Far too long!

My poor blog... it has been forever!!!

Things are incredibly hectic... had a couple of weeks from H-E-double hockey sticks! (apts upon apts, driving Izzy to and from school three hours a day with both kids, being a temporary widow while Duane lived out on the tractor for two weeks of seeding, and no John to help, etc...) But we survived, however, we are all very sick with nasty colds. Ethan in particular had high fevers for a couple of days and we spent our days just holding him and trying to keep him somewhat content. No fun, I tell ya!

But we finally found some wonderful second hand bunk bed bedroom furniture for Ethan and Anika and they are now sharing a room rather successfully. We also landed some beautiful pine furniture for Isabel's room which finally looks like a real "space" now. Melina is wondering when she gets a spruced up bedroom look... yeah, it will have to wait until we've saved up once again!!! Mind you, she had the second nicest bedroom suite in the house so I am thinking she is just going to have to be happy with what she's got.

The baby's room is set aside (Anika's old room) but there is lots of work to be done in there as I went to take Anika's posters down and ripped parts of the wall off!! Plaster is such a blast... NOT!

Gained fourteen pounds in six weeks which I think may very well be a record in the world of ridiculous pregnancy weight gain. Having said that, I have baked an amazing carrot cake, some cheese biscuits (my very first successful biscuits!) and some pretty awesome muffins. I have stopped baking cookies as I have not been able to exercise any form of self-control with homemade cookies in the house... and I wonder where the amazing fourteen pounds came from... Seriously, where on EARTH do these horrible cravings come from???

The baby is darling and I can just FEEL how cute this one is!! We have both our girl and boy name chosen and I just cannot shake the feeling that we are meant to have BOTH of them in our lives. We will see where God will lead us in that one...

My Dad and stepmother, Marj, helped me plant my garden just south of the kitchen window so we'll see if I have ANY luck with finding my green thumb somewhere deep within! If caring for house plants is a testament to my gardening abilities, we may be in serious trouble! I have a few more rows to plant yet, but with the torrential rains we've had, I am wondering if becoming rice-farmers might be a wiser game plan! Oh you should have seen the rains... between the strange clouds swirling around above our house and the high winds and literal downpour... I thought we'd have to seek some gofer wood to built an arc in an awful hurry. Thank God the fields have been draining successfully and we'll just have to wait and see how the seeds/plants have managed... perhaps they have evolved in some way and have grown gills!

Melina and I are still working away at her DVD math lessons every week and she's doing rather well. She has a music recital coming up on the 12th and just loves her opportunities to sing. I can hardly believe she will be turning fifteen this month... sigh.

Izzy's lift system is FINALLY installed (on her birthday, to be exact) and we are going to get the training on the fifteenth. The Occupational Therapist coming out sounds like a real gem of a guy so I'm looking forward to laughing at our attempts to dangle my daughter from the rafters!

Anika and Ethan LOVE the fenced in front yard and huge play structure we got for them. It took John a few weeks to assemble the whole thing so in his honour, we have named the play structure, "The Tower of John". Upon its completion, Anika exclaimed with such joy "Oh John, you made me a slide! I just LOVE it! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" Weeks later, upon our "thank you God for..." bedtime sessions, she still thanks God for the play structure... and for John!

Ethan is such a little man. Despite the structure being designed for ages 4 and up, he has figured out how to use the rock climbing ramp and the ladder. He won't go in the baby swing but rather sits in the big kid swing alongside his big sister. He is talking up a storm these days with an ever expanding vocabulary that has me rather impressed. He is even speaking in sentences!!! Amy said to me the other day "he speaks better than most of my Korean students who have been taking English classes for many years!" He loves the new bunk beds (despite the lower bunk being freakishly low). He calls it "new bed" and is pretty good staying in so far although after nap today, he surprised us by coming down the stairs... considering we have barricaded the sides of his bed, I do not want to know what he had to do to get out of his bed... The kids keep each other up until late chatting and laughing but I can't find myself able to sternly go into their rooms and tell them to stop all that fun! But it has resulted in some grumpy kids... sigh. Poor Ethan would make an occasional bang sound and I would hear "oh, bonka my head."

We have also welcomed more "life" on the farm this past week. Duane picked up six turkey chicks and twenty-six chicken chicks so the farm is "chirping" with life once more. Unfortunately, the circle of life is well exemplified here on the farm and a cat managed to get a hold of one of the turkey chicks within the first fifteen minutes of them moving in!


We also had an incident with Anika who was reaching over trying to pet one of the chicken chicks who had been brave enough to venture towards her at the edge of the little fenced-in area. Unfortunately, Anika was so excited about reaching the chick that she fell forward over the little fence putting her hands out in front of her to brace herself which meant landing on the little chick... oh it did not stop there... Anika could not get her leverage to push herself back up so she kept having to push down on the squealing chick in order to get back onto her feet... Sigh. She looked at me in a panic and said "what's wrong with the chick?!" whose head was now in an unnatural position. What else can I say? "Well, it was an accident, but when you fell onto your hands, you landed on the chick and hurt him very badly. He is dying."

She looked horrified and said "He's dying?" But the reality of the circle of life set in and she said somewhat sadly, "maybe you should put him up there" pointing to where Duane has been collecting the dead chicks. Oh dear me! At least she can face this logically, I suppose??? But because I am a huge proponent of idendifying your feelings and then communicating them, I asked her as we walked back to the house "How did your heart feel when you landed on the little chick who died?" And she replied "It felt very sad... and crunchy."

Not sure if the crunchy was how her heart felt or what it felt like landing on the chick... either way, I did not press for further explanation.

And that about sums up our lives on the farm these days!!