In Which I Chronicle the Disastrous Effects Of My Impulsiveness...

One evening Herself was Skyping one of her sisters that lives in China, and her sister mentions that she would like to return to the country that she lived in whilst in the Peace Corps, the Republic of Georgia.  She wanted to do this in order to re-acquaint herself with her friends that she had made and her host family that she stayed with.  Apparently she had developed really good relationships with folks there.  She was lamenting that she didn't want to make the trip by herself but she couldn't find anyone that would catch the vision enough to commit to going with her.  She was saying all this as I came into the room, and I surprised everybody (myself included) by saying "Wifey will go with you!"  This is another classic case of my impulsiveness...

After much discussion, (of course) all the details get hammered out and it is decided when they are going, it still seems all very far away and unimportant.  As the date gets closer, Herself starts compulsively making lists to help her keep track of everything that wants done before she leaves.  :)   

Then on the evening of the big day, she asks me where her passport is.   I realize that it is locked up in the Safety Deposit Box in the vault of our bank!  We were going to leave at 8:30 in the morning the next day, and the bank doesn't open until 9:00.  I texted my banker that evening and he was gracious enough to sneak me in a side door and give me access to the vault prior to the bank opening early that next morning, with plenty enough time to spare.

After that big 'ol airplane swallowed up our Beloved Mama, we went home, the kids were quite energized by the thought of fending for themselves and taking care of Silly, Helpless Daddy.  I came home that evening to a wonderful meal of spaghetti and my favorite home made cookies; peanut butter!  It was awesome!  From there, however, things just sort of unraveled.  Nothing traumatic or anything like that, it just became VERY apparent (really quickly) that there needed to be a full time person in my home taking care of things the way She does, to maintain normalcy.  And we didn't...

The first obvious example is wal-mart...  I decided to go shopping for groceries.  Now ordinarily, I avoid this place like the Ebola Virus, but one "Mustn't Grumble", so I trudged off to the my least of favorite stores.  (It may as well had a sign that stated: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here".  Anyway, I spent an HOUR AND A HALF looking for my list of 15 grocery items!!! An hour and a half!!! I realized that I knew where NOTHING was!  Now, I'm not suggesting that all I came home with was 15 items, noooo, in fact it cost me well over 200.00 dollars, but it took me that long to find the items on my list.  I was really frustrated by the time that I was done, but I was so proud of myself for sticking it through and getting my stuff. And not killing anybody or yelling at anyone in the meantime...

But sticking with the theme that things were different around the house without Mama, I quickly realized that there was a lot of stuff that happened around the house that I didn't (couldn't) care about.  One thing I realized quite quickly was this: How do single moms that work full time do it?!?  My work is very flexible, and I have very competent staff to get stuff done in my absence, so I took a lot of time off; going in late and coming home early, and I have my in-laws living right next door to help with child care, running to the library, etc, and all my kids have been doing their own laundry (and mine) for quite some time now, and I didn't hardly ever have to cook, and it was still nonstop chaos.

So, what are you going to do when your hospitable Wifey is gone over the 4th of July, and you have a bunch of family around (from both sides), and that family has friends with large families from out of state around, what are you going to do?  I'll tell you; you host a Fourth of July Party without caring how well it is executed, that's what you do.  And you invite literally anyone who wants to come.  There was more than 50 people there, including some of them that I'd never met before, and most looked like they were having fun.

It was unseasonably cool most of the time that Herself was gone, which was nice with the extra traffic of Roper kids going in and out; I wore out a few flyswatters, though.  But we finally developed a gait of unsteady rhythm; mostly winging it, with all the extra company, unregulated bedtime hours, sporadic meal times, we lived in Splendid Squalor, without any sort of schedule.  For the first time in my children's life, they lived in unchecked chaos; it was fun at first, but they were Sooo ready for Herself to come back and restore order in our lives.  As was I.

As for myself; I was nearly a basket-case from the beginning, but as the days wore on my resolve to "stay calm and carry on" was wearing pretty thin.  I found myself pretty irritable and lonely, and towards the end, even depressed (very unusual for me) for lack of Mama. Overall, I'm so glad she went, I'm delighted for her to have this experience to travel to another country, because I'm not at a point in my life where I'm willing to take 16 days off and go do that sort of thing, and I know she has a strong desire to do such things, but I can't really see the circumstances that it will ever happen like this again... Here are a few pictures of the fun Mama was having without us:

Above: The Black Sea

pictures of pasture for Jonathon

Beans, beans, and more beans...

Those of you who know me best, know that not all of my decisions are 100% reasoned out.  But when I'm being generous to myself, I refer to myself as "Impulsive". I was perusing the aisles of Sam's Club the other day, and saw a 40 pound bag of beans.  "Hey," I says to myself, "I could can those, and they would last forever!"  What I should have said to myself would have sounded a lot more like: "Keep walking, Jack, you've got enough projects!", but alas, in the cart the beans went.

Anyway, this is what 40 pounds of beans canned looks like: (Who knew? They SWELL!)

At final count, there were about 120 pints, and I think 21 quarts of beans.  I had been planning building fence all weekend, and still did get a lot done, but I just squeezed it in between trips to the shed to check the canner.  I also had some good and cheerful helpers, though!  Couldn't have got it all done without my kiddos...

in which I chronicle the advent of a bunch of chicks!

This winter, I actually did a lot of research to figure out which incubator (I hate doing research, I'm much more impulsive than that) and came up with the GQF 1588 Genesis Hova-Bator Incubator. If you like, you can see it on Amazon here. We are really impressed by it; we put in 15 chicken eggs and 5 duck eggs, and all 15 chicken eggs hatched! From what we have read, a 100% hatching is pretty rare.

We even had cousins here for the advent; my girls were babysitting them so that my Brother in Law could help me build fence. My nephew, the boy in the red and blue, who just turned 4, said excitedly "They are really turning into Fluffy-Fluffs!!"

The duck eggs still won't hatch until next Saturday; they take 28 days, instead of 21. After that, we will put in our turkey eggs we have been collecting from our turkey hen. We currently have 14, but are hoping for more.  Below are some more pictures of hatching; we had to actually help the very first one that "pipped" through his shell.  All his little buddies had hatched and he still wasn't able to break through because the membrane had hardened around and on him.  I managed to pull it off of him and he seems to be doing well.  They looks so dead-like when they are first born; they wobble about 4 steps and just crash and fall flat and sleep for about 2 minutes, and then repeat that over and over.

This is the guy that got stuck...

Alive! But just barely, it seems.  They fluff up quickly under the lamp, though.

In which I chronicle the advent of a bottle lamb

Last Sunday (01/19/2014), I came home from church and inspected Dottie, our new mama ewe, her 5 day old lamb.  I noticed right off that Dottie obviously didn't feel good, so after consulting my dad, I raced off to town and bought penicillin and wormer in the hopes of saving her. It did nothing for her and she died later that evening.  Herself and I caught the little lamb and brought her inside the shed and put her in the crate; I had some milk re-placer that I used for the hogs so stuck a feeding tube down her throat and gave her some just to keep her in calories until I could get some real formula for her.

After that, I spent hours trying to get her to take the nipple from a bottle; it was quite foreign to her, and the milk just trickled in for several days until Wednesday, when she truly figured it out.  Now that she knows where the milk comes from, she knows who her mama really is: ME!

Christmas break, part 2

It is soo nice when there is nasty weather around Christmas time, it is a naturally slow time for us, and it turns into a VERY slow time for us! (work wise)  I get to soak up some days at home, get some stuff done, hang out with my kids, etc.

Here are my "Curly-Cuteys;" rag curls are a Christmas eve tradition by now, done by family friend and hair specialist Haley.

Below is our first turkey butchering; the oldest boy and I raised them, fed them, and butchered them together.  He did a really great job of being responsible for them when they were alive and was super interested and helpful in the butchering and the processing of this first one as well.

I smoked it last night, but alas, it did not turn out that great.  It was pretty dry; I don't know what I did wrong... But it may have been a little tough naturally; his name was "Blinky" because he could only see out of one eye, so maybe he had a hard time foraging.

Christmas Break 2013

During this break from school, with all the kids being around and without as much direction as they are accustomed to, I felt that they needed some encouragement to get along with each other, as direction-less children often lead to conflict.  We packed up and headed to Panera Bread for breakfast that first Saturday morning, and they suffered through Daddy lecturing on and on and on and on and on about being Generous, about being Selfless, but mostly about being Respectful Of Each Other.  I told them that any time we hear angry yelling, hitting, or arguing, that was an indication of 2 people handling conflict incorrectly.  The correct was is to state: "It feels you are being disrespectful toward me because..."  To which the answer is ALWAYS: "I'm sorry that you feel that I was being disrespectful; I will stop doing...", even if they feel that they weren't being disrespectful.
The reason for that is because the point I'm trying to get across to these kids is that it is really about how our actions make the other people in our lives feel, not our intentions.  I know, this seems a little elemental, but in our house there seems to be a lot of conflict. We look at friends and family who have similar sized and aged kids as we, and are rather amazed at the lack of conflict in their home.  I don't understand this; is it me? Or is it just my DNA structure that I have passed down to my kids, the DNA that doesn't mind conflict?  Anyway, this is my experiment, it seems to be going well the first 5-6 days.  The nice thing of it is, the lack of structured days allows those who don't catch the vision to sit in their chairs quietly for a period of time, or in extreme cases, in their room for extended lengths of time.  We are usually busy enough that neither one of these two options are very viable...
Mostly, I posted this to look back and see; to be able to remind myself of doing this, and to gauge the effectiveness.  At some point in time, my kids will read it and roll their eyes and say "Oh yeah, I remember THAT Christmas break!"