7 months

Jaeg is 7 months now.  And. So. Darn. Cute.

 

 

Still not sitting up by himself...but he's got this bumbo thing down-pat.  He also LOVES to eat.  Surprise. Surprise.  He is a Legatt male after all.  Right now he chows down oatmeal cereal, bananas, and avocados. yum yum!

 

Here's a little sneak peak of our living room.  I'll be posting more pics as I get to it.

 

Today we got to drop off some food to friends of ours from church who just had their baby.  Wowzers do babies grow fast!  All the boys were in awe at how little the baby was (and he wasn't even as little as Jaeger was....in the 8 pounds).  We've also been on the slow mend from some stomach thing.  Went slowly thru each kid but this week is getting better. 

 

Well, speaking of my lovely 7 month old.  He's been crying for awhile (trying to go to sleep) so I better be off....



Fireplace

This is the first house we've lived in with a fireplace....and last night was the first time the fireplace went on...can ya tell?  They were memorized....until it started to smell like smoke bc of the left over twigs from the birds nest I removed from the vent outside.  We'll just keep the fireplace turned off until dad gets home to check things over...

School room

So we've packed, we've cleaned, we've loaded up, we've unloaded, and we've moved into our new place!!  And I can honestly say that (besides the color of my kitchen cabinets and the fact that all the walls were painted) I don't miss anything about our house and I'm so thankful for the house that we've moved in to!  But more on the move, etc later.  For now, I'm just trying to keep up with stuff!

Yesterday my parents came over to hang out so 1) Dad and I could go to Home Depot and buy some shelves for my awesome walk-in pantry/misc closet.  I was at HD the day before but I literally stared at the shelving for about a good half hour and since I had baby with, I ended up leaving with nothing.  I figured it would be much easier to be with my dad and his truck without children.  And then my parents also came over so 2) my mom could come with me to church bc I was bringing all the kids to the RAD kick-off!  Here's the cool thing...Nathan was planning on coming home but ended up making an early arrival since they were rained out!  But things continued as planned, except that Nathan helped mom with the kids while I shopped and then he helped dad hang some shelves while mom and I were at church!

There was only 1 shelf in the closet and I knew that I wanted to add 2 more below it.  Then before we left, I figured since the ceilings are higher, why not add one above it too?  This way we could utilize all the space.  The guys worked hard (I guess) while we were gone and got it finished up a little while after mom and I came back.  I hung the small (but very tall) shelf this morning to finish the closet completely!  I'm so happy for all my storage!  It's kind of hard to see but here are a couple pics of it.

Shelves on 2 sides of the closet

 

 

You can see the narrow and tall rack on the 3rd wall

 

 

....and she fell asleep on top of the couch while I was busy working....

 

 

Then I spent the rest of the day unpacking and organizing the school room!  Wow, was that a task!  I emptied 7 big totes and probably around 10 boxes....plus I had to sort, move, and put away all the kids' clothes into the dresser that we are borrowing from mom and dad until we can build our own for the kids.  And, yes, I keep their dresser in the school room...for a couple reasons. 1) super easy to put clothes away when they are clean. One stop and it's done. 2) I don't have kids wanting to change clothes all day long bc when it's outta sight it's outta mind. And that means MUCH less clothes and messes all over the floor....which keeps this mama happy.

 

The view of the school room from the door

 

the other wall....the dresser on the right houses my childrens' clothes.



And my favorite part...the closet! 

 

Everything still needs labels, but a girl can only do so much in a day!  And I have yet to hang the stuff on the walls....maps, calendars, letters, etc and I'll probably end up painting but I needed to get it organized and ready to go so we can have a little more structured school days.  Here are a couple pics of what I've organized so far.  Oh yeah, and I hung both of those bottom shelves in the closet today too.  It was kinda fun!  And it gave me TONS more storage space.

Butchering Day.

(Caution: The pics could be considered graphic to some...I will write everything first at post pics at the bottom so those who'd rather not see pictures, don't have to look :)

Butchering day.  We started on Friday afternoon around 3pm.  Since Nathan was just leaving the cities, his parents and I got everything set up and started on our first 12.  Mary (Nathan's mom) wanted to do 12 at a time, making the 67 we had to do seem a little more managable.

Nathan calls around 4:00 stuck in traffic.  I didn't think it was that big of deal bc we were doing just fine but then he reminds me that we needed to sign our papers for the sale of our house at 4:30!  He was going to just meet me in town.  Thankfully he called bc otherwise I would have totally forgot!  (How could I forget on signing on our house?!  Guess it just goes to prove how occupied my thoughts were on these chickens!)

My niece Alma came over to help with the kids (Jaeger mostly) so I was free to run to the signing.  (It was a "pre" signing since the original docs have to be up to Brainerd on Tues the 4th, which is when the buyers sign their side of the paperwork.)  I left the driveway and noticed a scooter driving towards me on the road.  It was our friend from church coming to help with the butchering!  Yay!  So I turned around, chatted with him and sent him off to our house and told him we'd be back asap.

Nathan made it to closing just before 5 and we were able to get everything signed in time!  Whew!  So back to the butchering!

We got back and went right into the swing of things!  Usually one of the guys did the ax dropping on the chicken's neck while Mary or another guy held the chicken down.  Then Mary did the dipping in hot water; Nathan, me, and Mary did most of the plucking; Tom gutted; Guy was the 'gizzard wizzard'; and then Mary cut them all up into pieces (ie: wings, legs, thighs, and breasts) and then Nathan or I packaged them up!

We wanted to get 36 done on Friday so we worked past dark, ending around 9pm.  I had to bring a lamp and set it up on our hay rack so we could see what we were doing.  Nothing like butchering chickens by 'candle light' :)  It was so peaceful though.  It was a perfect temperture, no wind, and all we could hear were crickets chirping.

The next morning we were up by 6:30 and started again by 7:15 or so getting all the bowls of water ready.  Butchering started about 7:30 and we were done by 11:30am. Our friend wasn't able to make it again this day so there were only 4 of us, but it went extremely well!  I was mostly inside keeping an eye on the baby and the kids and then manning the water, making sure they always had hot water ready and also pressure cooking all the necks and backs so we could get all the meat off them.  I also got 8 qts of broth just from those!

The chickens were a lot smaller than we wanted them to be.  We really wish we could have waited another 2 weeks to a month.  Then they would have been perfect.  But we had no choice, moving day is tomorrow!!  Each bird was only about 1.75 pounds all dressed and cut up.  We packaged them 2 birds per bag and put them in the freezer.  My in-laws took 2 home to fix the next day and said that they were some of the best chickens they've ever had.  Well, of course!

It's kinda of weird not having them around though.  I almost told Tiernan to go feed the chickens this morning when we first got up.  That was his job.  It really is nice though to have 65 chickens in the freezer, already 8 qts of broth, and 4 qts of cooked meat from the necks/backs!

It was a job well done!

Here are some pics:

 

Nathan, Guy, and Mary cleaning away

Caedmon helping to catch the chickens

 

 

 Ariella with a chicken's head.  That's my girl!

 

 

 Workin' hard.

 

 

 Guy chopping, Tom holding, Ariella watching

 

 

 Mary dunking

 

 

 I helped Mary hold a chicken down after it's head was chopped off and yeah, got a little bloody.  But don't worry, I wiped it off before I went to the house signing :)



 

 

 Working in the peaceful dark

 

 

 The next morning, back at it.

 

 

 We ended Friday night with a scooter ride.  Thanks Guy :)



My beauties

They are so fun to watch, and listen to. It's bitter sweet that tomorrow butchering starts. Since we would ideally wait a few more weeks to butcher them, they are smaller than we'd like but not much we can do about it. We've been feeding them like crazy and the past few days they've been going through a 50lb bag of feed per day! Plus they are moved on fresh grass everyday, sometimes more than once.

Tiernan is all excited to help with butchering and while we were talking about it, Brayan says "We gunna make the chickens be dead?!"

We will miss them and Nathan has even admitted that he won't be able to do the actually killing of them bc he likes them so much. Ha. Softy....

I'm sure I'll have some stories tomorrow :) oh and by the way, I've downloaded the blogger app so now if this works, I'll be able to post from my phone with ease, which equals awesome :)

Look who's 5!

So I think I realize what my problem is....I can't blog quickly.  And the main reason is because I can't get my pictures off my phone the right size and that's why the last few posts with pics have small pictures.  And what fun is a post without a picture??  (Esp when you have such cute kids!)  So there ya have it...hopefully I can get my pics working soon....

Here's whats been happening in our world lately.....

I have one more day before the whirlwind weekend starts....Friday= preparation for butchering our chickens on Saturday and I think we are going to start on a few on Friday evening as well.  Then Saturday will be filled with butchering the rest.  Yeah, that will be, uh, fun?...I think.  I've never done it before so we'll see!  I'm pretty sure that my FIL (father-in-law) will be the ones in charge of the actual killing of the chicken bc Nathan and I have gotten a *tad* attached to them and just think they are so beautiful and fun to watch that it would be hard for us to do the actual head chop.  But once it's dead, then I'll be fine :)

Then Sunday we have church and last minute chicken prep.  Monday morning at 8am we pick up our Penske truck and start-a-loadin!  We've gotten the approval to move our stuff in the garage of our new place the day before closing so we don't have to move everything on Tuesday.  Then Tuesday we need to be out of here in the morning as the buyer has their final walk-thru and then they close!  And then we close on our new place!  And Tuesday night we will be sleeping in our new home :)  We are very excited.

We had a playdate last week at a new friend's house that we met from church.  They have 7 children, their oldest just turned 9 but when we were there, she was still 8 so their were 12 children 8 and under.  And guess what?  FIVE of the kids were FIVE years old!!  (Brayan turned 5 last week and Caedmon doesn't turn 6 til next week so I currently have two 5 yr olds, then she has a biological daughter who's 5 and two adopted boys who are 5!)  Aren't they cute though??

It was so nice to hang out with a mom who "gets it".  Not too many people can understand my world of lotsa littles so young and the craziness that goes along with raising them, homeschooling them, and having a husband who travels often with work....but she does!  

Our friends even made Brayan a cake since we were over there on his birthday!  So sweet :)

So these two are brothers....can you tell??  These are the pictures the boys colored in class at church.  Kinda creepy.

I just love this picture of Tiernan. He looks so grown up. This was taken during sports camp at church that he was a part of for 5 weeks (once a week).  He LOVED it!  He played soccer and came home each week with different moves to show us.  He also received a dvd with the songs on it that they sang each week.  WOW, does he love that thing.  Plays it ALL. the. time. 

We celebrated Brayan's birthday last week with donuts :)  No cake this year with the move but I don't think he minded.

I can't help but laugh

Do you think she has some attitude??  :)