Karate and Advent Parties

Saturday we took a long day trip, but well worth it, to an awesome birthday party!  The kids look forward to Oliver and Isaac's birthday party every year and this year did not disappoint.  The kids all had their first dojo experience and loved it.  I loved getting to catch up with Jack and Rebecca AND that we took all 7 kids to dinner and it was actually close to relaxing;)

This week also kicked off our Christmas celebrations with the family advent party at church.  The kids decorated cookies, made crafts and enjoyed a Christmas story.  Let the festivities begin!

SaveSaveSaveSave

Thanksgiving 2017

Thanksgiving was a little bizarre this year since it was just the 6 of us.  It was a really wonderful family day spent relaxing, playing games with the kids, reading books, and cooking.  The best part was that we didn't have to pick up or do the dishes before we ate.  We missed our usual Thanksgiving family and friends, but we were happy to be able to relax together as a family before Gabe had to go back to work:)

Trench Digging and Turkey Trotting

The shed is almost as done as it is going to be before winter.  We finally got the wire to get electricity out to the shed from the house.  It was a fun race against the ground freezing to get the trench dug... we literally got it done the day before the ground froze.  We (we here really just means Gabe with minimal help from the rest of us) turned out tons of boulders and even discovered an old horseshoe... good luck, right?!?!?!? While we were moving dirt, the kids were playing santa in his sleigh from the roof of the bulkhead and generator shed... it was safe... enough;)  When we made it the 100 feet out to the shed, Gabe realized that he had drilled the hole in the floor in a bit of an inconvenient spot in relation to the floor frame. We both struggled to bend our arms in an impossible direction and failed.  Noah to the rescue!  His arms and wrists were the perfect size to maneuver the wire around the boards and up through the floor.  That is certainly a job we all hope we will never have to do again!

The pigs are growing well and have so much personality.  These ones seem like to rub and bite a bit more than the previous pigs, but they LOVE to have a daily massage on their backs and heads.  It is really a bizarre thing, but they will lay right down when I am rubbing them... I hope that bodes well for the dreaded part where we have to load them into the trailer in February...

This weekend was the annual Turkey Trot at UMF.  This year Grammy joined us to run with Ben and Audrey in the kids 1 mile fun run.  Gabe and James ran in the 5K and Noah and I tackled Noah's second 10K hoping it would be easier than his first.  Noah and I actually both ended up winning a pumpkin pie for our age categories, but the real truth is that we were the only members of our age categories...;)

Halloween and Little House on the Prairie Living

Why are there not many pictures of Halloween? you might ask... this was the Halloween that we didn't have time for because we were too busy doing our Little House on the Prarie chores since we have been without power for a few days.  We will definitely be buying a generator after this fiasco.  It has been relatively warm out and sunny during the day, so we haven't missed the heat except that the meat bird chicks are not old enough to be without heat, so, in something that is now funny after the fact, yesterday morning the kids and I loaded up all 30 meat chicks into a dog crate and dragged them to the back door.  The crate wouldn't fit through the back door so we had to drag them around to the front door.  This is fairly early in the morning, the ground is frosty and James is helping me in nothing, but underwear and a bathrobe.... it was quite a scene, not to mention the fact that the meat birds are on the verge of dying from the cold... On top of all of that having that many chicks live in our front room for a few days was unpleasant to say the least.  We were able to flush the toilets but only because part of our twice daily chores were to go to the pond next to our house and get buckets of water to use for this purpose.

Thankfully, most of our friends had power, so we had hot showers and towards the end we were able to borrow a generator so we didn't lose the meat in our freezers.  The kids had a great time trick or treating with their friends, the power eventually came back on AND no meat birds died in the end;)