Trying to get our routine back - again!

Well, it has been an amazing bit of time on our homestead!

I have finished out the last contract for work - which means I should be down to a much lighter schedule, which is much needed by everyone!  The kids have been fabulous with helping out and pitching in, but it has been a long stretch.  I think we have totally paid for the new bathroom.  Whew.  As soon as that last paycheck comes in.  Yay!  It was a long, hard stretch and we were all showing the strain.

So, I feel like I have gone to heaven, thinking of being home most of the time now!

Tomorrow we start getting our regular routine back - starting schooling again for all eight, continuing working on our homestead, training horses, riding, and on and on.

I have promised my husband that I will do more writing now, and this is the beginning of my efforts to do so.  I am hoping to set aside an hour a day, one way or the other to write.  I have several things in the works, and will be working on those as well as blogging more.

So,  the big events are typical for this time of year in the Frozen Tundra - at least for those of us who try to somewhat farm.  We are preparing for winter.

Sigh.

We all know that it is coming.  It is inevitable.

It will be cold, it will be long, and at times it will be hard on us and the animals we care for.

So, each year, we prepare.

We do whatever we can to improve things, and each year it gets better.

This year there is a lot, but I guess every year there is.
This year, we are have a lot of things we are trying to get done.  Sigh.

The rabbits moved out of the old rabbitry in our old garage (loosely called that).  We built all new rabbit hutches with nesting boxes along one side of the house and moved the kids' rabbits over to that.  It is really nice.  I call it the 'rabbit taj mahal'.  The rabbits are very happy, to say the least.  And they will be wonderfully set for winter!

The garage is being converted into goat housing. Problem is that the 'garage' has slipped from some of the foundation and dropped into the the ground by about six inches at one entire end of the building.

Yep that is a problem.  All sorts of things kitty whampus.

Well, we read about how to restore old buildings, to renovate and make them strong again.  Books make sense, but I always worry.  You know, when you go to do a home renovation project, it always takes three times as long as you think it will, and costs at least double if not more.  So, lifting a garage and putting in new sill plates and supporting the foundation seems like quite a challenge, regardless of how relatively simple it sounds in a book!

Hah!

For once, the book was right, and even better, while it took a while to do it, it wasn't terrible to do!  The garage went up, the bent siding straightened, and we were able to dig out the foundation.  And get the building supported!  Imagine chains holding a building together, three car jacks lifting, and a lot of amazed looks!  It worked!

The best way then to hold it all together (outside of the chains on the outside of the building), is to then support the inside as it is all straight.  So, insulation goes in, plywood interior walls go up, and the building is held together firmly.

Amazing!

So, we are still putting up the insulation and interior sheeting (plywood), so the chains are still around the building, but it is all coming together!  Can we all say "whoo-hoo"?

With a three day weekend coming up, I expect we just might get it done....  And maybe even get some goat stalls assembled in there.

So, I will be calling an electrician to help us run electrical to the barn!!!!!  Because that is what it will be!  A real goat barn!!!!  With heat lamps, heated water buckets and all.  Ready for winter babies!

And on another topic - we had a great "gotcha day" for Tsion, Aman and Ben last week.  Nothing fancy, just a nice dinner out to celebrate.  And on Wednesday we will celebrate Zeri and Ben's third "gotcha day" with dinner at the Pizza Hut buffet - that is their request.  Sounds good to me!  I don't know if it is harder to believe that it has only been one year and three years, or that it has been one year and three years.  I cannot imagine life without a single one of our kids, and they are all doing so well overall.  We have the general struggles that all parents have, but really nothing unusual, and our kids know how much we love them, through the good times and the bad.  We are so blessed, and we know it.

I am in total denial that my first baby is going to be 16 very, very soon.  Ugh.  I was just remembering him as a baby the other night as I drove home with him.  This big, gangly boy, taller than me by several inches at least, turning into a man right before my eyes.  How does this happen?  Wow.

I remember my trip cross country, pregnant with him, a single mom, hoping I was going to be good for him, that I could do everything he needed, going home to be by family.  We needed more than just I could give him.  The moment I saw that positive pregnancy test, I knew that I had made the last mistake that I would do carelessly and that from then on, what I did was not about me, it was about that innocent child I carried.  He came first, before I ever saw his little face.  He turned my life around, away from selfishness, back to my faith and God, and into reality.  It was no longer a game.  And it turned into the best thing ever.

We were so very blessed.  God gave me the best husband ever, and he wasted no time in doing that.  I am so lucky.  God sure is something else!

Well, time to sleep! I will be cleaning and reorganizing and getting us back into our groove.

Oh, by the way, I took the first digger in a while - silly me.  The three year old mule that has only been sat on a couple times was out in the pasture.  Well, I decided to climb on.  Got on too fast, too hard, and she took off at a trot and me grabbing onto her mane to stay on bareback didn't help things any.  I wisely decided to disembark before her freaked out trot became a full fledged panicked gallop across the pasture.  By the way, she is tall.  The ground is hard, and I had my hands so tightly wound into her mane that in order to get my fingers free, I took a big hunk of her beautiful black mane with me.  Oh, well!  Thankfully, I didn't give myself anything more than an ache or two (mostly from my fingers) - oh and to make it worse - I lasted right in a fresh pile of manure!  Several acres of pasture, most of it very free of odoriferous material, and I landed right in a fresh pile, and managed to coat one whole leg.  It was very funny, once I convinced hubby and kids that I really was just fine.  So, I can scratch that off my list for the year!

"For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans for hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11