Sometimes you catch 'em... sometimes you don't.

Oh the joys of camping... Check back for pictures later...

Rain, Rain... GO AWAY!

Well, I seem to be having quite the week. Paul and the boys are still off in dreamy Minnesota and I am getting a reality check here at home. I had good intentions of revamping the house with all the extra time I had this week. I was going to paint, and do some deep cleaning, fix the garden, etc, etc...

The day before Paul and the guys left, he bought a new well pump to have on hand because we noticed our water was being tempermental the few days before he left. By "tempermental" I mean it would act like it was running out of water and slow down to a dribble once in a while, then after an hour or so of no use, would resume pressure as usual. So, he left a new pump in the garage for me and the pump guy's number... Well, the night he left, the water pretty much ran out for the night. It came back on only to function at one-fourth to one-third the pressure for remainder of the week. Not enough to shower in, but enough to drool into the bathtub for a few inches of washing water.

Then, Tuesday was an overcast, dreary day, and as my mom left that afternoon, we noticed a storm rolling in. I put the goats away, and took the girls and Nathan in to take a nap. Rainy days are great for two things... sitting on the covered porch listening to the thunder and watching it rain, or napping. I chose a nap. After a couple sleepy hours, I went to check my email and the computer completely froze up! It has been locked up ever since (I'm posting this at my parent's house)... As I was walking through the house, I glanced out the front windows, and thought "is that snow? is it hailing?" The entire field next door was covered with white stuff. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was the sun reflecting on a field full of water. I walked out onto the back porch and the water was covering our sewer system and air (or whatever) was bubbling out of it. I stood there astounded until I remembered that we have 50 of our 11 week old soon-to-be-laying hens in a movable chicken pen in our back yard...

I grabbed my rubber shoes and out I trudged into thigh high water to rescue my poor drowning chickens. After picking out the ones that looked like they were still alive, I threw them on top of the coop and ran to get a box to carry them over the water. After several trips, I had to figure out what I was going to do with these half-dead chickens. I set up a temporary shelter in the garage and turned on some heat lamps while my mom and sister came to help me. Then on to the other animals. Our other chicken coop had about a foot and a half of water in it and our goat pen had about 6 inches of water and it was still raining! Ugh. After catching the floating chickens in the second coop and bringing them into my animal hospital, my sister and mom arrived to perform hypothermia treatments on them. (Dipping them in warm water and drying them with towels and a hair dryer)

The top picture is the goat pen, and the bottom picture is the "river" that was flowing over our fence (that the water pushed down). That plastic climbing toy is not on an island,it landed on a pile of corncobs and stalks that flowed from the neighboring fields.

Two of these chickens in the picture above actually survived thanks to my smart sister, and the bottom pictures are the damaged fences from the rushing water. My mom, sister and a great friend came over the next day and we spent the entire day cleaning up, rebuilding and fixing fences, and putting the 30 dead chickens out for the garbage man that was due for his pick-up that day. (Sorry, garbage man) By the end of the day, we were completely exhausted, but the place was looking almost back to normal!! Hooray!

Oh, yeah, as if I didn't have enough water, I called the pump guy to fix our well water on Tuesday (before the rain). He finally made it out on Thursday (since he had plenty of sump pumps to fix with the rain) and after examining the new pump that we had in the garage, he told me that it's not the right size, and guess what... no one apparently carries the kind we need in stock. It'll take 8-10 days to come in after ordering, so I'm taking my first shower in 3 days at my parent's house... And the saga continues... (But don't expect a post anytime soon. My computer is still completely locked up :P

Potty time??

Alright, I am not officially potty training my 8-month-old, but he did actually go "number 2" as he was sitting on his potty seat! While I was still pregnant, I pondered the idea of potty-training him from birth. I had read about other women that did it, and we all know those Indian women with the papoose didn't carry around a diaper bag, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Well...that was before he was born. Afterward, it was a different story. I really didn't care as much, and my lovely sister-in-law gave me the scoop on how to get some diaper deals :) But we have still encouraged him since he was born to go to the bathroom "on command" by repeating "Go potty Nathan, go potty" whenever we noticed that he was filling his diaper. On occasion, I would say the same thing if I knew that he probably needed to "go" and every once-in-a-while, I could tell by his expression and lack of breathing that he was actually trying to do what I said. Lately, he's been getting a bit of a diaper rash, so for a few hours yesterday, I let him crawl around and sit in his high chair in his bare bottem. Right after he had some blueberries for lunch, I could tell that he needed to go to the bathroom, so I grabbed him out of the high chair and was going to strap a diaper on him... but then I realized it would be just as simple to take him into the bathroom and less of a mess for me. Well, he sat there a few minutes and after snapping a couple pictures and telling him to "go potty", I noticed that he actually went!! Yeah for Nathan!!

And.....they're off...

The guys left for their annual 8-day quest to bond with nature...
This year, Noah was finally old enough to join the Men on their canoeing trip in the Boundary Waters between Canada and Minnesota. He was soooooo excited. Actually, all of the boys were driving me nuts with their anticipation. Like the weeks right before Christmas, they were bouncing off the walls with excitement. I will miss them, but truthfully, I was glad to see them go this time. They were getting into so much trouble. Caleb and Seth were doing "training" by dragging 40 pound bags of chicken feed around on their backs. That was OK, but it got out of hand when they decided to practice their hunting techniques on our septic tank service man. Noah and Seth had plucked all of my Peony bush buds off my not-yet-blossomed plant and, as much as I could tell, were going to use them for ammunition when the man came back around the house. Now, whether they actually would've done it, I don't know, but I DO know that my bush won't be flowering anytime in the near future, and to me, that meant WAR! It was kind of a one-sided war (since I'm their mom and they have to do what I say), so after they cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed the living room, folded the laundry, and collected the eggs, I declared myself the winner, and sent them back out to play...

This year Paul and the boys went with my dad and oldest brother, Mark. My dad used to go up annually with his fishing buddies on the same type of trip, but hasn't been up in about 20 years or so. I really enjoyed watching his excitement as they prepared to go. My brother has been there once (that I know of) and claims that he only needs the clothes on his back for the week (no need for extra weight, of course). I think he ended up throwing in a rain poncho "just in case". I am looking forward to many interesting stories and fish "tales" when they get back.

Gracie's actual birthday...

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm doing a run on 'Gracie' posts, but it WAS just her birthday and she IS my baby girl and... you get the point...

So, here's some pics from her actual birthday. She picked out pancakes for breakfast and as tradition would have it, we sang and lit candles in the pancakes for her to blow out. She had a little trouble since she hasn't quite got the knack for blowing air in a straight line. But, hey, isn't that what big brothers are for?? Then on to a park in Romeoville to meet daddy for a picnic lunch...

My baby girl is 3!!!

Gracie's birthday party was on Sunday. We are truely blessed to have most of the family living in the area, so there's usually a small crowd at any one of the kids parties. Gracie loved the attention. Every time someone would ask her how old she was at her party, she would say "two". (which she still was, but we were expecting her to say "three" because she knows that she's turning 3 on her birthday) With Caleb's coaxing, she insisted on waiting until her actual birthdate to proclaim that she was now "three years old" and "can use markers because she's not going to color on herself anymore". My Grace-full little artist had been banned from using markers for a few months, so, for her, the highlight of turning 3 was getting to use them again. And my highlight was a very inexpensive birthday present... a handful of markers, a new coloring book, and ta-da!

A very happy little girl.

My Gorgeous Gracie

We had dandilions aplenty before our first mowing of the year, and the girls were bringing in bouquets of them for me. We went out to enjoy the sun on a recent spring day and took some pics with the pretty little weeds. Gracie, my little herbalist in the making, must have known how nutritious they are because it looks like she's taste-testing a few in the pictures.

Brotherly Love

Seth is an excellent big brother. In fact, all of the kids adore and dote on their baby brother. When I would watch families that had older and younger kids, I would notice how whenever the baby of the family did anything out of the ordinary, they whole family would take notice and "ooooh and ahhhhh" about it. Of course, with our babies being so close together, there was much more chance of the bigger siblings saying something like, "well, watch me, I can do it better". But I can officially say, we have crossed that line. Nathan started crawling this week, and as he was going from one side of the living room rug to the other, we all just sat watching and cheering him on. (Until he would reach the other side and someone would say, "Turn him around, let's see if he'll do it again!")


It would be normal to think that in a family of six kids, that the baby would get stuck in the corner and not get much attention. Actually, the opposite seems to be true, at least in our family. Though Nathan may not get all of my undivided attention, he sure doesn't lack in love and attention from the entire family. Someone is always around to play with, cuddle (as much as he'll let you), and entertain him.

Zoology 101

As if we don't have enough trouble keeping our current "pets" alive, we've decided to add two new ones to the mix. Meet "tad" and "pole". This is a bit more of a homeschooling experiment than a quest to have a couple frogs leaping around the house, so hopefully (fingers crossed) when the little leg-less creatures sprout appendages, they will join all the other fish and frogs in Auntie Dawn's pond.