These Hobbits Love Strawberries

There is nothing quite so yummy as a freshly picked, homegrown strawberry.

This is our strawberry patch the last couple of springs. Rather overwhelmed with weeds. Very hard for strawberry picking. Not to mention choking those poor strawberry plants.

This year, with the help of a proverbial kick out the door on Jaired's part, I buckled down and weeded the strawberry patch. I think it took me most of three weeks of at least fifteen minutes a day to get it all done. And it isn't really done yet. There are a few patches that don't have any strawberry plants growing where I went ahead and left the weeds, I'll go pull them eventually. Then, of course, the weeds are still coming up, so I have to weed more. BUT the bed is actually predominately strawberry plants now!

It sure is easier to pick the strawberries. For the first time since we moved into this house our strawberry patch looks more like it is supposed to look. I know the pictures may not make the patch look like much, but there is a big difference.

Back in March, when strawberries first came out in the the grocery stores, I fed some to Jeremiah. Considering that the rest of us all LOVE strawberries, it was a bit of a surprise that he actually spit them out! I predicted that he wouldn't be able to say no to the little lovelies that came out of our own patch, and I was correct.

He would eat all the strawberries if I let him.

Not Much, But Life

Today wasn't our best day for sure.

Thankfully the sun was shining this morning. After a grey weekend the sun was a good boost. The usual Monday housework went pretty well. But then school time came.

The word "pat" proved to be A Very Hard Word To Read. Edmund would read it correctly, then get stuck on saying "pap". It was very frustrating, but I knew that he could read the word properly if he actually took the time to think, instead of just saying the first thing that came to mind. In the end I had to feed the other boys lunch and take them outside to play, leaving Edmund to sit and clear his mind.

Once that hurdle was past the day flowed more smoothly, though right about that time the younger boys started getting really cranky, but then, thank goodness, it was nap time.

I took time to hang the laundry outside today. It smelled so lovely when I brought it in; I really need to hang the laundry more. Partly because of the rain I haven't hung the laundry out as much I usually do in the spring.

My sewing projects are coming along well. I won't bother you with all the mending details, but I should be able to get up some pictures of the new things I am making. I will be making a quilt (and maybe curtains) for Miss Cook's nursery, and the fabric for that came in the mail the other day, so now I am trying to make a final decision on what the quilt will look like. I won't start that project until all the mending is done. I find quilting to be rather addictive, so I need to get the less fun stuff out of the way first. :)

And a couple random pictures from the weekend.

Nathaniel...speed reading? He is our literary child. We had friends over on Friday, and Nathaniel and their little girl brought our entire collection of children's books into the kitchen and read them all while we played games.

We went to a Renaissance Faire near St. Louis on Saturday. This is one of the only pictures I took. A fire-dancer. She was pretty good, nothing fancy, but then I don't know how long she has been doing this. Besides this two ended pole she also has some torched chains and a little torch that she did fire eating with. Edmund was quite fascinated.

Summer Activities

As with my other pregnancies I have hit that point where I feel the need to finish my half done projects before the baby comes. Sewing projects are the main thing on my list. But there are also a lot of things that still need to be done in the basement that I would like to do before Miss Cook comes. It would be nice to get the schoolroom completed and ready for the new school year, as well as getting the bathroom down there up and running.

For now, I have started on my sewing projects. There are many, ranging from mending to new projects and as I sat and looked at my boxes I started feeling overwhelmed. So I closed all but one box, and from that one box, pulled out the first thing and finished it. Now I have gone through an entire box, fixing what I could and making a list of necessaries for the other things. Some of the projects were so easy and quick that it is ridiculous that I took so long to do them.

One of these was Jeremiah's name sampler. I have made these for the other boys, always finishing them up while pregnant with the next child. After I finished Nathaniel's I started Jeremiah's and had it almost done before he was born. Then I never picked it up again. Well, I finished it the other day, and when I said it was almost done I meant it. It took me all of maybe four hours spread over a few days to finish it. Wouldn't it have been nice to have finished it back when Jeremiah was a newborn?

Here it is: finished, washed, and framed.

And a close-up.

It would be nice to get Miss Cook's done before she comes, but I do think I should finish all the other half done projects I have going first. We will see what happens.

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On another note. We have the pool out and the boys have been in it pretty much every day for the last week and a half. Some of the days were really too cold and they didn't last long, but Sunday and yesterday they were in it a lot.

They all love the water, but of the three fish this one is the fishiest:

Neither of the other boys liked the pool much at this age, but Jeremiah loves it! It doesn't matter how cold it is. In fact, last month when we went to the river for a picnic Jeremiah actually crawled right into the river. Not only is the river always rather cold, but below the spring (where we were) it is ICY!!! But Jeremiah didn't care. As you can see, he loves to splash!

While Jeremiah sat down right away, it took Edmund a little while to get acclimated.

But it didn't take him too long. Oh, the life jacket? I don't know, maybe he was afraid he would be out of his depth. :)

Nathaniel was sleeping when some of these pictures where taken, otherwise he would have been in there more, too.

On Narnia, Imitation, and Walking

Harper Collins has a great unabridged audio book set of The Chronicles of Narnia. Jaired and I discovered it at the library when we were back in Virgina Beach. Recently, Edmund has become really interested in listening to audio books. He started out with some Jaired made for him, just reading books into a voice recorder, then burning them onto CD's. A few months ago Jaired brought home The Magician's Nephew and Edmund has since listened to all the books several times. He loves them and can recite all his favorite parts.

Last night, the evening wrestling matched somehow evolved into a game of Narnian kings fighting giants on the western border. Then Edmund got his "magic U" (a plastic letter magnet U) and transported us to the little country train station where the book Prince Caspian begins. He proceeded to give us a blow by blow account of the story and what each of us, as the different characters, was doing. We were then transported to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where we went from listening to his accounts to actually acting out the story. Particularly one of his favorite parts, where I, as Lucy, had to go read the magician's book, and act out all the events related with that.

It was very amusing and fun to be able to participate in and encourage his imagination. He was so serious about it and was so pleased every time I was able to insert the correct Lucy quotes for each event. The evening ended with him asking me to read him a story from "the magician's book". When he climbed into my lap I asked him how is was that the magician (for that's who he was playing at the time) was able to sit on Lucy's lap. He said that he was a small magician. :)

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"Me, too!" For everything. Nathaniel wants to be like Edmund and do what Edmund is doing. Even when he doesn't know what we are talking about, if he thinks it sounds good, "me, too!" Even if Edmund is excused from the table and Nathaniel is still eating he wants to be excused too, though he ends up being hungry and wanting to come back to eat more.

Nathaniel is definitely in the unenviable position of middle child. He tries so hard to do all the things Edmund does, and at the same time is trying to stay ahead of Jeremiah. It's not fun. But that little, "me, too!" sure makes me smile.

And after saying hello to the baby, he always point to his own tummy and says, "me, too. Baby!"

Oh, and he has started volunteering kisses. He has the cutest little pucker.

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Jeremiah has finally started walking. He is so funny. Sometime last week, he started by walking up to something with his walker and stopping a couple of steps away, and then taking those last steps alone. He would hold his hands up above his head and as he reached his target bring them down onto it with a triumphant crash. Yesterday, we again had a fire going in the fireplace, so we spent most of the late afternoon and evening in there. Jeremiah walked back and forth between the couches or people, trying further distances as he went along. Today, he got up to halfway across the room.

He is so proud of himself. Of course we are proud of him, too.

(No pictures, I know. I'll try to get some in the next post.)

Baby Number Four

I should have posted this last week, but I wasn't feeling up to writing a blog post, so I distracted myself by reading a mystery story instead.

As some of you know, we are expecting our fourth baby. The due date is August 11. Yes, I know, that means that I am already over halfway through my pregnancy and I haven't blogged about it at all. That's bad.

Anyway. I had a doctor's appointment Monday of last week (the 18th) and we found out that we are having a girl!

It will be interesting to see how much differences there will be between raising a boy and raising a girl. But I think we will have fun.

Edmund is excited. Of course he has known all along that this baby was a girl and would never hear otherwise from anyone. He has even named her, Miss Cook. "Because she will be a good cooker like Mama when she gets big."

Once while listening to Alexander Rybak's "Dolphin," where one line runs, "...and in my dreams he's promised me that someday I'll find my girl..." Edmund said, "Mama, do you know when I'll find my girl? When she comes out of your tummy!"

"April Showers Bring May Flowers"

We have been getting a lot of rain. More rain than sunshine, particularly this past weekend.

On Saturday we and the fam went to Jaired's office for a spring clean up. It started to rain about halfway through the morning, but we still managed to get all the outdoor work done. I think we worked faster because of the rain than we would have normally. The indoor work all got done, too, though there wasn't as much of it. Mostly just a thorough cleaning of the whole building. We were able to hang Jaired's diplomas and other documents that we had finally just recently gotten framed. And Kimberly cleaned the chimney. I think she got about 30 lbs. of ASH out of it. Really? How was there ash in the chimney?

Saturday night the rain got really crazy. We even got hail, which, though it is sometimes in the forecast isn't really that common in this area. No tornadoes though, thankfully.

When we moved into this house there were four or five places in the basement that leaked. We thought we had taken care of all of them, but there is still one left in a side room. It turns out that the leak is in a different place than I thought, but I believe I have it pin-pointed now. We have to go down there a few times a day to vacuum and mop up the water that comes in. But things got even more wild when the back yard and patio flooded up to the house and water started pouring into the schoolroom. After frantically trying to scoop it up faster than it came in I happened to glance over at what we have always thought was some odd hole in the patio floor that was kept covered with an old pot. Willing to try anything I pulled out the pot and watched with relief as the water began to pour down the hole. We don't know where this drain goes, but it seems to work well. Hopefully we aren't flooding something else.

We had a very simple Easter. Homemade sticky buns for breakfast, then off to church where Edmund joined a couple of the other boys in singing "He Reigns" by The Newsboys for the congregation. Back at home we got a fire going in the fireplace and Jaired and I relaxed with our books while Edmund and Nathaniel watched a Curious George movie. In the evening we had an Easter egg hunt. This was Nathaniel's first hunt and the first one Edmund has had in a long time (since we lived in Virginia). Because of the rain we had all the eggs inside. I am really bad about taking pictures of these kinds of things because I am so focused on them and making sure they know what is going on and that they are having fun. They did have fun and they didn't have any trouble figuring out what to do. (Sometimes I wonder if I worry too much?) They opened their eggs by the fireplace and seemed to be as excited about the new cars and bouncy balls as they were about the candy.

Spring is Here

Spring has pretty decidedly arrived now. We are having the usual mixture of sun and rain, cold, warm, and hot. I like it. It isn't likely that we will get many, if any, more frosty mornings, but even if we do they will certainly warm up to be quite lovely by lunch time. There is some heat, for example, on Saturday we went over to the family's for dinner and they got the pool out for the boys to play in. But the heat isn't too bad either, and the evenings cool off.

The boys and I are spending more time outside now. All three of them love to be outside, so it works out well. I am able to get some yard work done while they play and even when they are cranky they will play happily, then when nap time comes they are ready to lay down and take a good long nap. Sometimes when Jeremiah is having a fit at lunch and refusing to eat I will sit him out on the stoop and he will eat up all his food with almost no complaint.

Right at the end of February we bought a John Deere garden tractor. That, along with an extra wagon the family had from one of their old garden tractors, has been a great addition to our spring yard work. We have been spending the last several Saturdays outside working on a lot of the neglected aspects of our property. We still have work in the basement that needs to be done, but I am glad that we are spending these weekends outside. There will be plenty of time to work in the basement when the weather gets hot. In the past we spent a lot of days not doing anything because of not being able to work on the basement for various reasons, but at the same time feeling like, if we were going to be working we should do the "important" projects, instead of stuff like yard work. But now we are really enjoying the spring and getting work done.

I have been working on trimming plants, pruning dead branches, and in general cleaning up the place. I am at war with the wisteria, which is trying to take over the garden. Jaired has been mowing the field, tearing down fences, and building things.

I love this time of year.