Haying Season

It's been a full week here of school in the mornings, and then heading out to the barn to help with haying in the afternoons and evenings.  The count, as of last night, was about 4200 square bales, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little bit exhausted!  It was good fun though, to be able to help out, sweat our butts off, and get a good workout!  I said that instead of doing "hot yoga", like some friends of mine do, I did "hot haying"!  We not only used the bale wagon, which picks up bales and stacks them, we also had a few trailers which took crews out to the fields to load and stack bales. 

 

Hannah got some more practice driving the truck and trailer while we stacked bales. It's a great place to get practice driving...an open field, with nothing but hay bales in the way. She did great, although she was a bit nervous at first. By the time we were done, she was a pro!

 

Every night, we got to witness another beautiful Alberta sunset. 

 

*sigh* I love this time of year!

 

Now, we need to turn our attention back home and get our place all ready for winter!

15 Things About Me

I have had this post written and rewritten a few times, struggling to find a balance between fun and serious, and wondering how deep to go... So this is what I've come up with..... Here we go. 

15 Things About Me
 
1. I am outgoing, but the older I get, the more introverted I become... I used to be the life of the party, but now, I'm more content to get together with a friend and have a good visit.  I've realized that quality trumps quantity in friendships every.  single.  time.
2. I'm in my mid-thirties, and have found relationships harder to navigate now than any other time in my life. 
3. I always wanted to be a Mom.  Always.  But I don't love children... I love my children, and my friends children, but put me in a room with a bunch of kids, and I can do it, but it sucks the lifeblood outta me.
4. I always wanted Girls.  Never boys.  I can't even count how many times people have asked me if we're going to try for a boy, or have wanted boys, or how "terrible it's going to be when the Girls are older".  I call your bluff, people.  I love my Girls.  I'm not sad to have never had boys.  My hubby loves his Girls.  All is well.
5. I love the country (in case you couldn't tell), but grew up in the city.  After being out in the country for so many years, I think I'd shrivel up up and wilt if I had to move back to the city.
6. I love to bake.  I find it therapeutic.  If I'm upset, or thinking, or stressed, I'll often bake.  I especially love making anything with yeast.  Something about the feel of the dough in between my finger I find very relaxing. 
7. I never took swimming lessons.  But I love the water and love to swim.  I chalk it up to being the baby of the family, and being forgotten about *sniff, sniff*
8. I enjoy working in my flower gardens, but not my vegetable garden.  I know, I know, it doesn't make sense, because weeds are weeds... This year, we plowed over our garden, and Art made me a few raised boxes for a square foot garden.  Fewer weeds, only planting the things I absolutely couldn't live without.... It's all good!
9. I don't love the mornings.  Not really.  I love sleeping in.  When our Girls were smaller, we trained them to not get out of bed before 8 am.  To this day, they still don't get out of bed earlier than that.  I guess it's a good thing we homeschool!  If I do have to get up early, usually it's for a really good reason, and then I do enjoy it.  But mostly, I'm a night owl.
10. I'm afraid of moths.  They always come for me...they're so unpredictable!  Art is the moth killer in our home.
11. I am afraid of time.  Time seems to pass so quickly, and before you know it, our Girls will be grown and gone, and I'm not really sure what I'll do with myself.  I know it won't be sudden, and that it'll happen gradually, but I'm still afraid.  I just can't imagine, after spending so many hours and days and years with them, that they'll leave.  I want them to live healthy, full lives and have families of their own, as long as they're close to me. :-) 
12. I love to decorate.  Period.  But I really love to decorate using re purposed, old, unusual objects (usually rusty, or with paint chipping off) that I find anywhere and everywhere.
13. My perfect day would include a drive on an unknown road in the country, meandering through old, abandoned buildings and homesteads, and finding cast off items I could use in my home (for free, of course!); a garage sale at an old farm that had been in the family for many, many years; riding a horse with purpose (working cows or whatever); being with people I love; and sunshine.
14. Fall is my favorite season.  I love the smell, the leaves crunching beneath your feet, the colors on the trees, the cooler weather with NO BUGS, and the preparation for winter.
15. I never expected my life would look like it does today.  In some ways, it's beyond my wildest dreams, in other ways, it's much harder than I imagined.  We've gone through our share of sorrows and joys, but really, I wouldn't trade most of it for anything, because it's helped make us who we are today.  Having children is much richer than I thought, but also a lot of work!   Marriage is much richer than I thought, but also a lot of work!  My relationships are much richer than I thought, but also a lot of work (you get the picture....!)

 

Cupcakes, Anyone?

A good friend of mine owns a country store in town.  Every once in a while, I make my way in there to check out her goods.  The other day, she had a big sale in the parking lot, so I of course had to pop over there to take a look.  I found these cute little ditties on her $1 table.  I was only going to take home a couple, but for $1 each, I thought I'd take them all!

 

I put the cupcakes on 2 cake plates that I stacked to make a display.  They're a fun little addition on my counter right now...

Chicken Update

Yesterday, we got 15 eggs.  15 EGGS!  The Girls are awfully excited, because they know that getting more eggs means selling more eggs, and selling more eggs means making more money.  We're still waiting for 5 of the girls to start laying, but that should be happening any day now....

We are still having a problem with the foxes....they have become Art's nemesis.  Hopefully, we'll soon be rid of them!

 

The turkey's are growing like crazy, only a couple more weeks until we butcher them... The meat chickens have been awfully tasty, so I'm looking forward to seeing what Thanksgiving and Christmas will taste like.

 

I've decided that I love having chickens.  A lot.  Except when we have to clean out their mansion.  But even then, it's not too bad.  And with 15 eggs a day, the Girls figure they're gonna be rich!

 

 

The Flurry of September

I read an interesting article the other day on the internet, entitled Busyness as Moral Laziness.  I especially loved this:

Busyness acts to repress our inner fears and perpetual anxieties, as we scramble to achieve an enviable image to display to others. We become “outward” people, obsessed with how we appear, rather than “inward” people, reflecting on the meaning of our lives. 

 

Busyness also seems to be a determination not to “miss out on life.” Behind much of the rat-race of modern life is the unexamined assumption that what I do determines who I am. In this way, we define ourselves by what we do, rather than by any quality of what we are inside. It is typical in a party for one stranger to approach another with the question, “What do you do?” Perhaps we wouldn’t have a clue how to reply to the deeper question, “Who are you?”

 James Houston

After having the luxury of 4 months of summer holidays, having little to no organized activities, September always seems to be extra full.   School starts up again, we try and get into some sort of routine, and figure out which activities which we will or will not be involved in. 

Part of our deciding to homeschool is our desire to be less busy, to spend more time together as a family, and not be running around like chickens with our heads cut off, taking our kids to things that we deem important.  Since I have the Girls at home all day, I try and choose a few activities which can be done during the day, which really helps reduce the number of evenings that we are out in a week.  It's often hard to stick to my guns when there are so many cool things to do.  But I've realized over time that me/us being busy equals cranky, scary Mom coming out.  The things that really are important, like school, family time, or down time, gets left behind, and we're so busy running, doing all the "fun things", that the fun things become something that we dread.   

I need to be more of a person of being, not doing.  I think many Mom's can find it difficult, because we are so accustomed to doing everything for our family.  I know I find it hard to just be.  To sit and relax, and not think about the dishes in the kitchen sink, or the dirty floor that needs to be cleaned, laundry that needs to be put away.  But we need to "be".  To sit and worship.  To cuddle with our children, scratching their backs and chatting about the things that are on their minds.  To watch them play on the swing set. 

And so, in this month that is normally a flurry of activity, I am trying to "be" more, and "do" less.  I think it might be working, because so far, scary Mom hasn't even shown her ugly face!

This is Why

We just got back from our summer holidays.  We headed off to Kelowna to see my parents, and enjoy the lakes and sun and orchards and bug-free existence there.  It was a great trip - very relaxing and full of family and laughing and fun times!

 The Girls enjoyed different dress up clothes at Nana's

We spent some time at the spray park....



And lots of time at the beach!

We went to the Armstrong Fair and Rodeo

 



 

Made some new friends there!

 

Learned how to milk a cow

and had a little afternoon nap while we watched the draft horse pull

Abby fell asleep during the rodeo...

 

We took an 8 km. hike through the Myra Canyon Provincial Park.  It was beautiful outside, and we walked across 14 of the 18 railroad trestles.

We got to ride in Grandpa's convertible....

and spent more time at the beach.  Where it was deserted, because school had started already.  But not for us!

There was a new petting zoo just down the road from my parents.  They had chickens and goats...

 

As well as a baby albino kangaroo, and many other kangaroo's 

 And emu's.  Can't forget the emu's!

 

Then, we spent MORE time at the beach (yay!!)

We left on Friday morning, feeling very relaxed and refreshed.  On our way home, we stopped in Jasper at the river that runs parallel to the highway.  A number of years ago, we stopped there as well, and the river was really low.  So low that we could walk across the whole river, which was sandy and soft, without the water going past our knees.  We made it about 3/4's of the way across, which was probably about a mile, and the little Girls were starting to get quite tired, so we turned back. It was beautiful outside, and good to stretch our legs!

 

 

We love taking vacations in September.... the weather is still great, but it's not nearly as crowded as it is in the summer.  This is one of the reason why we homeschool!