Seriously!?!?!?!

Seriously?!?!?! I haven't posted since September 5th, 2011. Where does the time go? But, silly me, I know the answer to that! Where should I start?

Well, alot has happened in the last five months. We had a wonderful turkey harvest in late October. The turkeys ended up in wonderful freezers and were/will be enjoyed very much. I would take down their picture on the right, but the little buggers were just too darn cute and we do plan on more in the future.

The end of October also was the time that we dropped our lease on our horse. Long story short, it just didn't work out. It happens.

November brought some wonderful news, we were finally pregnant again!

Flash forward to January 17th - we had a tragic miscarriage that I will go into more detail in a later post.

It is safe to say, February sucked a whole heck of alot.

And now we are at March! March has had it's fair share of yays and nays. We have had WAY too much snow for what should be expected. I mean, seriously, the following picture just does not look like March 6th to me... it should have been December - darn that mother nature!



With that said, knock on wood, we have not seen snowmagedon this year. Yeah, we were snowed out for about four days in early February, but it could have been worse (don't smack me in the back of the head my fellow Washingtonians). Luckily, the trees are showing some new buds and some of the bulb flowers are starting to grow... spring is highly considering and making a foreseeable, possible comeback - well, maybe.

Any who, I know this is alot of rambling but I need to bridge the gap between now and last September. I promise to have more interesting details and smart alec posts soon! I will leave this crazy-of-a -post with some fun pictures from the last few months:

Carla and her new winter snow wear:


My little monsters:


The Front Yard:


One of my husband's Christmas gifts that he is too embarrassed to take to work even though it is awesome (yeah, ok, my words but COME ON - those file folders are AWESOME)


More Monsters:


A special trip with teenager and mom:


Can you tell how much Carla LOVES a bath? Were sooo mean!


And, finally, some easybake fun with a friend:


Till next time peep's!

The Building of a Rain Water Cistern: Part 1

I love my home and our land. Yeah, there are a few downsides, like getting snowed in or flooded in, but nothing is harder on a family then a water problem. Problem you ask? Well, it's like this: our farmstead is sitting near the top of a large pile of iron ore. There is not much water inside of a rock. Our well is 350 feet deep with a 1,600 gallon storage tank and we still lose water from time to time during the year. The whole neighborhood is like this, the whole hill for that matter. Some have good water systems, some have no water at all and have it hauled in and then there one's like us where we get a gallon every five minutes on a good day. It just depends on your luck around here. So, after three years we have decided to up our luck and be proactive about a problem we have no controller over. We have decided to put in a rain water cistern system that will run off of our gutters along the house to collect the ever flowing Washington rain (might as well use some of it other than to make mud right?). We purchased a 550 gallon tank that will hold the rain water to use for animals, gardening and yard stuff, which will then help free up the good, small amount of water for the inside of the house. Heck, with the cisten water, we can ever flush toilets when the power goes out - BONUS!!!

So, we started the cistern project Labor Day weekend 2011. Yeah, I know, you don't have to tell me - it's March. We've been a little busy, but the process starts like this...

It starts will a family-team effort to move the cistern over the fence...


Then it's time to dig the whole. Yeah, it could be above ground, but it looks nicer below ground and with the kids wanting to dig, why not? ;-)


No you gotta putt it in the whole (don't you just love free child labor)


It's in, FINALLY!


and now the hard work starts! TO BE CONTINUED...