three

 Happy Birthday sweet Emma girl! 

It's hard to believe you are three years old.  You spent all of yesterday enjoying your last day of being two.  You kept saying things like "This is my last nap when I'm two."  "This is my last dinner when I'm two."  "This is my last bath when I'm two."  Cutie.

 You are so full of joy and energy.  You feel your emotions strongly.  You are stubborn and independent and sweet and cuddly.  You enjoy the smallest moments, exclaiming "This is SO awesome" in your bright, cheery voice.  You can also throw the tantrum of all tantrums. 

You are so verbal.  You start talking the moment you wake up and don't stop until you fall asleep.  You have a huge vocabulary and usually talk with your hands flailing wildly and a huge array of expressions.  You talk in complete sentences, ask lots of questions, and make up stories and songs.  You love to sing and dance and have some serious moves. 

We can count on you to eat most anything.  You love to help cook in the kitchen and we make a great mess every time.  You stir, pour, select the eggs, and measure the ingredients. 

You have a wonderful imagination and are often playing with your baby or cooking if you are playing by yourself.  When you play with Mason it's usually hunting, camping, moving, offices, or having a picnic.  I'm pretty sure you have no clue what princesses or fairies are all about. 

You amaze us with all you are learned this year. You can zip your jacket and put your own mittens on.  You can write a handful of letters and recognize your name and other words that have an 'E' or 'M'.  You can count to 20 consistently and often times even higher.  You love to help around the house, especially if it involves going outside to help daddy.  You unload the dishwasher, set the table, and put clothes away. 

You are our little entertainer, but only when we're home.  You are shy and clingy around other people and new places.  You can brighten any room with your funny antics, once you warm up.

We love you.  You add such joy and blessings to our family. 

xoxo,
Mommy

spring break

We're enjoying the tail end of spring break over here.  Our week has been filled with all sorts of good things.  Like having time to make doughnuts for breakfast. 

 

A little spring cleaning has been done...checking things off the list.  But mostly reading books, building tents, playing cars, dressing up dolls, and taping papers up in our "offices." 

I've bitten off quite a few knitting and sewing projects and am probably staying up too late. But, that's what spring break is for I suppose. 

minus a flock of chickens and one dog...

We've had our fair share of animal troubles this last week. It started when Daisy injured her leg.  She wouldn't put any weight on it and most likely sprained it.  A little aspirin and hotdogs and she's doing much better.  But, last week she spent most of the time inside, resting it up.  I don't know if this left Indie bored outside by herself or what, but she got herself into some trouble.  At least we think we did, we still don't have all the details. 

Last Tuesday when Ryan got home Indie was out of her pen and all our chickens were missing.  The entire flock.  Then he found two huddled under our woodpile where Indie was trying to get to them.  It was our rooster and one hen.  Ryan put Indie back into her pen and tried to get the chickens out.  They wouldn't budge.  I don't blame them.  Then he walked the entire property, drove around and tried to find the rest of the missing chickens.  It was really weird because there wasn't even really any signs of them.  No feathers, no blood on Indie, nothing.  Not even a lot of tracks in the mud and snow to give us a clue.  

About then the kids and I pulled up.  Mason went and got his binoculars and helped daddy.  Then it started to snow and the sun was beginning to set.  We figured they were gone for good.  We finally dug out the rooster and the hen.  Two other hens came straggling back from who knows where.  And then we found one dead chicken in the dog pen.  So, we tucked our three hens and rooster into the coop and waited for morning.  

Nothing new in the morning.  Later that day Indie got out again and our rooster went missing.  Never saw a sign of him again.  We talked to our neighbor and she said that three of her chickens were attacked that same day.  We've never had predator problems in the past, but it's looking like maybe hawks.  We've seen some coyotes around, but there were no tracks.  And we're still not sure what role Indie played.  But, this is her third attack of the chickens so we decided it was time to find her another home.  We delivered her to a nice family over the weekend. 

The kids were a little sad at first. But, after we assured them that they didn't have any chickens and that they weren't planning on getting any chickens they were happier about bringing her to her new home.  Every once in a while they talk about Indie and how she's at a new home.  Plus, yesterday I overheard them playing.  They had made a tent and they were hunting hawks and keeping them away from the chicken coop.  

So, we're left with sweet Daisy dog and three hens.  It sure is quiet around here.  And we're missing our fresh eggs like nothing else. 

The kids were sorting out treats for Daisy from their kitchen.

We're trying to figure out how to replace our layers.  The timing is not exactly great.  If we ordered new chicks they would come about the time the baby is due.  Their requirement of constant care doesn't mix well with spending a few days in the hospital over an hour away. Our best bet is to probably buy some hens from someone that are older and already laying.  Decisions.  We'll have to decide soon because I'm not excited about running into town today to buy eggs from the grocery store. 

ducky

Today we celebrated Ducky's birthday.  In case you're wondering who Ducky is, he's one of Mason's stuffed animals.  You see, Mason got a calendar around Christmas time.  We went through it and put in all our family member's birthdays.  A few weeks later, Mason grabbed a pencil and wrote in all his stuffed animal's birthdays as well.  So, Ducky's birthday is March 18th.  Mason decided that we should celebrate tonight since he had Awana's on Tuesday.  So, him and Emma set up the party with all his friends.  Then we made pudding for dessert.  We sang, Mason did a few magic tricks, and everyone had a good time. 

This isn't the first party for his stuffed animals.  About a month ago I came home from school and Mason told me that he and Emma and Grammie had celebrated Pup-pup's birthday.  Grammie made cookies and they celebrated all day long.  After I had been home for about an hour Mason came up to me with a huge grin on his face.  "We tricked Grammie!" he announced triumphantly, "Pup-pup's birthday isn't until June!"  Then he ran off laughing.  Sure enough, after a careful check of the calendar, Pup-pup is written in his cute handwriting right there close to his.  So, now we check the official stuffed animal birthday calendar.

PS...as I'm writing this, Mason comes out of his bedroom with Pup-pup (his smallest animal that is always getting lost) and says, "Pup-pup missed all the birthday fun.  He was under my pillow!"  Then the big tears start to slip down his face.  So, I show Pup-pup the above photos and we sing to Ducky one more time and all is well.   

snow

We've been drifting back and forth between snow and sunshine this last week.  Which of course leads to a whole lot of mud!  It gives me a good reason not to mop my floors...you know they just won't stay clean.  Last weekend we got hammered.  The kids loved playing in it and helping daddy plow out. 

This weekend is shaping up to have a little more sunshine.  We went for a walk early this morning while all the mud was still frozen.  Love the weekends!

play

It's so fun to watch and listen to these two play together.  Most recently you can find them playing camping, office, or hunting.  The first two require getting out lots and lots of toys and setting up "camp" or the "office."  When playing office there is usually a lot of work to be done.  This requires crayons, stamps, markers, tape, cardboard, and paper.  Hunting usually requires lots of animals and Emma's kitchen utensils to "take all the meat." 

Either way, listening to their imaginations run wild never gets old.

peppers + cornbread muffins

We've been enjoying a little green in the house this winter thanks to these fun pepper plants. These are a Siberian pepper called Grandpa's Home Pepper.  We ordered the seeds because it said they had more than 50 little peppers per plant and that they produced all winter in low light.  Both were true.  The hardest part about these was getting them to sprout.  There were only maybe 15 or so seeds in the pack and only two sprouted....months after we planted them.  We had pretty much given up but kept watering them anyway.  It paid off.

 These tiny little peppers have some serious flavor. We've been throwing two or three into anything that can handle some spice.  We've also been saving the seeds, drying on the counter, since we are enjoying them so much. 

I made some peppery corn bread muffins and tossed in a few of these peppers minced up.  Yum!

Peppery Corn Bread Muffins
adapted from Gooseberry Patch

1 c. yellow cornmeal
1 c. flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. dried basil
2/3 c. chopped peppers (green, yellow, red, or a combo)
1/4 c. corn
1/4 c. butter
1 c. milk
2 eggs

Stir together cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, chili powder, and basil.  Saute peppers and corn in butter for 3-4 minutes.  Beat together eggs and milk.  Mix together the pepper/corn mixture, milk mixture, and flour mixture.  Add to greased muffin cups.  Bake at 400 for 15-10 minutes.  Makes 12 muffins.  


In other gardening news, we got the greenhouse all cleaned out (and by we I mean Ryan and the kids while I was at a stampin' up party with my friends!) and ready to plant.  We are going to start our tomatoes and peppers (inside) this week and some greens and radishes will be making their way into the greenhouse.  I did manage to get all of our seeds organized and inventoried and we put in a couple orders for some things we were missing.  I'm looking forward to lots of gardening time this year!  

 

helper

It's cold and snowy here. 

So thankful for my carrying-in-the-wood little helper!

car talk

It's Thursday...which means Bobcat Day at our school.  Gotta love jeans and t-shirt day.  This is an oldie (taken before Christmas.) 

One of the fun things about Mason being in preschool this year is that he gets to come in to school with me every morning.  Two days a week Emma rides in to town with us too.  Those days in the car are full of singing and story telling and any tricks I can pull out to keep them from going all "he's-looking-out-my-window!!"  You know those moments, right? 

But two days a week it's just me and the boy and some pretty fun conversations.  Here are a few snippets:

Me: Mason...look there's some deer!
Mason: (almost in tears) but I don't want to see the does, where are the bucks?
Me: I don't know.  Where do you think they are?
Mason: Oh, probably in the trees.  They're much smarter you know.

Mason:  How do you become a grandma?  When does it happen?  You don't have to look old.

Mason: I'm going to count the whole way to school.  1...2...3..4....187!  We're here.  (That was a fun one:)

Mason: When are we going to Steamboat again?  You know that dad doesn't need a map to get there?  Remember when you got lost three times?

And most currently Mason feels it is his job to announce the speed limit and make sure that I'm following it. 

Mom, it's 65. 
Mom, it's 55.
Mom, it's 40.  Why do we always have to go slower in town?  I don't like going slower. 

How come your car has 100 on it if we never get to go 100? 

You know that dad's big white truck can't do 65 with a full load of wood?  You can go less than the speed limit, but not more.  Mom, you're going more.  

Mom, it's 35.
Mom, it's 15.  (insert really sad voice).  This is when we enter the school parking lot.  He always tries to convince me that it really is 51 and we need to go faster.  Like a race car. 

And my favorite:

Mom, God loves me infinity. 

favorites

The two favorites of the moment...Cow for Mason (always has been the #1 choice) and Karly-Baby for Emma.

It's a good thing these two can make me laugh when I'm about to lose my mind.

Most recent reason:

I'm working on a difficult knitting project that I planned on giving away this Christmas, but I wasn't even half way done with it when that time came around.  Sooo, last night I decide to pull it out and work on it.  I find my way into the pattern and realize I have three needles, so I throw one back into my knitting bag.  I do a couple rows and realize my tension is way off from the last time I worked on it.  I keep going.  After a few more rows I'm a little shocked at the difference in the gauge.  I show Ryan. We laugh about how pregnancy must really affect your knitting tension.  I keep going.  I'm not at all happy with how it looks, but I keep going trying to make it tighter until my eyes fall out and I go to sleep. 

Today at naptime I pull it out again.  I'm looking at it trying to figure out how to make it tighter.  I look at the pattern again.  I see something about size 3 needles.  I look at the huge needles in my project.  They're size 9.  Yes, size 9!  It all starts to become clear.  Both my size 3 and size 9 needles are green.  Apparently I pulled out my project and knit the first row onto a green size 9 needle.  That's about when I realized that I had 3 needles, so I kept the two that matched (the 9s) and threw the size 3 into my bag.  Funny right? Yeah, maybe if I wasn't doing things like this all the time.  It's a small miracle that I finish any knitting projects:)

growing

One of the things we're most looking forward to this year is growing, growing, growing our family of four to a family of five!

 

Yup, we have a new little bundle of joy set to arrive the end of May.  Super exciting around here!  

 

 Some of the details:

We found out in September.  I'm currently 20 weeks.  We had our ultrasound last week and everything is moving along perfectly.  We decided not to find out the gender.  Mason is convinced it's a boy and Emma keeps saying (well singing) "We don't know if it's a boy or a girl... but God has a special surprise for us."--which is just about the sweetest thing ever.

I'm feeling really good now. The first trimester was pretty rough (throwing up multiple times for 56 days straight.)  I don't think I left the couch except to go to work for all of October.  Bless Ryan for putting up with me and being so awesome with the kiddos!

I'm pretty much craving spicy and salty things.  My fellow teachers know they can't bring crackers or pretzels to lunch without passing a few my way.   I've got the peperoncinis and flamin' hot cheetos taken care of.  I've also been loving yogurt and grapefruit. 

We have absolutely no names picked out.  The kids are set on Race Car if it's a boy and Princess Rosie if it's a girl.  Guess we'll decide in May! Feeling super blessed and excited for a new little one! 

christmas

Happy New Year!  Christmas sort of flew by and at the same time we slowed down and enjoyed everything about it.  Now everything is packed away, waiting for the magic again next year.  We're staying busy, filling up the last few days before we return to school and our "normal" routine.  Here are a mixture of Christmas pictures all the way from Greeley to our house.  Lots of cousin time, grandparents time, cookies, singing and laughter.

 

 

 Now it's just finishing up thank you notes, wishing for fresh snow to play in, lots of hot cocoa, and new bedtime stories.  Ryan and I have lots of goals and plans for this year...I think it's going to be a good one!

trim the tree

We decorated our Christmas tree last Sunday.  On Monday Mason learned all about trimming the tree at preschool and since then he has informed everyone who talks about decorating a tree that it's called trimming the tree.  I always love getting the ornaments out and remembering the different times we received them.  

 

 The highlight of their day is doing the advent calendar before bedtime.  I guess it's alright that I haven't gotten around to wrapping any presents yet since this is their new favorite hangout. 

We're loving these cold wintery days.  We made eggnog bread for breakfast and a good friend of ours is coming over to can cranberry sauce before we start on our list of Christmas cookies to bake. 

wordless wednesday

giving thanks

It's December (yeah!), but here are a few pictures from our Thanksgiving holiday.  We had some major awesome family time from Thursday all through Sunday.  I loved seeing my little ones play with their grandparents and great grandparents.  They spent most of their time hunting all the elk in the forest and making elk stew and elk rootbeer.  And playing train conductor. 

 

 My family came on Friday and we had tons of cousin time full of staying up way too late playing games, getting up way too early with the little munchkins, eating turkey and cinnamon rolls, having snowball fights, playing trains, building snowmen, and just being together. 

 So thankful for my sweet family!