Nutrition and More Work Accomplished

We've decided recently to start staying out at our property during the week more, to try to get more accomplished. The frantic loading of everyone on Sunday mornings to stay the day there is exhausting, and we seem to not get very much done. As Jeremy headed off the work this Thursday, I began preparing to meet him out there after work. The kids and I ate breakfast, finished homeschooling, ate lunch, and then packed everything into the van. It is surprising the heavy bags that those boys can load into the van! They like doing it, and it helps me a lot!

I've also decided to stock the pantry/dorm fridge at the property so that we aren't trying to pack up loads of food for our stay out there. I've been going shopping just as we run out of food, which seems to be often, since that fridge doesn't hold very much. I tried to plan meals around foods that didn't require refrigeration, and I was successful in that we did get meals fixed and didn't eat out, but the processed foods and minimal protein started taking its toll! My hands were swelling, which they hadn't done in a long time (only a handful of times this pregnancy, and I'm now 32 weeks), and one night while walking around Wal-Mart getting some things we needed, I got really nauseous and faint feeling. I was adding up what I'd eaten on that (very busy) day, and it wasn't much, esp. not in the way of protein. So I went straight to find snacks, paid for them, and then walked around finishing our shopping while consuming everything I'd bought! I soon felt better. Yet I didn't feel completely better (as in, no swelling and not hungry all the time) until I got home today and could eat our usual foods. I'm so surprised how much difference the right nutrition makes, esp. in pregnancy. I bought a box of Nutrigrain bars, and I seriously could eat at least a half box at one sitting and still not feel full, probably because it just doesn't provide the kind of nutrients my little growing baby is needing. Next time I will be bringing my Bosch so that I can make homemade bread and smoothies! I have to eat twice (or more!) as much store bought bread as normal bread to get full, and it doesn't have all the nutrients. And it is hard to find healthy, tasty options at Wal-Mart sometimes that don't have refined grains and/or extra sweeteners, and there aren't too many close shopping options besides Wal-Mart. So next time I will bring a cooler, too, if need be, and just cook my normal meals so that I will feel well, and save the pantry stuff for emergencies. At least now I know.

As far as work on the property, we got some transition strips between the different floors installed, a threshold and some trim around the door to make it look so much better, a deck partially installed (I'm SOO thankful that THAT, as it was getting really hard to make it up our temporary steps), and the carpet cut and laid down for our bedroom. We don't have the carpet pad yet, and it isn't installed, but at least it is down, on the floor, so that we aren't getting that particle board dust all over our feet, beds, etc., and now the roll of carpet is out of the kitchen! One less thing to trip over. :) And while the kids were napping one day, I painted our bedroom (yeah!!), and Jeremy helped finish it up when he got home. And then we proceeding to scratch it up with the carpet "installation". Oh well. Another repair for another day, I suppose.

I was so excited to find a great thrift store not to far from our property, too. I'm going to miss that about where we live now - tons of thrift stores with lots of great stuff, all not too far from our house. Yet having one good thrift store will help, with some others a bit farther away. I was able to find a wooden highchair for Faith, and we negotiated the price to $12. It didn't have a tray, which I didn't care too much about, since we were planning to just slide it up to the table, and it was wobbly, which Jeremy fixed with some wood glue. Clothes were half price that day, too, so I was able to find a few things for the children for $1 each. And we found some great Bible story books for my nieces birthday party that weekend! The neat thing about thrift stores is that they have things that typical stores do not sell, and for a fraction of the cost of the things that typical stores DO sell. For example, we bought a last minute shirt for Jeremy since the weather was colder than we thought, at an outlet store at 75% off: total price - $12.50. I told him that the shirts at the thrift store were 75% off of that store's 75% off price! Maybe I'll convert him to my thrift store ways someday.

Septic Ready and Horse Drama

The boys room is painted, and they love it! We can't quite install the carpet squares because we need to replace some of the plywood. This is where electricity and power tools would come in handy, but we'll just have to wait for now. It is so nice to have a room almost finished....OK, so we have a lot of rooms almost finished, but this one is the closest, I suppose.

My lovely kitchen curtains do, indeed, look lovely, except that they are too short. I was convinced that the directions I had were incorrect, and I did it my own way. Well, she ended up being right, and it still makes no sense to me why. If you measure a curtain to the length you want it, and then you want a six inch hem (plus a 1/2 inch to fold under), why does that mean you have to add 12 1/2 inches of fabric? Oh, well, I guess I'll settle for a 3 inch hem.

The septic guy was out today, and our septic is done! The only thing that remains is for him to come back out in the morning with a different piece of heavy equipment that will pack down and smooth out the dirt. Then, we'll have the mobile home guy come back and move the home into place. I'm a little nervous about that. It only has to be moved a short distance, but lots of maneuvering in a "tight" space must be accomplished for that to happen. Praying for everything to go smoothly!

The septic guy was so nice to give our little boys a ride on the backhoe! They loved it and will be talking about it for weeks, I'm sure. He even let them pull the levers and lower and raise the bucket. Fun times! In the process of moving the gravel to the leach line site, the septic guy was having to come in and out of the pasture with the backhoe. Well, the horses decided to make a run for it out of the open gate, and we were nervous! The septic guy was throwing dirt clods at them and trying to shew them back in the gate, but they instead got scared and ran the OTHER way! Our neighbor, the owner of the horses, was not home at the time, so Jeremy and I came running out to help. We were looking for peppermints (the horses' favorite), anything to lure them back in. We finally found some apples, and Jeremy was able to lead them back over toward the neighbor's pasture. They soon returned, probably looking for more apples, and Jeremy manned the gate, opening and closing each time the backhoe came through. The younger horse, still a "toddler", stubbornly kept by the gate, in spite of Jeremy pushing on him and throwing dirt clods, so Jeremy suggested the children and I take the remaining apple and try to lead them over again. Well, that didn't work so well. Once the younger horse discovered I had the apple, he constantly had his face right by my face, no matter where I went, and had his head right on top of Seth's head, sniffing for food I guess. He kept opening his mouth, and setting his teeth on top of Seth's head (sniffing maybe?), and it was scaring me! I'd never seen a horse act that way before, so I threw the apple, and the two horses fought over it. Then, they were back again , doing the same thing! Jeremy was encouraging me to just keep walking and lead him over to the neighbor's pasture, but when an animal that large is butting you in the back with his head, and breathing on your neck, and not leaving even an inch between you and him, and you have small children with you, you want to get away NOW! Sometimes, maybe out of fear of the backhoe, he would even start to run a little, and I wondered if we might get trampled. Either way, Jeremy was able to lead them away from me, and they acted normal around him - maybe since they figured he didn't have food? Maybe one day, like the chickens, I will get used to the horses and not be concerned over them, but for now, I like being on the OTHER side of the fence, petting them from there. At least the chickens I can kick. :)

Progress...

The septic repair guy was out there today working with his backhoe, which the boys thought was awesome! Good news: both tanks are in and the line that will eventually go to the trailer is in. Bad news: leach lines are in very poor shape and will be costly to reinstall! However, it is still much cheaper than a new system, so we are thankful for that. We called our mobile home dealer to let him know that our date for the trailer's final move is quickly approaching, and that we hadn't forgot about him. We thought maybe HE'D forgotten who WE are, too! He said that he had one guy call 4 years after purchase to say he was finally ready to move it! He estimated that it would be 6 months before we called him, and it's been two, so not as bad as it could have been. :) I'm hoping this septic system will be finished within the next week or two so that we can move it, but we'll see.....

Today we finished priming the living room, and washing and filling nail holes in the hallway, and washing some of the walls in the kitchen. We spend about the first 15 minutes of our entrance into the mobile home every time killing wasps! Lots of them. We thought they were yellow jackets, but to my relief (sort of?), they are actually just yellow and black wasps. If the temps will ever stay below freezing for a while, we won't have to contend with them any longer! Which is good because they creep me out. Anyhow, the living room looks sooo different now, and so much more like home. That dirty wallpaper that wasn't my style at all, made it feel like someone else's home, but now, even with just the primer, it looks so much better.

I'm convinced that the former occupants of this trailer never cleaned. Ever. I have 3 children 4 and under right now, which means two things: 1. There are lots of messes, and 2. I have less time to clean them, and actually a third: morning sickness means I get behind a lot, too. Yet my house has never been that dirty. Lots of food splatters in the kitchen/dining, lots of dirty, dirty wall paper in the living room, entryways, you name it, and lots of other things I don't want to think about on the walls, toilets, showers, tubs in the bathroom. So, when you come to visit, if I tell you we scrubbed the place from top to bottom, you can rest assured that we are not exaggerating. And not because I'm a clean freak, either.

Fixing up the Mobile Home

I can't believe it's been so long since I've updated! Life is so busy, of course! Where do I start...

The old house is gone, along with the huge dumpster that holds its remains, burned or otherwise. So, with the exception of a pile of metal we still need to recycle, nothing is left of it. The neighbor behind us came with his bobcat, took some dirt from our next door neighbor's land, and leveled off the old home site to make way for the mobile home.

Now, LOTS to do in the mobile home! One huge blessing God has provided for us is that our neighbor is giving us some carpet he's not using. It's probably enough to carpet our bedroom, which is the only room I'd want carpeted anyhow. The mobile home had old green carpet, very dirty, but I told the Lord I'd try to be happy with it, if that is how it has to be. Thankfully, he provided another way. The rest of the house we plan to do in a combination of laminate wood and vinyl flooring. I'm thinking attractive, yet easy to clean, with the focus on easy to clean! We just went through a bout of stomach virus in our house, which definitely reminded me, once again, why carpet in a house with little ones equals disaster! Too much poop, puke, and pee in our house, and now that we are moving to the country, add dirt, mud, and animal poop to the list, and you can see why I need something that can be mopped. I'm very much looking forward to our UNcarpeted dining area (that, of course, adds food to our dirty equation).

Speaking of animal poop, we now have 2 horses, 1 longhorn, and 3 calves grazing on our land. Not ours, but the neighbor's! We get to enjoy the animals without having to actually own them right now. I'm very glad to actually be able to do something for our neighbor, however small, since he has been so kind to us. Jeremy told him that he's the best neighbor we've ever had, and it is so very true.

Back to the mobile home. We've ripped up carpet, swept up all the dust and dirt from THAT, washed the walls in the living room, and now, we actually primed the walls in the living room. So much left to do, but it is progress. Last weekend I scrubbed and scrubbed until I was sore in the kids' bathroom. It is probably the smallest bathroom I've ever seen (well, except that in a camper!), yet I've never scrubbed for so long in a bathroom! It is clean, though. The good news is, about 10 or so of those vinyl tiles should cover the whole bathroom floor, and a sample quart of paint (or the leftovers from painting the bathroom in our current house) should take care of it. We just need a new tub surround (who thought WOOD would make a good tub surround?), and a new sink (the plastic sink is cracked). We found a new sink for about $16, so it isn't setting us back very much. We could superglue the crack for a while if we had to, but the sink is so cheap, I think we'll be able to just replace it. The bad news about pulling out the carpet is we found some rotten plywood from leaks that we'll probably have to replace. We got some of that Thompson's waterseal, and we're planning to coat all the exposed plywood with it, so that we have no more rotting floor problems. I'm really surprised that the floors are made of plywood that hasn't been treated, and just covered with carpet. Plywood seems to buckle at even the slightest hint of water, and yet nothing was protecting it from the water, not even in the bathrooms. Strange.

We were hoping to maybe be moved in by Thanksgiving, but I think we've scratched that idea. Now we are hoping to be moved by Christmas. We have to basically paint the entire house, and replace all the flooring, except that in the kitchen/dining/laundry room, so that's a lot of work to be done still. We're painting over wall paper, so we're having to do primer (more than one coat), and possibly more than one coat of the actual paint. And we've never laid floors before, so we don't know how long it will take us.

It's all fun, though, in spite of all the work and the driving. We are making memories that we will never forget. It's fun to work together to accomplish goals, and it's fun to trust God and watch Him provide. And He is definitely doing that.