk a little to show his displeasure with being handled. The kids thought he was awesome. I got one picture, it isn't great, but have you ever tried to wield a camera while keeping a snake under control while a 6yo, 4yo and 2yo are bouncing around and trying to touch the snake?

We admired him for a little while, then released him in the back yard, well away from where mom parks. I let him crawl up the side of the big oak tree next to our compost pile. Too bad I didn't get a picture of that, it's amazing to see a rat snake go almost straight up a tree. If you were to look at their bodies in cross-section, you'd see that they are sort of loaf-shaped, like a slice of bread. This shape gives them some nice corners on their bellies to wedge into and grip any available crack for climbing. Pretty nifty trick for a critter with no legs, isn't it? Hopefully, he'll stick around and we will see him once in a while. He's a welcome friend.

I'm FINALLY Getting Started

The first step is always the hardest, right? I have so, soooo many ideas rolling around in my head but I never seem to get started with any of them. Well, that's gonna change. I am working hard at following my projects through to completion as a way to help me reach my goals. I'll probably be using this blog a lot as a way to keep track of everything and bounce new ideas around. And there's a good chance I'll use this to brag on my kids some too. I plan on making my little corner of the web nice and comfy.

A few months ago, Joy posted about the benefits of gratitude in our daily lives, and I've been thinking about ever since. In addition to this being my inaugural blog post, this is Gratitude Post #1. I'm grateful to live in an area of the country where something is always blooming. Don't the amaryllis in my garden look happy this year? It's wonderful to never have to look far to find a little beauty to enjoy.