Home Alone Again

(insert Willie Nelson tune of On the Road Again)

Home alone again
Just can’t wait to get Tom Builder home again
It feels like this moving thing is never going to end
And I can’t wait to get on with life again

Home alone again
He’s gone and left me with these kids again
Crumb crunching children who undo organ-i-zation
Mom has gone and lost her head while home again

Home alone again
I’ve got two more weeks of on my own again
Who were we kidding
So much for middle May
We’ll be lucky if we’re ready by Christmas Day

Home alone again
The belly’s growing large and round again
Bending, lifting, and climbing stairs are not my friends
Summer heat, and napless Faith confirm
I’ll never move again

Home alone again
Just got to keep the faith and think “Little Blue Engine”
Oh, I can’t wait to get on with life again.
Oh, I can’t wait to get on with life again.

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I’m A Pooped Pooper Scooper

Day FOUR. One more to go. It’s been four days since Mr. Incredible left me with three wiggly children who have not been homeschooled for two weeks. I don’t know what it is about homeschooling, but it sets the pace of the day, and gives the children a feeling of accomplishment. It also must give them a sense of freedom when the work is done, because the bickering is much less. But after two weeks of school break and now four days of the “alpha male” being absent, not to mention the incessant moving duties, I’m about to chew my left arm off.

By 4PM all I can think is, “I can’t wait until I am tucking every last one of you in bed, and I have a moment of peace.” Translation…”I want to hit the farm alone.” And for over a week, that is exactly what I am doing. After a full day of managing the home, I am more than willing to get outside in the cool evening and manage the farm. I’ve been bonding with the miniature horses, who will soon be finding a new home (we are told) at a center for disadvantaged children. With their winter woolies coming out in tufts, and with their current owner never showing up on the premises to pay much attention to them, I made it my mission this week to get reacquainted with horse care and grooming…ehem…starting in miniature.

I only have a year of riding under my belt, and that was back in college. And I’ll admit it has taken me a bit to find my self confidence and relearn how to become part of the herd. Believe it or not, the most difficult horse on the premises is the miniature stallion. He can turn at a moments notice and give you a drive by charge. Being preggo with Baby Hope, I’ve been extra cautious, but still determined to bond with the little dynamo. My heart, however, is set on the gelding. He and I have turned into buds. He patiently lets me harness and lead him, or spend hours grooming him, and in return he gets to visit a green bit of pasture instead of his dirt pen.

Tonight I shoveled miniature horse poop. How cute is that? Horse poop in miniature. The horse poop piles had turned into horse poop lanes, so I decided to get out there and get my hands dirty. Three large wheelbarrows full of the stuff. But it was lovely. Just me, my shovel, the horses, and poop. Nobody said a word. Tomorrow, if someone gave me the choice of 8 hours with my children or 8 hours with a shovel…I think I’d take the mute and well behaved shovel.

But then again, shovels don’t give adorable forehead kisses.
Tough call.

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What A Moving Day

What is better than “Two Men and a Truck”? TWO crews of “Two Men and a Truck”! Two trucks. Four men lifting all of our heavy furniture up and away. And NO disasters.

This would have been the day, where I signed my kids up for a Mother’s Morning Out at the church or something, but that would require more than half of a functioning brain. So, after an hour of The Princess of Wails being constantly in the way of men holding heavy furniture with white knuckles, and trying to stuff as many boxes as we could to avoid more car trips, I surrendered in retreat. The children and I headed back to the new place, while Mr. Incredible and the men endured stifling heat and box stuffing alone for the next couple hours.

It really was a chaotic day. Picture four moving men, a crew of six painters and three children standing in open doorways meant for four moving men. At two o’clock, all of the furniture had been loaded and the men where heading to the farm with the two trucks.

There are no words to describe what it feels like to finally have furniture in the farm house after living with just a table set, and mattresses on the floor for over a month. Each room in the house transformed into a cushy haven of rest with the warmth of wood along the walls. It was amazing to watch, and like Christmas to unwrap the shrink wrap on the furniture and not discover a single ding or scratch.

Tom Builder had the ingenious idea of numbering each of the main rooms in the house with a sheet of paper. Normally, one might shout to the mover that this or that box goes in the family room, but when there are two of everything, it gets a little more complicated. So the number system worked really well, and Mr. Incredible just shouted out a number as each item passed by. When all was said and done, some rooms were filled and complete, while a couple stood empty. Isn’t that how it should be when you move into a house with a round belly? Maybe that is where the term “Wiggle Room” comes from.

The unfortunate fact, is we still need to go back to our house of seven years, and clean out more closets, storage, a garage, and a workshop. Not the most exciting stuff to stay motivated over. I just want to stay here and nest for the next two years (which is how long it will take me to go through these boxes of random junk). But the job is not over.

Tom Builder and I, after many MANY days, finally had the treat of watching a movie on a TV screen, in a comfortable couch on a Friday night. I could at last prop my flattening feet on top of a coffee table, and think about something other than moving for the next two hours. Normalcy is near. And THAT is what keeps me moving.

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Confessions of a Do It Yourself Woman

This week was officially declared by Tom Builder to be “moving week”. Hence the sans blogging on my part. It has been an exhausting week with sunny visits inbetween. Tomorrow, the movers come to pick up all of the big heavy furniture. Today, the painters come to paint the house going up on the market a neutral color. And this morning, we interviewed our second interior designer to help us with the new house.

Yep…you read that last part right. For two die hard do-it-yourself-ers this is a big step in acknowledging that we can’t do it all ourself on this one. Two houses all connected together is a bit much to coordinate. It is also a large step towards swallowing some major pride as a woman. These days, there is great pressure to be Martha Stewarts and do everything by hand. Beautifully. Creatively. Simply. (And then of course for the conservative homeschooling mother, we should be grinding our own grain.) But I’m biting the bullet, and keeping an open mind. As we delve further into the interior deco world, I’m getting more relaxed about the entire thing.

It would take me years to accomplish what an interior decorator with a good hand and reliable contractors could do in hours. And I need to face the fact that what I could whip up 10 years ago (not that I was any good folks), is not happening with land, babies and schooling. I mean, I honestly haven’t had the chance to go get my unibrow waxed and my hair cut in almost over a year. Poor Tom Builder has been dealing with scrubs material, for pete’s sake. Look at that hair! This is my head all day every day – twist and a clip. (Thanks to my wonderful sister-in-law Kristy who made us an amazing handmade made desk calendar with family photos, I’ve been staring at the oh-so younger version of me and Tom Builder in our engagement photos this month. It’s getting to me.)

But honestly, when am I going to have the time to decorate two kitchens, six bathrooms, and six bedrooms?? I want to dream and plan over chickens, horses, a rip roaring garden, and an adorable baby we’ll know the gender of on Monday…and perhaps get my tail back into a salon. Not fuss over fabrics and finishes. Can you tell I’m trying to talk myself into this?

To give you an idea of how controlling I am with things of the home, I would never, NEVER, participate in a Trading Spaces episode. Love to watch the show, but would never want any room my house to be the brunt of someone else’s style and creativity. I wouldn’t be the one that cried because I hated it, but you can bet I’d be at Home Depot that evening picking out the paint color I’d be using to paint over the newly decorated walls. For me, hiring an interior decorator is equivalent to a person afraid of heights deciding to walk along The Great Wall of China.

We’ll also be looking into hiring a landscape design service…another major gulp of pride for me the gardener girl. I must stress this is all rolling out in phases over many years. But this is now our home for decades out, and we want it to feel like a retreat away from home for our friends and family. It needs a professional touch. Someone who does this for a living. It is just really hard to admit that person should not, and couldn’t possibly be me the control freak. {gulp}

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About This Moving Thing

Honestly? Cards all laid out on the table…This is really hard. How do people with kids who stay at home ALL DAY move? Is there a temporary public school out there that just takes kids for about three weeks while Moms make sixty thousand trips with overstuffed minivans? By the time I take all the children with me and trek back to the old house, and grab our school work to tackle while we are there, I’ve got a passenger side seat and a trunk available. Its ridiculous. Then there are my really stupid days when I let the dog come with us.

Ken bought one of those nifty WorkSport trailers that hauls a boat load of stuff, but that would require me to be a braver animal then a chicken to haul things with it. And so I creep. Along. Agonizingly. Slow. Each kitchen cabinet in TWO kitchens, needs thorough wash downs to disintegrate the grime and the kitty hair left behind. Meanwhile the baby is found scribbling with four markers on the freshly painted walls of the new playroom, or can be found swishing her hands around in the closest toilet (for the third time that day). And then of course there are all of the daily requirements that don’t disappear when you move: the groceries, the cleaning, the laundry, the yogurt, cocoa puffs, ketchup and juice spills in the last 12 hours, dinners. The demanding baby who has discovered how to whip up screaming temper tantrums and is tired of being fifth string, wanting her Mom to just sit and be still.

Add a deadline to the mix of May 15th for placing our old house on the market, that needs its own TLC, and its paralyzing. I feel like I am trying to run in water. So in case you started to think we were all tip toeing through the buttercups, and toe dipping all day in the crystal blue water, this is what is REALLY brewing 95% of the day.

We really do live in paradise though…check out the double rainbow smack over our farm from last week.

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Bedazzled In Buttercups

I was not exaggerating when I mentioned that the farm is dazzling. Wildflowers have taken over the farm, and it has all of us feeling like we have stepped into a child’s dream, or a TV commercial for allergy medicine…depending on the day. More specifically, we are bathing in buttercup pollen. 300 Google parts per million would be a conservative guess. These are not just your ordinary buttercups, these are brilliant gold Globeflowers.

We have learned in our homeschooling research, that ironically, Globeflowers are quite special as they are endangered in at least 7 states. When Tom Builder heard this report he quipped, “We’re the one’s in danger!” Guessing this week could only be peak week (does it get more beautiful than this?) we headed out to the back five acres and snapped gobs of cuteness pictures.

Faith was taking her morning snooze back at the house, so the kids and I continued on our trek along the creek. About six weeks ago, we stuck to the edge of the creek and wandered onto our sweet retired neighbor’s back property to do some further exploring. To our delight, we found what we now call “our secret spot”. And when we have time, none of us can resist visiting it. The creek takes a bend along the property line, which leaves a wonderful bar of sand and silt for the children to wander along. Everything about the place is southern. From the giant leaning sycamores, to the sounds of the birds and bugs.

I can sit on the sand in peace, and watch my children build sand castles, dig for clams, and spot animal tracks. And I can find equal amusement as I watch Hatch practice swimming in the shallows. The place is absolutely enchanting and safe. I half expect to see The Rabbit and Alice in Wonderland running by.

The return back from the creek has become an amusement. Wet feet squeak in rubbery shoes, and we soon look like giant bumblebees with loads of pollen stuck to our legs. The children usually have their hands full of clams and new wildflower bouquets. On the return, my eyes always scan the two things that have me very excited: budding wild roses lining the creek, and blackberry bushes…EVERYWHERE. I have my own grown up dreams that include friends and families with buckets in hand for blackberry picking in July.

The buttercups bring us home, slowly becoming less and less as we get closer to the farm. Because they are bitter, the horses avoid the plants. Horses. A few horses remain. We gave the word a month ago that we would not be boarding. Two of our favorites are still around, and we are tempted to keep them on site. They have become friends we visit every morning and evening. It continues to be a hard decision. But I think we will stick to it and enjoy their gentle personalities until they find a new home. One day, we’ll have our own gentle giants. But we’ll start small…

When the horses mosey on out, we’ll be placing our first order for “The Chicken Project”!!!

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Who Flu The Poop?

There is only one thing that keeps me from blogging for over a week. Not moving. Not homeschooling. Not chasing after three kids and trying to grow another. And not trying to do all of those things at once. What keeps me from blogging is Faith, the flu, buckets of curdled sour milk on the way back up, and amazingly rancid diapers that have MOAB military like capabilities when they detonate.

Flu + Faith = Stale Blog.

Six days of the flu bug for my poor little one. By day three, she was shuffling her feet along the floor like an old lady. By day four, we had the worst blow out in Knucker Hatch history. By day five, I was praising the steam cleaner for it’s vomit devouring capabilities on hardwoods. By day six, the laundry had washed The Princess of Wails’ sheets and blankets 12 times.

And now…Tom Builder appears to be Mr. Flu’s next possible victim. Good times.

However, we are making progress on the house. The play room is freshly painted, and neatly organized which has made everyone in the new house cheerful in spite of the stench o’ flu. I’m sure there is an old adage somewhere that says, “If the playroom is happy, everybody is happy.”

There is much more I have to share with you from last week. Not all of it was doom and gloom. In fact, the farm is dazzling. And just as amazing, we’ve discovered that Mr. Incredible can turn slime into sparkling pool water. Just in time for almost 80+ degree weather. A many pictured post to follow tomorrow (as soon as my camera battery recharges and recovers from my trigger happy finger.)

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