Fences Down and Roads Closed

We took down the rest of the barbed-wire fence along the front of the farm. We have a lot of road frontage! (About 1,100 feet! Which is nearly a quarter of a mile.) And we'd only taken down about a third of it.

This time Mike decided to give up on saving the barbed wire. Which made it go much much more quickly. It was still hauling barbed wire and pulling posts. That's no picnic (in case you were wondering). But cutting the barbed wire (rather than getting all the impossible clips and stays off of it and then rolling the entire strand) was so much faster!

Penny had a performance of her play that day, but Daisy was home for the weekend, so she and I switched off watching the little ones and helping Mike, Jesse and Anders with fencing (defencing?) at the farm. Sadly, that means I wasn't there at the same time as Daisy to take any pictures of her.

We took all the metal to a recycling place, and we gathered up all the metal stakes, but I didn't realize just how many wooden posts were left behind. Mike went back for those on another day, and it was hours (in wind and snow) of work piling wooden posts (and several 200 lb railroad ties) all onto a trailer. Poor man. But ... living his dream, so (shrug).

It's great that we got it all taken down because this very week they have finally started on the road shoulder we have to build out (the entire length of all that fencing) before the county will let us build.

How maddening that particular county requirement has been, how many calls and people we've talked to, how hard to find anyone who would get us a bid much less do the job, how shockingly much money it is costing us (that might have gone into building our home) is a tedious and discouraging story for another day. 

But! It doesn't change the excitement I feel about it finally getting out of the way! There's something oddly thrilling about trying to drive down a road only to find the entire thing closed ... because of you! (Mind you don't tell all the vehicles that have had to [and will continue to need to] detour for a week or so that it's because of us.)

You can see a couple of construction vehicles down there. I didn't even dare to drive along the road myself to see the progress (though I was incredibly tempted!). I'll need Mike with me so I don't feel like I have to answer to anyone. Still, for a thing that feels somewhat criminal for them to have made us do, it feels pretty exciting to see it happening!)

Some Things

It's 6:30 on a Friday night. (Though it feels closer to midnight with the recent time change.) Mike isn't home yet. (I texted him two hours ago informing him that it turns out I can only survive until 4:00 pm before missing him too much to go on. But apparently my wanting him here ... won't pay the bills.) 

But dinner's cleaned up, the boys have fed the goats (so Mike won't have to do it in the dark when he gets back), and the kids are all in pajamas and watching a Friday-night movie. ...

Annnnnd ... I got distracted (did my husband arrive home? is that what distracted me? I can't recall, but happy thought if it was) and now it's Monday, and I don't know what I'd intended to write about when I began this on Friday.

Still. Surely there's something to tell? Some ... things?

Let's see.

Abe just participated (and placed!) in his first jiu-jitsu tournament as a blue belt.

He also sent us these lovely photos:

(Poor Hansie. That was his face after a fall at a friend's birthday party. The party was at a tumbling place where the entire building was covered in spongy, bouncy things. ... The entire building except for the one spot where Hans managed to fall directly onto his face. But Daisy venmoed money for him to buy ice cream and Abe turned him into Rocky so there was a silver lining I suppose.)

Daisy came home this weekend for Penny's play (more pictures of that later) and lucked upon the week of the kids' primary program as well. She made us an amazing apple crumble, and, in turn, we made her steak.

Goldie is coming home in 3.5 months! I really haven't been thinking at all of her as a nearing-the-end-of-her-mission missionary! It's wild to me when things that existed for so long only in the idea stage move not only into reality but onwards toward memory!

A tiny snippet from her:

"You never know what to expect in the day of a missionary. For example: being sent away with the fanfare of bubble guns, a preacher promising to pray we find good husbands (telling us to call him when we do), and using all our ikea skills to build someone a crib with dogs and 2 year olds climbing all over it. Missionary life is full of surprises and I love it."

We had our first snowfall a week and a half ago. (And another one today.) 

The fog/snow combo made it completely white out there.

I got out of bed to help a few of the kids who were struggling to get appropriate snow gear and then went out in my bathrobe to take a few photos. (And then I nearly sent Mike to meet his maker with the shock of bitter cold I brought back into our bed with me.)

With the snow, the kids started thinking Christmas thoughts. Starling requested red and green elastics for her hair and when I only had pink and yellow to offer, she, feeling disappointed to not have her elastics match some sort of holiday, asked hopefully, "Are pink and yellow the color of ... family reunions?"

Yes. Of course they are.

And I don't know if this falls under the category of "things to tell", but here is a photo from a drive out to the elementary in Mendon one morning. I think Mendon is the most charming little town ever.

And now for a picture of Penny as her high school theater historian and the rest of her Unsinkable Molly Brown pictures. (They won't let us take photos during the play, so this year Penny cleverly volunteered me to take pictures during one of the rehearsals. There are 300 other photos where these came from. Haha.)

And that will end this post. (How one must lie down to read when wearing a turtleneck. [Because who can bear it against their neck?]) 

Moving Towards Winter (and Farewell to Halloween)

Costumes are put away.

Carved pumpkins, their jack-o faces having begun to shrivel in on themselves, have been tossed over the electric fence into the field.

Paper bats are no longer taped to the walls.

And there are no more orange lights glowing in our house.

The unseasonably warm October temperatures have given way to our first snowfall.

The clocks have turned back.

And it seems we are shifting from fall to winter. 

And with that comes a mixed feeling of:

Loneliness. (Something about the cold? The early onset of night? Feels like a longing for things beyond this life and reminds me of the time as a child I found myself all alone in the quietest snow down the "no dump" hill north of our house. Everything was so still and when the distant sound of a train whistle finally blew across the quiet, I suddenly felt so alone and homesick I thought I might die.)

Anxiousness. (November reminds me that Christmas presents for ten kids aren't going to simply buy and wrap themselves.) 

Coziness. Excitement. Anticipation. Joy. (Soon there will be Christmas lights, and Christmas music, and kids home from college, little kids so excited they can't sleep, stockings hanging and nativities placed, and the smell of evergreen in our house!) 

Nostalgia. (Does any season encompass all that was brightest and happiest from childhood like Christmas?)

And ... a little (more than a little) disappointment. (This is not a "shifting to winter" feeling in general, rather something specific to this year as the window for weather warm enough to lay the foundation for our home--which we'd been working so hard and with such hopefulness to make happen this fall--is swiftly closing.)

But, before we fall headlong into winter and its accompanying holidays, I ought to at least put our Halloween pictures up!

We still haven't fully established what our Halloween tradition is here, but had stew as we often do, then tried out the College/Young Ward trunk-or-treat (which seems to be where one sees all their neighbors in neighborhoods where going door-to-door isn't feasible). We then went to one of the Mendon neighborhoods to give our kids a little traditional trick-or-treating.

Also, the week earlier, Mette and Summer hosted a Halloween party. They'd wanted to do a combined birthday party in early August, but somehow I never made that happen. To make up for it I let them have this little party. 

Between Summer, Mette, Hans, Starling and all the friends that couldn't possibly be left off the invitations list, we had 16 little kids crowded into our rental. It was a bit wild. But they all had a great time making mason-jar mummies and Halloween graham-cracker houses, watching Room on the Broom, and dancing to Halloween music.