Renos during pregnancy...why?!

One of the most frustrating things in the blogging world is when you spend half an hour writing out a witty, entertaining post on your phone, only to put your phone down to put your kids to bed and to come back to find that none of it saved. Why on earth would the blogger appnot have an automatic save?? Anyway, now you all get the shorter, less entertaining version!

Why is it that renos often happen in the latter stages of a baby entering a family? Sure, it's probably pretty logical. You need more space, or a more usable space. It's nesting to the extreme: "honey, let's renovate! Oh, except I can't help you really very much at all..." Doesn't quite seem fair, does it? In our case, we are looking for more bedrooms. I'm hoping the baby has their own room by the time he/she arrives, not that they will use it for the first little bit. But I really want to go through the process of getting the baby's room ready...and to do that, we will need to have the older two in their new room(s). It's yet to be determined if they will continue to share a room for a while or if they will have their own rooms right off the bat. 

The first week of renos was done by a crew during the day and Nathan did cleanup in the evenings. By the end of the first week, we had our garage framed in, windows added, a subfloor and ceiling built and bedrooms framed. Since then, we have been working on drywalling the bedrooms and covering the studs in the addition with particle board. Considering this is one of Nathan's busy seasons with work (wind-ups, grads, etc), he hadn't had much time to work on the house. But he has been devoting what little time he has to do what he can. And he also manages to spend some quality time with the kids every day. He's pretty amazing. No complaining either. How great is he? 

Speaking of great...ok, so this is kinda opposite...our house is a wreck right now. We have displaced furniture all over the place and thanks to a spring flood in our basement that happened just as renos got going, we don't even have that space to store the things that fit down the stairs. It's lovely. So now we're not only trying to finish up the upstairs renos, we are trying to eliminate our basement water problems. But once it's done, our list of things that we want to do to this house will be much shorter! And that is just.plain.exciting!

Speaking of exciting...oh wait, opposite day again...Kayden has had some serious potty regression with the chaos of renos. She had been trained for three months and we were at the point of not needing to take along extra clothes when we went out but now we're back to "how many changes of clothes will we need if we're out for 6 hours?" I know that regression happens and that they just need consistency and patience and they'll be right back into their groove before too long. But right now it's discouraging. I just hope that baby's arrival doesn't bring on potty regression #2! 

Speaking of baby's arrival, we should be welcoming baby in 6-7 short weeks! I'm getting so excited to meet this little person. It always becomes more real to me once I can see the date on the calendar and count the number of doctors visits left before the big day! This is actually happening! We're actually going to have three kids! THREE! That's exciting! I'm sure it'll have its moments of "what have we done?" but when I see those sweet little faces...there's no going back :) I thank God for each one of these miracles! 

Halloween 2014

Costumes were kinda last minute today.  Levi wanted to be Santa for Halloween because he thought it would be funny. We even made a nice, fuzzy beard for him.  But at the last minute he changed his mind and we had to scramble for something different, literally as we were about to walk out the door for trick-or-treating.

While we were out, Levi didn't utter a word.  He was silent the entire time.  Kayden was so nice to give her "thanks" and "bye!" and "see ya!"'s. I wonder if she will end up being the talker of the two?  Cause at home, Levi has always done more talking, even from a young age.  But when we're out, Kayden is definitely the less shy one!

Levi ended up dressing up as a chef...though whenever anyone asked him if he was a chef, he just shook his head. So...who knows. :) Maybe he was actually dressed up as something else in his mind that we didn't know about.

Kayden's costume was just as last minute because I had put together the chef costume for her but then Levi decided to wear it instead.  So I had to run downstairs and find her something and thankfully she let me dress her up, no complaints! She was a cowgirl and actually wore her hat while we were out, though refused to wear it for the picture.  We were loving the tickle trunk today that Auntie Ia and Auntie Carrie put together for Levi a couple years ago. The chef attire was sewn for Levi by Auntie Carrie but the Santa hat and cowgirl costume were both from the tickle trunk. It's a gift that keeps on giving!

GAK

We made gak today. If you have never made gak, you definitely should! Whether or not you have kids. Make some. It's cool :)

Here's the recipe:

If you can't read it, let me know. 

Basically you make a glue/water mixture (equal parts of each) and you also make a borax/water mixture (1tsp borax/1cup water) and you mix them with lots of stirring and you eventually get a slimy, slippery, oober-fun substance known as gak!

Mix mix mix.

And then you let your kids play and sit back as they're entertained for going on 45 minutes!  Love it!  It's a bit of a mess as it sticks to clothes and stains (if you've used food colouring) and little bits of it tend to end up everywhere but I'm game for a little cleanup some days if it means I have some happy kids :) (notice I said "some days!"). 

Oh, and a random sidenote...Levi loves saying the word "gak" and says "gak" as many times as he possibly can. For instance: "mom I like gak! I'm going to make my gak even gak-ier!" In fact, I just heard him say it 3 times in the last 30 seconds while typing this. Oh, and there it was again!  Gak!

And then the logger in me comes out

Sometimes it feels so good to do something other than sit inside and work on orders, that I decide to cut down a tree. By hand. With the biggest saw we've got. 

An adventurous hermit?

I woke up this morning with terribly sore groin muscles. TMI? Well it's true. And I couldn't figure out why. I racked my brain for the cause (what did I do yesterday??) and just couldn't come up with anything.

And then I sat on the quad our friends lent us. And the sore muscles all made sense. Ouch. 

I couldn't figure out whether to title this post "I want to be a hermit" or "I love adventure". I figured I'd go with a combo. 

Our family went for a quad ride together yesterday. We just did some exploring around our place, places further than little legs can walk (ahem...I'm talking about the kids here) and where the truck won't go. We love to do stuff like that together. I definitely wouldn't say we're extreme adventurers...but for doing it all with a 3 and 1 year old, we hold our own :) First we did a circle around our yard. Over some bumps...ooh yeah!  Then we headed away from the yard. The path we were following was pretty solidly gravelled. Then the gravel thinned out and the trail turned to sand. Then the grass took over. Before we knew it, there were trees on both sides of us (I feel so at home when surrounded by trees!) and as we were enjoying the trees above us, the solid ground under us turned to water. Gulp. (This is where the sore muscles came from! I was hanging onto Nathan pretty hard as we hit the water/mud and apparently I pulled something!) Stuck. Mud. It's not our quad. Hmm. Oops. Well, thankfully it was a relatively small quad. I was the responsible mom and kept the kids dry on the quad (right!) while Nathan took his shoes and socks off and stood knee deep in water/sludge/sewer (as Levi called it) to haul us out. Done and done. Catastrophe averted. Not stuck out in the bush, miles from anywhere, with two young kids today. 

We continued on - back the way we came - and when the road ended and electric fence came, we abandoned ship and headed out on foot. I find it so much fun to wander and explore and see what there is to see. Growing up I often wandered in the bush on our farm just to explore. We found a "secret" pool of water surrounded by trees! As we wandered (with a lone cow standing by the water that we saw at the last minute, thankfully not a bull...or at least not one that felt like protecting its water hole) We saw the lake from the top of the non-populated side of the water. We saw lots of wild grass and Saskatoon bushes and trees and wild, raw nature. It was absolutely breathtaking. And all I could think the entire time was "I want to live here."  I know we live not 3 miles from there, but I was seeing a cozy little cabin built right into the hill, with just wild grasses and shrubs for my front yard. 

From most places on our adventure, we could see no signs of civilization. No roads, no buildings, no power lines. Just the natural beauty of the incredible land where we live. 

When we first moved to the country, a big draw for me was the feeling of isolation. Of being completely alone out here. I love that. And when we were out on the hills near our place, that feeling of silence and solitude was even stronger. I'm in love. I'm pretty sure I was meant to be a hermit. How many people can say that the more alone they feel, the more "right" it feels?? I certainly have a social side and I get lonely from time to time, especially when I see friends having fun without me...but I think I could be pretty happy living on the side of a hill with nobody to talk to for days on end. :)

I hope I can give our kids both a sense of adventure and a deep sense of peace that comes from being alone with their creator. What wonderful gifts they are!