December

 

Kevin kindly bought me a lamp to illuminate my puzzle table. I have been working on this puzzle for awhile and am almost done. It is kind of puzzles within puzzles; a picture of a whole bunch of paintings. So much fun.

I am in the middle of a decluttering frenzy. This happens once or twice a year. This picture shows a whole bunch of our office supplies, which I spread out and then organized neatly. I threw stuff out too, of course. I really like having a neat and tidy house, but have also accepted that our house will never be really tidy with seven children roaming around. However, there is a great advantage in working on stuff and organizing it and throwing out trash and broken items. The most important thing is knowing where stuff is so we can find it when we need it.

Kevin kindly bought me a treadmill! Walking is my favorite form of exercise, and this treadmill allows me to read books or watch movies while I am exercising.  I have exercised faithfully for a couple of weeks. I haven't lost any weight, but I feel more energetic. So yeah for that!

Unfortunately, I am sick with some cold now. I tested for COVID and it was negative so hooray for that! My greatest concern is asthma. Sometimes my lungs get mad and I am a mess. I really am praying that doesn't happen this time.

Oh, I went to the doctor and my latest A1c (blood sugar test) is 6.2, same as 6 months ago. So no better or worse.

Nearly the End of March

 So as is, I guess, usual, March has been up and down a lot.

Mostly down, really.

We have had a cooler March than average and when the temperatures have heated up, they have generally been accompanied by wind and rain. Today it is supposed to be in the mid 50's with lots of rain and winds up to nearly 30 mph.

Miriam is groaning a bit at that. She works at Burger King but just one day a week, usually Saturdays. She is busy with college so one day a week works best.  Every Saturday this month (I think) the weather has been rotten when she works.  Today will be no exception; the BK windows are facing toward the west, where the winds come from. So winds will be whistling through the drive through windows, and maybe some rain as well!

In other news, I worked on organizing, decluttering, and cleaning a lot this week.

An explanation is in order.  The wicker basket is where I throw papers of dubious provenance. That is to say, I put random paper items which I think I might want sometime, but am not certain of.

It fills and fills and fills, and then every three or four months, I go through and basically throw it all out.

Of course, you have to wonder, why don't I just throw the papers out immediately? Well, because I am not CERTAIN. MAYBE I will want to look at the papers later.  I generally don't, but this works for me because I can just make decisions once every three or four months and in the meantime, all those random papers are confined to one place.

Angela has cute hair.

Rose is funny and big.

This bookshelf is a lot clearer than it was but I don't have a before picture.  I moved a bunch of books downstairs and donated some others.

This ... this is my life.  

Kevin and I have produced a bunch of really creative children. They like to draw and make things out of paper and mess around with boxes and it is great!

However. Every horizontal surface set aside for art ends up looking like this. Rose, in particular, doesn't care if she is working in a four inch by four inch space. She has no concept of "tidying up" the art table. She makes stuff, shoves aside the refuge, and keeps working.

 Now she cleans other things and so do all the kids. I could not keep the house in decent shape otherwise!  

But yes, the art tables always get really messy in a short time, and then I need to sweep in and work on cleaning things up.

Which is Ok. It is just a little weird to me because I am pretty tidy and always have been.

I am also not artsy craftsy at all so maybe that is part of it?  

I distinctly remember hanging out with a friend when I was like nine years old. She was really good at drawing faces.  I tried and failed to do something remotely decent and gave up.  So I wonder -- if I had persevered, would I have been a reasonably good artist?  All the girls have persevered in that area and are now good artists.

Or was my giving up a sign that I just don't really care about creating art?  I have been a bookworm since I was able to read well, which was like age 7 or so. I had my nose in a book a lot.  I still adore reading books. And I write them too, of course.

Anyway.  That was our week.  Cleaning a lot, along with the other normal stuff.

Lurching Toward Spring

 

I know it is not warm today, but we have had a couple of warm days recently. Yesterday it was almost 70. And windy, of course, as a front blew through.  Very windy.

We missed a major winter storm to the north of us so I am happy.

Much of this week has involved the cat on the right.  Moonbeam is our oldest cat.  We were not confident how old but came up with him being at least 13 and maybe even 15!  That is old for an ourdoor cat.

Kevin noticed he was slobbering and I checked him and discovered a tooth was broken.  I took him to the vet and they extracted that tooth and a couple of others that were barely hanging on.

Then they dosed him with pain meds and antibiotics and we put him in the barn for a few days.

Like all but one of our cats, Moonbeam is a stray/rescue. He and his mother and fellow kitten showed up on our porch many years ago. We found homes for Mom and Sib, but Moonbeam stayed. He is a very very nice cat.  I know he is very old too, and don't expect him to live a lot longer.  I am going to keep a close eye on his quality of life. He seems happy now.

Kevin bought our children a new "Active Life" mat. The Wii has games where you jump up and down on the mat and get exercise.  The old mat was not working right.  There is great happiness regarding the new mat.

We got our Universal Yums box from Brazil a few days ago. It is a subscription service where every month, we get food from a different country.  The kids really enjoy testing out different items. 

I finished this fun puzzle.  In addition to being spiritually encouraging (names of Jesus) it was also easy.  All those letters made it easy to put puzzle pieces in the right places.  A few months ago, I started a Monet puzzle and gave up.  I love Monet's work but it was SO hard to find the right spots with most of the puzzle full of tans, greens, purples, and pinks.

I found Wiki Stix living in a random box.  

Much of the family has been sick this week. Kevin has been the worst, poor guy.  Four of us helped at our church's food pantry last Saturday and on Monday, I got a text from one of the leaders that he tested positive for COVID!  We already had some people feeling funny on Saturday (no one who went) and three of us have tested negative for COVID since then. Which is to say, we tested at home. I am nearly certain it is just a cold.

Daniel has been sick all week but today felt well enough to make lemon muffins.

Oh, this is one last "funny".  All last weekend I was thinking I needed to wash the dining room floor but didn't get around to it.

Monday morning, Rose was sick and asked for some 7-Up. I said yes.

She then spilled it all over the dining room floor. I was glad I waited on washing the floor!  

Then a few hours later, we brought home groceries and Daniel dropped a bag with a giant container of yogurt.

Which then smashed and spread yogurt all over.

Sigh.

So now the dining room and kitchen floors are clean. Because I had to deal with them!

 

Feet, Cats, and Other Topics of Interest

 

I bought very expensive shoes for my poor feet. Well, specifically my left foot.  My right has been fine, but my left foot keeps hurting. I am pretty sure it is plantar fasciitis, as I said before.  With these shoes, it is pretty happy. It is weird basically wearing shoes almost all the time, but for now I need to do so or my left foot starts hurting a lot.

This is Ghosty, a stray cat that has kind of adopted us.  That is to say he likes our food but he finds us very scary.  He always runs away if we get near him.  He is, at least, eating our food and is filling out a little, though he is still overly thin. Poor cat!

Jet outside. We are transitioning the kittens outdoors.

Opal up in the tower with Isaac.

We have been sick off and on this week. Miriam and Angela did not get baptized last Sunday, which was a big disappointment. The reason was an illness. Rose threw up a couple times and Kevin was sick, and then I got sick...

Baptism is important because our Lord Jesus commanded that his followers be baptized. But baptism doesn't save anyone.  It is a ceremony of obedience.  We will wait for another opportunity. Miriam and Angela are all ready and our church will have another baptism in the next few months.

Isaac and Joseph have been working three days a week at a local college, moving furniture, pulling up carpet, putting down carpet, and so on. It has been a really good job for the boys and we are proud of their hard work.

One minor problem popped up this week, and that is that Joseph has lost a few pounds in the last weeks.  Now for a normal person, no biggie, but Joseph is very underweight.  He is a little over 6 feet tall and weighed in at just over 100 lbs this week.

That...that is skeletal.  Now I assure you  that he does not have an eating disorder.  He is a somewhat picky eater and he just doesn't have a big appetite.  He has been doing a very physically demanding job of late and obviously calories in are less than calories out. So we sat down with Joseph and talked about bigger meals and more snacks, and Joseph is working on it.  

Other than that, we have been sorting out college classes for Isaac, Joseph, and Miriam, and I have continued to work in the basement, and Kevin has been working hard for his job (which supports us all) and also on the launch of our new book, which goes live on Amazon this coming Thursday.

So we are not bored!

Decluttering Frenzy

 So I am in the middle of my annual decluttering frenzy.  I know people do this in different ways. Some people toil away faithfully through the year getting rid of excess stuff.  I just get an urge, and have the time, and dive in.

So our secret room was a huge mess.  Secret room is a funny name, I know.  It is really a tornado shelter which we've made into a store room, but it is kind of in a funny place so we call it the secret room though it is no secret.

We also call the little room between the master bedroom and the master bath the "sewing room" even though I don't sew there.  What can I say? We are weird sometimes.

Anyway...

That is how it looked.  Yes, that is BAD.

I started pulling things out and organizing and tossing and this is how it looks today.

I hope it is obvious that it is much, much better.  

I am actually really good at tossing things, to the point that sometimes my kids are horrified.  But I am also busy, and every time I start organizing, things get messier outside the secret room. So I need to have time and sufficient determination.

I am not sure about our ice cream maker. I pretty much want to get rid of it because it takes up space and we haven't used it in years.  But I will talk to Kevin and see what he feels about it.

One nice thing about the frenzy is uncovering some old pictures and stamp albums. It has been fun going through them.

This Week

 A week ago, I finished my work on our latest book, Gallant Mr. Darcy, which will be published soon.  Kevin has been juggling all kinds of tasks involving the book launch but I am the Talent, and I don't deal with that stuff.

Kevin's job has also been demanding lately so, kudos to Kevin for managing everything!

So this week my brain veered from finishing the book to dealing with a bunch of little and big projects that had been allowed to lie fallow of late.

A big project involved our 5th wheel, which is parked beside our barn. We bought it 4 or 5 years ago, with the idea that it would be a little "cabin away from home.".  It was; when we still had very small children running around, Kevin and I would retreat there on date nights and watch a movie or just hang out together. Being 100 feet from the house was amazingly relaxing. Instead of hearing yelling and thumping of little feet, we just left the older kids in charge (yes, we did pay them for babysitting, though not a high hourly rate) and enjoyed one another's company.

Then Naomi lived in the 5th wheel for much of a year.  She had graduated from college but had a low paying job, and couldn't afford to live on her own yet.  But she could live in the 5th wheel, which she did.  She is an introvert and the sheer number of people in our house was not easy on her.  

Eventually, Lydia graduated and got a job, and they moved out, and are enjoying being on their own very much!

Oh, and Naomi got a much better job in computers.  Yeah!!  Praise God!!

Lately, we haven't been using the 5th wheel much.  We are in the hot tub enjoying one another's company, or we can watch movies in the basement or even on the computer without a lot of interruptions. There is a big difference between having a toddler and a 7 year old!  Rose is still very active and busy, but she can leave us alone when necessary.

So, we have decided to sell the 5th wheel, and this week the kids and I worked on getting the inside cleaned out and cleaned.  We had some stuff out there; not a ton, but some. Which means, yeah, I have to figure out what to do with all that stuff!

We had sleeping bags out there and the kids have decided that the living room is a fine place to set up a "tent city".  They have been having fun.

So yes, the inside of the RV looks good, and Kevin will clean up the outside a little, and we will try to sell it.  Probably we will find a buyer; apparently RV's are in hot demand right now.

I went through socks.  Ughhh.  Threw out some that were small or wearing out.  Matched a bunch.  Also found quite a few without mates.  

I went through some of my books and homeschool materials and set aside a bunch of stuff to give away. I posted the best of the lot on a local homeschooling group and a lady promptly said she would take everything. She homeschools and is a teacher at a private school so she said she could use everything.

I am hoping that this is the last gasp of winter. It is currently in the low 20's and we got snow yesterday.

  

This Week in Pictures

 

We bought collection folders for quarters and have had fun looking through our stash of quarters and putting the different state park and state coins in the right places.

Back three acres is mostly wild and really nice.

Rose with magnets on door.

There is a story here!  I decided to spray off the porch with a sprayer on a hose.  Kevin says no, use the pressure washer.  So what was going to be just a little clean up turned into a long, exhausting, but productive process.  I did some, Kevin did more.  The Welcome in the dirt shows what the porch looked like before Kevin toiled away with the pressure washer.

The black and white kitten is Kevin's emotional support animal. He sometimes takes her into his office for meeting.

Rose can be dramatic about folding towels.

Lydia and Opal

A Week of Organizing and Decluttering. Also, Fleas.

A couple of times a year, I have a sudden, deep, passionate desire to organize and declutter our home.  Commonly, these desires tie into the changing of seasons. So sure enough, a week ago I decided it was time to take a week off of school and do some work on the house.

I never get as much done as I hope, but this week has been very productive.  I worked with the kids to go through ALL their clothing. We donated 6 or 7 full trash bags full of clothes to Goodwill.  It feels good to have all the outgrown stuff out of the house, and everyone's clothes where they should be. Briefly.  It is inevitable that garments start sneaking into the wrong drawers over time.  

I also worked on the downstairs.  We have a storage room and an old bar where there is more storage.

Now, you may look at both of these and say, so what?  Well, I didn't get before pictures and I should have; I assure you both places are far, far better than they were. Also, they are not perfect.  One of my life mantras is "Better is better". I often often often don't have time to do a job completely, but even improvement is great.  The area behind the bar was particularly dreadful to the point that I couldn't walk back there, thanks to the kids throwing a whole bunch of costumes on the floor.  I got that cleaned up.

The kids helped a lot.  It wasn't all me.   I was the mastermind.

Also, our kittens have fleas. This is no great surprise since we rescued them from outdoors so yeah...

They are too little for traditional flea treatments, but apparently it helps a lot to just get a flea comb (which I ordered and received from Amazon), dip the comb in soapy water, and comb them. So today we did that and got a lot of fleas off of them.   The kids and I will keep doing that once or twice a day until they are old enough for a treatment. 

Apparently fleas don't live on people, which is good.  Our house doesn't have carpet and most of our couches are faux leather, also good. So hopefully we don't have an infestation. The kittens live in the sun room, also free of rugs. So we will see. We will keep working on it.

 

Bathroom Closet

I truly enjoy organizing and throwing things away!

However, it always takes time and I have been busy so it is rare that I go so far as to empty a bathroom closet and sort and tidy and all that.

Yesterday I tackled our main bathroom closet.  It is shocking HOW MUCH STUFF was in there.  The bathroom counter, and the washer and dryer, and the toilet, all had random things.

Some was expired and some needed to be elsewhere, so when the dust settled, it looked far better (see bottom picture.)

It really is nice to organize at least a couple of times a year.  The kids and I move things around so it is hard to see what I still have.

Daughter Switcheroo

On Wednesday of this week, Kevin and I abruptly decided to move all the girls around. 

The precipitating factor was that Rose and Sarah were sleeping in the room directly above the family room, where Kevin and I usually spend our evenings.  If they were just sleeping, that would be fine. But EVERY night, in pursuit of shenanigans or using the potty or late drinks of water, the little girls would hop, skip, and thump their way across the floor.  We would just be sitting peacefully and suddenly -- BANG.  It was loud, in spite of a carpet and other sound deadening attempts. 

So we decided to move Rose and Sarah into the room above the dining room.  That meant Miriam and Angela had to move into Rose and Sarah's room. Lydia was in the room with M and A, but we decided to move her into the study downstairs and Naomi into our 5th wheel.

For a couple of days we worked our tails off. The kids did most of the heavy lifting with help from Kevin, but I worked very very hard as well.  I ache.

But of course in the midst of all that moving, we found plenty of things that were out of place or useless, so we decluttered a lot in the process.  For a brief moment, we had 4 lovely bedrooms.

The boys stayed in the same room, but Daniel inherited a bed frame.  Previously, he just had a mattress on the floor.

It's beautiful.

Also beautiful.  I love clean floors.  It is a rare sight.

Lydia's room now.

Argh.  So now I am recovering from all that work but I am also happy at what we accomplished in a frenzy of activity.