granaryliving

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T01:02:00.003-05:00

Here are a few photos of our little egg-dying party at home.

This is Sofi's "Easter" egg! And she didn't need any help spelling it, by the way.

I almost took the last egg, but Sofi caught me and asked for it.

Hmm, guess I should have moved the dye closer to the middle of the table. Oh well, he managed.

Notice that Erik is using a spoon now ... but do you see any clue that he didn't use one before?!

And egg-dying is followed naturally by ... a little dancing with a light saber. Oh, why not?

... Dave is all ready to play the Easter bunny tomorrow! He really sets the bar pretty high for Easter -- and it's all his doing. I'd just give them a chocolate bunny and some Peeps and call it good ... but Dave has a whole scavenger hunt set up for them, culminating in new summer toys. He says he can spoil them at Easter ... and that I'm the one who established that every trip to Aberdeen ends in a stop at Twist Cone.

Though that's not quite true. We don't stop if it's not open ... or if it's raining.

Clearing out the photo backlog

2011-04-15T19:29:00.005-05:00

I've had a request for more photos of the kids. And they're cute enough, why not?

We did have some nice walks, even when there was snow on the ground.

Erik wanted to bring the shovel along on our walk. Sofi ended up carrying it for a while.

That walk was not the most easy going! Our big-tired jog stroller did the job, though.

Sofia took this picture -- she really captured the spirit of the moment!

Mom and I are helping to cover my sister's babysitting needs until summer -- which Sofi and Erik love, of course. Here the crew had fun in the dress-up box!

Happy April!

2011-04-04T14:59:00.007-05:00

It's amazing how many people I've heard mention how hard this winter was on them. One woman told me that had never had problems with depression in the winter until this year -- but this year she found she just didn't have the energy to get things done.

I must say the winter really got to me this year -- and I didn't realize how much it had affected me until we started to feel spring around here and I felt the weight of winter worry lift. Suddenly, with a little warmer weather and a little more sunlight, things that had seemed to overwhelming to contemplate became doable again.

Well, it probably wasn't just the weather. Two unexpected deaths in the family also weighed heavy this winter, both very sad in themselves and reminders that we're still grieving the loss of Dad. But even those griefs seem easier to bear when there's a garden to plant and chicks to start, and walking weather has started again.

The wind blew enough to shake the siding and the window casings in the early hours of Monday morning. It slowed during the day, and by the time I went for my walk in the evening, it was utterly still. The wind had helped dry the yard and the road, and I was pleased to be able to put on my sneakers again instead of snow boots or rubber boots.

It was so nice to be outside! March, I have to say, is the worst month of the year in the Dakotas, even worse than the 31 days of January -- in January we know there will be no respite to winter and we're not expecting one (if a January thaw shows up, we count it as a special blessing), but by March we're expecting at least some hint of spring. We received nothing but a sea of mud, to be immediately covered up by a think blanket of heavy snow. We'd shaken our fists at winter all through March, but April's arrival with a quick thaw, a drying wind and sunshine took the fight out of us. For a moment, we could just be.

And I am thrilled that the birds are back. Great waves of geese have been passing overhead since last week, stopping to gather in a field for a raucous reunion for an hour or a day before they're on their way again. On Saturday, the sloughs were still covered with ice; by Monday evening, they were brimming with ducks and geese, and with killdeer skirting along their edges. Twice while I was walking a squadron of ducks (they looked like fighter jets in formation) flew very low overhead -- they didn't quack at that moment, so all I heard was the frantic flapping of their wings, like a dozen airborne fans. I viewed it as a sign of respect (though I am also glad they didn't decide to "unload" at that moment!).

I think part of the reason I like the birds so much is that we keep facing the same problem in different forms in all the groups I'm involved in -- too few people. Everybody leaves for places that are warmer and have more Starbucks. It is nice that at least for a while we have a crowd here! Even if they don't sign up for township board, they at least seem to like their time here while they're winging through.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T16:52:00.006-06:00

Well, all, this is part of my New Year's resolution: Write more. So hopefully you'll see some more posts on this page!

Current news from the granary house: The kids have just come in from playing outside for a few minutes while Dave shoveled a path to the woodshed (again). A drift forms between the house and the woodshed whenever the wind blows, and boy has it been blowing the last few days -- wind chills down to 40 below. We also received about 10 inches of snow in the two storms, Thursday and Friday. It was difficult to see the other house at times on Thursday.

Thankfully, that's not the case today. The sun was shining nicely when we woke up this morning, so we could clearly see just how much snow there was to deal with: Over two feet of snow in front of the front door; five-foot drifts in front of the barn (where our RAV4 is) and the shop (where Mom's car is); another big, long drift between us and the chicken coop; the aforementioned drift on the way to the woodshed; and every door on the buildings just named iced down. Oh, and the roof of the studio needed to be shoveled.

And I must admit I used the "we" part very figuratively, as Dave did all this work while I stayed toasty warm, hanging out with the kids and helping Mom with a couple projects. Thankfully the tractor cooperated!

Here's the view of the drift outside the south windows. Notice the brown chunks of ice on top of the drift: That's the brown stuff that freezes into icicles coming off the chimney, which every once in a while breaks off and rolls down the roof. I didn't know that happened until I saw it!

... I've heard a fair amount of grumbling during this last storm. It is a pain. But then, it's the variety of life! We are really living out here. This blizzard will make a fine story later, we will be aware that we can go through such events and survive, and we will be that much more appreciative of spring when it comes. (Though I could say that with more authority if I had had to shovel today. Thanks, Dave!)

... At least we have winter-loving kids. Sofi, Erik and all the cousins had fun outside on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. They can really get up some speed in snowpants on a slightly icy slide!

Even Briella came out for some fresh air!

... The winter fun continued when we went to St. Paul. Sofi became an expert sledder, learning steering tips from her uncle Michael.

There they go!

Erik was a little more tentative, but he eventually had fun on the sledding hill, too.

Happy New Year, all! May it be filled with more blessings than you could think to wish for.

... And a postscript to the relatives: The photo books have been completed, and should be on their way to you shortly!

I heard there was a clamor on the Internet for these photos ...

2010-09-29T00:12:00.004-05:00

Yes, everyone's been waiting to see what the chicken tractor looks like!

Dave made it completely from scrap lumber and parts, with the exception of the wheels ($6), the chicken wire, and the hook-and-eye closures I made him get after I scratched myself on the wire closures we had before. He had to learn to weld to get it done, too -- the base 6x8 frame is welded rusty metal bars with wheels attached. Then he arched hog panels over the top of that to create the shape. He built the front end from plywood, and then I helped him stretch chicken wire over the whole works, and put an apron of chicken wire on the inside along the bottom to discourage Fantastic Mr. Fox and whoever else thinks chickens are tasty. (We did have an attempted break-in the other night -- something had put a paw on the chicken wire and managed to rip a few staples. That's as far as it got, though.) A quick door, and a tarp over the top, and it was ready for mobile chicken containment!

It adds that lovely hippies-live-here touch to the farmyard, I have to say! I am just happy we finally got our little chicken chain gang out to work.

The chickens have been in it for about three weeks now, weeding, tilling and fertilizing the garden at the rate of one 6x8 foot rectangle a day. We move it once a day (well, to be honest, Dave moves it once a day -- it's awfully heavy, and I can't get it to move over the ... let's just say overgrown parts of the garden), and in that time, the chickens make a noticeable difference in the amount of weeds in that spot. Go, chickens! Get that garden spic and span!

Dave kept saying they aren't really earning their chicken feed until they start laying, too. I told him he'd better stop wishing for them to lay before he had their nest boxes built! (There are some icky parts about raising chickens -- one of them being that if you aren't vigilant about egg gathering, some chickens start eating eggs, and once they get in the habit, it's tough to get them to stop. Ew. A rollaway nest box is the best way to ensure the chickens don't get started down the wrong path, but Dave didn't feel like building anything that complicated at this point -- a plain old box with a slanted, hinged lid helps, too, in that the egg is out of sight, out of mind.)

Anyway, Dave, Sofi and Erik went to check the chickens last night after supper, and what did they find?

One smallish brown egg!

Yes, our little chicks have become full productive members of society. Almost makes you teary when you think about it.

OK, not really. And actually, it's only one chicken, since we didn't find any more eggs out there today. But I'm sure the rest will step up to the plate (one with a side of bacon on it, preferably) and start laying soon!

Dave took that one egg as a sign and made two nest boxes last night after the kids went to sleep. I did not observe a chicken in one of the boxes yet today, but that doesn't mean much. They aren't very adventurous chickens -- it takes them a while to warm up to new things.

So there's the chicken tractor. The Internet clamor can settle down now!

Guess what we have!

2010-09-05T00:35:00.004-05:00

It is sometimes clear to us how new we are to this whole chicken-raising business.

As we watched the chicks grow, we noticed that none of the chicks had any kind of a cock's comb when they were tiny, but that they all started to develop one as they grew. None of them had anything that resembled the traditional silhouette on the top of the weather vane -- but there was one that seemed to have more of a cock's comb than the others. And each day it had a little more, and a little more ... "I'm suspicious of that chicken," I told Dave one day.

And then, one morning, Dave came in and said, "Guess what I just heard!"

There could no longer be any doubt: We had a rooster. Or a morning alarm clock.

And boy, does he ever act like a rooster! A person understand better just what "cocky" means now. He's always the first to run forward to investigate things; when we were working outside near his house today, he started crowing regularly -- just to show us he was the rooster, it seemed like. And he really struts in there. Dave said it's like he's saying, "Yeah, I have eleven ladies!"

We are actually happy to have a rooster. Having one rooster in the bunch means there's no question about the pecking order, so there's no need to fight to establish it. And my aunt Lillian told me that the eggs have less cholesterol with a rooster in the flock.

Sofia has named him "Cock-a-Doodle-Doo." Dave says that's better than the name he was thinking of: "Soup of the Day."

Local Food Challenge: Days Two and Three: A new definition

2010-09-05T00:28:00.002-05:00

Sigh. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to redefine what I can expect of myself on this local food challenge: It is a work in progress.

The tagline the challenge had on some of the early posters was “How LOCAL can you go?” Well, for some meals, pretty local! For others? Not very.

Read more from that entry here. A recipe for a squash and apple casserole is included!

Local Food Challenge: Day One: And we begin!

2010-09-02T09:14:00.003-05:00

All sorts of successful bloggers have discovered this wonderful fact of the Internet: Why post your writing in just one place when you can post it in two?

So, for the month of September, I'll be cross-posting here the articles I'm writing on the Frederick blog. This is all for the Three Rivers Local Food Challenge that Frederick Forward is sponsoring -- check out the website for the challenge to get all the details.

Here's a bit from the first blog entry:

7 a.m.: Push the snooze button.

7:20 a.m.: Jump out of bed, remembering I need to put gas in the car before I go to my sister’s to babysit. Shower, make coffee, pack bags, etc.

8:04 a.m.: Rush the kids out the door and into the car.

8:15 a.m.: Remember, as I’m driving and eating one of the whole-wheat bread and Nutella sandwiches I made for the kids and myself, that it’s the first day of the Local Food Challenge. Groan. Console myself that coffee and Nutella were on my exemptions list anyway.

8:45 a.m.: Get gas.

8:55 a.m.: Get to my sister’s house. Discuss what I’ll fix for the kids for lunch; wonder why in the world I didn’t bring any vegetables from our house! For a brief moment, believe the only local food in her house are a few sliced tomatoes. Eventually unearth corn and apple slices in the freezer — along with some local liver sausage. Realize that this “eating adventure” looks like it’s going to start with liver! But not for the kids. They get meatloaf and potatoes (not local).

Read the rest of the entry here.

Erik is 2 (finally!)

2010-08-22T21:14:00.003-05:00

Technically, Erik has been 2 since July 28. But since we didn't really celebrate it -- we had planned the party for what eventually became the day of Dad's prayer service -- he's been kind of hanging in limbo for nearly a month now. We had decided to wait until Don and Mary came back to have the party, which is why it went so long. But it all worked out in the end! I think it was a very nice party, even if not everything worked out as planned.

When we had Erik pose with his cake, for example -- Erik made one effort to blow out his candles, but he was too far away, so we moved the cake closer. that was the wrong thing to do. Erik was scared of the flames; he had to hauled out of his chair and calm down and eat his cake until after everyone else already had theirs!

You'll notice the hat: He wore that thing nearly all day. Don gave it to him, and Erik immediately became attached to it!

I was fairly proud of getting his name to show up in jelly beans! (This photo was taken before the gummy frogs were added.)

The birthday Rice Krispie cake made it from Gram in Iowa in fine form! The gel frosting ran just a bit, but we could still make out "Erik 2 -- Happy Birthday" on it.

We had intended to have home-cranked ice cream, but the project failed -- we suspect that using canning and pickling salt is not an adequate substitute for rock salt. Oh, well -- we figured out that we could make a passable substitute by putting the mix in the freezer and stirring occasionally!

Lunch included applesauce from our own apple tree -- and a frog mysteriously appeared in it before the meal. Various suspects were accused of putting it there, but the culprit did not confess.

One of Erik's presents was a T-ball stand, and balls to go with it. We already had a bat. It was a hit! He played with that for a long time.

He even occasionally let Amara have a swing! (We'll work on sharing happily later.)

The playhouse was, of course, a hit with the kids again.

It's another version of a little house on the prairie! You can really see that in these photos, I think.

I like the grain bin at center stage in this one.

The girls have decided the playhouse should be called the "Fun House." Because, as Sofi explained to me, it's a house, and it's also fun. That works! We had planned to paint in the playhouse today -- I'd gotten samples of some fun colors so the kids could paint on the inside walls -- but it was so hot we decided not to start that project.

All of these photos, by the way, are by Mary! Thanks, Nama!

Playhouse picture album

2010-08-10T23:30:00.007-05:00

Well, we got bored after building this house and decided we needed to build another one.

This is the playhouse in its current state! Actually, Dave got the trim around the windows done today, but I didn't have the camera out -- but this is pretty close to its current state.

The playhouse, which was intended to be finished for Erik's birthday but didn't quite make it (though we haven't actually celebrated Erik's birthday yet -- we're waiting for Nama and Grandpa to come back for the party), sits on a platform five feet off the ground. The platform is 6 x 8; the playhouse takes up 5 x 6 of that, and the rest is taken up by a covered porch. There's a ramp to go in on the north side of the porch (grownups find this a little tricky; the kids scramble up and down likes it's nothing) and a slide going down the east side.

I think it's a hit! The cousins have been over many times as this was being built -- they've had all sorts of scenarios going on over there. Playing house, of course, but once there was a slave camp, once there was a ship -- and they do a lot of cooking with dirt, water and weeds. We've had to do a bath every night since the playhouse was up, but I guess that's OK!

Here it is in process:

Don and Mary were here for the initial stages -- plotting out where it would go.

Actually, figuring out where it would go was a really time-consuming part of the process. We thought about putting it over by where the swingset is, south of the old farmhouse -- but then I couldn't send the kids out to play and still watch them from the window. Right in front of our big windows was too much in the way of cars; to the east of the house is the driveway to the tractor shed; to the north there is not a clear view except from bedroom windows, and the mosquitoes are worse back there closer to the slough; and to the west of the house is taken up by berry bushes. I mentioned that the best spot for it was really east of the sauna -- right where that hideous eyesore of a junk pile was. I wasn't sure Dave would take me seriously, since I had mentioned wanting that junk pile moved before and he might have thought this was just a ploy for that -- but then he thought for a moment and agreed with me! So now the junk pile is half gone (there's still some clearing to do to the south) and there's a playhouse in its place.

It was really hard to keep the kids from climbing the ladder while the house was in progress! That was a motivating factor to get it done quickly.

This photo was taken from our dining room windows -- see what a good view I have of the playhouse from there?

It actually came together in about a month's time.

Here they are, playing happily!

Though we still have painting to do -- Sofi REALLY wanted to paint today, but there was just a little too much of a chance of rain. And it's a good thing we didn't paint! We only had about 10 minutes of rain, but it was a downpour. Our paint would have washed half off.

The playhouse will be -- guess what colors? Red and white, of course! Like any good little Finnish house. I also bought a variety of little sample jars -- the five kids (Briella's a little too young) can work on painting the inside however they like.

Here is a smorgasbord of other photos of life in the last few weeks:

The garden is going gangbusters -- even if we lost the war with the weeds when we left on vacation, and then had a time of mourning when all sorts of things seemed less important. Mari actually picked all those green beans in the middle of the day during some nearly intolerable heat and humidity.

Mari and the girls came out for three days when Doug was on a trip -- one day happened to be Amara's birthday (Aug. 8) so we had an impromptu party for her. The actual party is this weekend.

The two littlest cousins seemed to enjoy this story by Mummu!

Sometimes they play together quite well. Other times they fight over toys -- but that's part of the whole learning process, I guess.

We also had the girls do some modeling -- Mom had made some hats that have been languishing for months without being posted to her Etsy store, and Betty also had some brooches that needed modeling. The girls seemed happy to oblige! Even Erik wore a hat for the occasion.

This summer is living up to the hot summers of my childhood memories. The wading pool has been out quite often. This was a splashing contest with the cousins.

Having Dave climb up on rooftops has been a theme around here lately. He helped install a new antenna on Mom's roof -- her TV service was discontinued, so she went back to plain-old TV. Sometimes it works well and she gets four channels; sometimes she only gets one, or none at all. We haven't figured out the pattern yet.

Summer is rushing by! Sofia starts preschool Sept. 9 -- that's just three weeks away!

So much to say ...

2010-08-10T22:04:00.003-05:00

I've been gone for a while. Most of you who know me also know why: Dad passed away on July 19. Even as his health had been failing for months, the end still came more suddenly than we were ready for. I brought him books to read on Wednesday; he started reading one as soon as I left that evening. I returned them to the library the following Tuesday, all but one of them unread.

If you'd like to read his obituary, you can find it here. I was pleased with how well it turned out (and, as an editor, that everything was spelled correctly).

I'm not going to dwell on it too much here, but I will give a few things that I've learned in the last few weeks:

"A heavy heart" is not just a metaphor -- somehow it did actually feel like there was an extra weight on my chest for a few days.
No matter how old you are, or how old a parent is, you still feel like an orphan when a parent dies.
It does no good to dwell on regrets at a time like this -- we were all doing the best we could, and Dad knew that -- but I do know that if I had read this article in the New Yorker two months ago, I would have made different decisions in the last week of Dad's life. (I urge everyone who sees a time coming when they will have to make end-of-life decisions in the future -- which is, of course, all of us -- to read this article.)
The memories that make you laugh are the ones that keep you going -- like those of our trip to the Black Hills during Sturgis week, when there were no hotel rooms to be had and Dad ended up sleeping on a picnic table.
You learn how many friends you truly have at a time like this -- and for us, thankfully, the number was more than we realized.

I was really moved by the words to a song that Dad played often on his harmonica -- I'd heard them sung before, perhaps, but hadn't paid attention to them until we translated them for the funeral service program. Here they are; may they bring you as much peace as they did to me.

Kiitos, Sulle, Jumalani
Thank You, My God

Thank you, my God, for the grace in all things
that I have known throughout my life.
Thank you for the bright spring days
as well as the gloomy days of autumn.

Thank you that many, many of my prayers have been answered.
Thank you also that other requests were not answered.
Thank you that in my distress I have received help through you.
Thank you that my sins are forgiven by your Son.

Thank you for every moment of my lifetime.
Thank you for sunshine as well as darkness.
Thank you for the struggles, even for the crosses to bear for my Lord.
Thank you that you remember me always and help me in my pain.

Thank you for the flowers that were blooming along my paths.
Thank you also for the thistles that cut me.
Thank you, that your will is to give me eternal life.
In all things, O Lord, I will give you praise forever.

No, really, it's too small for you.

2010-06-16T01:17:00.004-05:00

This is what I saw when I came down the steps this afternoon, ready to head out the door! This bull, which is not actually supposed to be within half a mile of our place, had wandered over several times before to visit the heifers that pasture not far from our house. But this time, he stopped right in front of our picture windows ... and took a liking to Erik's tricycle for some reason! The only thing I can think of is that there is probably just a little bit of sweat on those handlebars from Erik's hands. He wouldn't leave it alone! I shooed him away from it once -- by opening the door and saying "No!" in my sternest Mommy voice -- but he came right back to it when I shut the door.

It reminds me of a book we've read to Sofi: "Big bull blowing bubbles biking backwards ..."

He could see me through the window -- and didn't particularly like that.

This was after I shooed him away. You'll notice Blue has the situation completely under control ... she did a fair amount of barking, but I don't think she wanted to get too close to that bull either!

... And then I noticed that it was a party! Not one ... not two ...

... but three, four and five head of cattle paying us a visit in the yard!

I called our neighbor, whose cattle they are, and he came over with the four-wheeler to try to round them up. Those cows were clever, though -- they took off into the trees, where they knew he couldn't chase them! I finally did get out the door and down the road, though, so I'm not sure exactly how this turned out. Our neighbor was going to call in backup from his sons -- all bovines were gone by the time I got back, so something must have worked!

We have chicks!

2010-05-15T22:51:00.007-05:00

Twelve cute little downy chicks are getting themselves settled in the old chicken coop tonight, the first chickens to have made their home here in about 30 years.

We've been working on the old chicken coop little by little -- basically when Dave finds time to spare. First there was a lot of cleaning to do -- we'd been using one corner for storage, so all that needed to find new homes (luckily -- sort of -- many of the books were water damaged, so it was easy to decide throw them out), and then a layer of accumulated dirt and debris needed to be cleaned out. Making sure the electricity worked was important; the little chicks need a heat lamp for the first few weeks. That didn't take too much trouble, thankfully -- just the replacing of a few fuses. Then we had to make sure the building was tight enough to keep predators out. That took a little more doing -- a number of windows needed covering (we might repair them later) and some cracking/crumbling foundation issues needed filling with Quickrete. An little Shopvac-ing and the place was ready for new life!

Dave and Sofi went to get the chicks and all the necessary equipment this afternoon. Sofi is very excited about all this -- she had to tell me all about the equipment, and she held one of the chicks, though she's still working on getting up the nerve to pick one up by herself.

We have three breeds: Buff Orpington, "a good beginner bird and popular throughout the world" (quotes are from Dave's birthday present book "Keeping Chickens" by Jeremy Hobson and Celia Lewis); Australorp, "easy to keep and become very tame, so they make good pets for children"; and Silver Laced Wyandotte, described as "docile, hardy, friendly, and attractive" and "the ideal beginner's breed." Not the frequent use of "beginner" and "easy"! The Buff Orpingtons will be a lovely light brown, the Australorps will be black with a green iridescent sheen, and the Wyandottes will have white feathers with black edges -- very pretty, all of them! And this is a laying flock -- with no rooster -- and they all lay brown eggs.

Dave and Sofi brought them home in a cardboard box with little windows cut into it for air holes.

They were not very happy when we first moved them into their new digs -- it was too cold, and they just climbed all over one another trying to stay warm.

The heat lamp took a while to get warmed up -- in the meantime they huddled in a corner. Poor little things!

But pretty soon then settled in. And started drinking and eating. I had not realized how much those little things will eat -- in the next 10 weeks, each of them is going to eat 10 pounds of chicken feed!

Sofi and Erik got as close as they could to get a good look. (Erik might have hopped in if we'd let him.)

We'll keep you updated on how all this turns out! I was thinking today, now why doesn't everybody have chickens? They provide eggs, meat and great compost, and they'll keep the bugs down in the berry patch and work up new garden beds! The downside, of course, is that everything loves to eat chickens -- we are now at war with not only all wild predators but our dogs and cats as well.

Next step in the plan: Building a chicken tractor!

Here's a little video of the chicks ... they are very calming to watch, I think.

Random notes

2010-05-04T13:29:00.005-05:00

Dave's parents were here for the weekend and left some lovely photos of the kids! (Don took all of these great shots.)

Sofi and Erik like to play on the old loading chute by the barn, but one board was loose; they both helped Dave fix it.

Watch your thumb, little Erik!

Peeking through the boards on the side of the chute is lots of fun, apparently!

And whose little eyes are those?

"Mommy funny," Erik says.

Sofia was a little sleepy by the end of the day.

Video from Frederick's Day of Champions Cleanup Day

2010-04-29T10:55:00.006-05:00

Every year, Frederick takes part in the annual Day of Champions, when athletes from Northern State fan out over the region to do service projects. All sorts of things were accomplished in Frederick this year! Some people in our Frederick Forward group say it's their favorite day of the year -- we talk about doing things at our meetings during the rest of the year, and some things are accomplished, albeit slowly, but the Day of Champions is one big day of action!

Here's a little slide show I put together of the day:

Kite flying and pasque flowers: Spring is here!

2010-04-19T23:56:00.005-05:00

Dave and the kids have been out flying kites on several occasions already this spring. On the latest expedition, Sofi got her own kite up all by herself! I wasn't along on that trip, however -- these photos are from an earlier time. The wind wasn't working in our favor that day, so these photos pretty much captured every kite-aloft moment. (The rest of the time, Dave got his exercise running around the pasture with a frog kite bumping along behind him.)

But even Erik got to hang on to the handle for a few seconds!

... We went down to the river quarter on Saturday -- a beautiful spring evening. Dave needed to check on how much fence the river had washed away this year. He was lulled into a false sense of optimism on that count -- he looked at where the damage had been worst last year, and that wasn't nearly so bad, but our renter stopped by Sunday night and said it was far worse on the other side, where it had never been bad before!

We had an awful time getting to the river quarter. There are three ways of getting there: Two of them are gravel, but one of them is basically just two ruts through grass. Since the two gravel roads had water over them, the grass trail became the best route -- which isn't saying much. It was a bumpy ride for the whole mile, and there was one soft spot where we held our breath and hoped the pickup wouldn't slip into the muck on the side.

But once we got there, we enjoyed the view.

A muskrat was swimming across the river when we got there, and two pheasants thundered up out of the grass not 20 feet from us as we walked past.

The kids discovered an old rock pile (this land is now pasture, for the most part, but it was once cropped -- these rocks were piled here to get them out of the way of the plow) that made for an impressive obstacle course. Sofi did her own hopping, but Erik needed a little help.

Up, up and away, Erik!

... And then, just as we were about to give up and go home, we made a discovery:

Pasque flowers!

I think it's amazing that they are there, because that land was cropped for many years -- were they such stubborn weeds in the field that they resisted efforts at eradication? Or did they just lie in wait underground, as seeds or roots, for all those years? Perhaps their seeds were brought in later by birds or other animals ... who knows. But I do love to see them!

Erik was happy to point them out. He did OK at pronouncing them, too!

Sofi wanted to pick some -- we explained that it would be better for a wildflower like that if we don't pick it but just enjoy its beauty as we find it. And its message: Spring is truly here!

A walk with the birds

2010-04-19T23:30:00.003-05:00

The prairie is a noisy place again, now that all the birds are back and settling in. Or passing through, as the case may be -- and I hope that's the case for some of them, as there are at the moment a ridiculous number of blackbirds here! Some can stay, but they are going to have to stake out territory on every fence post instead of every third if they all decide to stick around.

I had a lovely walk on Friday morning observing all sorts of feathered activity. (The children are in daycare two days a week, and I decided to engage in a little solitude on one of them last week!)

This pintail pair was not far from the farm. We saw a pintail pair on our walk tonight as well -- not sure if it's the same couple.

I do like taking pictures of the birds I see -- I can zoom in and ID on the computer screen later, even if I couldn't do so when I saw them in real life! Here is a slough full of lesser scaup, with a few redheads mixed in.

And here are some of the blackbirds! That fence is going to need a "no vacancy" sign.

This looks quite nice -- it's almost as if the trees are decorated for a holiday -- but it's not the most impressive blackbird tree I've seen this spring. On two other occasions I've seen a tree nearly black with birds. From one, the birds started to fly out in a coordinated exodus, just three or four at a time, like a lacy ribbon unspooling into the sky. It was absolutely beautiful.

That little walk had so much beauty in it that it was almost sad, if that makes any sense. I knew that (especially since I saw three abandoned farm sites on my way) there are far too few people who would see the beauty in a walk on the prairie in the early spring. Even, frankly, myself, as that was one of the first walks I've been on since the weather warmed.

We all need to get out more!

Happy Easter, everyone!

2010-04-04T20:38:00.006-05:00

I don't think we could have asked for a nicer Easter!

The weather was lovely, the kids had a grand time hunting for eggs and eating chocolate, and we had a nice meal together -- our family, Mari's family, Mom, and Dad -- who was back to the farm for the day from the nursing home, where he is still trying to get strong enough to win the doctor's approval to come home to stay. He did pretty well at home for the afternoon, which was heartening for all of us.

Here's a little photo montage of our Easter doings, all courtesy of Mari, who was behind the camera, and is therefor only the family picture above, for which she used the timer!

Erik is on the hunt! One egg in the hand, one left to go.

Amara and her daddy ponder whether there might be another egg in the grass ...

I LOVE this photo! He could be modeling for Gap here. There's a cutest baby contest going on at the local daily paper ... this photo would be a serious contender! The dirty tummy (he'd already fallen in the yard) just adds to the charm.

Sofi's got her two! (The kids were each assigned a color to look for.)

That's our smiley girl! She was excited about her new dress today.

Once all the eggs were found, the kids had a grand time romping at the edge of the trees. Here comes Erik!

Erik and Amara used to be at odds -- now they are big buddies.

I'm not sure what was so serious here ... but whatever it is, it made these girls suddenly look a lot older than they are!

And here are the menfolk, taking in the sun. Did I mention the weather was glorious?!

It's for days such as these, when winter has lost its grip on the land and its people, when family gathers to enjoy each other and the world, when we marvel at the growth of the green grass and even more at the growth of the children ... this is when I realize just how great it is to be at home here on the prairie.

Geese! And what we can learn from them

2010-03-18T23:40:00.010-05:00

We saw the first big flocks moving over earlier this week, and they were really active yesterday.

I have been in deep with the projects I'm working on lately -- encouraging a local food economy, revitalizing rural communities -- and I've been watching all the drama on health care reform, so it's perhaps not odd that as I watched the geese, I realized they have a lot to teach us about how to get big things done. They, after all, travel thousands of miles from their southern wintering grounds to their northern nests each spring -- and then fly back the same thousands of miles in the fall.

Here are a few lessons from the honkers:

Don't be afraid to start moving toward a goal that you cannot yet see, that in fact seems impossible from where you stand. Keep moving toward the goal, and soon enough the impossible can be accomplished (even twice a year).
When the goal is a formidable one, find strength in numbers. And don't just look for your expected allies -- if someone is traveling in the same direction, even if they are not a bird of your feather, you will both do better if you travel together.
One voice in the wilderness may sound lonely, but if it's persuasive, soon enough others will join in, and pretty soon you'll be making a racket that can't be ignored.
Take the lead of your group when you are called to do so -- but also know when it's time to fly back to the tail end of the V and recharge for a while. If the leader is tired, the whole group will move more slowly.
Focus on the end goal, yes -- but don't be so focused that you don't appreciate the journey. If the sun is shining and the breeze is just right, don't be afraid to take a little time to circle and soar.

And, on a lighter note, here's a little video of our bird-watching expedition on Thursday. The kids were trying really hard to be quiet, so I could record how loud the birds are, but that's not all that easy to do, apparently!

Note to self: Do not leave raisins on table unguarded.

2010-03-10T22:32:00.002-06:00

March: Yes, spring begins, but it's also our snowiest month

2010-03-07T23:14:00.003-06:00

Let's start with the depressing facts: We may have spotted that "Spring begins" message when we flipped the calendar to March, but there's no pretending it's time for tulips quite yet. The photo above was taken last Sunday night, on the road we normally do not take to get off the farm. And Dave had plowed this way not too long before -- but we'd had a bit of wind, and the ditches are so full that any wind at all can close the road. (Though we could still get the truck through that with little problem, Dave pointed out.)

Dave had to clear out his path to the woodshed again -- it's a narrow lane through that drift, but it's enough!

But we can go on to more positive topics. It's been warm enough and not windy enough to make skiing enjoyable -- Dave and my mom have both taken their skis out for a spin. And I went for a walk the other evening that was quite pleasant, and I didn't even wear my long underwear! (That's how we really mark that spring is coming -- when you can leave your long underwear on the hook.)

And we also had a grand time with Nama here for the week! (Don was here for the weekends but drove home to put in his working hours in St. Paul in between. Thankfully, driving was not stressful this time!) The drifts behind the house became the scene for the Olympics (at which both Sofi and Nama won gold medals) and some impressive princess tales. Erik discovered the wonders of sliding down the side of a drift, and Nama discovered how much of a workout it is to lift a cute little 30-pound weight over and over!

They also dug an impressive tunnel, with Don doing some hard-labor digging to hollow it out. (That snow was packed!) At least for now, it seems structurally sound.

... Though that might not last long! There's been a breath of spring in the air the past few days -- the gravel started to peak through our all-white roads on Thursday, and now we can drive over several patches of brown on the way home. Yes, mud season has begun! We are debating if we want to continue driving around the loop in front of our house, which would kill the grass but also leave some dirt ruts, or just park farther away until the ground dries out.

The newspapers are full of people talking about flooding concerns. Our area should be OK if we get a steady, slow melt. We're going to be watching those big drifts to the north of the house -- they might act as a dam to keep the runoff from the yard from reaching the pond, which could mean we need a moat to get in the house again. We can dig a channel, if need be -- we'll just have to keep an eye on it.

We may have a new photo blogger! Don and Mary got Sofi a new camera, and she is sure enjoying it. She wants to have it out all the time, but we have to monitor its use -- while Sofi is quite careful with her things, Erik is not. I haven't downloaded Sofi's photos (or videos!) yet, but when I do I'll post some of the good ones. (The ones of me in my pajamas groggily drinking coffee will not be uploaded.) Above, Sofi is documenting the seeds that she and Erik and Daddy started tonight -- tomatoes, peppers and more. It may be a little early, but I'm all for gardening optimism!

The "I Hate Winter" edition

2010-02-23T22:42:00.004-06:00

Oh my gosh, has it really been that long since I blogged?! Good grief. I may have to re-introduce myself:

(A-hem.) I am Heidi, the lady of the house that was a granary. Welcome to my humble blog!

... Since I've been away from the blog so long, this is going to be a catch-up picture post that in large part is meant to keep the relatives longing for updates on the children happy.

... It is still winter here. (I remember once, when we were living in North Carolina, being so thrilled that we could drive around with the windows down in February. That would not be a pleasant experience in South Dakota.) And it's been a hard one, though I gather it's been a tough winter all over. Though I have to say dealing with winter out here is on a different level than it is elsewhere, even in Aberdeen.

Let me explain: We are just half a mile from the nearest blacktop highway, which most of the time we consider fairly convenient, but this winter that half-mile might as well be a hundred for how much trouble we have with it. There is almost nothing you could call a hill around here, but one of the few such places is in the last 200 yards or so between us and the highway. The land is higher than that spot on the road to the north and the east, meaning that when the wind blows from those directions, it blows it over the top of the hills and then drops it -- right on the road. The ditches filled in during the Christmas blizzard, and since then the drift over the road just keeps getting deeper every time the wind blows. Dave clears it out with the tractor, but after a day of wind, the drift fills in again completely -- you can only guess where the road is by seeing the top six inches or so of the fence posts sticking out of the snow.

This road is in theory supposed to be cleared by the township, but they only allot a certain amount of money for snow removal each year, and they are already beyond flat broke because of dealing with flooded roads last summer. So basically, that means we rural people are on our own if we want the road cleared. That has not been as much of a problem the other two winters we were here, but this is a snowier, colder, more blizzardy winter than we've had in a long time. (In fact, my aunt Lillian says this is what it used to be like in pioneer days.) And this is also the first winter my dad hasn't been able to help with the snow clearing at all -- he fell in mid-January and has since been recuperating in the hospital and nursing home; we hope he can come home within a week or so.

Our tractor is also part of the problem -- snow-blowing with it involves driving backward while scraping the window every few seconds because there is no defroster, and it cannot be done in the dark, because the loader bucket is mounted in front of the lights. ... And did I mention that when the wind blows the drift shut you have no idea where exactly the road is?

So, basically, if the wind blows at night, Dave can either stay home from work to clear snow (once it's daylight) or he can gun through the drift with the truck (taking care to stop before he flies onto the highway) and we are then stuck at home for the day until Dave comes home (gunning the truck up the hill) to quickly clear snow before it's dark again.

It's not a wonder, then, that under those conditions Dave got the tractor stuck on Presidents Day evening. He was trying to clear the road a little wider so it wouldn't fill in again so quickly (the wind was still blowing) and guessed wrong about where the edge of the road was. He walked back to get me to help (he'd forgotten to take his cell phone), and I went with him in the truck.

I don't remember ever being outside in anything quite like that. The sun was shining but the wind was still howling, and the snow was weaving across the crusted drifts of snow as you may have seen in nature specials of sand blowing across the Sahara -- I think there was some depiction of the phenomenon in "March of the Penguins" too. It had snowed in addition to the wind blowing, so the the drifts were unmarked by anything except the carving force of the wind. It really felt like we were out on the tundra somewhere.

Dave had started clearing the road before the tractor got stuck, and it was a good thing, as otherwise the truck would have had no chance of getting through -- when I got out, the wall of snow was about waist high. We made some effort to get the tractor moving with the pickup -- no traction, so no luck there. Eventually, several neighbors gathered around to get us unstuck. Gotta love good neighbors!

... So anyway, we are always on edge when the wind blows. Will we be able to get out? Not that being snowbound is such a hardship nowadays -- we still have our phone, heat and Internet, so I try to think of it as a gift of time and not a prison sentence.

... The drifts to the north and east are really getting tall. The metal building in the photo above is where our wood is stored; the slight marks you see in the drift behind the fence is where the path was that Dave had cut in the drift so he could fetch wood. Every time the wind blows, it fills in completely and he has to shovel the path out again.

The drift behind this house is also getting quite high; the kids' cousins came over on Sunday, and they and Sofi used it as a sledding hill. (They said they were pretending they were in the Olympics.)

The dogs love that drift, too -- they use it as a lookout point. (I took these photos from the upstairs skylight, so the quality isn't that great.)

They use it to watch for rabbits and to warn off coyotes, I think.

I'm so bummed this photo is a little blurry -- a howling dog makes a nice photo!

The sun shown after all that snow during the Presidents Day storm, leaving a good deal of ice on the car ...

... and on the roof of the studio on the old farmhouse. And I'm embarrassed to say I took this photo and then didn't think any more about it. The next day, Mom came to get in a rush, saying that the roof of the studio was creaking -- it may not have been in danger of imminent collapse, but there was no point in taking chances. We got a ladder, and I climbed up and shoveled off all I could reach from the ladder; I didn't dare climb up on to the roof, both because I'm clumsy and the roof was icy under the snow, and because I didn't want to put any more weight on it. When Dave got home later that day, he climbed up and finished the job.

...And now, finally, to the kids pictures!

I was busy taking pictures of Mom's rugs when Erik found Mom's flour barrel! Luckily he didn't tip it, just reached in and dusted himself with it.

... I had told Sofia (and Erik, but wasn't expecting much from an 18-month-old) that it was time to clean up, and a few minutes later this is how I found them. It was tough to be upset when they were playing so peacefully!

... Sofia said she wanted to go get the mail by herself the other day, so I gave her a bag and sent her off. Such a big girl already!

... Let me say, first, that the dog is NOT allowed in the living room. She can sleep in the addition, if she doesn't bark. But if we leave the gate between the main house and the addition down for more than a second (which I do fairly frequently when I'm doing laundry) -- well, she sneaks through to find a spot in the sun. As the kids did, too, apparently.

We are all longing for spring!

A little joke

2010-01-27T00:15:00.002-06:00

Sofi's learning the art of the knock-knock joke, and Erik must have been listening to her, since he's now come up with one of his own:

"Knock-knock." (He generally pounds on something when he says it.)
"Who's there?"
"Banana." (Or, more accurately, "nana," but we know what he means.)
"Banana who?"
"Cracker."

That's it. He's repeated it several times. We don't really get it, but we do laugh every time -- and I suppose that is the point!

Frosty mornings

2010-01-21T22:39:00.006-06:00

We've been grateful for some milder weather in the past week or so -- no temps below zero, and we've often awoken on several mornings to beautiful frost sculptures outside.

I love how ordinary things -- even this junk pile behind the sauna -- are turned into works of art in the frost.

I do so love these trees! I'm so happy they are so easy to see out the east addition picture windows.

Even the old chicken coop (rehabbing that is on the to-do list, by the way -- we'd like to get chickens in the spring) looks lovely, nestled under such a nice frost arbor.

I am sure I wasn't the only one out taking pictures in the past few days. In fact, I know I wasn't, as I saw one other photographer out the front door:

Sofia saw me run out with my camera and straight away grabbed her camera to take her turn outside.

She didn't just run out and snap a few shots and hurry back in, either. She really did some searching for subjects. Here are a few of her photos:

I'd say she's got quite an artistic eye for a 4-year-old! Maybe she needs her own Etsy shop ...

... The weather is due to turn, though. Freezing drizzle starts around noon tomorrow, and some level of a winter storm is supposed to follow. That's South Dakota weather -- we must appreciate its beauty while it lasts! (And try not to grumble too much when it gets ugly.)

Christmas, snowed in, belated, but merry nonetheless

2010-01-04T09:49:00.007-06:00

I'm back! After a nice hiatus from work on the house (as well as from blogging!) for the Christmas holiday, I'm back on the blogging wagon.

Christmas was all discombobulated by the blizzard that hit the 23rd through 25th: We'd planned to spend the 23rd with the Marttila family here at the farm, then head to St. Paul where Losures from near and far would gather. With roads treacherous and even closed in all directions, that didn't happen.

So, Plan B: We celebrated in the snowstorm with Mari's family here at the farm, then headed to St. Paul to celebrate Christmas around the New Year's holiday. It all worked out, even with the weather stress!

... The Christmas blizzard was something else. It was slower to arrive than predicted, but it came with a fury when it did arrive. We didn't get as much snow as places further south -- perhaps 10 inches, as opposed to 19 inches in Sioux Falls -- but there was plenty enough to create massive drifts on the roads.

And drifts in front of the door! We cleared this doorway at least four times during the storm; the drift kept coming back. (We'll be working on some type of snow fence for next year.)

Some of the cattle bedded down in the slough, trying to get out of the wind. Randy made several trips to our place during the storm to make sure they had feed and access to water.

And what is this, you wonder? Belle! She refused to come in to stay warm in the addition (while Blue was hard to kick out!) and just bedded down in a snowdrift. Looks cold to me, but she was fine; she was up and running around shortly after the picture was taken.

... We had a grand time in St. Paul, as usual when the relatives gather. I took a little video, and (finally!) figured out how to upload it to the blog. This is so typical of a Losure Christmas: Note the variety of activities, the stuff explosion, and the toe-tapping music.

... If you like the music, Dave and Mary are professional musicians -- lessons, performances, even banjo making! Learn more about Flying Pig Fiddle and Banjo here.

... We've been enjoying life in the new house, but we keep running into little issues that show we need to keep working on it: The towels and sheets are spilling out of the linen closet, since we don't have the shelves up yet; it would be nice to have doors on the bedrooms (we noticed this especially when we had Mari's family over for Christmas -- tough to keep quiet enough when the kids went to sleep earlier than that parents did), and we can't keep Erik out of the knee wall spaces without doors on them. And much more, of course. The trick is deciding where to start!

Tour of Homes -- Check!

2009-12-07T13:55:00.006-06:00

It occurred to me, as Dave and I spent hours that we'd normally dedicate to sleep on getting the house ready for the Tour of Homes, that I couldn't think of any other family with a toddler and a preschooler who had volunteered to have their home on display. I thought of it again, at 11:30 on Sunday morning (with guests who'd paid good money to see the house due to arrive at 1 p.m.), when Erik, completely oblivious to my frantic tidying, happily pulled pots and pans out of the kitchen cupboards. (Dave took the kids over to the other house soon after, where they could play for the afternoon without me constantly snatching potential messes out of their hands.)

I was frantic until 12:53 p.m. -- but then I unplugged the vacuum cleaner, looked around, and sighed with satisfaction. The transformation was amazing!! Most of the credit goes to Mari, who brought over her decorations and worked her magic. She has a great flair for decorating, and many of her decorations worked really well with the "rustic" style we were after.

The living room was really stunning -- the tree looks just phenomenal next to the old wood of the north wall. (Thanks to the Mikkonens for giving us the tree! We are delighted -- it looks so Finnish!) We hung our farm art by Laverne Alvestad in the room, along with Laura Schaunaman's "Savo Summer" print. The bench is one my dad made once when he did a workshop at the RVP1875 store (described at this site), which was then in Story City, Iowa -- no power tools were used in making it. The bench fits in well with the rustic look of the room!

Mari set up the lovely display at the end of the hall upstairs ... and doesn't this rug look FANTASTIC in the hall here? The colors work together so well. This is an inheritance from my grandmother -- it was one of her "special occasion" rugs.

We did do a bit of clutter-hiding -- I hung a sheet over the entrance to the storeroom at the end of the hall.

The closet of the west upstairs bedroom is for the moment set up as a kids' space. Erik likes it -- I think kids always enjoy cozy areas like that.

The rest of that room is set up as a project room for now. It's so welcoming! I've already done a bit of weaving, since the loom is now ready to go. (Dave made the loom for me one winter when we were still living in North Carolina, in the tiny house we rented then -- he worked at the dining room table between meals, since we had to clear off his woodworking stuff to have room to eat.) I had a slide show of photos running on the computer during the tour, showing the house in various stages of completion.

Mari hung a garland over the top of the bank of windows, then made the lovely paper heart ornaments to go in the windows. The candles are ours, from our time in Boone -- we had few decorations out there (we always went elsewhere for Christmas), but we did have candles in the windows.

Several people were impressed with the fact that because of the open area by the stairs, you can see the first floor from above -- most homes don't have a way to get a different perspective on your living space that way. I got a few waves from people peeking out the windows of the upstairs bedrooms!

The kids' room looks great! (Mary, note the curtains in the windows!) The floor got many positive comments during the tour. (Erik's playpen was moved to the other house so he could take a nap there during the afternoon -- not that that happened, with cousins to play with.)

Dave's sideboard (which he also made at a workshop at RVP1875, using no power tools -- I gave those workshops as gifts to Dad and Dave one year) fits in beautifully next to my favorite blue wall, and Mari did a lovely job setting up a display here, too, with Swedish straw horses above and baskets of vegetables down below.

And the stockings were hung by the fire with care ... And Joyce, notice the fabric curtain over my linen closet, to the right! (I'll need to add a better picture of it.) It adds such a nice, bright touch to that spot -- bifold doors would make that little transition space feel like a telephone booth, but there has to be something to hide the sheets and towels there -- the fabric curtain is just the thing!

Dave also had the addition cleared out for the tour, which Mom was really impressed by -- it had been Dave's workshop, filled with tools, wood pieces, paint cans, and other assorted detritus until 10 p.m. Saturday, when Dave started cleaning it. (I'd had him working on finishing trim before that.)

The kids were allowed recommence living in the house once the tour was over, as you can see by the rugs askew already in these photos, mere minutes after we all returned! But that's OK. It wasn't perfect even when people were going through -- I had forgotten the breakfast dishes in the sink! Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. Dave did them at some point in the afternoon, along with the dishes we made while serving coffee and cake to the visitors -- Mom made the cake in honor of her birthday and Finland's independence day, both Dec. 6.

In general, the tour went quite well -- though I have a few regrets about it, one of which is that I didn't think to put out a guestbook, so I'm not sure how many people came. (Other regrets: I didn't have the slide show going right away, so a number of people didn't see it; also I didn't have the sign up saying that Mom's studio was also open, and I didn't remember to tell everyone, not everyone stopped over there.) But it was nice to hear all the people say "Wow!" ... Mari said she heard one person mention House Beautiful as they left.

And so ... now what? I've been focused on house stuff so intently and for so long that I've kind of lost my bearings of what else I should be doing! For now, at least, we've got Sofia's birthday and Christmas to plan for. There's still a lot of work on the house to finish, but we've declared a moratorium on house work until after Christmas -- time to relax for a while!

O Kitchen, My Kitchen ...

2009-11-29T23:34:00.002-06:00

Yes, I'm singing praises to my kitchen ... well, not quite, though I have spent a good deal of time singing in my kitchen lately! We had a small Thanksgiving dinner, just Dave, me and the kids, and I have to say, I don't think I have ever been so happy cooking as I was Thursday morning. It was just so darn pleasant to have that length of counter space, to have all the ingredients handy, and to do the dishes as I needed to. (Thanks again for putting it all together, Walt and Dave!)

Several things are new in the above photo: We picked up the missing cabinet door from IKEA when we were there last Monday, as well as the toe kicks, which are now in place. The under-cabinet lighting is installed -- I don't think I took a picture of that before, though it's been up a while already. And I put down one of my rugs -- I wove it when Dave and I were in Finland in 2003, staying with my grandmother, and I didn't use it at all in the house in Boone, as the colors didn't go with anything there. But it looks like I made it for this kitchen! The colors are near matches to my color scheme, with the addition of red, which I think adds a nice touch of brightness (as in that dish towel).

... We did Christmas Cookie Baking, Part I today. Mari and I don't get cookie baking done like we used to -- too many children "helping" the process, I think. So we'll have to finish another day. That also went well in the new kitchen, I think!

... We're working frantically to get the house in shape for the Tour of Homes on Dec. 6. The list is long, though nothing on it is terribly hard or time-consuming ... except there are only a few hours in the day when I don't have "helpers." We'll see how much we can get done between now and then -- good thing the new coffee pot works!

At home in a granary!

2009-11-08T23:46:00.004-06:00

I can use illness as an excuse for part of my tardiness in blog posting lately – H1N1 (we think, anyway) made its way through the family in the past couple weeks. I wouldn’t say we are completely healthy yet even now – I’m still blowing my nose a lot, and Dave gets a coughing fit every now and again. Erik is much better, though it’s just in the last few days that he’s stopped sounding like Darth Vader when he’s asleep. Sofia’s nose is still running a bit, but she’s otherwise back to normal.

And, when we weren’t sleeping off our sickness, we’ve been busy. We were working late into the night to get the house ready for move-in day, which was Friday. We didn’t get as much done that day as we’d hoped, but ready or not, we bedded down in the new house that night!

I have to say, getting up on Saturday morning and sitting down to our usual pancake breakfast at our dining table in our own house (which, did you know, used to be a granary?!) was an amazing feeling.

I thought I’d give my impressions after living in the house for two full days now. Here are some things I absolutely love:

The big south-facing windows. Living in this house is living on the farm in a way that living in the old house is not. There you look out the windows sometimes, but you have to purposefully do so, and many of them are covered with plastic and storm windows, so it’s not always easy to see out. Here, the windows draw your attention, whether you are planning to look out them or not. We watch the cars go by (mostly hunters lately, and a few combines and semis). Erik is thrilled with the dog-watching – the big windows are low enough that he can see out easily. And Sofi pointed out a flock of geese flying over while we were eating lunch today. I wonder a little if there are days when we won’t be excited to look outside – some nasty blizzards are bound to come through in January and February – but for the most part, I think those windows are a daily blessing.
Our well-insulated, passive solar design. The big windows are a part of that as well. On Saturday, it was warm outside, in the 50s, but it was nearly hot inside. We opened the windows to let in a breeze. We rarely have to run the heaters while the sun is shining, and the house stays fairly warm into the evening.
The IKEA cabinets. There’s so much room in them! We don’t yet have a well-stocked kitchen, but I’d say the cabinets are still at least a third empty. And eventually we’ll have the pantry space besides, though that’s pretty far down on the list of priorities. My pleasure is in no small part also due to not having to deal with two household’s kitchen needs in one set of cabinets, but the cabinets themselves are pretty nice. (Sofia is blurry in all the pictures I took Saturday -- she says the new house is a "fun house"!)
The bright color choices. The high blue walls and ceiling don’t seem like overkill at all, and the blue wall in the kitchen makes me happy just to look at it!
My dishwashing aids – the dishwasher and the drying cabinet. I love having both, I have to say! It’s great to be able to put dishes to dry in the cabinet and not have to look at them anymore until they are dry (though this will of course work better when we get that replacement cabinet door), and also to wash a big batch of dishes in the dishwasher. Sofia likes helping with loading and unloading the dishwasher – a bonus I wasn’t expecting! Dave and I haven’t debated once yet about whose turn it is to do the dishes – I’ve hopped right to it. (Dave did say that installing the dishwasher – a complete pain – should excuse him from a year’s worth of dishes. For now, I don’t mind a bit – but a year’s exemption might be a bit much.)
Erik sleeping in the children’s room instead of ours. Maybe it’s just because it was so tough to sleep with his noisy breathing while he was sick, but I am resting much easier with Erik out of our room. He’s still fussed once each night, but I think soon he will be sleeping better, too – he’ll get better at putting himself to sleep if Mommy or Daddy don’t race to help with every little cry.
Our improved moods. I have to say that Dave and I are both notably happier – it’s easier to laugh, and little problems are less frustrating. We live in a lovely house that we designed and built ourselves (with generous help from friends, of course) – that in itself is immensely satisfying.

That doesn’t mean that this new house isn’t without its challenges.

The kids’ bedroom, with all of their necessary dressers, toys and bookshelves, barely has room for their beds. We had been planning on moving Erik into a bigger playpen for a few months, since we were thinking that having bunkbeds wouldn’t be a good idea for a while, as it would be too hard to keep Erik off the ladder to the top bunk. That plan is not going to work, as the playpen he’s in now barely fits. We’re still trying to figure out a way to have a bunkbed that Sofi can get into safely, but with a ladder that Erik can’t climb (for a while, anyway).
Our bedroom is also very small. We installed a nice closet organizer, which will help, but I don’t think all of our clothes (especially all of mine) will fit in that room. Which is not that big a deal, really, as we have plenty of closet space upstairs – I’ll just have to get used to going upstairs on occasion to get clothes.
There are spiders in here – left over, I’m sure, from the old wood’s granary days. I don’t have a huge fear of spiders, but it was a bit disconcerting to watch a spider drop down from the ceiling into Erik’s playpen (he wasn’t in it at the time). I’m hoping that’s a problem we can fix, or at least diminish, with some vigilant spider-crushing warfare.
There’s still a lot to do. When we sit down to eat or relax, we try not to dwell on all the trim that’s left to do, or the doors that are missing, or the shelves, or the bathroom mirror, or the coathooks … as Don would say, when you have a house, you have a task and master for life. And it does sometimes feel that way. Though I have to say, it feels a whole lot better to be reaping the rewards of that work even as we look toward doing some more. The work is much more pleasant than it was just a few short days ago!

It's a costume party!

2009-11-08T23:13:00.005-06:00

Halloween was definitely a trick and not a treat for my and my sister's kids this year, since they were all fighting off H1N1 on Oct. 31. We had been planning a trip to Iowa and to the Cities over that weekend -- Nama in St. Paul really had her heart set on having Sofia and Erik in the Cities to see the street festival that is held nearby each year on Halloween -- but all that had to be skipped. So, to make up for that, we planned a costume party for the family a week later, when everyone was healthy (more or less).

The rule was they everyone, grownups included, had to wear a costume. So, we had in the room:

a giraffe,
a frog,
a ladybug,
a butterfly,
a witch,
a genie,
a Jordanian woman,
a union suit man,
a storybook princess,
a hatted guy,
a cleaning lady, and
an old farmer.

Isn't that giraffe cute!

Erik didn't want to wear his costume at first, but pretty soon he really got into being a frog.

We had a fishing pond -- everyone got to fish.

Dad made a big deal of "reeling in" his catch -- looks like he got a big one here! (I think it was a "juice fish.")

The storybook princess and the butterfly enjoy their "juice fish."

Here's that crazy Jordanian woman running the penny toss. (My costume looked better when I had my scarf around my head.)

We had mentioned the day before that we'd have a balloon game, but I was thinking of skipping that game since there seemed to be enough going on. Sofia wouldn't have it! I had no idea how important the balloons were, but to Sofia, it wasn't really a party if we didn't have balloons. And I have to say, they were a big hit! Note to self: Balloons are a bigger deal than you think.

Sofia is just about to had after the balloons in this picture. Erik was pretty happy about the balloons, too, even if he's looking more subdued here.

And a grand time was had by all -- even if the party did go past the butterfly's bedtime!

MOVING IN!

2009-10-26T00:45:00.004-05:00

After a day of detail work Saturday, we started taking stuff over to the new house today! We are pretty excited ... though I have to say we'd be more excited if we were all healthy. Erik has been sick, and I'm fighting the same bug ... could well be H1N1. Erik has been rather miserable, which not only is no fun for him, but it puts a damper on how much we can accomplish ... but little by little we're making a home over there!

Here's the new fridge that we got for such a deal! It's a little short, now that we have it in the space -- we could have gotten a taller one. But the space is adequate. We flipped the handles over to the other side this evening.

After we got it into place, we noticed that the doorway to the addition (which is remaining a workspace for some months yet -- we've got a gate to go there so Erik doesn't get into Dave's tools) is more like a hallway. Dave pointed out that as we start to bring stuff into the house we'll realize just how small it really is.

I cleaned the big windows the other day ... it's nicer to admire the view from them now. Though it does remind me that we'll need to figure out window dressing at some point.

We put up the IKEA shelf in the kids room today! A place to store toys and more. I like that the desk part can grow with the kids, since all the shelves are adjustable.

We're using the futon as a couch for the near future. Dave stopped for a little while this evening to admire all the results of all his hard work!

Oh, there's still lots to do. More trimwork, doors, closet organizers, and a whole lot of general organizing ... I'm not sure exactly when we'll start sleeping over there -- probably not till after our trip to Iowa and the Cities this coming weekend. It's nice to be able to work after the kids go to bed, and I'm not sure how we'd do that when the kids are sleeping over there, especially considering there is no door on their room (that's also on the to-do list).

It's just awfully nice to have a LIVING space over there! The kids had a good time for a few hours this afternoon playing with the few toys we've now moved across the yard. (Moving the little chairs around the floor was the most popular -- makes us realize how foolish we were to be proud of protecting the floors so well while we were working in there.) I'm looking forward to having our stove and dishwasher, both of which we pick up this week.

... I heard the geese honking for the first time this fall as I was walking between the old house and the new one. We're not the only ones on the move!

Maybe we can move in this weekend!

2009-10-21T13:40:00.004-05:00

I helped at a pancake breakfast last Saturday morning, and told people excitedly that we were going to move in last weekend! We just had a couple little things to finish before we got to moving.

Well, those couple little things still aren't quite finished, so the big "move-in weekend" fizzled. But this is all for the best, really -- we're now getting things done that would be a real pain to try to do once we're already living there.

We need to have the baseboard heaters installed in our bedrooms before we move in, and Dave was working on that and figured out that it would work better to have the wire come in from the bottom than from the back, so we had to cut a slit and then do some drywall repair. It's ready for painting now, once I get some touch up paint.

We're also still waiting for one heater -- Mertz ordered it and send us one with the wrong voltage. Here's hoping the new one arrives this week!

In the meantime, Dave started working on trim -- the particle board in the beams is now hidden on the living room side! Looks much better, I think.

It's not perfectly fitted (it was tough to get the beams trimmed exactly underneath), but I'm not going to stress about it -- it adds to the rustic look. We still have to do this trim on the kitchen side -- I'll need to stain it and varnish it, too. Then perhaps we'll be ready to move in!

Dave also gave in and put up my ridiculous chair rail. Looks lovely! (Even if it did take a whole evening.)

The gate for around the stove arrived -- it's quite nice, I think. Still need to attach it in some way.

Menard's took back the dishwasher, but returning it took a solid 45 minutes. (Very glad I decided to do it without the kids along! That would have been horribly stressful.) The replacement dishwasher should arrive Oct. 28.

We're going to go buy a refrigerator today! I went shopping at Sears and found one that was still in perfect condition but had been returned, so it was $300 cheaper than it had been. And I've got some gift certificates from Sears (I got them points from our credit card), so we're going to buy a refrigerator for $300! I'm pretty excited about that.

Blue, in case you are wondering, is absolutely fine. No sadder, no wiser -- she's still happily chasing cars. But she is a little slower (she walks with a bit of a hitch), so most of the time she doesn't get to the road before the cars have passed by. And I think she's keeping her distance a bit more in general. But taking off when she hears tires on gravel is a pretty strong instinct, I guess!

Gotta run -- it's Sofia's dance class day!

Blue's progress

2009-10-14T00:09:00.006-05:00

I know some folks are wondering, so I thought I'd update you on Blue: She's doing much better, all things considered. She spends most of her time in the porch, but she gets up on her own to go outside with Dave. And she's been eating quite well (especially since Dave is feeding her pork hearts and liver -- I think she's eaten more meat than we have lately). Dave does wrap her up on a blanket at night (we call her the Bluedog Burrito when she's all snuggled up), and we always laugh when we see her in the pink blanket, since she is just not a pink-blanket kind of dog. (She has gender identity issues, but we try not to hold it against her.) She is much more subdued -- probably still in a fair amount of pain -- and she walks with a hitch in her step now, looking a little like a cantering horse. But she is a dog who got hit by a truck and lived to tell the tale! (And wag the tail ...)

... House issues were frustrating this evening. Dave went to install the dishwasher, and it was damaged. Looks like it was dropped upside down at some point, which we definitely did not do in transporting it to the farm. It's dented enough that it's tough to open the door, and I'm sure the seals would leak if we tried to run it. I'm taking it back to Menard's tomorrow -- hopefully we won't have trouble returning it, though it has been more than 30 days.

It's frustrating to have such a setback when we're so close to moving in! We need to have the end of the counter supported in some way so we don't accidentally damage it -- Dave's thinking of putting on the end support now, even though it would be easier to get the dishwasher in without it in place, just so we don't have to keep reminding ourselves not to lean on the counter.

... My pre-move-in to-do list is getting quite short -- just a few more beams to varnish, some trim to paint, and then I'll be down to cleaning! Which will take a while -- there's sawdust everywhere. But I think we'll still be able to start moving in this weekend!

White railings, a quirky window -- and snow

2009-10-09T17:57:00.005-05:00

We had been planning a trip to visit the Iowa folks over the long weekend, but we've had to call it off. One reason is the weather -- today's weather might not be pleasant once we head south from here, as it's snow here (yes, snow, in October! not unprecedented in South Dakota -- it's not likely to stay) but rain further south, and central South Dakota is supposed to have quite a bit of accumulation on Monday when we're set to drive back.

But we probably could have tackled that. The other reason is that Blue, one of our dogs, was hit by a pickup truck this evening, and although we're pretty sure she'll pull through, we can't leave her to my parents' care like she is now. She let Dave carry her into the porch, but now she won't let him move her. We don't think anything is broken, but we can't really tell -- we're guessing it's internal bruising, which could be quite serious. Animals are tough, though. I think we'll be able to tell quite a bit by morning.

We knew this day was coming, honestly. She's an incorrigible car chaser -- we never could train her not to do it. When we were here in the summer of 2003, we tried everything we could think of -- including spraying her with pepper spray out the car window. That worked the first time; she quit and went to roll in the grass to try to get the pepper spray off. But before long she was back at it, so we tried it again -- and this time, even though it hit her square in the face, she just closed her eyes and kept on running. Dad eventually rigged up a cart for her to pull, as she couldn't chase cars while pulling the cart. (Of course, then we often found her caught up somewhere with her cart snagged up around a pole or in tall grass. But she's a vocal dog -- it was easy to find her.) This time when we came back to South Dakota we just resigned ourselves to the fact that she was a car chaser, and that someday she would no longer be as fast as she thought she was. Now we hope she's learned her lesson -- though we wish she could have learned it another way.

... The dogs were out by the garden with Dave when the truck went by (the driver did stop and apologize -- Dave told him it was as much our fault as his). Temps will get in the teens tonight, so Dave thought he'd better get out and get our potato crop in. This might take a while -- we had a good potato crop!

... This is what Dave was working on last night -- getting in one of my crazy windows, this one between the kids' room and the living room. This is one of the old granary windows. I think it looks darn cute in that wall! ... I do have to had getting a curtain for that window to the to-do list. I got it primed this morning -- hopefully I can get out and get it painted this evening.

... And here is the piece de resistance! I've been working on this staircase every evening this week. It's been sanded, stained, primed, painted (and scraped, sanded and stained again where the paint dripped) and varnished. It's still not completely done, as there is a little bit of trim missing (where the steps and the back wall meet), but I have to say I am pretty pleased with how it's turned out. (Thanks, Walt, for encouraging me to get the white painting done now!)

Wow. The house suddenly looks high-class!

2009-10-05T15:45:00.004-05:00

The tiling crew made swift progress this morning -- they were done by the time I got back with the kids at 1:30. I walked into the house and just thought, Wow! That tile makes quite an impression!

I have to say I can't quite believe it all came together as well as it did.

You may notice in the corners of the photos that I started painting the spindles on the staircase! And that makes an amazing difference, too. I'm glad I got all the support from you commenters to do this now and not put it off!

One thing that does stand out now are the posts -- getting going on the faceboard just moved up on the priority list. (I'll try to be patient, Dave.)

Pleasant time in the pumpkin patch

2009-10-05T15:17:00.004-05:00

We had a family outing to the pumpkin patch event in Aberdeen on Sunday -- such a very nice event, great fun for the kids and completely free (though donations are welcome, of course). I tried for some lovely pictures of the kids, and I think I got at least one worth framing:

It's still not perfect, but it's tough to compose an ideal picture with two young children. And they're cute enough that it makes up for some lack of compositional perfection!

Sofia had fun decorating her pumpkin. It was a project that required a lot of concentration quite a bit of time to complete -- hmm, I didn't take a picture of the finished pumpkin. Have to get that later. (I had to blur the background because the people walking by ruined the photo otherwise, and this photo had the best smile.)

Erik didn't really warm up to the event until we were almost ready to leave -- we interrupted his nap when we got there. But he had fun with the pumpkins for a little while, anyway.

The little lawn tractor-led train was popular with the kids. That's cousin Eliana in the rear, Sofia next, and cousins Viena and Amara next.

Sofi had to give a big smile to Eliana!

And here's the youngest cousin, Briella. What a little pixie!

Done! Er, wait. Not done.

2009-10-03T12:54:00.004-05:00

I stayed up late, working on the staircase, finished at 1:30 a.m., stepped back to look at the effect of my hard work ... and didn't like it.

It matches the old wood fairly closely, but the overall effect is too dark, especially with the dark tile. It changes the feel of the whole room, which had been more light and airy before I stained the stairs. It felt like a sullen stranger had moved into our dining room.

So I started thinking about how I could fix it. This stain color had not been my first choice ... I came to it through a series of events that included grabbing a gallon of stain while trying to keep track of two rampaging children in Menard's (never a good way to make decisions). My original vision had been to have a dark railing and white spindles -- I'd seen something like this in one of the Sarah Susanka Not So Big House books. With that in mind, I started playing with my photo in Photoshop and came up with this:

And I like that effect much better! It involves a good deal of detail painting -- first primer, then paint -- but I think it will be worth it. I'll just use the high-gloss trim paint I have for elsewhere in the house. I haven't varnished it yet, thank goodness, or this change would involve sanding the whole works again.

Dave wants to wait on this project till next summer, but I'd like to have it done before the Tour of Homes in December ... the paint isn't that stinky. I can even do it after we've moved in, if it's at all warm enough to have the windows open.

Gotta love Photoshop!

Yay for tile!

2009-10-02T15:33:00.002-05:00

The tile is starting to go up! Jason (of Cox Flooring) came by himself on Thursday to cut and lay the cement board, then the crew came this morning to get started on tiling the wall behind the stove. It looks really nice, I think! It complements the stove well. They'll be back to work on the floor Monday and Tuesday and should finish up Wednesday.

And you remember we said we'd MOVE IN when the tiling was finished?! Well, we'll see if we can move in exactly when the tiling is done. I need to have all the "stinky work" done before we move in -- staining and varnishing for sure, and the more painting of trim that's done the better. And then we need to clean everything -- the windows and really almost every surface are filthy from drywall and sanding dust. And THEN perhaps we can start moving!

I finished sanding the railing last night, working into the wee hours since I knew I wouldn't be able to work this morning while the tiling crew was here. Then I started staining.

I welcome comments on the color -- it matches the old wood fairly well colorwise, but it's got a different tone. The old wood has a warmer tone, a little bit of reddish color to it. I'm going to experiment with the oil-based polyurethane -- it "adds a warm golden glow," according to the label, which might be just the thing to get the new wood to look more like the old. And if I don't get it to match, I'm not going to stress about it. It'll be just another aspect of our "hand-crafted" look!

Here's the promised photo of the trim in the kids' room! I think we did the right thing going with painted trim -- there's a lovely contrast between the old wood beams up high and the glossy new look of the painted trim.

I know there's supposed to be a chair rail piece of trim where the different colors of paint meet, but I'm not sure if I'm going to put any up. I even bought a piece for that, but I'm not sure how to do the transitions -- it would meet other trim in odd places on two of the room's windows. Dave also says that if he hits a wire nailing in a non-necessary piece of trim ... well, he left the threat open, but I'm sure it would be bad. That's why we took pictures of where all the wiring is, right? ... We did do that, didn't we? Hmm. I'll have to check on that.

... Back out to work again for me tonight! I'll work on finishing those stairs and painting some baseboard trim. That's moved up on the priority list, since we're contemplating getting some of the baseboard heaters installed this weekend and it's easier to put the baseboards up first. We need to do that because the tile will need some heat in order to set up correctly. The backup plan is to set up our space heaters out there for a few days, so I guess we don't need to panic about it.

Move-in day is quickly approaching!

So ... you like squash?

2009-09-28T23:24:00.004-05:00

There's a frost warning here tonight, so we did a quick run through the garden to see what we could save. We started with the wheelbarrow; when that was overflowing and we hadn't even gotten out of one squash patch, Dave went to get the truck. It's been a good squash year! (On the to-do list: researching how to store squash through the winter. And finding friends who like squash.) On the downside, our tomatoes got a blight, so there were far fewer tomatoes to process than there usually would be. Actually, this year, I'm going to count that as being on the "upside," since we don't have time or patience for canning with the house taking all of our focus.

... Sofia and I painted the one wall of stripes we were planning in her and Erik's room. It's quite busy, but I think for one wall it's OK. I'm not sure if we quite achieved the effect of the Finnish national costume dress we were aiming for, but it looks awfully Scandinavian to me!

... Sofia helped Dave get the baseboards for her room into place. They are all finished now, as are the windowsills, but I didn't get out to get a picture of them yet. I also varnished the wall in the living room, and the stairs. Now the railings await! I've started sanding them. It's not much fun, I have to say. But I'm reminding myself that I only have to do this once, and then it's done! Then I can move on to staining, then varnishing. And then I can stop thinking about the stairs for a while.

Maybe by then the tiling will be done! The tiling crew is supposed to be here mid-week, which hopefully means Wednesday or after, since there's still a fair amount of lumber piled up where they need to put the tile.

Dave's been working on the front steps, which is what the lumber piled in the dining room is for. He worked until it was nearly dark, then he put this crazy headlamp contraption he bought the other day and continued working into the night.

It apparently worked, this headlight of his, since at 11 p.m., this is what we had:

It's quite nice, I think! After much discussion, I think the stair heights are just right -- 6 inches high, with steps 11.25 inches deep. We wanted to make the height low so that people who don't walk so well anymore can make it up the stairs with as little trouble as possible. The railing still needs doing -- we'll see if the rain in the forecast holds off long enough for Dave to finish that. (And for me to prime and paint the whole works.)

When I went out to take these last photos, the coyotes were going nuts out there, and of course the dogs were, too. Dave said he was working under the steps when they started up, and his first reflex was to grab the hammer. They were close -- my guess is just beyond the slough. Not sure what set them off -- just howling to hear the echoes in the cold still night, perhaps?

We have a shiny floor!

2009-09-20T18:45:00.008-05:00

It's done! It can be most accurately called "rustic" -- "distressed" is another good word for it. But hey, that's all the rage now, so I guess we're up with the trends! There are some things I really like about the new floor, like the way the nail holes and other old blemishes turned dark. But I don't really like the way the knotholes turned out. The first kind of wood filler I tried didn't take a stain very well, and it was also hard to sand. The second kind of wood filler I tried worked a lot better -- it took a stain very well. But by then I had already gotten the hard-to-sand wood filler all over. Oh, well. It all adds to the trendy rustic look, right?

This took four coats, and getting it done with the right timing was a little bit tricky. You had to wait at least four hours in between coats, but no more than 12 hours. If you waited more than 12 hours you had to sand the whole works again before you could put down another coat. So I did one coat Friday night, one coat first thing Saturday morning, and another coat Saturday after lunch. Then we went to Menard's to get another gallon of polyurethane so I could put on one more coat Saturday night. That was a lot of bending over! My legs and back are sore. But the floor looks good!

So now it's on to the next project ...

... the stairs. This is also going to take a lot of work. I think I have decided to stain the whole works -- except for the treads and risers, which we'll just protect with polyurethane -- and that means there's a lot of sanding and wood filling to do.

... The trim around this door was Walt's last project before he left. It looks great -- now we just have to decide how to finish it. There will be both varnished and painted trim surfaces in the house, so it really doesn't matter which we do -- we just have to decide.

... My dish-drying shelves arrived from Finland! Pretty speedy delivery, I'd say -- took just nine days. They are a few inches too long -- Mom knew this when she bought them, but it was either too long or too short, and she figured Dave could cut them, which he can. But putting them up is a lower priority at this point. We can do that after we move in. And the plan is to do some cooking over at the old house for a while anyway, while we wait to buy a refrigerator and stove.

Check out all the crazy stamps! It cost Mom €48 to send the package, and I think they added a stamp for every euro. Some are shaped like teardrops. (Click on the photo to see a bigger image.)

... Dave built the little shelf that will go in a wall in the bathroom. It's fine, though Dave says not to put a level on the top shelf. (It's tricky to get much of anything perfectly level in this not-square house.) It's primed so far. I think I'll paint it blue like the rest of the wall.

... Here is a view in the freezer! That's mostly corn you see -- with some zucchini and shredded cheese mixed in. Were talking about doing an apple processing date tomorrow, so it might fill up fast.

... We celebrated Savo Church's 125th anniversary today. There was a good crowd at church, and it was good to see a lot of old faces. I learned some things I didn't know before -- like that the cross in the front of the church was made by one of the members in the 1960s. I also found I missed a number of the people who were no longer there -- my uncle Arnold especially. One of the former pastors mentioned him -- he said he'd been remarking that he'd heard that there's more thinking about God in hospitals per square foot than anywhere else, and he'd asked Arnold if he thought that was true. "Well," Arnold said, "I think more about God in the cab of my tractor than I do anywhere else." I teared up at that. (Arnold probably did too when he said it -- he was like that, especially as he got older, tearing up every now and then.)

Mari and I sang for the program -- we cheated a little and sang two songs we know awfully well and didn't really have to practice. In fact, we'd sung one of them for the 120th celebration five years ago, which we didn't remember until I opened up my hymnal from home and saw the program from the 120th in it, and the page for the hymn marked! Well, it was a time for celebrating old favorites, so I guess it was appropriate.

... One final note: Mari did some modeling for me for Betty's Loft (one of the three Etsy shops I run -- Betty is one of my Mom's friends), and they turned out really well! Betty was very pleased. Check out all the pics here!

We have running water!

2009-09-14T22:53:00.005-05:00

We still don't have one of those new-fangled telephones in the house, but by golly, we've now got running water -- two sinks, a shower, and a toilet! Hey, especially with a toilet, what more do you really need?!

Well, toilet paper, for one thing, I found out as I went to try out our new seat. (I made do -- you don't need to know the details.) So I stopped on the way home from picking up the kids and bought a pack of toilet paper. Sofia brought it out to the new house with me after lunch -- we were there perhaps 20 minutes, and she had to use the new potty twice! We're all pretty excited about plumbing, apparently.

Here's the kitchen sink, with the dark faucet I was so excited about. The plumber didn't put it exactly where I'd envisioned it (he left off the bottom plate), but after looking at it for a while, I like it as it is. It's simpler this way.

We got all the hardware for the cabinets put on and the shelves put in a couple evenings ago. All that's missing is the microwave shelf, the shorter empty spot to the right, and the door above the sink, which was damaged when we got it, so we'll have to get a replacement.

Here's the bathroom sink ... grabbed very quickly at the end of a cranky trip to Menard's. Good thing I like it!

... I was up filling knotholes with wood filler this evening. I don't really like the way it looks -- the filler is lighter than the rest of the wood, and it's distracting when you look at it. But I haven't tried putting the wood glue-sawdust mix over the top of the holes -- that might help. Even just staining the filled spots darker would help, as then they wouldn't be so noticeable. That's my next job.

... Erik has figured out how to pick apples from the tree, and (sort of) eat them. (Dave sliced that apple for him after the picture.)

... We had a family corn processing day on Saturday -- two wheelbarrows full are now in baggies in the freezer! That's 50 quarts. It's a lot of work, but it's actually a lot of fun to work with the family on that kind of a project. (It's a good thing I feel that way, since we've got an apple processing day coming up!)

... The swallows have been congregating here for some weeks now, but a few days ago they had a swallow convention in the front yard. They really filled the electric lines! Looks like barn swallows and tree swallows together. I don't mind their presence! They seem to be swooping after bugs a lot while they're here.

... Well, we've had several signs of fall lately: The leaves on the trees are starting to turn, and the mice are moving in. We've set out one trap, but it's tricky trying to tuck traps in places where Erik won't find them.

At least I haven't noticed any mice over at the new house! Though the wall by the east porch is infested with spiders. Dave doesn't feel at all sorry for me when I complain about the creepy crawlies. "That's it, we're complaining to the Realtor," Dave said. (Ha, ha.)

Ah, well. That's all part of country living. And I still think rural life's positives outweigh the negatives (even if I'm typing this with my feet held up off the floor in case the mouse comes running by).

Thanks, Walt!

2009-09-09T23:55:00.005-05:00

We are so thankful that Walt stayed an extra week (and that Karen gave him permission to do so!), since we are so much farther ahead than we would be otherwise. Check out our progress:

The bathroom vanity is installed, and the sink is purchased, though it's not yet set into place. The plumber should come next Monday to finish that work.

Here's our faux tile (actually vinyl) floor in the bathroom. I like it, faux or no!

Another view of the bathroom floor. The toilet is purchased, though not yet in place.

Check out that kitchen! I'm itching to get out my kitchen things and start stowing them in the cupboards! Of course, there are a few things to finish: Dave still needs to finish putting on knobs and handles, and I need to put all the shelves into place. We also need to get one door replaced -- it was damaged when we took it out of the box. Hopefully IKEA will replace it free of charge.

Walt did a lot of work on this -- much of which wouldn't have been necessary in a new house, but the walls in our house are not square. It's not noticeable normally -- just when you're trying to install cabinets and countertops!

My bothersome drying cupboard shelves are on their way, too! I couldn't find anything like them here (though IKEA in Europe does sell them, but their European cupboards are in different sizes, so they wouldn't fit in our kitchen), so I had my Mom, who is currently in Finland, purchase them for me. She called today and said she shipped them yesterday; shipping cost 48 euros, while the shelves themselves cost 21. They are on their way! That's a relief -- for a while I wasn't sure if we were going to be able to make that plan work.

I didn't get a photo of the finished door frame yet -- that was Walt's last project before he left on Tuesday. As Dave put it, he's the best houseguest ever!

Walt left some pictures, too -- including this one of the kids in the boxes their foam floor came in. They loved to climb into the boxes -- "just like cats," Walt said!

We also had fun with the boxes the IKEA flooring came in -- we built a little fort, then a short tunnel.

Sofia wanted her picture taken when I was documenting the progress. Look at how much older she's looking already! My goodness, they do grow up fast!

... So, the plumber comes on Monday. The tile guys should come in the next two weeks. Before then, at some point, we need to finish the floor upstairs -- or at least it would be better if we did, so we don't have to be in the house when we stink it up with chemicals. But we think after the tile's done, we should be able to move in! Trim work will continue, and we won't have all our appliances -- we're waiting on the "cars for clunkers" program for appliances that's set to start later this fall -- but hey, home is sweet even without all the trimmings!

Living room floor!

2009-09-01T21:04:00.005-05:00

Walt was really getting into his work this morning, putting the floor under the stairs, a spot that will be a little cubby hole for the kids. The rest of the living room and Sofia and Erik's room are done!

The living room, in the afternoon light ...

... and Sofi and Erik's room.

Sofia wanted her picture taken. Then she took the camera. What follows is her view of the new house:

I did love finding that series of photos on the camera!

(She also took a picture of my backside, but I made an editorial decision that that didn't need to be viewed by the world.)

Late-night floor work

2009-09-01T10:04:00.002-05:00

The new floor goes down a lot easier with two people working on it, so Dave and Walt worked into the night on it. They finished the living room except for the last row (which is trickier). Walt then finished that this morning. I'll post pics of the finished room soon.

I love the floor -- the only concern I have now is that the place where the lovely old wood of the one wall and the posts meets the lovely fake wood of the new floor looks a little funny. Perhaps a painted baseboard to hide that transition would do the trick.

... Erik has now discovered how to climb on the dining room table. I've hauled him off of it at least three times today.

I can't blog fast enough: Ceiling fans, floor sanding, kitchen cabinets ...

2009-08-31T16:01:00.005-05:00

Walt's been working hard (and the home folks haven't been slacking either), so lots of progress is being made! Somehow I just haven't made it to the computer to keep you all updated.

And I don't have a whole lot of time now, either, but here are some photos of the progress!

Kitchen cabinets are nearly all in place! Just doors, drawers and countertops to go (they aren't yet in place in the photo above.

Here's the faucet that's going to go in!

And, after much drama, we found a sink that will work. Here's a photo from the Swanstone website:

Here's the long-story-short: I designed the kitchen on IKEA's design program. When the 36-inch sink base didn't fit, I pulled it out and put in a 30-inch one -- I saw that IKEA had sinks that looked big enough that fit that base, so I didn't figure it would be too hard to find one to fit.

Well, it was -- since I was looking for a double-basin sink. IKEA had pretty much the only ones, and they were actually 1 1/2 basin size. And I didn't care for them all that much -- not a whole lot of style, and the shape didn't seem to make the best use of space. (Surprisingly, for IKEA.) So I was looking for a white cast-iron sink, since that would best showcase the kind of faucet I wanted, and when it looked like the only white cast-iron sinks that would fit had only three holes at the top, meaning I'd have to give up the spray nozzle, we looked at other options. Walt was with me at Menard's, and we were seriously considering getting a double-basin sink and cutting out some of the side of the sink base to make it work, but in the end, that didn't seem like the best option -- that would take up a lot of the time that Walt is still here, and it would make the silverware drawers narrower than they would be otherwise, and the sink would be slightly off-center. So, we ended up with the white granite sink above, which is white (the better to show off my faucet, which I'd already bought by that point), stylish, and big for a single-basin sink -- it's 9 inches deep, and the arch at the top gives a little more room for big pots. It only has one hole now, but the directions say that additional holes can be cut with a 1 1/4-inch bit. (It's not solid granite -- part quartz, I think.) The only drawback is it's a special order, so we're really hoping it gets here so Walt can help install it!

Here's three days of my life: I sanded the upstairs floors with a belt sander and a palm sander. (A larger sander would have been big to lug up the stairs, and would have involved more work with pounding down nails.) I still need to vacuum and mop it, but the dirty work is done.

This light is a real accomplishment! Dave was having trouble with a circuit, which was not working correctly, and malfunctioning in a way that no one could figure out. Dave eventually did, though -- it was a loose neutral, whatever that means. All I know is, it now means we have functioning lights and outlets in all rooms in the house!

Here's a bad photo of the bathroom floor, all rolled up and in plastic. I researched more environmentally friendly floor options for a wet space and didn't find a compelling option, so vinyl it is. At least it has the advantage of being easy to install -- no glue required.

And the IKEA floor is going in! Walt started work on that today. I was able to get out to help him for about an hour, when Erik was sleeping (Sofia was at daycare, where the kids have started going on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, but Erik is coming down with a cold, so he stayed home).

Erik went straight for the hammer when we went out to look at progress in the afternoon.

The box that the flooring came in was also a good toy.

Here's one of the lovely lights above the dining room. I'm especially pleased with these!

And the ceiling fan is in! It really makes a difference on hot days. Hopefully it will work as well in the winter and keep some of the hot air downstairs! We went with white, thinking it would be cloudlike up there, in the prairie sky above the prairie grass artwork on the walls. In my mind's eye, while in Menard's, I forgot about the black stovepipe. If I'd have thought more about that, I would have gotten a darker fan. Oh, well.

I'm in a quandary about the lighting fixture that should go in that spot above. Should it be big? Diminutive? Hanging? A similar style as the dining room lights? Feel free to give your opinions!

Paint!

2009-08-22T22:23:00.005-05:00

The house is nearly painted! We've only got three little corners to go -- one wall in a bedroom and the downstairs linen closet (both because we ran out of paint) and one wall in the upstairs hallway (because we had so little paint we needed a different kind of roller so we wouldn't run out).

So here, without further ado, are the rooms in their newly painted glory:

Here's the downstairs bedroom, in "Evening Hush" blue, with the stripe of "Heavenly Blue" at the top. It's a little dark, but we'll have white curtains and a white bedspread. It will work.

The east wall in the downstairs bedroom is "Soft Suede."

The living room, dining room and kitchen (which are really all one room) are all in "Soft Suede."

... Well, that is, with the exception of one wall in the kitchen, which is a vibrant "Chinese Porcelain" blue.

This little wall, dividing the kitchen and dining room, is "Soft Suede," which contrasts nicely with the "Heavenly Blue" of the high ceiling and walls.

Here's the view looking up. The color itself is fine, but what I really like is how it's going to look with the artwork that's going to be on the straight walls on either side -- it's silhouettes of prairie plants, in brown wall decals. (I'm still working on the design.)

Here's the west bedroom -- "Bahia Grass," "Soft Suede" and "Queen Anne's Lace." It's going to be the project room for a while, till either Sofi or Erik move up here. The colors aren't all that thrilling for that, but we'll decorate with some red, and I think it will be nice.

There's a little more of that "Chinese Porcelain" color in the upstairs hallway, though you won't see much of it -- we're planning on having bookshelves running most of the length of the hallway.

Here's the Swedish room, also known as the "Tribute to IKEA" room. OK, I love IKEA, but that's not really why I went with these colors -- I had both of these colors left, and I think they look nice together. I like the striping, but if it gets to be a bit too much (if we start feeling like we're in a Swedish jail) I'll continue the blue paint around the bottom third of the wall.

Here's the other wall! It's so bright, no one is going to oversleep in here!

Here's a nice view of the striping from the hallway.

And we must give credit to Walt for all of this getting done as quickly as it did -- he not only knows the tricks for getting the paint to look good, he was willing to clamber up and do the high ceiling. (We decided not to post this picture until we were all done with this, so Karen wouldn't worry.) And he made it seem like it was no big deal. Phew! A lot of worry off our shoulders!

So, what's next? Well, cleaning! I'm really excited to get all the drywall dust up, not only because we can then move on to other projects, but because it means I can put Erik down to walk in the new house sometimes, which he desperately wants to do.

On the immediate horizon are floors and kitchen cabinets.

Please, share comments on paint colors! Even if it's to make bad jokes about the Swedish jail. (That's going to be the guest room for the immediate future, by the way.)

A good time to invest in IKEA

2009-08-18T22:35:00.003-05:00

The title was Dave's idea, and it's pretty appropriate, considering we've sent several paychecks directly to IKEA headquarters in the past two weeks.

First, we we went to the Cities on the first weekend in August to get our IKEA kitchen. I finished my design that morning (IKEA has a slick kitchen design program that took out a lot of the guesswork) and uploaded it to their site. Here's what I came up with!

The one thing to notice here: The sink is not below the window, since I want the sink to be below a Finnish-style drying cupboard. That's one thing we'll still have to work out -- I've got to see if I can find such shelves here, or if I'll have to special order something from Finland. Surely I'll be able to find something that works.

Then we headed to the store, and after a few last-minute decisions (such as countertop color) and a lunch of meatballs, we purchased our kitchen cabinets! With only one small glitch, in that our credit card had been canceled between the lunch of meatballs and the attempt to purchase kitchen cabinets. I called the credit card company, which said that the account had been closed because the number might have been compromised, as reported to the bank by someplace we had used the card. They reopened the account for a few days so we could make our cabinet purchase. Wasn't that some timing, though? That's probably the biggest purchase we've ever put on a credit card, and the card was canceled right before it.

The van was LOADED for our return trip home. And you don't even want to know how five of us crammed into the van for the trip from IKEA to Don and Mary's.

We did some other things besides shop that weekend:

Sofia enjoyed the butterfly garden at the Como Zoo.

And Erik and Sofia both enjoyed Uncle Michael's old Nerf guns.

So that was the first trip to IKEA! But we just can't get enough of the place, so we went back for more -- though the "we" for the second trip changed to my sister and me. We planned a whirlwind trip to the Cities Wednesday through Friday last week. I had found some flooring I liked, and we had discussed Don and Mary bringing flooring to us when we met at the lake over the weekend, but in the end Mari and I decided that it was a now-or-never opportunity to get away before life got complicated by a number of things, including Mari's girls starting school.

Here's the flooring I picked out:It's got an "antique" look. Hopefully it will go well with the old wood we've already got in the new house!

Once again our vehicle was LOADED coming back from IKEA, but this time it was Mari's van. (She also bought a coffee table and a mirror, but for the most part the back was full of flooring.) And once again five people had to squeeze themselves amid IKEA merchandise for the ride from the store to Don and Mary's. And once again I had meatballs for lunch. Can't get enough of a good thing!

... There's much more going on in the house now, but I've got to get some sleep. Hopefully I can get a painting blog post up tomorrow, with photos!

Erik is one year old!

2009-07-30T11:42:00.005-05:00

Erik had a lovely birthday party last Saturday! We spent the day at Wylie Park in Aberdeen (Sofia's idea) and made ice cream and toured Storybook Land. Here are pictures, for the family's pleasure!

Erik and the Rice Krispie creation that Gram sent from Iowa.

Making ice cream.

I think nearly every gift that Erik received had wheels! Well, he got a few books, too. And he knew just what to do with them -- push them across the floor and go "Brrr..."

And of course he got a tractor!

He's happy to walk holding onto someone's hands! And he's now taken a total of about five steps (on three different occasions), but he's yet to really take off. Any day now, though!

JULY 19 UPDATE: Painting! and more!

2009-07-19T22:41:00.003-05:00

I'll admit this right up front: I'm getting impatient.

I don't so much mind during the times when either Dave or I is working out there, but during the times when Dave is at work and I don't have child care, I can just hear the unproductive seconds ticking by. The feeling is worse now that some of the rooms are starting to look habitable, I think. I'd really like to speed things up now that we're nearing completion! (Or we can at least see it from here. Maybe "nearing" is too optimistic.)

But we've had some dramatic progress in the last few weeks! The addition is painted, and the electrical finish work is all done in that room.

I tried to decide what color would be best for a laundry room, which is also the first room the family will enter most days, and went with green (or "Bahia Grass," as the paint chip says). It seems calming. (This picture was taken before Dave finished the outlet behind the chair, but you get the idea.)

So all that's left for that room is the trim and the floor. What I'd like for trim in that room is some barn wood—it would tie the room together, since the one wall we are leaving as is, with the old wall of the granary showing. We'll see if we can find something that works.

Sofia and Erik's room is also painted, off-white and yellow ("Queen Anne's Lace" and "Yukon Gold"). Mari (my sister, that is) came over on Thursday, having handed off three of her girls to the other grandma so she'd have time to help me paint. When we were finished, we held up the curtains that Mary (my mother-in-law) had made, with the mushrooms and gnomes on them. The effect is just darling! But I didn't get a photo then, so I don't have one to post. You can see the colors in the photo below, though.

This is what Dave accomplished on Saturday! We had enough of this old wood (given to us by a friend of the family, Eve) to cover one small wall. We were a little worried that we'd run short, but Dave selected pieces very carefully and had just enough. It looks very nice, I think! I'll have to think a little about how to finish it, though—how it would best harmonize with the rest of the wood in the house.

Sofia really wanted to help when Dave was making that wall, so she pounded a few nails.

The window that goes in that hole in the wall is also painted and ready to go! Well, ready to go once we figure out what hardware to put on it, as we want it to be able to be opened. The yellow side will face into Sofia and Erik's room; the side that faces the living room is off-white.

... Today, Dave did the sanding in the bathroom, then I touched it up with the drywall sponge (with Sofi's help—not sure that she exactly understood what we were trying to do, but she had a good time helping). Dave got another coat of mudding done in our bedroom in the afternoon, and then we switched places after supper and I got the bathroom primed. Priming always shows the imperfections in our mudding/sanding work, so I might go out and touch up a few places in the morning before I paint tomorrow.

So things are shaping up!

... We are in the height of berry season! The currant bushes are loaded. We've been able to put a number of containers into the freezer, and we've eaten some fresh as well.

Sofia is an eager berry picker, and lasts quite a while at it, but her pickings are generally pretty meager. Eating while she picks, perhaps!

No "perhaps" about it for this one! He downs every berry he can get his hands on.

JULY 6 UPDATE: Gotta love acceleration

2009-07-06T19:04:00.006-05:00

We had a very productive holiday weekend! Don and Mary were here Friday through Sunday, so we got a fair amount of done while Nama and Grandpa took turns entertaining the children. Don and Dave also framed in the pantry door so that area could be drywalled, and Don sanded the granary window that will go in the wall between the living room and Sofi and Erik's room. (Painting that is next on my to-do list.) And then Doug, Mari and their whole crew came on Sunday, and while we girls (and Erik) had fun in the wading pool, Doug and Dave put in a hard afternoon's work in the new house.

We are getting really close to being able to paint! In some rooms, anyway. I mudded in the bathroom, and did touch-up work in the addition and Sofi and Erik's room. Doug finished what I had left in the bathroom, worked in the dining room, did some work in our bedroom, did some of the mudding in the kitchen, and then got to work sanding in the addition.

After seeing how fast he worked, I thought to myself, why didn't we get Doug to help us sooner?! Dave and I are dedicated, but (we both admit it) slow on this work. Doug had done this taping and texturing work for a couple months last year between jobs, and he's definitely got a knack for it. But then I remembered why we didn't ask them sooner -- they were finishing their own basement project, which needed to be done before baby Brie arrived in May. They've been a little busy.

In any case, the addition just needs a bit more sanding, then some vacuuming, I imagine, and we'd be ready to paint! Oh, how exciting.

Dave says yes, he was slow, but he was also learning how to do this while he was 15 feet in the air. True enough.

The little ladies (minus baby Brie, and plus Erik) had fun in the pool while the menfolk were working. I didn't realize how much fun that little puddle of water could be! Or that they could all fit in it with so little fighting.

There was a little splashing.

They treated us to a rendition of "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" (inspired by a sighting of a not-so-itsy-bitsy spider) from their pool stage (they are at the "out came the sun" part). Even Amara worked on playing along!

The girls went out berry picking after supper and found a treasure trove of them! Ah, those strawberries are so fragrant -- it's like filling the kitchen with perfume. The sweet scent of summer!

JULY? Already?

2009-07-02T22:14:00.006-05:00

I'm really getting a case of summer guilt.

What is summer guilt, you ask? It's what I call that nagging, slightly panicky feeling that the glorious days of summer are slipping away, and I'm not appreciating them enough or making good enough use of them. There went another sunset, I noticed, and all I could give it was a quick glance out the kitchen window. The kitchen rugs need washing, a summer job, and it's already July, and when are we going to do it? And the weeds in the garden! I need several days just for that! (Panicky breathing here.)

OK, I'm calmer now.

This was one big difference I noticed when we were living in North Carolina -- I didn't see anyone having summer guilt there. (Or guilt of any kind, really. Perhaps this is a Midwestern, Scandinavian thing.) The whole pace of life seemed slower, and I think it had to do with the seasons. The summer was long, and a person was eased into summer with glorious days in the spring, and into winter with beautifully crisp days in the fall. There was plenty of time to tend to the garden (though the soil was poor, so there wasn't as much of a harvest), and take a walk in the woods or sit on the porch swing. Here, summer is short, and much of the year's recreation and work has to be crammed into just a few weeks. It's not a choice between work and play, like the tale of the ant and the grasshopper -- in these northern climates, we have to fiddle while we work, and work while we fiddle!

So all this was leading up to my excuse for not blogging a whole lot recently: We've been working and playing hard here lately!

... Finn Fest was last weekend, and I'd say in general it went quite well. I was busy before and during the festivities, as were most of the committee members. My biggest impression, as I watched how everything went, was that there needs to be more of us next year! The whole event would come off better if we in the community could have focused more on fewer tasks.

I haven't had a full report yet, but I'd say we had double the attendance of last year. I think in general attendees had a good time, from the comments that came back to me, anyway.

... "Miss" Finn 2009, a.k.a. our kind, helpful and knowledgeable neighbor Dale Groop, takes a bow as he receives his plate of Finn bread. Eight brave men participated in the event. I didn't see much of it, as Erik decided he wanted to explore the lunchroom more than watch the show.

Mari and I did sing the Finnish national anthem before Friday evening's program started. You wouldn't think that was such a big deal, but it took a fair amount of coordinating to get two moms free for two minutes!

... I wasn't sure if it was quite fair, since I had explained the rules of the boot toss, but the other ladies said it was OK if I took a turn, too. So there I am, with the boot in the air. Does my shot putting experience show? Well, I had a few good tosses, but I stepped over the line, so they didn't count. I should have practiced up before I started!

... All of the wife-carriers chose upside-down positions this year. The team on the left won (but not the wife's weight in beer, as would be traditional in the contest in Finland -- they got a coupon for a six-pack).

... The program on Sunday went well, in spite of some lack of organization on our part in putting it together. Hearing old-time music and old stories was appreciated by the crowd. And people seemed to really enjoy the kiisseli (Finnish berry fruit dessert) that I brought. And I had plenty left over for our family and Mari's!

... So we have had a chance to get outside a bit in the past few days. Erik's really taken to standing without holding on to anything (though in this picture he does have one hand on the stroller -- I couldn't catch him with his hands free). He's not feeling adventurous enough to take steps yet, though!

Erik's still not too sure if he likes the swing, but Sofi making faces at him helped for a while.

... Oh, and the house! Well, I've had child care help from two junior high girls for a month now, and since Finn Fest is over, I've finally gotten out to the house to do some more mudding and taping. It's coming along ... but boy, is this a tedious job. And I'm not very fast at it, which makes it even worse. Progress is progress, I guess, even if it is at a snail's pace.

... I just love this view! It really looks like it's our little house on the prairie from here.

Dave has been busy lately putting metal corners on all the drywall edges around windows. We decided to do drywall around the windows now, since that's faster and easier, and maybe later we can add wood trim if we like.

... We bought paint yesterday! That was exciting. Even if it was a little early. I still need to finish one more coat of mud in the addition, and then sand it, but then I think we can paint that room!

I'm also going to work on my interior windows this weekend. They need scraping, sanding and painting.

... We've got a new goal in mind: All the drywall work and painting DONE in July. Walt will be back in August, and we want to have all the grunt work out of the way so he can work his craftsmanship on things like our built-in drawers and shelves. I think we can do it, though there's a lot to be done ... two July days are already gone!

Uh-oh ... I think that summer guilt is creeping back again.

Storm photos

2009-06-22T22:45:00.003-05:00

I'm a little late posting, since the storm was last week already, but I thought you all might be interested in the freaky clouds that passed over our house:

Here's the front rolling in.

These wispy clouds were roiling constantly as they came over the trees. (That's the one drawback to having a good windbreak -- it's tough to see the storm coming until it's right on you.)

See that spot in the middle? That was rotating. Some people a mile away saw a funnel form and drop down from the cloud briefly, but it didn't touch down.

The contrast in color in the clouds was quite dramatic.

I went back in after a few minutes, as did Dave -- then he ran out to the barn for something. He said the really bad-looking clouds had already passed, but they still look a little rough in this photo, which I took out the kitchen window.

... And after all that, it wasn't much of a storm. We got 0.4 inches of rain, a little bit of strong winds. Just an ordinary thunderstorm!

JUNE 14 UPDATE: Ah, summer

2009-06-14T23:18:00.004-05:00

I just love barefoot weather! I used to spend as much of the summer as possible without shoes -- so much so that I could cross the gravel driveway without breaking my stride by July or August. I'm not quite that good anymore, but I still revel in being able to kick off my shoes whenever I feel like it.

... Walt left last Tuesday, after significantly speeding up our progress. There were just a few odds and ends of drywalling left to do then, and Dave's been working steadily since then, so that the "ends" are pretty much finished, with just a few "odds" to go. That does include the drywalling around the windows, though, which will take a bit of time. All in all, we all feel a little bit more optimistic around here now that we've had Walt back to lend a hand and give advice. Thanks, Walt!

... Here the workmen are, standing in the newly drywalled kitchen.

... We did notice one little goof as we looked over the newly drywalled linen closet area -- the light that was supposed to be in the little square walkway area between the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom doors and the linen closet is instead directly over the linen closet. Since the closet is going to have shelves in it, the light isn't going to do much good where it is, except for giving all sorts of light to the top shelf! (The junction box for the fixture is in the center of the picture -- the light to the right is just a work light.) But Walt figured out a way to get this to work anyway -- we'll just have surface wiring out to where the light is supposed to be. I'm sure no one will notice.

... The kids and I got out to enjoy the weather this afternoon. Just beautiful -- not too hot, and just breezy enough to keep the bugs away. Erik enjoyed sitting in the grass ...

... and doing a little tasting. I was telling him, "Hey, Erik, look at the camera!" and he looked up and popped the grass he was holding right in his mouth. The kid will put anything in his mouth! We really do have to watch that. He's a totally different sort of child than Sofi in that respect. She rarely did that.

What a nice smile! (And see, all concerned relatives out there, I did get him into the shade after the above pictures were taken. Though I'm sure some of you are still concerned because he didn't have a hat. In life, some risks must be taken.)

Sofia had her own projects while we were out and about, including stunt jumping. (We tried many times till I got a good photo!)

Then we went to the new house, where she helped Daddy a bit.

She went out after supper and helped a bit more -- she handed him what he needed, and working together they got a light fixture installed. Sofia came running to the house, telling me I had to go see what they'd done! It was pretty impressive to flip the switch and get a pleasant glow in the bathroom. Let there be light!

JUNE 5 UPDATE: Walt's back! Now we're cookin'

2009-06-05T23:54:00.005-05:00

Once again I've lagged in updating -- so much so that these pictures are going to look awfully impressive! At least the progress in them is -- the pictures themselves are not so great, since much of the progress itself was hidden by extra sheets of drywall. But without further ado, here's some of what Walt and Dave have accomplished this week, since Walt decided to spend a working vacation in South Dakota:

The little wall between the kitchen and dining room is drywalled in. (It's purpose is to keep you from seeing the mess on the stove when you sit down to eat.)

The little wall from another angle.

Kitchen's nearly done!

They finished up this later Thursday afternoon.

They also finished drywalling the back bedroom, and Walt has also done quite a bit of mudding.

Gary Peterson was here and started mudding the high part of the dining room, the part that requires scaffolding. And our water heater is now installed, and we've checked to make sure the plumbing works before it was covered with drywall.

Things are really starting to hum out there! I really love it when Walt visits -- I start to believe we might be able to move in eventually. And the best news: He'll be back in August to help with finish carpentry! Maybe he can even help us move in! Who knows! Optimism rules when the house is progressing like it is.

A couple photos just to up the cuteness factor:

Erik insists on feeding himself, which sometimes leads to food in his hair. Removing said food sometimes results in a bouffant.

Sofia wanted her picture taken, too. And that smile was well done!

MAY 29 UPDATE: A little at a time

2009-05-29T11:25:00.004-05:00

I was able to get out to work a little bit more on the house yesterday — I got in a couple of hours of taping and mudding. I wouldn't have been able to do this without the help of a local girl I hired to help watch the kids. She seems to be having a good time with them. And I am really appreciating the help. I don't know why every mother doesn't have a helper like this! It's really saving my sanity to be able to get out and do a little work.

Of course, there's still tons of taping and mudding to do. And there's a lot of drywall yet to hang, too. At least I'm seeing some progress, even if it is snail-speed.

... Sofia, Erik and I went out for a lilac appreciation walk this afternoon. They are in peak bloom! That's later than they have been for a few years -- they were in peak bloom in 2001, for example, right for our wedding, on May 19. This year it was right on for my birthday, May 28. (I feel honored in any case.)

We went out for a birthday supper last night, and we were planning for a round of mini-golf to follow (a birthday tradition -- it's a sport I don't at all mind being bad at) but that was rained out. We'll have to try again some other day. We did enjoy a plate of chocolates from the new restaurant/chocolate shop in town ... wow, were they good! Absolutely divine.

... The latest plague is in full rage: Mosquitoes. Last night as we were driving home, it was as if we were driving through snow, as the headlights lit up the bugs as we drove through a mosquito cloud. Stepping outside in the evening I could hear the high-pitched whine of a million blood-thirsty mosquitoes, buzzing from all sides. I haven't been out enough to get too bit up, and they weren't bad this afternoon when the kids and I were out, as long as we stayed away from the long grass.

We are in the top West Nile Virus county in South Dakota, which is the biggest worry. We didn't worry about such things when I was a kid, when I'd be peppered with mosquito bites all summer long. They looked horrible -- I couldn't help scratching them -- but I didn't worry about getting sick from them! Well, the really bad mosquito time here doesn't last too long. Sometime in June they'll calm down a bit -- though that's when the West Nile cases start showing up.

There is one reason we're all happy when winter comes -- the mosquitoes freeze!

... We are all celebrating: Dave's uncle Walt is coming to help for a few days again! We told Walt he is welcome ANY time. He'll be here on Sunday ... not sure what we'll have him help with. Drywalling and taping and mudding are what we'd be working on otherwise, but we should put his talents to better use. Never fear, we'll come up with something!

Welcome to the world, Briella Melodi!

2009-05-27T23:54:00.005-05:00

I'm a proud aunt again! Briella Melodi was born in the wee hours of May 26. She weighed 6 pounds, 4 ounces -- holding her feels like holding nothing at all. My babies were never that little, and of course they are much bigger now, so putting down Erik and picking up little Brie is quite a difference.

I stayed at my sister's when Mari and Doug went to the hospital, watching all five kids for two nights. It was slightly chaotic at all times, but the only really tough part was when Erik and 22-month-old Amara both needed to go to sleep, and I only had one lap. That was tricky. Finally Amara just gave in, or gave me a break, and settled down without much help from me, since Erik was fussing in my other arm!

... We had been home from our trip to Iowa for less than 24 hours when Mari called and said the baby was on its way. A few pictures from that trip:

Erik is attracted to all things that make noise, whether it's the loud vibration a metal shelf makes at the library (sigh) or his daddy's banjo. He also proved himself a natural on his sister's bongo drums.

Sofia's attention span is getting long enough to sit through a fairly lengthy book. She had several readers on our Iowa trip, including Great Aunt Mary. (Or just Aunt Mary, since we all know she's great and don't need to focus on it.)

... The weather this evening was just glorious! Even a few mosquitoes to swat couldn't ruin the evening. Dave did the real work in the garden, but Erik and Sofia both needed tools as well. Sofia hoed all sorts of dried grass into a pile, and even Erik kept working with that shovel from his perch on the stroller!

MAY 16 UPDATE: May, sweet May

2009-05-16T14:33:00.006-05:00

It's nearly lilac time! This photo was taken at Living History Farms in Iowa a few years ago.

Oh, I do so love this time of year! Not just because it's awash with birthdays (mine, Dave's, Dave's mom's, Dave's grandpa's) and our anniversary, though that it is nice to have so many excuses for cake and company. There are so many things to lift my mood in May -- the weather is nicer, flowers are blooming, we leave coats in the car most of the time, and it's light late into the evening so we have time to take it all in.

Of course, with all these new things to enjoy comes less time to enjoy them, as there is a lot of work to do once the weather warms. The garden cries out for attention, and all sorts of little projects that I could put off without a guilty conscience because the weather was too poor to do them are starting to niggle again. Oh, and the house still isn't finished. There's that.

At least we've been getting some things accomplished lately. Dave's mom, Mary, was here for a week, and I got all sorts of taping and mudding done while I had full-time childcare! Check out my progress:

The utility room ...

... Sofia and Erik's room ...

... the west bedroom upstairs ...

... and the east bedroom upstairs. As well as a few closets and the upstairs hallway. It was so fun to get something accomplished! Thanks, Mary!

But this looks like more than it is, since only the first coat is done on all of this. I got out today to do a second coat in two closets, and I'm prepared to label them ready for sanding, even if the books say three and even four coats are needed. No one is going to examine the closets that closely.

But the rest of the rooms are going to take a lot of work yet before they are ready for painting. And that's of the places where the drywall is hung. The kitchen, bathroom, our bedroom downstairs, and the dining room still need drywall. (Though the dining room hardly counts, since there's not much wall at all in it -- the high part of the room was already finished by the Prairie Builders crew.)

The drywall in the living room is nearly finished, including the insulation in the ceiling, which was a pain -- Dave used what he had left from his floor insulating, meaning it was way too thick and had to be cut down to fit. But I think it will be worth it in keeping peace and harmony in the family when heavy-footed teenagers start living upstairs. We'll also put insulation above the kitchen ceiling, but not in the bathroom ceiling or the ceiling to Sofi and Erik's room, as they are for the most part under closets. Our bedroom ceiling will be under the hallway ... might be a good idea to insulate that, too.

... My tin ceiling idea is getting shot down from all sides, but I am still doggedly hanging on to it for the kitchen ceiling. I just think it would be one of those features that will add an authentic touch and be worth the effort in the long run. I've got a little more negotiating to do, though.

... The breaker box is back in working order! We had an electrician do the work this time. Not fun to have all the work that Dave and Don did go to waste, but now it's done and we don't have to worry about it anymore.

... We got a bike trailer! My friend Sheila's neighbor was getting rid of one, and we benefited from their garage cleaning. We took it out for a spin the other night, and it worked quite well -- Sofia really seemed to enjoy it, and Erik fell asleep. It's not hard to pull, Dave says, except that going into the wind he's got a sail behind him. We've yet to try it on my bike. (Biking weather -- yet another reason to love May!)

MAY 3 UPDATE: Lightning

2009-05-03T18:14:00.006-05:00

So, we've had floods. Blizzards. Now ... a lightning strike. Kinda makes you feel like re-reading Exodus to check the weather report for the summer. (Will the plague of locusts or frogs come first, do you suppose?)

The story: Wednesday night, I was getting Erik to sleep and saw some lightning start out the window. I remembered the computer was plugged in, and I thought about going to unplug it, but I thought I'd let Erik finish nursing first -- the lightning seemed far off yet, and I couldn't hear any thunder.

I took Erik upstairs a few minutes later and heard one rumble of thunder. Uh-oh, I thought, and hurried back down to unplug my computer. I unplugged it, then shut it down (since the battery would last a while), then headed back upstairs to help get Sofi to sleep. I hadn't even sat down when I heard a BOOM and saw a flash -- I gasped, and then all was quiet for a moment, and then Sofi whimpered and started to cry. I stayed with her (Erik slept through the whole thing) while Dave went to assess the damage.

The lights in Sofi's room were still on, but the flash had been the bulb in the hallway burning out. That circuit's fuse had blown, as had another -- the top two in the box. Mom had heard a bit of thunder but hadn't thought to unplug her computer, or the DSL router or wireless router (which were all in a different part of the house from my computer). Her computer and the DSL router were shot -- no flicker of life whatsoever. The surge protector was shot, too -- it's apparently no match for lightning. The TV got some level of charge, and now has a funny-colored line through the top half of the screen.

But that was all in this old farmhouse. The new house was affected, too, though at first we didn't realize it. Dave went out and saw that every circuit that had been on was tripped, but he flipped them back again and they seemed to work OK. But he was working with a flashlight that night. The next day, he went out and checked again. Then he saw the damage to the stovepipe.

Around nearly every screw on the stovepipe is a blackened ring like this one. Some of the screw holes were made bigger, so that the screws are just sitting loose in the holes.

Then he saw the damage to the tile below the stove.

The charge had followed along the metal trim around the base of the tile and blew out at the corner, damaging the tile.

This was all bad enough. We are hopeful that we won't have to replace the stovepipe, but we don't know for sure yet. Hopefully all we'll have to do is get bigger screws to fill the screw holes.

Then, this weekend, we found problems in the wiring.

The yellow wire in this photo had been held in place by those little white staples; the power of the charge yanked it out of those staples and blew out the back of the junction box.

Three junction boxes were damaged, but this was the worst one.

Don came up with a hypothesis that seemed plausible to the rest of us: The electricity came into the house through the wires, through those three junction boxes, then arced over from the last junction box, with its wires exposed ...

... over to the metal scaffolding. You can see how close the scaffolding was to the junction box in the picture below.

You can tell the scaffolding got some current because of the scorch marks on it:

And from the scaffolding, the arc must have jumped over to the chimney, and the metal around the tile. The stove, by the way, has no damage at all, even though it is mostly iron and could have carried a charge, too.

All of this damage is a pain, but it can be fixed. We were pretty sure the damage was contained to those junction boxes, since the next box on that circuit had no damage (the scaffolding, serving as an indoor lightning rod, was between the two). Which is good, since if it had traveled much farther on that circuit, the wires are already covered with drywall.

Unfortunately, Dave and Don hadn't yet taken the cover off the electrical box. What they found was discouraging:

And there were some charred wire pieces that I didn't bother to get a picture of.

We do have insurance on the house already, but we have a $1,000 deductible -- we probably won't hit that figure, unless the fixing the wiring in the box is more expensive than we imagine, or the stovepipe and chimney both have more damage than we can see at this point. (Mom and Dad, with the old farmhouse, are on a different policy, with a $500 deductible, and I don't think we'll hit that figure either.) I do count my blessings that I got my computer unplugged, as that, with all my software on it, as well as all my, Mom's, and Betty's Etsy pictures on it, along with all sorts of other files, would have been thousands of dollars (and hours) lost. (I'm very motivated to find an online storage system now!)

Dave was holding up quite well with all this until he saw that breaker box. Then he decided he'd had enough of the house for the day and headed out to fix fence for a while. The next step was calling an electrician, anyway, and there was no point in hanging more drywall in case the electrictian wanted to check some more wiring.

... So we've been having a discussion about lightning rods. Gary of Prairie Builders said no one puts them on new houses anymore. Dale, our neighbor, stopped by after church and said his farm house was hit by lightning when he was a kid ("Just like a bomb going off," he said) and that house did have lightning rods. He questions their effectiveness.

Online sources are contradictory. Some say they help; others say they don't. The lightning rods on the farmhouse were taken off last summer when the roof was reshingled; I do know that our phones have been knocked out twice in my memory from lightning strikes, even with the lightning rods, though that could have traveled on the lines from some distance, I suppose.

I have half a mind to try to do a freelance article about lightning and call some experts. Then the other half of my mind (which has a voice a lot like Dave's, oddly) tells me we've got enough to do already.

APRIL 26 UPDATE: Thinking about colors and ceilings

2009-04-26T09:05:00.005-05:00

I was gently prodded (ow!) by my sister to update the blog. I've had all sorts of things to think about, but I haven't sat down to get it done. But here I am!

COLORS: My mother-in-law was asking me all sorts of questions about colors when she and Don were here over Easter weekend, meaning I had to actually make some decisions about what colors I want in the house! Well, I had done some thinking before, but I hadn't settled on anything yet. And I'm not quite sure I'm settled on this yet, but for now, here is the inspiration for the color palette for the house:

I want "prairie colors" as color scheme for the house. I had started with wanting colors from Lora Schaunaman's "Savo Summer" watercolor, then after looking at it more closely, I realized those colors are too pastel for me. I checked out this book based on the lovely cover (though it is a very good book otherwise -- I would recommend that high schoolers read this so they understand the land they grew up on).

After trying to pull specific colors from this, however, I am realizing that it might not be exactly what I want. The colors playing off of one another look good, but on their own, they might look like odd blocks of color. Sigh. I guess I'll have to just trek off to the paint store and see if I can find a close color scheme that works.

The plan is to have the high part of the ceiling in some shade that makes you think of the prairie sky -- that's likely blue, but it might not be. Then, over that, as a low border, I was looking into wall decals of prairie plants. I haven't found anything just perfect yet, though this is the closest I've found so far:

CEILINGS: Pretty soon we need to make a decision about what kind of ceilings we want in the living room and kitchen (the rooms on the north side of the house will just have drywall, textured ceilings). I had wanted ceiling tins, and I contacted Jim and Kay Dumire, since I was pretty sure they had ceiling tins. Well, they did, but they have a LOT of work embedded into them -- Jim took them off the ceiling of an old church, and had to remove about 4o nails per 2-foot-by-2-foot tin, while looking up and dodging falling dirt that was behind the tins. So the charge is would be $20 per tin. NOT in our price range, unfortunately.

We've gotten some other suggestions -- my sister suggested beadboard, and another friend suggested getting ceiling tiles that look like tins and painting them with a metal paint, which gives the same ceiling tin effect -- but I have this crazy idea that would recycle at the same time. Keep an open mind and consider ...

... the old tin they took off the granary roof! Dave thinks I'm kinda crazy, and maybe I am, but I think, if we're trying to preserve that "old granary" look, this might be pretty cool.

We'd have to put up a plywood backer, I think, so it wouldn't be much cheaper than drywall. But it would definitely be more interesting.

Mari thinks it might be OK above the kitchen, but that it would look too industrial above the living room. She might be right. We could try it in the kitchen area first and see what we think.

All right, folks, time to vote! What do you think of my tin ceiling idea? Leave a comment!

...Dave's been busy with other things, namely getting the garden ready, but he's also managed to do quite a bit of drywalling. Sofia's room is nearly done. It looks a little funny, actually, with that one corner of the downstairs nearly done and the rest of the downstairs walls' innards bare -- like that corner is a stage set in an old warehouse or something. (Sorry, no photos of that. I'll get some more soon.)

...And I'll leave you with this nice photo of Sofia and Grandpa, taken when Don and Mary were here over Easter. The astonishing thing to note here is that it's taken at least a mile from the house, and Sofia had walked all the way on her own two legs! She was carried a short distance on the way back, but she did most of that on her own, too. She's a good little walker.

... And Sofia is learning how to spell. She's got two words down now (in addition to SOFIA, which she's known for a long time): BABY and STOP. Not because we keep telling baby to stop (though we've been doing that a fair amount too) but because she kept seeing stop signs and asked about them, and because we had a box with the word baby on the table for a while. Most of this is her own instigation. She just likes letters.

We figure she's going to be bored in kindergarten.

APRIL 11 UPDATE: Easter Bunny's at work

2009-04-11T22:58:00.003-05:00

It's going to be some Easter for the kids, I think.

Dave had some summery presents he wanted to get for the kids, and with Sofi's birthday in December and Erik's in late July, there wasn't a good holiday for present-giving except Easter. So Sofia is getting a small bike, and Erik is getting a small slide, in addition to the usual chocolate Easter goodness.

Dave just finished getting the bike adjusted and the slide put together. I wrote up a few riddles for Sofia to figure out as she runs around looking for eggs, which will eventually lead to the bigger presents outside. ... Hmm. I hope we're not setting too big a precedent ... well, if necessary, we can make up some sort of story next year, about the Easter Bunny having a broken leg or something.

... The huge flocks of geese seem to have mostly moved north in the past few days, but flocks of ducks remain. This is in a prairie pothole in one of our fields, less than a half-mile from the farm. The ducks eased away a bit when I walked close, but they didn't take off, apparently judging me as not much of a threat. We did bird ID by photo, and figured out that these are lesser scaups.

This photo especially helped in the ID, since we could see the peaked head. Greater scaups apparently have a rounded head, in addition to being bigger, the guidebook says.

... Dave's parents are here for the weekend. Don and Dave worked on several things in the new house today, including fixing the door (somehow the strike plate was set too far back, so the latch wouldn't stay in place and keep the door closed — a shim behind the strike plate did the trick), adding one ground wire they had missed, and doing some drywalling.

We had quite a discussion about what the move-in date might be. It's really hard to say at this point, as we have to guess at too many factors — how many hours Dave gets to work on the house, for example. But midsummer still seems like a good guess.

... I might have a few more hours to spend on the house, depending on how accomodating Mom is on doing child care: I found out a few days ago that my contract with my online editing job is being ended as of April 15. Basically, I'm being laid off, along with the rest of the copy editing staff. We've been deemed "redundant," and the mangement wants to be more "nimble" so they can post stories without having to wait for us to read them.

It's not fun to hear, especially as the money I brought in kept everything less stressful around here and allowed us to put more money into the house, but we'll survive. And I have a feeling something else will fall into place for me, workwise. I'd like to get my name out to do some more graphic design work, for example.

But first, I'm going to work on my book about my Aunt Lillian. I've taken it as a sign that she has a massive heart attack within a few hours of me finding out that I'm laid off. Really, how much more of a kick in the pants to I need to get going on this project?!

APRIL 10 UPDATE: High-traffic area

2009-04-10T06:51:00.003-05:00

Our farm has definitely become a high-traffic area lately. Hundreds of thousands of geese are traveling on their way north to Canada toward their nesting grounds. They make quite a racket as they travel.

The other day, thousands of geese decided to stop to rest near our artesian pond. They would settle down, then fly up and circle for a bit, seeming to enjoy just flying in the spring sun before they settled back down again.

Taking pictures of geese is harder than it would seem -- or at least it is with my camera. I happened across one good shot, though. (I did doctor the photo in Photoshop, though.)

... The Prairie builders crew has been working in the house again. They've nearly finished all the drywalling. They are going to return to help us with the taping and texturing, but we think they'll wait until it's a little bit warmer. That way they don't have to heat the building while they're working.

... Erik has decided that he wants to feed himself. He won't eat unless he has a spoon in his hand, or something like bread that he can eat himself. He's not very neat yet.

... I ran out and got a nice picture of a sunrise yesterday morning. I didn't even throw a coat over my pajamas! Gotta love spring.

I did this blog entry using my new toy. It's called NaturallySpeaking, and I didn't do any typing at all. I just talking to my cool Bluetooth headset and the words appear on the screen. Of course, it did think that I said peace instead of geese. But its accuracy apparently improves as I use it.

A cool little surprise

2009-04-01T23:20:00.005-05:00

I was helping Sofia write in her bird book this evening (Dave and Sofi bought a little notebook where they can write down all the birds they see each day) when I glanced out the window and told Sofia she'd have to wait a minute, the light was just right for some lovely photos. So I ran down and snapped a few pictures out the door, then carried the camera upstairs, thinking I'd show Sofia what I was so excited about. The angle was better from Sofia's window than it had been from below (the contrast of the dark sky with the yellow corn stubble was what looked so nice), so I snapped a few pics from her window, even though I was taking pictures through the screen, and I doubted they would turn out at all.

This is one of the pics I got from her window:

A surprisingly good picture for one taken through a screen. But then I noticed what was in the upper right corner. Here's a zoomed-in version:

That cloud is a flock of thousands of snow geese. I didn't even see them when I took the picture -- the screen hindered my vision more than it did that camera's, apparently.

I think we'll have to print this out to put in Sofia's bird book, don't you?

I just love a little surprise like that!

APRIL 1 UPDATE: Winter. It's still here.

2009-04-01T22:11:00.003-05:00

I'm not sure how much snow we got here — probably 5 or 6 inches. Enough to be irritating, but it was still possible to drive through it. Just a few miles north, however, they got considerably more. Dave took this photo while he was out working somewhere by Monango, N.D.

We're pretty hardy folk up here, but with the blizzards, then the flooding, then the blizzards, then the flooding, a person's stamina for winter does start to wane about April.

... The kids haven't lost their stamina, though, as you can tell from this photo. Erik made an attempt to climb the stairs today. This is as far as he got. He couldn't figure out how to lift his feet yet. But he's motivated (notice his sister egging him on), so I'm sure it won't be long.

He was so darn proud of himself.

We tried to do some more babyproofing last night, but there's one problem I can't keep ahead of. We've had a ladybug invasion lately. They must have hatched out as soon as it got warm — er, make that not so ridiculously cold. I vacuum them up several times a day, but there always seems to be more. Tonight Erik just about ate one — hand was already in the mouth, but bug was still in the hand. Yech. Though I suppose there are worse things than bug eating, and it does show his hand-eye coordination is improving. Yech all the same.

MARCH 29 UPDATE: Waiting for the blizzard

2009-03-29T17:58:00.005-05:00

We are not thrilled that another blizzard is coming. One would think we'd be in the clear by now, since it's nearly April. Not, apparently, in South Dakota. Winter lasts as long as it wants to here. The warning is for a blizzard to last from 7 a.m. Monday to 7 p.m. Tuesday; 12 to 16 inches of snow possible.

My aunt Lillian is not surprised. She was born in a three-day blizzard on a ranch on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on March 31, 1919. The doctor could now make it to the sod house where she was born; neither could the midwife. Her father delivered her. He said he wasn't too concerned, since he'd delivered many cows and figured it couldn't be that much different! He was 31, but Lillian's mother was only 19; I'm sure she was scared, but there was no helping it. They were alone, and baby Lillian came in the middle of the storm. She said we can all remember that she was born in a three-day blizzard, and another came on her 90th birthday, which will be Tuesday.

At least we've had a lot of progress on the house lately! The Prairie Builders crew has been here again, and they got quite a bit done in the upstairs -- just a bit of detail work to go, and all the sheetrock on the second story will be in place!

This closet off the west bedroom is all finished.

The hall is nearly done ...

... as is the east bedroom.

Sofia was pretty excited about the closet, which I think she was thinking of as a little playroom. Well, we'll see. We'll be living on the lower level for a while anyway -- maybe she can play in that closet for a while.

... The Prairie Builders crew was not here every day this week -- they were dealing with flooding in Frederick for a few days. The Maple River rose to the highest level I've ever seen it. A number of houses were flooded, including Gary Peterson's (who owns Prairie Builders). The water rose so quickly that on the last few trips to move furniture out of Gary's house they were walking through water. This picture was taken after the water went down a ways:

This pic is courtesy Krysti Mikkonen -- more pics of the flooding can be found here. The Johnsons home, in one of the photos, is so badly damaged it will likely be razed. The Petersons will likely be staying in their hunting lodge for many months as they work on repairs. ... Twelve to 16 inches of snow we do NOT need right now.

... Erik has graduated to the big boy tub now! He turned 8 months yesterday, and seemed to grow up a bunch overnight. He's eating crackers like it's nothing now (using his six teeth), and believe it or not, he was working on STANDING this afternoon! He put his hands on Dave's guitar case, and pushed himself half onto his feet. Then we tried to stand him up, and he stood, just holding one of Dave's hands. Wow -- they sure don't stay little for long.

MARCH 22 UPDATE: Snow geese

2009-03-22T14:08:00.003-05:00

One of the photos I took yesterday of snow geese flying overhead turned out, so I thought I'd share it with you.

It's tougher than you'd think to get a decent shot! It takes a long time for the camera to focus, and if you zoom in to where you think the geese should be, you can't find them in the viewfinder until they're gone.

We had thousands of geese stopping by on the artesian pond last night. It was too dark to see them, but oh, could we hear them! They made quite a racket. They were gone by this morning -- Dave and Sofi went out early to look for them, but with no luck.

We had thoughts of going to Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge to see some of the geese stopping by there, but two things stopped us: First, the weather turned icky today -- cold and rainy. Second, we're not even sure we could get there -- the James River is flooding, and the road might be under water.

We no longer have a lakefront home, by the way, though we've still got some muck outside the front door. Dad and Dave's draining project, as well as a couple sunny, breezy days, got rid of the standing water.

MARCH 21 UPDATE: Spring is here!

2009-03-21T14:37:00.005-05:00

It's rare to go outside the last few days and not hear a gaggle of snow geese flying overhead. The yard is a muddy mess in places; I had a whole load of muddy children's laundry to do. We are eating supper when it's light again and our regular family walks have resumed.

Spring must be here!

And I do have quite a bit to blog about.

Check out all the drywall! Prairie Builders were here earlier this week and got all the high ceilings drywalled, as well as a good part of the upstairs.

They work so quickly! It is fun to watch professionals at work. They just carried that sheetrock up the ladders, lined it up, nailed it into place. Done. Then came cutting the place for the light. That took about 30 more seconds.

Mudding will take a good deal longer, though. But they'll help with that, too, at least for the high stuff that requires scaffolding.

... Dave had another project to work on today -- one that involved straddling the roof.

The cone that he's putting the black caulk under is not sitting exactly where it should be; because of the sharp angle of the roof, it is up a little in the back, meaning there's a quarter-inch gap in the front. For the most part this is no problem, but when the wind really starts to blow, it blows snow (or rain) up into that gap, and into the little attic area. Now that there's drywall up, that's a problem. Hopefully this caulking does the trick -- we're supposed to get rain this week.

... This is the project Dad's been working on for the last few months: A new sauna stove! It's made from an old baler. The guys at the junk yard just laughed at Dad when he asked them to get the baler box for him (which, frankly, I thought was a little rude of them). And I did wonder myself if this was more trouble than it was worth. Then I looked into the cost of new sauna stoves: About $700, at least, and then they wouldn't have the connection to the large water tank like this one has. (This is all engineered by my late uncle Arnold, and perhaps Leo and Dad, many years ago.) This all cost about $200.

At the moment, it stinks, though. I'm not sure what it is -- it's a hot metal, chemically smell. Dad's been trying to burn it off today. I don't know that I want to go in the sauna till it smells less.

There's a story behind this picture. Sofia is always eager to go on our walks, but then she tuckers out and just looks miserable walking home. The picture of misery!

... But Dave did cheer her up. She was smiling by the time we got home.

MARCH 16 UPDATE: Draining a wetland

2009-03-16T06:32:00.002-05:00

We didn't know we had lakefront property!

Spring brings many blessings, but I wouldn't count a large puddle in front of our front door as one of them. It's been warm enough for several days now that the large snow piles in the yard are melting, and unfortunately, quite a bit of water is pooling where we don't want it. Hopefully there's no breach in the foundation that we don't know about letting water in to soak the insulation that's under the floor, but Dave says he's not worried — yet. The plastic he put down over the foundation should be keeping any dampness that might be wicking up from getting to that insulation — but, he says, if there was a 3- or 4-inch rain now, we might have a problem.

Bringing in fill dirt is the long-term plan, but in the short term, Dave and Dad tried several other tricks to get it drier over there. On Saturday afternoon, first they dug a few narrow trenches from the puddle to the lower ground behind the house with a maddock and hoe. Water started flowing, but it moved pretty slowly. They tried using a hose-suction trick — Dad explained how it would work, with the water going downhill pulling more water behind it, once they got the suction going — but they didn't get it to work.

On Sunday afternoon, we looked at the problem again. Dave thought about their hose trick and saw that the problem was that they never got enough water in the hose to get the suction flowing, so he took the hose to the sauna, filled it with water and carefully carried it back into place. I lowered one end under water in the puddle, Dave sucked a little on the end of the hose (he didn't get any in his mouth, that I noticed!) and lowered it, and behold, water started to flow! We were pretty proud of ourselves.

Of course, our work looked pretty paltry compared to what Dad had in mind.

No matter how well it's flowing, not too much water flows through a garden hose. Dad got out his sump pump, which I forgot he had, and he and Dave pumped quite a bit of water later on Sunday afternoon. (You can see the water flowing through the hose above.) The lake was much smaller by the time they quit for the evening. It was a nice night, though, and the lake may have grown bigger again by now with new snow melt.

... In between all that wetland draining (which, ironically, Dave says is what he spends most of his day at work telling people they can't do), Dave got quite a bit of drywall work done! The ceiling in the addition is now drywalled, with the help of Dave's new drywal lift.

He won't get much work done today, though, since he's got the annual township tax equalization meeting to go to tonight. I also have a meeting to go to tonight — Frederick Forward's monthly meeting — so we're wondering what to do with the kids. Sofi would have more room to play at Dave's meeting in the church basement, but we'd all eat at my meeting, since we are having a St. Urho's Day celebratory meal before it.

What, you've never heard of St. Urho's Day?! Well, you can be forgiven: Read up on this tongue-in-cheek Minnesota-Finn festival here.

After the blizzard

2009-03-11T17:07:00.004-05:00

We're not sure how much snow we got since it blew around so much, but judging by the height of the drifts, we got quite a bit.

The fence posts peeking up in the background are at least seven feet tall, maybe eight.

Dave made it to work just fine with the pickup, though. And after today's wind chill warnings pass, things are looking up! By next week, we'll likely have highs in the 40s! Woo-hoo, heat wave!

A little poem

2009-03-10T19:40:00.003-05:00

Thank a really slow Internet for this one — I wrote it mostly while waiting for pages to load. I could have taken a picture to illustrate it, but I'll spare you the bone-chilling (literally) details.

Poem for a March blizzard

The pick-up truck outside the window,
The one that generally gets my husband to work when the plow has yet to go through,
Is a little hazy,
It’s form showing clearer, or not, depending on the whim of the wind.
(The truck went nowhere today. My husband stayed in his pajamas.)
The rings on my daughter’s swingset are hazier still,
Their ghostly handles doing a frantic dance, not stopping to let Sofia grab on
Until this arctic wind finds someplace to rest —
Maybe in Minnesota, where there are trees,
Or perhaps Missouri, where someone was smart enough
To put up mountains.
The fence across the road is nearly gone, disappearing often in the swirling snow.
The trees beyond them, the neighboring farms, the town where we’d go for a gallon of milk —
They are gone completely, lost in a wall of white.
They have become mere memories, as far removed from our reality
As the tulips under the six-foot drifts, under the coating of ice, under the frozen ground.
The white of the window is too bright to gaze upon for long.
So we turn inward, to the comfort of the internet and the television,
Reveling in those 2-D images of the warm-weather world —
A fine activity for a Tuesday afternoon, we say,
And try not to remember that we have no choice.
The rest of the world is gone,
And won’t be back until tomorrow noon, at the earliest.

We've got insulation!

2009-03-09T23:48:00.005-05:00

Right now I'm sitting in the dining room, listening to the house creak, and thinking how cold my feet are. This old farmhouse gets awfully drafty when the wind is blowing, and it is surely blowing tonight — gusts up to 35 mph, the weather service says, with a winter storm warning starting in the early hours of the morning. Mom just came downstairs and got a stocking cap to wear to bed — her room is on the north side of the house, and when there's a north wind, it's nearly like sleeping outside.

Dave says it's warmer out in the new house than it is in here, and he might well be right. After he got home today he went out and started a fire in the woodstove — our beautiful, high-efficiency woodstove — and he went out and checked on it this evening before he went to bed and commented on how cozy it is tonight, now that there is insulation on all the walls. "Especially upstairs," he said. (Here's hoping our ceiling fan will do some good pushing that heat back down.)

Dave wanted the house heated at least overnight, so the spray foam insulation has a little more of a chance to cure at the right temperature. The guy installing it said it wouldn't need to be heated more than the time that it took him to clean up, but Dave figured it didn't hurt to get a fire going — and it would be a test for the new insulation as well. Apparently it's doing its job!

... We're still not sure how the one guy got the big heater out by himself, but apparently he did it — and made quick work of the rest of the job, too. He was driving out of the yard before 3 p.m.

... It's too bad it's such lousy weather — there's no way to air the house out, and that spray foam stinks for a while. Here's hoping for some nice weather later this week so we can open the windows!

... Dave did notice that some of the siding is flaring up a bit in the wind. He's going to call the construction company that installed it and ask them to take a look at it again, maybe add some nails. It's not good that it's flapping so much — in this wind, it's going to work itself loose.

MARCH 9 UPDATE: Getting ready for more insulation (and snow)

2009-03-09T10:29:00.004-05:00

Dave spent the weekend getting the house ready for the spray foam insulation installers — or "installer," I should say, since there was only one guy who showed up with all the equipment this morning. Dave had to help him carry in his big NIPCO heater — apparently the building does need to be warm for the foam to set right. Dave wasn't sure about that, so he didn't start a fire in the woodstove for them. That heater will more than suffice, though. (Though we're wondering how he's going to get it back out of the building by himself — maybe he's waiting for backup?)

We'll see how much the installer gets done today — I'll post pictures tonight in any case.

The bathroom exhaust fan — or at least the bit of ductwork that will go through the wall — was one thing that needed to be in place before the insulation is sprayed in. It doesn't look too bad from the outside. And it's on the north side of the house, so no one except the cows is likely to see it anyway.

Dave said it was a little tricky figuring out where in the wall the vent would come out. Even where it is now will require bending the ductwork in the wall somewhere. A straight shot out from the vent would have led right into the soffit.

... It's a little soggy around the front steps lately. Dave's put a board out so we don't have to wade through the puddle to get into the house. It's like a drawbridge over a moat! I'll have to tell Sofia that. Of course, we probably won't have any time to play on it, since ...

... We've got a blizzard watch for tomorrow. Eight to 10 inches of snow possible. That's great -- now that we've got a solid layer of ice down in places with the thaw we can get a good padding of snow down on top of it. Sigh. Just when you think spring is around the corner, winter smacks you up side the head again.

Dave did hear the first goose of spring flying overhead last night, though. Apparently spring is coming ... eventually ...

MARCH 6 UPDATE: Acceleration

2009-03-06T23:07:00.002-06:00

Sofia and I stopped in to see how the work was coming in the new house on Thursday.

... And we took a little time to ham it up for the camera.

I love this one! I'm so bummed it's a little blurry.

Anyway, Dave got the addition pretty well ready for drywall (you'll notice the vapor barrier is up), and the drywall lift he ordered showed up on Thursday too, so the addition is humming right along!

And we have now scheduled the spray foam insulation guys to come back to do the rest of the house -- they should be here on Monday.

It will be interesting to see if there's any difference in how the house feels or if we have any maintenance issues in the addition versus in the main house, since we're doing the insulation differently. ... I'm hoping they both keep out mice (I type as I hear a funny scritching in the ceiling).

... Both kids have been sick (colds and ear infections), but both are on the mend. Gotta love antibiotics! That medicine sure can transform a crying child into a laughing one overnight.

... Sofia and I discovered that the snow was perfect for making snowmen on Thursday! She made four total, two with me and two with Daddy. Good thing we did that Thursday, though, as the temperature dropped today and the snow is all crusty now. Fun to crunch under your boots, we found, but no longer good for snowmen.

A little accomplishment

2009-03-04T06:30:00.002-06:00

I promised I'd post a picture or two of my weaving once I finished -- here it is!

It took at least three times as long for me to make this as it would have for Mom to have made it, and it's still not quite as good — I'm still working on getting the sides straight and the width even. But I had fun weaving it! It's such fun watching the colors work together and deciding which color to use next for best effect.

I did list it on Mom's Etsy shop — maybe someone else will like it, too!

Daydreaming about a "Savo Summer"

2009-03-03T08:02:00.002-06:00

I bought an exercise machine in January, and I've been pretty dedicated to my exercise routine since then — a half-hour a day, five days a week. It's getting to the place where it's a habit, for both me and the kids (Sofia eggs me on most days: "Mommy, I think you can go faster."). I was sick of feeling trapped by the weather, like the cold and wind were conspiring to keep me inside and lethargic. So, on the up side, I'm now getting my exercise. The downside: I spend a lot of time staring at the same wall.

Luckily, this wall does have this nice print of a painting by local artist Lora Schaunaman on it. It's titled "Savo Summer," and it shows Savo Hall and Savo Lutheran Church, both less than a mile from our farm, if you walked across the section. In fact, the viewpoint of the two buildings is nearly exactly what it would be from our farm (especially from the upper story of the new house), if a shelterbelt wasn't blocking the view. (Lora and my mom are good friends, both artists as they are; I always wondered if Lora did that on purpose.) The hall, the church and the township are named after the region of Savo in Finland, where some of the settlers to this area came from.

Lora's taken a few artistic liberties in her painting. (I purposefully didn't take a great picture of the painting, as I don't want a perfect copy of it to float around the Internet without credit to Lora, but you can get a better idea if you click on it.) There are trees around the two buildings, but not quite as many as she painted; it doesn't look as much like an oasis on the prairie as she depicted. The field in the foreground is also more likely to be planted to corn or soybeans than prairie grass. But the feeling of a Savo summer she's created is spot on. The bird — a hawk, likely — is floating on a touch of a breeze, the morning sun is shining, the world is big and wonderful, and the day is full of possibilities.

Years ago, life around here did center on the hall and church. The church had its weekly importance, as well as its place as the scene for weddings and funerals. The hall was the place to gather for school programs, traveling plays, band performances, dances and more. It shined brightest at midsummer, when it had a program that lasted all day and into the night. Speakers (quite often rabble-rousing, union-minded, populist types — sometimes called "Communists" outright) would come from all over to step on their soapbox in front of the crowd. Athletic events took up the afternoon; Dad said he often played baseball in those days. And a dance would follow, as these people who lived in a place that's dark and cold for much of the year celebrated the time of light and warmth.

The Savo Hall Association (of which you, too, could be come a lifetime member for just $1) sold prints of it at Savo Hall's 100th anniversary celebration in 1998. (In fact, I think there are still some for sale, at the Community Store and the Historical Society's gift shop.) The celebration was much like the midsummer celebrations of years ago, though without athletic events or the speakers (Communist or otherwise).

The group also auctioned off the original painting then. My uncle Arnold was one of the last two bidding for it; my sister and I were really hoping he'd get it. At one point he hesitated, and I remember going up and leaning over and telling him that we'd all pitch in to help him get it. He didn't respond, and I got the feeling I shouldn't have said anything, as it wasn't the place of a young woman to tell an old man what to do.

In the end, the bidding went quite high and Arnold let it go to the other man, who was the decendent of someone who'd grown up here but who now lived far off in California or some such place where it's summer yearround. I wished Arnold had gotten it, but he was happy enough with a signed print. He had it framed nicely and put up on the most prominent wall in his living room, where he spent much of his time in those last years.

I got a cheaper unsigned print, which has traveled with me to every home since — including back home to this one, and on to the new one across the yard, where the view of the hall and the church is just a little bit better.

A cold, snowy world

2009-02-27T07:23:00.005-06:00

The day dawned bright and clear, a pleasant change from the gray light of the blizzard that had blown through the day before, but frost was thick on the inside of the kitchen windows, and the dogs were not eager to go outside -- signs that the temperature was likely below zero.

And, indeed, it was -- 14 below, feels like 34 below, according to the online weather report. She sighed. Spring, and the date for moving into the family's new home, seemed far off.

... Just thought I'd write this little blog post as the opening to a book. Don't worry, you'll find out how it ends soon enough!

Belle had been OK outside for much of the storm yesterday (she prefers to be outside lately, for love of chasing rabbits), but we saw out the window at one point that she was acting a little frantic, trying to find a place to lie down out of the wind. No wonder. Her dog house wasn't pleasant anymore, with all that snow blown into it!

I got a few more pictures ... file these under the "snow as artwork" theme.

It really does have some cold beauty to it, doesn't it?

... For sick kids, these two are in pretty good spirits this morning! Smiling despite their stuffy noses.

Erik's working harder on crawling, now that army crawling has been accomplished. Look out, world!

FEB. 27 UPDATE: Reminder from winter: I'm still here

2009-02-27T06:47:00.003-06:00

Just when we were getting used to weather in the 20s or even, sometimes, above freezing, winter gives us a little reminder that it's still February -- we've got at least a month of winter to slog through. At least. It could be mid-April before we see spring in South Dakota.

It's hard to tell exactly how many inches of snow we got, since the wind was blowing as well. There were drifts up to Dave's chest in a number of places in the yard.

Yeah, we're going to have to figure out what to do about that drifting in front of the door of the house. A snow fence, maybe? Planting something there won't do any good for several years.

... Dave worked on clearing snow in the yard with the tractor yesterday afternoon, even though the snow blow around him while he worked, canceling out much of his efforts. He made enough of a dent that he was able to get to work this morning in the pickup, though. (He didn't go to work yesterday, obviously, but since two of his coworkers did make it to the office, he had to take a vacation day. He wasn't very pleased about that.) There will be more snow clearing to do this afternoon.

... We've got two sick kiddies at home now. We took them both to the doctor Wednesday (before the weather hit). Erik has an ear infection, but the up side of that is that as soon as the antibiotics kicked in, he started cheering up. Sofia just has a cold, for now, but with her history of viral-induced asthma, we have her on her nebulizer as a proactive measure.

Speaking of her asthma, I was at a meeting a couple weeks ago when I realized just how prevalent that has become in children. I was one of four moms sitting around a table, and each of us had a child with this diagnosis! One of the other moms says about half the moms she work with say the same. We were all chatting about the same medicines, whether they were doing any good, whether they were causing behavioral problems ... I don't think moms used to bond over this!

I asked Sofia's lung specialist on Wednesday why he thought this is now so common. He said part of it is diagnosis -- people used to call this bronchitis, and some level of wheezing in kids was accepted and not treated. Now there's a good treatment, so it's diagnosed right away. But he also said there's a hypothesis that because of all the good vaccines we have now, our bodies don't learn how to properly respond to viruses -- when one shows up, the body over-reacts, which is what the asthma symptoms are.

Sounds plausible. But I wonder if there's more to it than that -- is there something in our environment that is causing a change as well?

FEB. 22 UPDATE: Get ready, get set -- insulate!

2009-02-22T23:30:00.003-06:00

The insulation is nearly all in place in the addition! Dave had a very productive Saturday.

Looking toward the southeast ...

... and toward the northwest.

The insulation says "Thermal and sound control," and it was doing some good already at this stage -- my footfalls didn't echo in the room as they had before. Of course, once we put up drywall, we'll have an echo chamber again! I guess that's one of the reasons people want texture on their walls ... we're still looking into the natural plaster option, which I think will help alleviate the echo-chamber effect as well.

Dave's aiming for the recommended R-value of 49 in the ceiling in the addition, which is accomplished with two layers of insulation -- one R-19 and the other R-30.

... I've been doing some weaving lately! It's a nice stress reliever, really -- watching how the colors blend together as I weave them. I'll post a picture once I've got something off the loom!

FEB. 20 UPDATE: We passed!

2009-02-20T15:47:00.003-06:00

Dave says I need to get this blog post up before people start thinking the electrical inspection bombed. Sorry, sorry!

Well, we did pass the rough inspection! Not with a perfect score, but a pass is a pass. Some of the things Dave was worried about (not putting outlets in the knee walls, for example) just got a cursory look and a nod, but he will have to fix a couple things he was hoping the inspector would let slide -- he'll have to add a couple outlets in the kitchen, and he'll have to put in two outdoor outlets.

The biggest problem, however, was with work that the professional electrician had done! Apparently there are two wires in a conduit that, according to South Dakota code, should be separate -- even though Dave questioned this, and the electrician couldn't answer what could possibly go wrong because they are in the same conduit. How they are going to fix this is a big question -- Dave suggested that perhaps the way to fix it is to get a different inspector for the final inspection.

So, on to insulation! Dave got started on putting up the insulation in the addition (which will just have traditional insulation) yesterday.

... We've got a bit of winter weather today -- some light snow and wind. I just felt and heard the house creak as a big gust hit us from the north. A person can't hide from the weather out here, even in the house. Dad has added some more insulation to the house through the years, but the windows are nowhere close to tight -- I can feel a breeze through the kitchen window when we've got a good north wind. And the living room gets a draft when the south wind blows. You can tell which way the wind is blowing by where you find us in the house!