Six Months

Sunday will be six months since we've moved into our house! The time has gone quickly, it sure has been easy to "settle in". The kids hardly ever mention the house trailer and never say they miss it or the other yard, which is kind of funny because we don't have any grass here. They have spent a lot of time playing in the garage. I back the van out, Ron has the truck at the farm, so the kids can skip, do tricks on their bikes (ok, that's just Nathan!), ride bikes with training wheels and not get hung up every 2 seconds on a gravel ridge, skateboard...I think you get the idea! The other week we came home and it was raining hard and very windy. Larissa says, "Mom, I'm glad we have a garage, now we don't have to walk out in this yucky weather!" She is definitely appreciating the house for what it offers and not taking it for granted. The kids can't decide which is their favourite thing about the new house. Nathan loves the size of his room and the fact that he has a place downstairs to shoot hockey. Larissa said the other day that our lives would be so different if we didn't have an island in the kitchen! I was preparing supper and she was sitting at the island with her craft supplies so we could "work together". Bethany wonders when we'll stop calling it the "new house" because it just feels like we've always lived here. Ron loves the lack of water consumption our new toilets and washing machine have provided! He will often tell people how much less water we use now. In the trailer we had 11 year old toilets and a traditional top load washing machine. Now we have 6L flush toilets and a top load HE washing machine. We haul our water so it's maybe more obvious to us than it would be to some people. In the trailer we would haul 3500 gallons of water every 4 weeks. We are now down to 2000 gallons or less in 4 weeks. We didn't have a single time of running out of water at 1:00 am in -30 this winter! (That maybe happened once or twice in the trailer!!;D ) I can't say I really have a favourite part either. The house just feels like home. There was no adjustment to living here. Perhaps that's due to the fact that we came by here almost every day during the building process and we we've been dreaming of this for years. The kids had no adjustment issues either. They were involved in choosing things for their rooms and they were just as excited about the new house as Ron & I were. Comfort. Love. Home.

We have been winding down our year long activities these last couple of weeks. Nathan's piano lessons and Larissa's private violin lessons finished last week. Bethany's final dance recital is this weekend. We've been busy running to extra practises for that but by Sunday at 4:00 it should all be done! Then soccer starts. That will be three evenings a week for 8 weeks plus Larissa has violin group class on a fourth night of the week, if we choose to go, so it might be busier in the next 8 weeks than it was all winter long, and I'm doing it all as a single mom! We started seeding last week Thursday, took a break due to rain, then started up again yesterday. There is no rain in the forecast for the rest of the week so hopefully we can get a good chunk done. What looked like an early spring due to lack of snow and an unseasonably warm March has turned out to be a very average year for us. I had secretly hoped for seeding in March, harvest in July and the month of August off to do some camping and fun family activities but I knew that would never happen. Ron would want to plant a second crop!! In reality I knew my "hope" would never happen but I figured it didn't hurt to dream! Fourteen years of being a farmer's wife still hasn't erased the 20+ years of being a teacher's daughter! Don't get me wrong, I love the farming lifestyle I just sometimes still feel like and old dog learning a new trick!

I have been out of picture-taking-mode the last few months so I don't have too many to share. I did receive a few complaints last time for not having any pictures posted (you know which aunt you are!!) so I will deliver on my promise to have some this time!

This is Larissa with her violin teacher.

The kids playing in the garage.

I know this isn't a clear picture of Nathan but I'm hoping you can see his facial expression. Lips puckered and tongue out of the mouth, a classic "I'm concentrating on what I'm doing" look for him!