Cue the "Green Acres" music....Big C. has taken to the tools of farm-land like a duck to water. He loves loves loves to be given a task, working outside alongside Muma or Dada. Here he shows off the interior of the chicken coop/guinea hutch, which has consumed much of our energy lately.



Other tasks include hangin' in the pickup truck, which the girls seem to prefer (Miss.P was actually WORRIED ABOUT HER NAIL POLISH yesterday, and therefore declined to help me unload straw from the back of the truck. Gahhhhh. How in the world will I raise two Princesses????)

We have a cherry tree on our property! It is down the fence row, quite a way from the house, and almost over-grown by a couple of ratty looking dogwoods. I can't really identify the type of cherry - it is very very sweet, but it has that cherry-red translucent quality you would normally expect from a sour "pie" cherry. They are small and yummy with a sizable pit. And there are millions of them on this very unlikely looking tree....so, what better to do in the early morning than pick a wee bucket of cherries and make cherry muffins? Yum yum yum....
The three urchins gave them six thumbs up.

Thankfully, we aren't living in the garage, in all its Tyvek-covered glory. It's quite, uh, rustic, currently. But this is how the house looks, as of June 20th. I'm told the brick masons will be arriving tomorrow, and I'm told we may even have shutters by the end of this week. Rumor has it that the electrician and the plumber will be stopping by, as well, so, hey, maybe we'll have lots of new things to post on the blog!!!
Stay tuned!

My apologies for the delay in getting back to this old blog. My absolutely lame excuse is that we moved - finally - to the farmhouse in Virginia - while Rick was overseas. And sold our house in North Carolina. And built a chicken coop and still haven't unpacked all the boxes, and made some nice raised garden beds and still haven't found the box that has the rest of my glass mixing bowls in it. And a few other things, along the way.
For those of you who forgot about the farmhouse, here's a little memory-jogger:




It looks a little better than this, now that we are here.... but it would appear that, despite two years of work, our contractor STILL WASN'T FULLY PREPARED FOR OUR ARRIVAL. I guess all those times that I would call him, long-distance, from North Carolina, and tell him we REALLY, TRULY, ARE moving to Virginia - well, I guess he thought I was KIDDING. Or merely testing him to see what his reaction MIGHT be.

Because on that fateful day when the kiddos and Josie and I fell, exhausted, through the front door of the farmhouse, knowing that all our worldly possessions were somewhere on a highway between here and there behind us, well, let's just say the house wasn't really DONE. As in, we had only one bathroom with BOTH a functioning toilet AND a functioning sink. And it was on the main floor (that would be one floor AWAY from all the bedrooms, for those of you keeping score). The children were never really fans of the whole "wash your hands after using the potty" rule, anyway. But this - the absence of nearby sinks in which to perform said duty - made the rule practically obsolete. So, yeah, ewwwwww.

I spent 2 weeks brushing my teeth twice a day in the laundry-filled laundry room. (The washing machine hadn't been hooked up properly so, while we accumulated MUCH laundry, it had to wait...but at least the laundry room had a functional sink....)

Also missing - screens. Window, or door. This means that you are faced with a choice - either suffocate from the noxious fumes from the freshly refinished hardwood floors, OR open the windows and doors and invite 7000 flies, 473 stink bugs, 113 things called a "house centipede" (which, ick, nasty) and two very angry wasps into the indoors with you. Send flyswatters. (Miss P. calls them "Flyswappers")

And mud. We had been promised a verdant carpet of green, lush grass to cover the sea of red clay that has pretty much surrounded the house since construction began. The reality is a patchy assortment of weeds and some very sad blades of grass that bring to mind those guys who should've shaved off the last of the glory-days hair style years ago, but cling stubbornly to those sad little wispy strands still dangling forlornly to their shiny scalps. You know the ones. My yard is a metaphor for male-patterned baldness.

The dog, the kids, the worker dudes - everybody brings this clay-ey red mud into the house. The floors are covered in a fine veneer of red clay dust. Every. Single. Day. The kids' socks are red. The floor mats are red. The pads of the dog's feet are red. When it rains, the rivers of mud running through the front yard are - yeah, red. Gahhhhhhhhh. This juxtaposes quite nicely with the mulberry stains (from the three trees surrounding the house) which are purple, cover any surface NOT already red, and do NOT wash out. Ever. Mulberry juice is more permanent than permanent ink. OxyClean weeps when it sees mulberry. Trust me on this.

But I know Grandma wants to see pictures, so I'll try to comply over the next couple of days.
Here are a few to tide you over....moving day (and no, we didn't put them INSIDE the moving van), and two of a wee excursion to DC on a sunny day - when unpacking boxes just wasn't any fun anymore....
Will post more, later!