The Lumberjack's Wife

So, I have not made a family photo album since 2007.  Is that not sad?  I am trying to buckle down and get caught up, but I find this job to be quite tedious.  I was a good girl and got half of 2008 done last night and am already ready for another 5 year break.

The good news is, according to our photo albums, Little Dude was finally born!  The bad news is, if I stop, he will forever be frozen in time looking like this:

And we all know the lad is no longer that innocent.

Anyways, I was not blogging back then, so I thought it might be fun to share some old pics.  Please.  Try and feign excitement.

When I started looking through the pictures, I was reminded about all my frustrations with living in a fixer upper!  The reader might recall that before we moved to Ruralville, we lived in a house built in 1910 that David had gutted and was slowly putting back together.  This phase lasted for 7 years.

I was certain that house would never, ever, be finished.  I did not get a digital camera until 2007, so that’s when these pictures will start.  But let the records show:  we had been working on this house since 2003!

Baby Handsome Dude.  Please notice the wires and the unpainted sheetrock.

And before this whole funky house building adventure, I had no idea what sheetrock was.

Do you?

The girls on Sweet Pea’s first day of preschool.

Do you see that big sheet of OSB on the porch?  There was a giant hole in the front porch that I kept begging David to fix.  He just never found the time to get around to it.  So one day, I marched to the backyard and grabbed a sheet of OSB and threw it on the hole.  And there the OSB sat for many years.

What’s that?  You don’t have random building materials floating around your yard?  Odd.

And before this whole funky house building adventure, I had no idea what OSB was.

Do you?

The girls “helping” David work on the master bedroom.

Check out Sweet Pea’s “workboots.”

Classy.

Daisy Mae never stops talking.

Ever.

She’s probably talking right now while taking a shower.

There’s my main man!

I am pretty sure he still owns the same Carhartts.  The man has separation issues when it comes to Carhartts.

Did he have a goatee?

Will the reader please look at the above photo closely?  Notice the windows.  Every single window in our house looked like that for many years-unfinished with insulation peeking out.

It was an exciting day when David, the grand house builder that he is, installed all the window trim!

Here is a picture of the girls my the newly finished, newly painted living room windows.

Oh!  And baseboards, too!

And my husband did the floors.

Seriously.  He did it all.   Is there anything my main man can’t do?  Besides resist buying scores of chickens?

Here are just some cute shots.  You know.  To dazzle and delight.

The girls riding bikes in our old backyard.

I think this was 2007, so they would have been 4 and 3.

 Coloring Easter Eggs . . .

While Handsome Dude was contained in his high chair . . .

Ah, the glory days.

Fishing!

Hiking

(I was pregnant with Little Dude)

Mother’s Day

(Still pregnant.  FYI)

Baby Little Dude

Please notice:  Wires, unfinished back door, and no pantry door.

Because I sure noticed.

I also forgot these days . . .

It is hard to see, but there is a bench there and David always kept all his building materials there and I would try and keep the kids out of it.  David would come home from work and work on the house most evenings.

Why on earth did I take the above picture?  I was probably really, really, really tired.

Camping and hanging out at the river:

Sweet Pea

Daisy Mae

Handsome Dude

Camping and Wood Cutting:

(Notice the wood in the back)

Hiking

Fishing

Little Dude, the trooper that he was.

Sweet Pea’s first day of kindergarten . . .back in the days when I outsourced education!

And, yes.  The OSB is still there.

And that’s as far as I got in my photo albums!  Hopefully I will get some finished soon.

Happy Friday!

This week has been busy!  I decided to look up on the calendar when our last day of school was and guess what?!

It’s today!

Let us take a moment to stop and hear the angels singing.

We worked hard Monday and Tuesday to finish the new rabbit fences.  We have been using hutches, but decided to give them more of a fenced in yard so they can run around. We have been working on the fencing for their yards-we have five areas for them. Did you know we raise rabbits?  Yes. We are weirder than you think.  Tuesday we worked until 9pm to get it all finished up.

Towards the end, David had to pull the rabbits out and determine their gender before putting them in the appropriate stalls.

Sweet Pea is socializing with the rabbits who are awaiting an escort to their exciting, new locale.

Please notice the one rabbit who is about to make a jump for it.  He/She senses freedom.

No!

I do not know how to “sex” a rabbit.  We’ve been through this.  Don’t you people listen to me?

I opted to pick up tools and the like instead of stare into the private areas of a rabbit like my husband.  Clearly, I am the smarter one.

The kids were off the charts excited.

I don’t know why they found this so thrilling.  But they are homeschooled and don’t get out much, so what can you do?

The kids were so excited to visit the rabbits the next morning, so after breakfast they all went out to see them.  While I was doing the breakfast dishes, Little Dude came inside to inform me of the horrors that were ensuing outside.

Little Dude, shouting as per his usual custom:  MMMMOOOOMMM!  Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey-Mom?  MOM!

Me:  Yes?

Little Dude (still shouting):  TANK AND . . . TANK AND . . . TANK AND . . . TANK AND MILEY ATE A WABBIT!

Me:  The dogs got a rabbit?!

Little Dude (about to explode from his own volume):  YES! AND THAT MAKES GOD SAD, RIGHT MOM?  RIGHT?  RIGHT?

Little Dude spoke the truth.  But the biggest problem was that the rabbit was not all the way dead.  It was going to die, but it was not there yet.

These are the things I did not sign up for, my friends.  I don’t think I can “put an animal out of its misery.”  Besides, I don’t have any suitable firearms.  Nor do I want any.  So while I started to panic over THAT issue, the girls got the naughty dogs into the house.

And then this is what I hear.

“Blood!  Blood is everywhere!”

Which is what every mother wants to hear.  I don’t know what happened, but Tank the Dog injured his foot while slaying the rabbit and was bleeding.  So I got the dog contained and the wound looked at, because I am Dr Quinn Medicine Woman now, and then looked at the rabbit sitch.

The rabbit died on its own.  Which is sad, but good, because I did not want it to suffer, but I did not want to have to figure out a way to kill it.

So, yesterday was full of much excitement and we didn’t start school until 10am.  And maybe I won’t complain about teaching math and grammar anymore because dealing with injured dogs and dying rabbits is much worse.

And that makes God sad, right readers?

Right?

RIGHT?

***

On Tuesday, I asked why Tamaracks were important.

Reader Wichiepoo got the answer right first:  Tamarack is, according to my lumberjack, the best firewood out there.

Holla, Wichiepoo!

***

Yesterday, when I was checking on the rabbits, I noticed this little bit of excitement:

See all that gray/white fluff?  That is rabbit hair.  But underneath it are six live newborn rabbits!

The astute reader might recall awhile back that the girls informed me of a rabbit giving birth.   I had asked David about it later that night, and he said no rabbits had been born.

I found this to be odd, but I forgot to talk to the girls about it.

So, yesterday, this was a little convo between Daisy Mae and I:

DM:  Mom, remember when we told you that mama rabbit was having babies?

Me:  Yeah?

DM:  Well, that was a boy.

Me:  What?

DM:  I asked Dad and that rabbit was a boy, not a girl!

Me:  But you said you saw babies coming out.

DM:  We thought so.

Me:  Hmmm . . .

DM:  Well, something was coming out down there!  I don’t know WHAT it was.

And I will leave that little disturbing statement to your imaginations, dear readers.

Homeschool.  Biology.  Check.

Once upon a time, there was a precious baby boy.

His parents found him to be quite charming, but noticed that he was constantly cross-eyed.  They discussed their concerns with the doctor, and, sure enough, the boy could not see.

Ever seen a 6 month old in glasses?

There you go.  Do you think it is easy to keep glasses on a baby?  You are gravely mistaken, my friend.

Keeping glasses on the lad was no easy task.  In all truth, he probably wore them about 15% of the time, and not for a lack of trying on his parents’ part.

By the time he turned one, things started to get a bit better.

Yes.  You can stop wondering.  His mother is pregnant in the above photo.  Again.

Soon, he grew out of the baby glasses and moved up to a bigger size.

This is when the fun begins, my friends.

And I use the term “fun” quite loosely.

Quite.

Having a toddler boy in glasses resulted in his mother making weekly, sometimes daily, trips to the place the children became to know as “The Glasses Doctors.”  The Glasses Doctors exhibited much patience with Frazzled Mom and her well-behaved crew of four and did everything in their power to make sure the boy was able to see.

This was no easy task.

Eventually, the glasses in the above picture became missing, and were presumed dead.  This was fortunate timing because the eye doctor decided the boy no longer needed glasses at all.  This was worrisome to the mother, but she was a bit over the whole novelty of a young child in glasses, so she listened to the doctor.

This was a mistake of gargantuan proportions.  The boy’s eyes became much worse and were constantly crossing.  The mother went back to the doctor and got the boy back in glasses.

But, alas.  The boy still had trouble.  He did not seem to be seeing all that well and his eyes would cross terribly once his glasses were off.  And his glasses were off a lot, seeing as how he broke them daily.

Then, one day, the boy laughed and said,

“Two mommies!  I see two mommies!”

This freaked the mommy out and she decided she had better get the boy into a new doctor post haste.

New doctor looked at the boy’s eyes and looked at the boy’s vision history and said the boy has never been in a strong enough prescription.  New doctor eased the mother’s worries about her son someday having a permanent lazy eye, but warned her that her son’s brain was going to have to relearn all images, because he has never seen the world like he is about to start seeing.

The boy was given an extremely strong prescription.  When The Glasses Doctors put his new pair on for the first time, he almost fell down and said,

“Everything is wiggly!”

The mother has been encouraged since switching to new doctor.  The boy has caught up and learned all his letters and numbers and seeming able to do more things.

But, alas.  The boy’s glasses kept breaking.

The Glasses Doctors have been doing everything in their power to keep glasses on the boy.  He has gone through about 5 frames in the past year.  Since the family now lives far away from The Glasses Doctor, the father has been attempting to keep the glasses in working order on his own.

It’s just not working out.

So, the Glasses Doctors recommended new, indestructible glasses for the boy.  They were $300, but were promised to never break.

The mother and father like the sound of the word indestructible.  They, do, however, feel like their son now looks like a Space Man.

The boy LOVES them and thinks himself to be a rockstar.

The mother is having a hard time with them.  As is the father.

The mother and father need to get over themselves.  Rest assured, the mother and father only praise the boy and tell him how awesome he looks.

But you can certainly understand their pain, no?

Happy Thursday.

Love,

The Mother of Space Man