to our yard, earlier this evening.

a.k.a. the rainy day skirt

The forecast for the boys’ baseball season opener?  Low 40′s and rain.  Splendid.  And high time for a defensive play of my own…

I whipped up this skirt in about 15 minutes, using the wool leftover from the Wee Girl’s jumper.  Because I’m all too well acquainted with the 6th inning feel of metal bleachers during a crisp mountain evening in the spring time.  In fact, it’s almost as quintessential as peepers or maple syrup.  I paired them with my wool leggings for added warmth.  And yes, it was still cold, but bearable.  I had been planning on saving this fabric to line my hunter rain boots, which was not a bad thought, considering my numb toes by game’s end.  But this little skirt is seeing a lot of use.  And even a bit of snow at a game last week.  Ah, New England in the spring!

Last weekend started off with work on the house, followed by baseball.  My parents arrived for a brief visit on Sunday.  Upon flipping through her photos my mom remarked that in less then 24 hours she had pictures of the kids at the playground, singing in a concert and at the beach.  She said that it looked more like a week long visit.  That’s just the sort of steady clip we move along at this time of year.  And don’t worry, we fit in some more baseball before they left again.

The water at the pond is not warm enough for swimming yet (I don’t care what Galen says!), but it was a warm sun-shiny day, just right for a bit of sun bathing, sand castle making, and stone skipping, before heading off to the next activity.

Well, I did it!  I managed to finish it all, though it only took us a week to live it and me two to record it.  This is kind of a supplemental post.  I wasn’t as good about capturing our living space throughout the week as I would have liked.  So late on Week in the Life Sunday, I went about and took some pictures of what things are like right now.  It’s especially relevant as by this time next year, I imagine that very little will be the same.

We have three bedrooms on the second floor, none of which are being used because we are still working on flooring them.  In the meantime, we’re all sleeping on the first floor.  Which in turn means that our beds and things are displacing the objects that rightfully belong in those spaces.  It’s a bit cluttered.  And there is a lot that we haven’t been able to unpack yet, because we haven’t been able to prepare the space for it.  But really I don’t think it’s bad at all and soon enough we’ll be upstairs as well.  We’ve lived in much, much tighter quarters.  Go way back in the archives and you’ll see what I mean.  It will be nice and funny to be able to look back at these and say fondly, “oh yes, remember those days?”.

This is the view from the dinning room into what we’ve been calling “the bunk room”, current bedroom to all three boys and future homeschooling space/home office.

Galen’s area.  He made his bed himself.  It should also be mentioned that I took these after 7 kids had spent the day playing and running about in here, so it’s all very lived in, with nothing at all being arranged ‘just so’.

And the other side of the room, where Iain and Elijah reside, with a big pile of boxes, containing all their worldly possessions stacked up behind their beds.

Along with our little, make-shift area for homeschooling supplies…

Arranged on the changing table that Steve built when I was pregnant with Little Rosebud. No closets for anyone either, so dress clothes hang off the edges.

The heavily rumpled space above, also off of the dining room, is my future studio and current bedroom to The Man, The Girl and myself.

Which means that all of my crafty stuff is in the living room, along with a great many boxes and lots of plants.

~The answer to the question, “doesn’t it sound like that woodpecker is pecking on the house?!?” is, yes.  Because he was.  This yellow bellied sapsucker (my father-in-law’s favorite bird name ever, by the way) took a wrong turn and ended up stranded on our screened in porch.

~Cooking and cleaning this morning.  We have friends coming to brunch.

~I made that fabulous chicken with lemons and olives, quinoa and butternut squash.  They brought a yummy salad of golden beets, red onion, dikon radish and cucumber.  For dessert Iain and Elijah made my friend Heather‘s absolutely amazing orange-chocolate covered dates (as a side note, if you all clamber for it maybe we can convince her to do a guest post with the recipe.  Because believe me, you want this recipe!).

~It was just one of those glorious, golden days, where the weather is beautiful and everyone more or less gets along, with good food and good company and everything just generally being right with the world.

~I know I’ve mentioned before that my Middlest Boy has a great love of horses.

~Well, while we are not in a position to get him that pony he has always wanted, we have decided that for his 10th birthday, he is getting riding lessons.  He found out today, when we took them all on a visit to the horse farm.  He can’t wait to start.

~Màiri Rose was gifted a pretty green araucana egg.  I made a snack of it for the two littles, along with odd and ends thinned from my seedling trays.

~The big boys are off at practice again tonight.  The last one before opening day.

~Have I mentioned that my children are the owner/builders of the worlds most elaborate cardboard box house?  Work on the third addition has stalled out due to running out of tape.  There is however, a fireplace (complete with chimney) and some shelves inside.

~I finally got around to unpacking our books.  It was like greeting as many old friends.

~Turns out the auto-focus on my camera is not broken is was just, uhm, turned off.  Really wish I had figured that out at the beginning of the week instead of the end!  Also a friendly reminder that I need to continue learning more about my camera.

~Our nuts.com order came today.  I think that for my kids it’s like what going to the candy store, with money saved up, used to be for generations past.  I was ordering flour in bulk (arrowroot and coconut), along with some dates and chocolate making supplies, but they each added in their own little orders.  Galen bought himself banana chips.  Iain and Elijah pooled their resources for dried mulberries, pineapple and crystallized ginger.  They all traded and shared their prizes, even with the Wee Girl who had nothing to share in exchange.

~I can’t believe it’s been a week since we visited the sheep.  The lambs grew a lot!

~It was windy today.  The sun came and went, but it snowed lightly the whole time we were out.

~Finally made it to the woods to identify wildflowers, among other things.

Iain, Irish dancing on a drainage pipe!

~On the way home we came across deer tracks, with tiny, tiny fawn tracks along side them.

~Steve’s car broke down between work and the grocery store, leaving him with a long tow truck ride home.

~We baked date bread and ate it for dinner with red raspberry leaf tea, just because we felt like it.

~We let Iain and Elijah watch the beginning of the Phillies game, instead of reading tonight.  I love that they bring their books in to read during the commercial breaks.

~the Wee Girl was up most of the night complaining that he “tummy hurt” and asking me to rub it.  We’re both very tired this morning.  I had all sorts of plans for the day, especially if the weather was nice, which it seems to be!  But I think that perhaps we had better stay close to home.

~Thursday is bathroom cleaning day.  I was completely convinced it would also be bathroom painting day, but it didn’t work out that way.

~Iain and Elijah are each working on a map of our town now.  I’ll take pictures for us, but I think I’ll opt not to share them here.

~Màiri Rose makes up little songs and sings them to herself and others.  Sometimes she just goes right from one song to the next.  Today I tried to keep track of some of the little snippets of song I heard from her.  None of it’s complete, but this is what I have.

~~~The Songs of Màiri Rose Irene, Age 3~~~

The birds were flying up in the sky, the stars were flying up in the sky. The birds were flying then they came on down and the birds were singing to me.

The people all swam at the ocean and they lived together.  They all lived together in their little house.  And they ate pancakes.

Over the ocean, in my little boat.  The boat was singing to me.

Then they all lived together in their little crooked house.  Then they all swimmed and swimmed and swimmed.

~~~~~~~~~~

~Did some touch up painting and trim installing in Iain and Elijah’s room.

~They are off to practice again tonight.  In the rain.

~”It was Pop-pop and then it turned into Me-Mom!” ~the Wee Girl, after getting off the phone with my parents.

~While dinner cooked and the dishwasher ran, and the fourth load of laundry for the day was in the wash; after Galen had had his fill of loom building for the day, I managed to sew 4 or 5 seams.  I have two little dresses starting to take shape.

~Iain and Elijah spotted a pileated woodpecker from bed this morning

~breakfast plans were altered in an attempt to allow Goosey to sleep later.  I ended up serving leftover chicken dippers and acorn squash with maple syrup (the later having been cooked in the crockpot overnight).

He says, “look with my tape measure, I can hang from the ceiling!”

~the neighbor’s cat, a frequent visitor here and much beloved, especially by the small fry, had an unfortunate run in with a porcupine this morning.  We suspect it was the rather portly fellow that sometimes comes out to nibble things, around the edges of our yard at dusk.  Iain and Elijah discovered her in her rather prickly state and I sent them at once to fetch the neighbor.  They helped get her home and stayed for the de-quilling.  And then a bit longer still to visit with the frogs in the pond.  All is well with her now.  She came back to play just after.  And that was our excitement for the day.

~I got a roast and golden beets into the crockpot early on in the day so that I could easily feed dinner to different people at different times again tonight.

~We’re trying to identify this skull we found in the woods, but I keep forgetting to pick up some more books at the library to help us out.

~The weather was very fickle today, one minute being bright and sunny and the next threatening rain.  We hit a clear patch and decided to high-tail it to the woods to try to identify wildflowers, but before I could quite get everything ready to go, the sky opened up and it started raining, snowing and sleeting all at the same time.  All three boys were playing baseball in the yard at the time, waiting for me to finish up a few things.  Galen looked up and said, “I think it might be time to roll out the tarp!” (a reference to how they would go about protecting the field for a major league game)

~We settled for guide books by our own fireside instead.~mid-morning snack: apple and collard smoothie

~Elijah is growing cacti from seed, he has 8 of them so far.  Iain is attempting to grow pitcher plants.  They have been planted in a pot in the refrigerator for the last 5 weeks.  In another week he can take them out, then they might germinate in 1-3 months.

~lunch: catfish with leftover asparagus soup and kale salad

fetching wood

~The older ones are off even earlier today.  It’s choir day and they and rehearsing for their last concert of the year.  My parents a making a special trip up to see this one and everyone is excited.

~Another night of just me and the littles.  There are a lot of nights like this at this time of year, but it’s a short period.  Starting next week there will be baseball games and we’ll all be going out several nights a week!

~We three home bodies headed out to the garden to try to prepare some space for more cold weather veggies.  Until we were forced back in by a heavy hail shower.  Funny how the forecast was for little to no precipitation today!

~Galen has been looking for more challenging “work” lately.  A bit of woodworking together tonight.  We’ve started building a peg loom.

~After dinner II, which took place at a reasonable time for once, the older ones went to their bed’s to read and Steve and I curled up to watch an episode of Mad Men on Netflix.

~I’m really not sure how much longer I’ll be able to resist making myself a circle skirt.

~I’m almost done the second sleeve on Elijah’s birthday sweater!