A Weekend with Joel and Kirsten

As usual, weekends with Joel and Kirsten make me giddy with joy. Who else could share my love of all things Homestead-y? Who else has my same enthusiasm for raw milk and my corny sense of humor? (Let’s just say it’s not my husband, whom I love dearly, but still blatantly refuses to get giddy about chickens . . . )

But Kirsten and Joel weren’t the only ones visiting for the weekend – we were also dog-sitting for a friend, so we had our old buddy Brody here, as well as Joel’s dog Shiloh – which brought our dog total for the weekend up to four. Surprisingly, they weren’t  much trouble at all, but even I must admit that four full-sized dogs can sure take up a lot of space! Add eight riled-up kids to the mix, and you have one very activity-filled house!

Speaking of activities, I had specifically planned two, which turned out quite well – the first was a new Advent-themed game I bought this year called “To Bethlehem.” I knew Kirsten’s family was the right one to hit with this (all but Joel are confirmed board game lovers). This game was supposedly created “for the bored Dads who get sucked into family game night” and featured squares which required you to, say, put a towel on your head (ala Christmas pagent shepherd), flush the toilet, or sing a Christmas carol. It was obviously also a hit with the 5 to 12 year old crowd (the kids even played it at least twice more over the weekend, without prompting!)

The other activity was making cut-out Christmas cookies, using the Zoellner family recipe Joel and I had made every year with my Mom (and now our kids were making them together! *sniff*) Unfortunately, neither Joel nor I actually participated in the cookiemaking, since Joel was sitting on the couch cuddling my dog and I was busy washing dishes, mixing up frosting, and making pizzas. But, as usual, Kirsten took my “crafty” plans and brought them to fruition (aka she actually dealt with crafting children), while I played the supporting role (I made the dough and the frosting and supplied the cookie cutters and colored sugars) I must say, she did a wonderful job, both of making perfect cookies and keeping the children (even the two-year-olds!) content and non-messy! She definitely has a gift.

Of course, being the Amish wanna-be she is, Kirsten wanted to visit our local Mennonite Bulk Food Store (which we did, and actually found quite a few classic toys and books for Christmas presents) and, also being a back-woods Minnesotan, she asked that we also visit The Bear Paw, a hunting/fishing/outdoor-type store, featuring many many mounted animals, including bears, deer, moose, fox, mountain goat, geese, etc. etc. Our guidebook-loving homeschooled children beg to go there any chance they get! This year’s big find was outdoor-themed cookie cutters (which of course we used that very afternoon, and some of which you can see in the above picture – a trout, horse head, and cardinal).

Before all of that “fun” shopping, however, Joel and I had to run in to Walmart Friday night to pick up some garlic bread and a movie. I was quite surprised when, of all the movies available at the Redbox, he picked (without any prompting from me, mind you) Julie & Julia – which of course just happened to be the movie I would have picked. He *says* he picked it because he knew Kirsten wanted to see it (she had actually ordered it from Netflix, and her dad said it arrived while they were gone. He also asked if he could watch it before he sent it back. I’m beginning to wonder about those two guys . . . Although maybe it just means that they’re sweet and thoughtful, because they knew their wives wanted to watch it! On the other hand, maybe they’re just a couple of Julia Child wanna-be’s . . .)

The movie was fun, although not as good as I wanted it to be – but I was inspired to put my hair up and wear a nice button-down shirt and pearls while flipping pancakes the next morning!

And of course, I can’t finish off without a cute quote, this one from Kirsten, which made me laugh out loud because it didn’t come out at all as she intended it:

(referring to Josiah, who still isn’t quite potty trained *sigh*): “Other than the big boy underpants, he looks so much like your mother!”

(Mom, I’m so glad that you don’t wear big boy underpants! Otherwise I might get you and Josiah confused!)

Camera Photos (Yes, that 1 megapixel, no flash device in your pocket can come in handy sometimes)

Yes, this is Peter again.  Ruth is soaking a sore back in the tub, so I thought I would give her a break and log another post in her stead.  I used to think it was just silly to have a tiny almost useless camera on the back of your cell phone.  Afterall, the images were nowhere near as good as a real camera, and only the best conditions gave you a good photo.  However, I have found that sometimes there is a quick moment that just needs to be captured, and would be gone forever if time was taken to run and get that expensive, but high quality photo taking machine called a real camera.  So I have enjoyed some high quality memories taken by a low quality device and while they may be a bit grainy, they make me smile when I scroll through them.  So here is a sampling:

A quick shot of a great landscape on our trip to Colorado in October

An unidentified snake in the grass spotted during a grouse hunting trip with Paul and Trevor after our annual Pumpkin Fest (yes Ruth, that is how pumpkin is spelled).  Anyone know what kind it is?

A snug bug in her . . . bed, who is just way to cool (and cute!) to go to sleep.

A happy houseful of feasting relatives at the Zoellner Thanksgiving.  They keep getting bigger – pretty soon we won’t all fit into the house!

Where there is a will, there is a way.  Yes, you can fit two twelve packs on the back of a bike (especially when it is free, procurred from the wonderful Leinenkugel’s brewery during their summer customer appreciation days – or locally known as the Leinie’s Family Reunion).

And finally (not because I have run out of photos, but because Ruth is done with her bath, and is bugging me to get off the computer (funny how the tables turn around so quickly) . . . Here is one of yours truly – significant only because it was my homecoming after a four day trip to Dallas, and it was great to see my wonderful family again (especially when they are as cute as Josiah

The Blizzard of 2009 (and what it wrought)

Well, Ruth has been at this blogging thing long enough, I thought it was my turn to contribute.  I had a very bloggable moment (is that a word?) so instead of telling Ruth about it, I thought I would just share it myself (that way she can’t make quite as much fun of me).   Our first real snow this year turned out to be the snow event of 2009.  Predicted 10-15 inches only turned out to be 8 or so around here, but the wind and cold made it a real winter event.  Thus inspired, it was time to get out one of my favorite ‘man’ tools – my trusty new(ish) snowblower with a nice 12hp motor to really throw the snow (which is nice when you know how wide our driveway is . . .).  Well, the owner’s manual only tells you about one use of this powerful man machine, but the first real snow of the year not only allowed me to utilize the magnificent power of the mighty Toro, but it also showed me what a multi-functional tool this thing really is.  I never knew what a handy hose finder/coiler/shredder that Toro really could be.  But I know now . . .

After a half-hr of cutting and untangling - here is my newly found, but now greatly shortened hose.

“It’s Christmas!”

This was Elaina’s cry as she entered the door after her afternoon at Aunt Debbie’s. It was my annual Christmas decorating surprise day (postponed because of illness last week – even though I have a cold and a sore back. *sigh* But I figured if I waited for everyone to be well, it would be January!)

The kids fulfilled their part well, pointing, screaming with excitement, jumping up and down, etc.

It was a little sad, though, to see that Sam is getting too old and cool for such excitement (although not completely – he is still the first to call for The Nutcracker so they can dance crazily around the room!)

We tried to explain to Elaina that it’s not Christmas yet, just the Christmas season, but this was too much for her three-year-old head to get around. I could see that all of our explaining was wasted when Elaina woke up this morning, walked into the living room, and squealed, “It’s Christmas again!”

Even Josiah, who doesn’t understand much what it’s all about, is getting into the Christmas spirit – instead of waking up at 6 am and yelling, “Be quiet!” to the silent house, he woke up this morning singing (yelling) “SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PE-EACE! SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE!” (thereby ending any chance of our doing just that . . .)

One more Josiah cutie: this morning after breakfast Elaina asked for a banana, which I gave her. Seeing this, Josiah came up to me and said, “Mom I wanna Hannah!”

Gymnastics (or is it Puh-lastics?)

Instead of quoting my own children (although who could get tired of that!)  I’m going to allow some guest cuteness to relate the highlights of this past weekend:

 ”We’re going to puh-lastics!” (close, Timmy (my nephew, just two weeks younger than Josiah, although he is much more vocal) – we went to a gymnastics meet, where his cousin Anya was participating. This was the reason Anya’s family came up to visit. Timmy’s family was visiting because his daddy wanted to go out into the Great North Woods for muzzleloader season)

“My chair is shaking!” (this one was from Anya, while her uncle Peter was in the basement showing off his new subwoofer to her daddy)

“gurgle gurgle plbt gee!” (at any given moment, any one of my three adorable baby nephews could have been saying this: Kenny (Timmy’s 8-month-old baby brother), Trevor, or Nathaniel (Anya’s twin 7-month old baby brothers), all of whom were adorably cute, and charmed everyone all weekend!)   

I need to set up this last one a bit to get the full effect: I was coming in from feeding the chickens when I rounded the corner to go up the stairs. Suddenly a pair of big brown eyes were looking up at me from my four-year-old nephew’s face as he stood in the guestroom doorway and said sorrowfully: “I don’t know where my clothes are!” (Um, let me go ask your mommy . . .)

New Clothes

As I mentioned, we got a whole bunch of hand-me-down clothes from my brother, which thankfully included a lot of clothes for Sam. As I was separating them out this morning, he glommed onto a bright blue hawaiian shirt that just happened to be his size. Moments later he rushed out of his room wearing the shirt and waving his light saber, proclaiming:

“I’m a Jedi from Hawaii!”

Thanksgiving 2009

OK, I know it’s been a week, but we’ve had colds, so I’m behind on my blogging!

We started our Thanksgiving trip on Thursday morning, arriving in Neenah around noon. Last year, we’d forgotten the pumpkin pie bars we’d promised to bring, so this year I was extra careful to remember them. Unfortunately, I forgot the broccoli and cauliflower, which I was supposed to provide, too! But a quick trip to Walmart when we were almost there rectified the situation (although oddly Walmart was completely out of cauliflower – the whole bin was empty – while the broccoli bin was almost overflowing. So, I bought double the broccoli and called it good. Of course now we have two heads of broccoli and a head of cauliflower to eat back home . . .)

The only other hitch that I remember was when I thought Peter was watching Josiah and I went outside to let Wisty out with my dad, while Peter thought I was watching Josiah and was watching football. At that moment my sister pulled up to the house, only to discover a barefoot, coatless two-year-old walking down the middle of the street. That child is more trouble than the other four put together!!!!!

Other than that, it was the same old wonderful family gathering I love – lots of people, lots of food, and this year, lots of clothes – my brother Paul had brought bags and bags of clothes his kids had grown out of, and my sister and I sorted through and picked out what fit best for our different kids. I ended up with about five garbage bags full (one of which we had to leave at Peter’s mom’s house, since it didn’t fit in the van on the way home!) I can’t even imagine how much it would have cost me to buy all of those clothes new! Thank you Paul!!!

We stayed overnight at my parents’ house, which actually ended up being quite a quiet night – the guys all headed out to the hunting shack, my siblings and their kids all went to their own houses, so it was just Peter, the kids, and I with my mom and my sister-in-law (who left for Black Thursday shopping at 4 am, so we never even saw her the next morning!). It was a nice interlude of peace before we headed down to Milwaukee for another houseful of family!

We were the first ones to arrive at Peter’s mom’s house, so we helped with setting up tables and getting things ready (while trying not to let the kids get too many toys out and make too much mess!) The food was delicious (and I was thrilled to find that my brother-in-law claimed the turkey carcass and was merrily boiling a pot of stock on the stovetop all afternoon! See, Peter, I’m not the only one!) although the pumpkin pie left something to be desired – specifically, about a half a pie more would have been nice – but unfortunately Wisty got to it. *sigh* I guess all of the food the kids dropped on the floor wasn’t enough of a Thanksgiving feast for her!

Speaking of food, poor Josiah missed out on the big meal, since it was served during his naptime. I had given him a light lunch beforehand, but the smell of the feast must have gotten to him, because when he woke up he seemed pretty hungry. Luckily for him, one of his uncles had left out a bag of pretzels he’d been munching on before dinner. But instead of grabbing a fistful and stuffing his face, my “Just-so Josiah” would take one pretzel out of the bag, carry it back to the dining room, climb onto a chair next to me, move the napkin sitting in front of him onto my lap, eat his pretzel, and then get down and truck back to the living room for another pretzel. He did this a good half-dozen times, much to the amusement of everyone at the table, until Peter got out the camera and attempted to record the process. Unfortunately, Peter also decided that the sequence would film better with the lights on – which ended the scene, because the light fixture in Grandma’s dining room is shaped like a candleabra, and when it was lit Josiah had to stop and sing “Happy Birthday” to the pretty candles!

But our Thanksgiving fun was not quite over – on Saturday we went to visit our friends the Micheels (who should also be 7, next May!) We were vigilant not to let Josiah in the street this time (!) even though we let all of the kids play outside for quite a while, and Elaina managed (as only she can) to find a feather boa and a set of purple wings to wear for most of the morning (and this in a house with four boys, no less! She has a gift . . . )

We arrived back at Peter’s mom’s house to find his brother Kent installing a new bathroom sink (what else would you want to do the day after Thanksgiving?!) which Peter set to work helping with, while I put Josiah down for his nap and enjoyed a quiet afternoon.

Oh, and I feel I need to mention, Peter’s mom told me she is trying to make sure she gets on the blog again this year for “Grandma Gifts.” She told me (jokingly, thank goodness!) that she intends to buy each of the kids an “indoor sandbox kit” she saw advertised recently. “Indoor sandbox”??? Seriously??? What are they thinking??? What kind of cruel, spiteful person would sell such a thing?! My vaccuum is going on strike at the mere thought of it!

This ‘ere’s bakin’ day!

Yesterday was once again my annual baking day for the Rice Lake Preganacy Help Center’s bake sale booth at the Cedar Mall craft sale. I’ve done this for two years now, and it’s definitely a tradition I want to continue. Not only do I get to spend the whole day baking (not having to limit myself to what we realistically can eat) but I get to send it all on to a good cause (and not only the “Not Onto My Own Hips” foundation) This is the day the Sugar Nazi in me is sent on vacation as I measure out cup after cup of the offending substance into my mixing bowl with wanton abandon. I even let the kids help!

Every year I make a Friendship Bread starter 10 days before baking day, and then on “the day” I mix up all of it (instead of sharing it with friends, like you’re supposed to do) and make a dozen loaves (although honestly, they should call it “Enemy Bread” because it’s so bad for you – it’s got enough sugar to kill a horse!) This year I kept it simple and just made 6 vanilla/cinnamon and 6 chocolate/chocolate chip (in former years I’ve made lemon poppy seed, lemon cranberry, and even pistachio!) I also decided to share some of my zucchini bounty from this summer (barely making a dent in the pile in my freezer!) and made 6 zucchini breads.

The kids of course were begging to get in the action, so I told them they could pick something to make, too. Elaina picked Snickerdoodles (I think mostly just because she loves to say it! Is she her mother’s daughter or what?) and Hannah picked brownies. Sam joined in with Elaina, and Naomi helped Hannah, so we made two batches of each. Elaina was very upset when I told her we were giving “her” cookies away, so we saved a few for after supper Unfortunately, one of our batches of brownies didn’t bake thoroughly, so we had to save that for later ice cream sundaes (yes, we’re pretty broken up about that!)

The day was not without its snags, however; I had put the first two ingredients for the friendship bread into the mixing bowl when I decided I was not going to use up all of my cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil making sugary desserts for people who really don’t care anyway, so at 8 am we headed to our little local grocery store and picked up 3 quart-size bottles of Vegetable Oil (Ingredients: Soybean Oil). Now, ordinarily I would not allow soybean oil within 100 feet of my kitchen, but Healthy Girl was on vacation with the Sugar Nazi, and I kept it my own dirty little secret.

An hour later I was out of cinnamon and ziploc bags, and I also realized that I needed some meatballs for church on Sunday, so we were off again to the grocery store, where they are beginning to know me on sight!

The one thing we didn’t run out of was eggs. I tallied it up later, and we used 37 eggs over the course of the day. Thankfully, my pullets are now laying around 18 a day, so this was no problem! I even sold 5 dozen this week, and still had enough left over (I wasn’t able to make waffles this morning, though, because I only had 3 left after my baking spree. It’s now 4:00 the next day, and we are up to 18 again!  Yup, I’m a happy chicken farmer!)

At 4:30, the last six loaves of friendship bread came out of the oven, but for some crazy reason I had decided to use up some of the meat in the freezer from the 1/2 cow we bought last fall – which just happened to be beef tenderloin! I found a recipe online for bacon-wrapped beef tenderloin (I had leftover bacon I really should use up . . .) (yes, it should have been raw, and it burned pretty badly, but it still gave a wonderful flavor to the meat!) It was also flavored with garlic and rosemary (which was nice, since I had just been thinking I needed to prune the rosemary on my windowsill). YUM!

But I had to eat quickly, because I was supposed to meet my sister-in-law at the movie theater to watch New Moon. So I ran out the door (thinking that I had just eaten enough garlic to scare away any vampire) and made it just in time. I was VERY glad to sit for a few hours after my day of running around the kitchen, and had fun watching the movie with a bunch of other Twilight fans (who occasionally commented on the movie while we watched – it was a blast!)

And then, to top it all off, when I got home Peter was cleaning the kitchen and washing all of the dishes from my baking spree. What a guy!

PS – no, there will be no points awarded for the Mary Poppins quote – it’s too easy; and besides, Kirsten already guessed it on my facebook page!

More bits

Peter is adamant that I must record our progeny’s cutest sayings for posterity, so here are a few more “best of” quotes:

~~~~~~

Every morning, as soon as he is awake, Josiah shouts, “Be Quiet!!!” repeatedly to our silent house (waking everyone else up in the process!)

~~~~~~

After a successful trip to the potty, Josiah generally congratulates himself by clapping and saying “Good job!” Once, to my great amusement, he followed this by singing with great gusto a few particularly pertinent lines from a favorite hymn:

“Let the people rejoice!

Oh, come to the Father through Jesus the Son

And give Him the glory, great things He hath done!”

~~~~~~

After lunch one afternoon, we were listening to a program on NPR in which they were interviewing a man who was a self-proclaimed “Professional River Rat” on the Mississippi River, and had written several books about his experiences.

Considering this a bit, Sam declared, “I want to be a River Rat when I grow up. No, wait – I want to be a Sea Dog!”

To which Naomi replied, “I want to be a Pool Cat, so I can stay home.”

~~~~~~

Elaina has some very distinct views on cuteness.

One day I told her she was cute, to which she replied, “I’m not cute, I’m a big girl!”

“What about Sammy? Is he cute?”

“No, he’s a big brother.”

“What about me? Am I cute?”

“No, you’re a big Momma!” (How could you be so silly?)

“What about Daddy? He’s big and cute!”

“Yeah. Daddy is big and cute.”

~~~~~~~
As we were driving home one morning, Sam mentioned that he wanted brats for lunch.
“Can Dad grill them?”
“No, it’s kind of cold and foggy, and he’s got work to do.”
“Well, can I grill them then?”
“What? You know you can’t work with fire!”
“I can put it in a ring, and then it will just burn!”
“What??”
“You know, it will ‘burn, burn, burn/the ring of fire/the ring of fire!”
OK, my little Johnny Cash, Jr.!

This ‘n That

Apparently Joel is pining away for news from The Westendorf 7, so here’s some bits and pieces of what’s been happening:

Our pullets continue to lay, slowly building up numbers as more start – we averaged 5 eggs a day last week, and 10 a day this weekend. They’re still small, so I’m not selling any, but prospects are looking up!

Homeschooling is going wonderfully well, now that we have a new schedule. Previously, I had each child doing their math first, since they could do this independently while I was getting chores done. Unfortunately, this led to getting no other school done, since I have one extremely talented dawdler who can take 8 hours to do one workbook page! Now we do all of our other subjects first (Bible Study, reading, greek, science, geography, grammar, and spelling) which works out much better, since I have all of the kids doing the same lessons at the same time. We all sit down at the table together and do these subjects (which usually takes under 2 hours total), then break off and each child does his or her math lesson for the day. This goes MUCH smoother (although I did resort to bribery in one case – I told my 8-hour dawdler that I would buy him a toy (under $10) if he got his math page done in under an hour every day for a week. He did it! Yesterday we went to pick up his toy – and *surprise* he chose a new light saber

Unfortunately, we did so well with school Monday-Thursday that I decided to rest on my laurels and have a “Teacher Inservice” day on Friday - otherwise known as “Mom works on other things” – other things meaning yardwork on a gloriously warm and sunny November day! I fixed the lamp in the chicken coop (which was on a timer so the hens get their required 16 hours of light, but hadn’t been working because they kept knocking it down) and installed extra roosts (fun with power tools!), cleaned up the scrap wood lying behind the garage, which was getting wet and beginning to rot, so I stacked it upright so it could air out (and of course made plans to use it for new chicken runs . . .), and organized and swept the garage. A very productive day (and only  minimal damage to the house while I was outside!)

Saturday we went up to our friends’ new house on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was the perfect day for it – in the 60s and not too breezy. The kids had a wonderful time picking out rocks from the lakeshore:

Naomi found several heart-shaped ones, and one shaped like a breadstick (which I am saving to hold my books open while I read!) Our friend Matthew was there, too, and although Naomi’s heart-shaped rocks may not keep her warm, we couldn’t find any furnace-shaped ones for him . . .

Sunday was catch-up-on-all-the-cleaning-that-didn’t-get-done-while-I-was-busy day, with a brief break to take the kids shopping for Sam’s Math Booty (and also get the kids away from the house while Daddy dispatched Hannah’s chicken, Clara, who had a lethal respiratory infection).

And now it’s Monday. School is almost done (only math left), laundry is moving through the system, and it’s almost time to make lunch. Many homeschool moms have been asked, “What do you do with the younger children when you’re trying to do school with the older ones?” Well, in our house, they have their own studies to occupy them:

Jobiwan Kenobi trains his padawan, Princess Laina

So there you go, Joel. I hope you’re happy now