The Homestead Journal ~ Week 55~ First Snow of the Season

Homestead Happenings

  We have been settling in to the new place. When we first learned we were going to be moving, it looked like we would be going out of state, so I began purging. Now that is a fairly local move, 80 miles, I have decided the gas money is worth the trips for a bit more of the stuff, mostly books and furniture. I still need to purge a little more tho, we sure do have a lot of stuff! I have been organizing it as it comes in, but I still spent Saturday finishing off the kitchen and laundry organization. 

We have an outside clothes line, but I also wanted an indoor line. I don't know about your house, but we can loose 100 clothes pins in about 3 days.. So I had a brainstorm... and it works perfectly. The line is thin, but strong, so I may do this for a few outside lines.  I strung the string through the spring ( what a fun phrase!). Its working great. 

We have a huge closet here so I am taking advantage and going back to the family closet. As you can see, all the boys pants, are hung on the back end, then all the boys shirts. The girls clothes are paired and hung, then our Sunday sets and ties, then suits and dad's clothes and mine are on the end, and I also use the pockets for underclothes and pajamas. The children pj's are in the orange buckets, and sweaters in the corner, socks and undies are in the white baskets on the floor. The totes above are clothes storage, and the grey totes below are photos and etc.  

Everyone is excited we have an oven now. The electricity was on when we moved in, so we just needed to transfer into our name. We weighed it all out and decided to do so, instead of living "off grid" as we have been. It is well water here, so the only utility is the electric. We are going to hook the wood stove up on Monday and only use the electric heat only as back up. Since this is a modern home, it will be a bit more to run off solar/generator. We will work on that when the days are longer and the weather is warmer. We hope by next winter to be sustained by a solar panel system.  I will say, we have been a bit spoiled by it all, and my husband and I are back to the walk around the house shutting lights off. We will be going through the breakers and labeling them and shutting off the ones we do not use. 

Back to the oven. Baking. That is the 2nd biggest thing I missed. We did not have an oven, only range type cooking. Quinten did try cookies on a campfire, and they came out great. This week Quinten made french bread and cookies, Abigail made cookies an Jacob made banana bread. 

 Lucas was helping Quinten, I tried to sneak a shot, but he has mommy radar in full power.. He was sifting flour with his hands, like Quinten was doing. It was really cute. He is wonderful about just getting in there and doing what everyone else is doing. Like in the photo below, he had spilled some water, and he went and grabbed a towel and started cleaning it up, without being asked.

Jacob's yummy banana bread! Sans walnuts because A, I do not like them and B, they are not cheap! But daddy has requested them, so next walnuts are on the grocery list. I have to learn some things are worth the extra, not only does my family enjoy them, they are good for us too. 

 Zachary insisted on making cookies as well. We had found these on Pinterest a few weeks ago and had saved them. Well, he decided to find them on his own, I learned that day I need to be more cautious when letting the children use the site, Zachary stumbled on a few photos that shouldn't have been on Pinterest, when he misspelled cookies......... I do not think he actually realized it was there, or how long it was there, as I found it when I went back. I had called him right as he sat down, so I think the Holy Ghost was protecting him, by having a nagging mom who kept taking him from the computer LOL..... he probably typed it up, hit search and walked away before it popped up. Lets hope any how, I asked if he saw anything weird, and he said no.... That's good, cause this was REALLY WEIRD!! 

He was so proud of himself, we made a mental list and I gave him $6. He checked out the groceries and made the treat himself. I did have to help him because he misunderstood the adding the cereal to the bowl, and tried to dump a whole box into the pot!! He made S'mores Rice Krispy treats. You use cinnamon toast crunch cereal instead of rice krispies and you add chocolate chips at the end. Oh, they were good. It cost $2.29 for the cereal, $1.99 for the chips and we used maybe half. The marshmallows were .99 and a stick of margarine is about .25. It made 12 good size squares, as you can see how deep the pan is in the photo.

Last Sunday afternoon, Daddy took the two older boys to get a load from the old house. The Littles and the Middles horsed around a bit in my room, you can see who the wild child here is LOL.. Lucas loves to sit on heads!! While Daddy was out, he picked up an impromptu Christmas gift. I would only say half impromptu. He has wanted a Pyrenees puppy for years, and most recently has had terrible puppy fever. A friend had this little cutie. He got car sick so when Daddy brought him home late that night, I gave him a bath.. Thank the Lord for grooming tools. It was easy peasy and I even blew him nice and dry and fluffy before bed! Ezra, being extremely fearful of dogs, was very leery. Daddy felt it best if he chose the name. Alma is what he chose, so the puppy's name is Alma the Great. We did have fun with some banter of name suggestions.. Snowball, Dakota, Falcore, Utah, Mosiah, were among a few of the suggestions. Being that is was near Christmas, They also suggested Egg Nog, our last name being Naugler (pronounced Nog-ler). There was a car full of giggles on that on as we ran errands last Monday. They had a few other silly names, but I cannot recall them now.

 I am not sure I have ever really done a post about it, but we no longer Celebrate Christmas in the traditional sense. I guess its not quite like the JW's, but we stopped doing big birthday celebrations years ago, we backed off of other secular and non secular holidays, and even Christmas now. We are not anti-Christmas, how ever, we have de-Santa-tized our traditions. We do not do big celebrations for the most part, however, we do let our children receive gifts from family. And they make gifts for others, tho usually they are just because gifts. I will try to do a blog post on that later... ( remind me!) 

The puppy was a "gift" from Nana ( daddy's mom) and my mother hand made gifts for each child. Quinten got this super soft scarf. And he loves it. (Look you can even see a smile!) Lucas got a crocheted tie, but I think the photo of him quite puzzled by the gift wrap is adorable. Jacob and Isaac also received ties, Zachary a scarf and Urijah a hat. The girls have crocheted flowers and Olivia got a head scarf. Ezra's is in the mail! 

 Quinten teaching Lucas "Go Fish". Lucas repeats all of the cards, but if you ask him what it is, they are all Jacks. And Ezra got some snazzy jammies.. He kept asking me what was on his shirt. I finally told him they were like church clothes. 

The big excitement here..... SNOW!! Just like the rest of our life, a day late and a dollar short.. It snowed firs on Dec 26 and again on the 29th. I braved the cold on the 26th and went out on the property and took some photos. 

(more photos below)

Our Adventures 

On Sunday we went to church in our new ward. We have been there before with friends, but this time, was a little different. The primary president was looking at the 7 little new primary students. Primary presidents love my family, we usually make up 1/2 to 1/3 of their classes LOL. 

We have been crazy busy this week. Monday we "ran into town" ( we have 3 towns, each a 30 min drive) to get a few last minute groceries...We got to Walmart, and well, welcome to small town America! It was not a super Walmart. I was happy and Sad at the same time.

Thursday we went back up too the old house and finished packing and cleaning. One big load left! 
Friday we went back "into town, to check out the Library. Cute new little building. Bless the lady who had to assign 7 new library cards! 
On the drive home I noticed this.... 

He was having a grand ole' time writing on the bottoms of his feet! ( he had made a mess of his pants and the car was super warm) 

Home School Notes
I suppose we are on Christmas vacation of sorts. With the move and such, the books have been returned or packed up. They have been doing some baking now that we have an oven, and they have been identifying the trees on the property, not such an easy task in the dead of winter. 

Additional Photos

 Thor and Alma are great friends. I love having cats who enjoy the company of dogs. Joe took this photo of them wrestling..

 This is our "spring" cave.

 Our old Pyr loving the snow, she turns into a puppy. I have a video I will try to post later.

 Sweetie

Alma playing in the snow, he had a blast!! 

That's our week! I am sure there is plenty more, but I am exhausted! Have a great week. 

(note: to see photos larger, click on them)

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