Christmas Time Is Here

Like everyone else, this is a busy time of year for us.  It seems like we are always busy no matter what time of year but the Christmas season is even busier with doing our Christmas card, making candy and goodies, watching lots of Christmas movies, going to Christmas parties, coming up with gift ideas, etc.

As the girls get older it gets even more fun because they can do more and we can do more activities with them.  In previous years on this blog I have mentioned about how we try to promote Jesus and his birth over commercialization and Santa at Christmas time. I have to admit it is harder now that we have kids and we really have to work at it but it is so worth it to us. We have been teaching the girls about who St. Nicholas was and talk to them about how Santa is not real which is hard when they get the Santa thing at school and everywhere else. We got out their little people nativity that they love playing with and fighting over.  It is always funny to hear someone screaming "Give me back baby Jesus".  And we have read about the birth of Jesus in the Jesus Storybook Bible (which may be the best version of the Bible out there).

We have been doing lots of other fun activities also.....

Building a gingerbread house

Completed gingerbread house.  Notice someone is not to happy about something. 

And here is a video of our nightly dancing.  The girls have really been loving to dance to little drummer boy while playing their drums.  This video is a little dark because Esther prefers dancing with all the lights off except the Christmas tree lights these days.

Snow

As the girls get older, there are more and more things that they are able to do/enjoy and that we can do together.  I don't want them to grow up too fast but I look forward to these things. One of those things is sledding.  When I was a kid, I loved sledding and it was one of my favorite things.  Then I grew up and I still loved sledding.

This past weekend, we got some really good snow...about 8 inches with a layer of ice underneath.  The girls were really excited about the snow and getting to play in it.  Unfortunately it was not good snow for snow balls and snowmen but it was great for sledding.  We have a great driveway for sledding at their age, steep enough to go pretty fast but not scary steep. The three of us piled on the sled and went down a few times.  The girls really enjoyed it.  We would have went a whole lot more but hauling two toddlers up the hill wears you out fast. I also got to take Esther down a few times just me and her and we laid down on the sled which is much faster and she loved it. We also got to make some snow angels and play some more before we had to go in from the cold. One thing I found out from our fun is that I am not as young as a used to be.  It hurt to sled and I was very sore the next day.
I really enjoyed our time in the snow and I look forward to even more fun as they get older and can do more.

Pulling the girls around

Sledding down the driveway

Snow angels

Our snowy view

2 years old!

Today is Clara's 2nd birthday (technically not until 8:30 p.m.)! I can't believe she is two. I know it is cliche', but time really does fly. Clara is a sweet and silly girl. She is quite dramatic and is always making hilarious faces. She keeps us laughing with her crazy antics. She is the life of the party and it seems like her party never ends. She definitely has more "toddler" tendencies than Esther did. She gets into all sorts of things and loves to make messes. She throws fits when she doesn't get her way and other typical toddler meltdowns. But overall she is very fun and we can't imagine our lives without her.

Things Clara is doing these days.

• She loves to play with her baby dolls, her play kitchen/food, and dress up clothes. Her and Esther play together really well most of the time. They will keep each other occupied for several minutes at a time, it is great! 
• She loves to color and draw. 
• She loves to be outside, though it is getting too cold to be outside much. Her and Esther will watch the chickens, we will take walks through the pasture, she loves to slide and ride her tricycle. She especially loves to play in the dirt and any water she can find. She usually manages to get her shoes and socks off when she is outside. She always comes in filthy.
• Clara loves to dance and sing. We usually have a dance party every night before bed. Her current favorite songs to dance to are "Footloose" and "What does the fox say?" She often breaks out in song, lately it has been "Happy Birthday" and "Three Blind Mice"
• She talks all the time. Most of the time you can understand what she says. There are still the occasional times when we can't figure out what she is saying, though many times Esther can interpret for us! She comprehends everything we say.
• She can say her ABCs and count to 10, though she doesn't associate the words with the actual letters or numbers yet. 
• She is still a big kid. She wears 3T clothes and weighs almost as much as Esther. We have her official two year checkup next week, so we will see if she is still in the 99% on the growth charts!

We are in the midst of a snow/ice storm (it snowed the day she was born too), so her birthday celebration will be fairly quiet. Just with our family here at home. We do have cupcakes, which she has been talking about for days! 

A few pictures of Clara from her first two years

    

 

 

 

Redneck Playhouse

So, when we bought our house this summer, I never really walked around the whole property prior to buying it.  Probably not the best idea to not walk around it all but I was not worried about it.  You could see most of it from the house and I did not see it as a big deal.  After all, what are you really going to find that is going to be shocking on farm land.  I will tell you what I found....a party barge boat. And not a small one.  Twenty four feet long and baby blue just sitting on the ground between some trees. The metal is all in pretty good shape but the decking is all rotted. I had no idea what to do with it besides sell to someone as scrap metal. But one day when telling a friend at work about it, she suggested I make a playhouse out of it for the kids. I am not sure how serious she was but I thought it was a grand idea. So, a new scheme was hatched.

This past weekend while my family was in town I decided it would be a good time to try and move it.  This thing is not light aluminum, it is heavy gauge sheet metal so it was going to be a tough move.  My dad brought his tractor out for the job.  We hooked it up with a big chain and lifted it a little with the front end loader and tried to start dragging it but the tractor would not budge it.  But we weren't giving up so we hooked up my truck to the tractor which was hooked to the boat and used both to pull it.  Even then, my truck tires were just spinning until I put it in 4 wheel drive and it finally started to budge.  It was slow going and we almost flipped the tractor a couple times but we finally got it to it's new location....at the end of the orchard inside the yard fence. It will still be a while before I have a chance to alter it and make it into a playhouse but at least it is moved.  I have lots of crazy ideas for turning it into a playhouse.  It is either going to turn out awesome or terrible.  But I have a feeling we will have the only party barge playhouse maybe in the whole world. 

Here it is in it's natural habitat.  It may have been here since this area was covered by ocean.

Here it is in it's new home

Here is a video of the truck pulling the tractor pulling the boat.

New Chicken Coop

When we moved to our new house there was an old chicken coop in the barn that was in decent condition.  I wanted to build another better one but figured this one would work until I got around to building a new one. This ended up happening sooner than I intended because the old chicken coop was not very secure and the neighbors dogs got in and killed all our chickens. So, building a new chicken coop moved up on the list of things to do. I actually finished it several weeks ago but am just now getting around to posting about it. I decided to attach it to the back of the shop so it would be close to the house but in the pasture and it would be cheaper and easier to build by not making it completely freestanding.
We wanted to build a bigger coop at this house just in case we decide to raise more chickens in the future (we usually kept 10-15 at our other places).  So, I ended up building this coop 16'x8' which is big enough to hold 40 chickens. Currently we only have 20 chickens. I built it really secure so no varmints or dogs can get in. The way to keep dogs or other things from digging under to get in is to have extra chicken wire overlap the bottom of the coop or run and have it lay on the ground, then cover it up with dirt. That way when the animal tries to dig in, they hit the wire and can't get through it.
If any of you local people want to buy eggs, let us know.

New Chicken Coop and Run

Inside

Watching Chickens

Growing up

The girls keep getting bigger and older. We have a preschooler and a toddler, not two babies anymore! We changed Clara's crib in to a toddler bed this weekend. This is about the same age we moved Esther to a toddler bed. She has done really well so far, she hasn't gotten out at all, even when she wakes up. We'll see how long that lasts though. We are happy that we won't have to worry about having a crib or pack n' play when we travel or visit people. She is very proud and keeps talking about her big girl bed.

Clara posing in her big girl bed

Esther continues to impress us with her knowledge. She recently has learned her right from her left. I'm not sure when kids usually learn that, but 3 seems early. She always asks which way we are turning in the car, so she learned her right and left that way. She will tell us which way we are turning now. If you ask her, she will correctly identify her left and right hand/foot.

She also is really interested in her letters. She always asks what letter something starts with. Once you tell her she will then name off a lot of other words that start with that letter. She also asks you to spell and write words. She recently started spelling her name and Clara's name. She never wants to do it when you ask, but I managed to get some of her spelling on camera the other day.

Halloween

We decided to make this year our first official trick or treating with the girls.  We felt like they were both old enough to actively participate.  I wasn't sure what they were going to be until a week ago and we came across some good costumes at a consignment sale for really cheap that we could not pass up.  First we took them this afternoon to the Fayetteville square where all the square merchants, other city businesses, and city officials were handing out candy, prizes, and more. The girls did great and really enjoyed it.  Then for the evening we met up at a friend's house and had dinner and then all went trick or treating together.  It was a lot of fun.  It took a few houses but the girls got into the swing of things pretty quickly.  The first house Esther rang the doorbell and then started to open the door to go inside.  The girls got lots of candy and we had them each pick out six pieces to eat over the next few days and the rest mommy and daddy will eat, or give away.  The were thrilled because they hardly ever get candy.  All in all it was a successful Halloween and lots of fun. 

Clara's spaceship costume was the hit of the day.

Esther was a dinosaur but was not a big fan of getting her picture taken.

Friends

Super cute girls

Fun Fall Weekend

We have been enjoying the nice weather and decided to get our Fall on this weekend. Saturday we went to a local farm pumpkin patch. We walked around the patch and searched for the perfect pumpkins. The girls had a great time helping pull the wagon, trying to lift huge pumpkins, and picking out their pumpkins.

We also invited some friends over Sunday afternoon for pumpkin carving and chili. The adults carved while the kids "helped." 

This kids were actually more interested in playing on the big pile of dirt for the future garden than carving pumpkins.

The girls enjoyed lighting our jack-o-lantern tonight. 

Before and After

This is going to be a long post because I am going to try to do all the before and after pictures in one post. We did a lot of things to this place to change it into being ours.  A quick recap of the major stuff before pictures:  We took down wallpaper and paneling from every room, had the walls textured, and then painted. We put in a new back door where there wasn't one and a new dishwasher where there wasn't one. Replaced the carpet and linoleum. Painted the cabinets, altered the cabinets, and did new countertops. Put in new light fixtures and fans.  And we did lots and lots of little stuff.

 Here are all the before and after pictures of our house.  I will also try to talk about what I did in each one.

Before Kitchen

The kitchen dining, and living area are all one big room.  The kitchen has the old school cabinets that hang down so you can not see into the rest of the room unless you bend down which is kind of ridiculous.  My idea was to take these out and make some hanging shelves.  I ran into some problems with removing these so I ended up just altering these into hanging shelves which turned out pretty good and was a lot easier.  We also ended up painting the cabinets which we did not originally plan but we are happy we did.  We were really excited about having open shelves because we have lots of antique kitchen wares to display. And now you can see into the rest of the big room and the kitchen feels a lot more open

After Kitchen




Before Kitchen

This picture is after I had already put in the dishwasher. Notice the big breadbox also.

After Kitchen

Before Kitchen

So, I removed the doors, panels, and some supports to make the cabinets into shelves

After

Before

This was the dining area but we changed the dining area to a different spot so the kitchen flowed better into the dining area.

 After

This is now the computer desk and play area for the girls

Before

This was a random area in the main room.  The fireplace is a propane fake fireplace that they took out the back door to put in which makes no sense to me.  I would much rather have a back door so we put one back in. 

After

Before Living Room Area

After Living

Before bathroom

I painted the cabinet and put a new counter top on.  Installed a new medicine cabinet and light.  Also had to install an exhaust fan because there was not one before. We also replaced the flooring in here.  There was carpet in this bathroom which is gross.

 After

We also remodeled the bedrooms which I did not really get good pictures of but you can imagine bad wallpaper and paneling and now they are nicely painted. 

Here are a few of my favorite things I did with the remodel. Some of these are ideas I had but was not sure how they would turn out but ended up pretty good. 

New back door where we took out the fake fireplace.

This is a little entry wall by the front door. It was covered with...you guessed it...wallpaper and crappy paneling. I recycled the cedar strips that were between paneling wainscoting and wallpaper in every room and covered this wall with it.  It turned out really cool looking (even better in person). This is also a great place to display our antique and interesting books. 

Here is a close up of the hanging shelves made by altering the old hanging cabinets.  I love being able to display our antique kitchen stuff, cool glassware, and my granny's dishes. 

I came up with an idea to do horizontal boards in the kitchen as a back splash. I used pvc boards so water won't affect them and they are super uniform. I also put a small gap in them. I am happy with how it turned out, it is a really clean/cool look. 

I decided to do horizontal boards on the bottom outside of the cabinets.  I used different sized boards pieced together with different sized gaps and painted them