Goldie Home Tomorrow!

Welp! We're ready! As of about ten minutes ago the tasks on my "to-do before Goldie gets home" list are complete! 

Actually, that's not totally true.

There's a stepladder and high-pressure air blower (what are those called again?) waiting to be taken to the garage or returned to the farm when Mike gets home. And a pile of stuff related to 3-D printing and the like that I need Jesse to do something about. And, I haven't gotten groceries yet. Mainly because our fridge just went on the fritz and everything in it has been moved to the garage freezer or to coolers outside. I wanted to be stocked up on food for various meals to make with all ten kids home this weekend, but ... we shall have to see if I'll have a working fridge to put everything in first. Poor--and yet unsurprisingly typical--timing. (Like when our basement flooded the night before leaving for GA for a month.) On the positive side of this fridge business: I most definitely did not have "clean the fridge and freezer" on my to-do list, but ... once it was all empty, it became quite apparent that a cleaning must occur. So ... it's not stocked, but at least it's now clean!

But all of the tasks to make space are finished (she's got a bin for shoes, a drawer in the girls' bathroom, room enough to pack a fair number of dresses in the shared girls' closet, and half a dresser :)). All the bed sheets are washed and beds made, the showers and toilets are scrubbed, the computer area cleaned, every speck of laundry is put away, the windows are washed, and spots have been found for a host of random things. Mike changed lightbulbs for me (thus the stepladder waiting to be put away) and vacuumed out the van. And last night we made welcome-home posters. 

All that remains now is for us to arrive on time to the airport tomorrow!

Mind you, when I say things are all set and ready, take that with a grain of salt and do recall that, in a house this full of people, things are mostly being unreadied as fast as ever I've readied them. Before we leave tomorrow all the beds will be unmade and there will be two more loads of laundry needing done.

Still, it is pretty exciting. It reminds me a little of the flurry of nesting that would always come before our babies arrived. Just ... wanting home ready and prepared to welcome. 

What a happy day tomorrow will be!

Misc.

Anders: Do we have any lamp oil?
Jesse: Lamp oil? What do you think this is? The 1800s?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anders: Don't worry, mom. When I'm a rapper I won't swear that much in my songs.
Me: Hm. That's wonderful.
Anders: And when I'm famous I'll send you some money.
Me: That'd be great.
Summer: And when I'm grown up, I'll send you lots of postcards and pictures from all the places I travel!
Mette: Well, when I'm grown up, I'm going to drive all the kids I have to school in a bus.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mike took the kids to their twice-yearly dental visit this week. He takes everyone when he goes. And so, especially now, with us living in Logan and Mike still taking them to their old dentist in Ogden, it means an entire afternoon and well into the evening of me just here by myself. It's lovely.

(It's become tradition for them to stop at The Pizzeria after.)

Sadly, this trip three kids had cavities and will need to make a return visit. Starling was one of them. She has, so far in her short experience of dental visits, considered them a great adventure. She goes off with a passel of her siblings, has her teeth cleaned, gets a small toy and a new toothbrush, and then goes out to eat (something we do almost never). It makes me sad to think that she will soon become acquainted with another, less-fluff-and-sunshine side to it all. (Trips to the dentist were the one blight on my own otherwise-idyllic childhood! But then ... one time I had nine cavities. And there was no numbing gel to be applied before the lidocaine shots.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

It doesn't feel like we've had an awful season as far as illness goes. I guess that's because we haven't had one of the horrible weeks where one child after another is hit with some terrible bout of throwing up. But we actually have had a good number of children get sick! They've just been spread out ever so slightly so they feel unrelated. But since Christmas break ended, we've had Penny, then Starling, then Mette, then Summer and now Hans come down with something that has kept them on the couch for a day or two.

Oddly, these bouts seem to strike every time I have a temple trip planned! I just scheduled one for tomorrow morning and, sure enough, Hans is now burning up with a fever. Sigh. When I mentioned this phenomenon to my sister Shannon she replied, "Oh man. So sorry. I'm glad the Lord judges us by our desires." 

"Yes," I replied, "But a fat lot of good that does Titus Pyart's wife!"

I have become, unexpectedly, quite involved in family history. It was never something I had any desire whatsoever to do, but experiences (angels, honestly and truly) have grabbed ahold of me and pulled me in. And now there's nothing for it. They won't let me rest. BUT! I have been praying for help! "Please send help!" I have all of these people who I have found--often in ways that are just absolutely ridiculous and impossible--but just not enough manpower to get all their work done! And I know, I know, I can just release their names to the temple. But I always worry they will sit for years. (Of course, just saving them in my own little reservation pile--to sit and wait there--isn't probably any better. But! If I could at least manage to arrange a temple visit ... when a kid is not sick, well, that would be something!)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Penny asked me to take a few graduation photos recently. It was a freezing day, and the light was terrible for photo taking, so we will take more still, but we did get a few cute ones.

I made her stop at this house that I am intrigued by. I want to know its story so badly! And I want to investigate it—peer in all the windows, etc., but I don't dare. (I barely dared make her run up for this photo.) It's obviously abandoned. But there are still goats fenced about it. So someone must come and go there. I'll get a better picture someday. But it's this old house surrounded by trees, and it must have once been so charming! The most charming house in College Ward?? All these window pains and faded wood that once was painted green and red. I just want to know who lived there and what it was like in its prime!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mette is in a little group for smarty-pantses at her school. This day she was doing a presentation she'd pulled together on capybaras.

Good work, Metts!

-------------------------------------------------------

Today we got Goldie's LAST mission letter! I almost cried when I finished it! It's just so wild to me that this enormous thing that she planned and prepared for and was determined to do for, well, all her life, she's not only arrived at, but now pretty well finished! It's just so ... I don't even know what! I can't even express what it makes me feel!

--------------------------------------------------------------

And that's all for tonight!

A Welcome Home ... Mailbox

I've spent the past week going through closets and drawers trying to clear things out to make space for our Goldie in this little 3-bedroom rental. I boxed up dresses that were getting too small for the three little girls and squeezed Penny's dance dresses into our closet to make a little space for Goldie's own dresses. I boxed up blankets that were in one drawer and consolidated clothes that were in another so she has a few dresser drawers. I boxed up toy sets that were stacked on dressers to give her somewhere to set a few books and belongings. I still need to get to work clearing her a drawer in the girls' bathroom and making space in the coat closet.

Goldie has never really lived with us in this rental. (She was here living out of her packed suitcases for about ten days of home MTC.) I'd been fairly convinced she'd come back to a new house on the farm (complete with her very own set of dresser drawers--imagine--haha!).

As it is, ... she returns in ten days. (TEN DAYS! Can you believe it? Ten days until I have all ten of my kids together again! At least for weekends here and there. Such happiness!) And what we have is ...

A mailbox (and an official address--though it's obscured in this online place :)), an official county garbage can, and a long stretch of road shoulder and ditch (redone to be less narrow to please the county). 

That's what we've got. 

Along with this view (the best view from the farm, I fancy)--waiting to be looked upon from an official front porch.
 

But! She will be home in time to see ground broken! Hopefully all the thousand pieces are finally almost in place and that will be in March! Hopefully! HOPEFULLY!!!

(In the meantime, at least our views here at the rental continue to be ... well, they certainly aren't chopped liver!)

A Bit of Starling

I looked out into the cold and wet gray yesterday evening and saw a little barefoot Starling, clad in her cheetah outfit, crouched down, and carefully inspecting rocks. 

Upon further investigation I discovered that Hans was in the throes of despair at that very moment. He'd discovered a small dead bug next to the French doors in the girls' room, decided its passing was too tragic to be borne, and begun to sob.

Starling had, in a "buck up" and matter-of-fact manner told him that she would say a prayer for the bug and that she would then find a rock under which Hans could give it a proper burial.

Dear girl.

Mike recently gave her a small, old ukulele we had sitting around. She likes to get it out and carefully wipe it down with baby wipes. And she occasionally takes it to bed with her so she can strum her sisters to sleep. We turned on some of Mike's old country favorites tonight. She ran to get her ukulele and then brought it to me in near tears because when she strummed it ... it didn't exactly match up to the sound of "The Cowboy in the Continental Suit".

She continues to quietly go off and create little things all of the time. I'm generally not allowed to look until she is finished, and usually she gifts them to me. (Though the "pillow" she made from paper towels, staples and cotton balls was offered to me in exchange for a treat. Bartering. Clever.)

A "framed" picture of Mike, Starling and me.

The pillow.

Something sweet she taped to the fridge after asking Mette a few spelling questions.

Here she is asking me to take a picture of her and "this cute girl" she found at Old Navy. Haha.

Mette tried to remedy the glaring problem with this new friend. (And did the same on the next one we found.) 

And when we were going to the cabin last (after not having been there for a while) and Mike said, "I hope the cabin is in good shape," she mischievously questioned, "Like you don't want it to be a triangle?"

Do you know I honestly, truly was 99% positive that Hans was my last child? I was! It's horrifying to even consider that 1% idea not having lit up my mind as it did! Thank goodness thank goodness!

View of the Farm From the Game Cam

Often we forget to put the camera card back in the game camera. And usually, we forget it's even there. (Though you can tell from a few of these pictures that the kids sometimes clearly recall it is there.) But it's always fun when we bring the card home and see what there is to discover that has been happening on the farm without us there. For example:

This picture makes me laugh every time I see it. That is one of our steers. And there is no time that the game cam should ever have a picture of him since he is in theory penned behind barbed wire fence a good distance away from the where the camera is. And yet ...

And this:

Every time we catch a rooster pheasant on the camera I want to shout, "Run! Run for your life you fool!"

I left incriminating evidence off of this blog post, but we have a number of pictures of people trespassing on our property with shotguns in hand. We even have pictures of some guys carrying our little Jon boat to make a duck blind for themselves. Ugh. The nerve. In any case, no rooster pheasant can possibly be safe there!

(Other incriminating evidence? I left these images off so as not to feel a smidgen grumpy every time I come back across this post, but we also have about a million pictures of our neighbor's dogs--often coinciding with the times of finding our chickens dead. Why we even have one with their dog carrying a piece of one of our chickens in his jaws!)

Of course they aren't alone. We often see this fellow:

We probably ought to trap him, but ... I love foxes, so that's a sad thought. 

And of course there are plenty of harmless trespassers:

We see this cat going about, making his rounds constantly.

And lots of birds set off the camera.

This cat is also a regular on the farm at night. 

And ... a passing bus. Probably can't quite be called a trespasser. (When you hear the word "trespassers" do you always think of this line describing Piglet's house in Winnie the Pooh? "Next to his house was a piece of broken board which had: 'TRESPASSERS W' on it. When Christopher Robin asked the Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather's name, and had been in the family for a long time. Christopher Robin said you couldn't be called Trespassers W, and Piglet said yes, you could, because his grandfather was, and it was short for Trespassers Will, which was short for Trespassers William." I hope you do think of that, or, at least shall from now on.)

There also appear to be a number of ... ghosts (?) on the farm:

Why, this ghost is even looking challengingly straight into the camera!

And now, in no particular category, all the rest. (By "all the rest" I mean, of course, a tiny handful of the 600 or so images we've captured.)

These first two were captured the first time the kids ran to greet the cows and terrified them so badly that they frantically broke out of their pen. You see Jesse running to tell Mike the bad news, and Mike then following him back to size up the situation.

Hansie on a dock.

Summer. I think?

Mette knows the camera is there.

Giving it the side eye. 

More Hansie on the dock.

Mike and Jesse on the dock in church clothes.

Jesse, in same church clothes, carrying back water for the chickens.

Run chicken! Run! A dog is probably after you. Sigh. (We do have our poor remaining chickens locked up in a pen they are quite safe in now.)

A thoughtful Penny.

Pen and Jesse looking like they are on a mission of some sort.

Penny running. Which makes me think probably cows were out again.

Mike on the dock.

Back when lots of our hens were still alive. Sniffle. 

Mike doing farmy things.

Penny strolling out to the dock.

Daisy and Jesse. Daisy looking ill-prepared for farm work (but very cute all the same).

Me looking ill-prepared for farm work! I feel cold just looking at myself. 

Oh! But look! Eight minutes later on the time stamp. I now have Mike's coat and hat while he has nothing. Good good man.

I remember this day! I used that wooden perch from the chicken pen to try and break the ice on the pond to get water for the chickens. But the ice was so thick it just ended up breaking the end of the wood!

There I am carrying the water bowl over to the canal (where I had no better luck, mind you!).

Plenty of shots of our various vehicles driving past. 

Trying to get hay a million miles across the farm to the steers. (We've since had some huge bails dropped off right next to where they are thank goodness. In fact, at 10 pm last night Mike and I were over there trying to cover them with a big tarp before an incoming storm.)

Ill-prepared again. I stopped to feed the cows after a visit to the temple. Luckily I had at least thought to throw a pair of tennis shoes into the car.

Mike the opposite of ill-prepared! He's never been cold once working in that full Carhart suit we recently found for him! 

Daisy looking much better prepared for farm work. (Cute boots!)

Jesse and Anders who are slowly coming to terms with the fact that Mike will be taking them to the farm to do some task or other every Saturday ... possibly for the rest of their lives. 

I cannot tell what Anders is holding.

Hey Van.

And that's all for now. But I'm sure there will be more posts like this one!