Week Ending 10-8-23 Sandbox and Zipline Are Finished!

Relaxing Sunday Afternoon Outside

Sunday afternoon I picked a lot of produce from our garden with Tilly. The sunflower is dropping its seeds, which are fun to pick and roast and eat! We also picked wildflowers and made flower arrangements.

Andy and Tilly picked pokeberries, put them in a bottle, mashed them with their feather, then drew pictures the rest of the day. They set up an art studio and charged siblings to come sit at it and draw with their pokeberry ink.

Life is so good on the farm on Sunday afternoons. Everyone is happily writing in journals, playing in the wildflower garden, doing something creative, playing the piano, and just enjoying life free from the weekday worries.

Finishing the Sandbox

We spent all day Thursday hauling loads of sand from the creek. There are several spots where the creek overflows in the summer and leaves a lot of great sand behind in the tall Chinese grass. So we dug it up and hauled it up the steep hill and poured it into our new sandbox.

Thomas and I and one other kid would go down and dig the sand and haul it back up. A wheelbarrow of sand is heavy! We could only fill it half full. Our hill from the creek up to the house is really steep so we’d have to zigzag up it and we still struggled to push and pull it up at the same time. Thomas pushed and I pulled to make it over the sticks and fallen branches.

Meanwhile, the kids at the sandbox would pick up walnuts from the ground and fill the garbage can full and dump it. Then whoever wasn’t helping to spread out the sand would then fill the wheelbarrow with walnuts and dump it. Then we’d take it back down to the creek. We were constantly busy!

Looking good! The boards are 7″ tall so we filled it with about 4″ of sand from the creek and then called it quits. We’d made numerous trips on several different days and were proud of our efforts. It was very time consuming, but we’d had a good time working together. When we were too tired to do any more loads, we poured good play sand from the store on the top.

All done!! Yay!! I love it!! I also made two corner seats to sit on cause I thought that would look good.

The kids are loving playing in it!

Miscellaneous Moments

Playing at the park near the bookmobile. The little boys love bringing their cars to play in the mulch. Talea and I love to ride scooters together.

Spontaneous reading party. When I make popcorn, out come the books.

I came in from outside to find Kaitlyn reading “Ruthie’s Gift” to Andy and Tilly. And Andy found a comfy seat. Great for his balance!

Every time we milk I want to take a picture because it’s so frothy and fresh! It’s just beautiful pure white milk coming straight out of the cow. Makes me so happy. The picture on the right are some little dogs Kaitlyn crocheted for an auction to raise money for youth camps next summer. They sold for $125! She also sold a koala, a bunny, and an elephant. She normally sells them for $20 with free shipping. If you want one, let me know!! She can make any animal.

Friday and Saturday: Cousins Come!

Nathan’s cousin, Emma, and her husband and 3 children stopped at our house on a road trip. Technically I’m not related anymore but I love them like family and the kids are still second cousins. It’s the first time they’ve met and they had a great time. I loved talking to Emma and Josh and Josh was super helpful in fixing things around here, including our stovepipe so we could have our first fire on Sunday!

First we cleaned for them. When they arrived we played outside the rest of the day and didn’t even come in for dinner until it got dark. Her boys loved playing in the sandbox and with our chicks and running around, exploring.

Saturday morning Josh (the dad) and Thomas fixed our zipline!! It was put up in June but hung too low and you hit the ground. Josh moved it to a different tree and then found a way to tighten it so we can ride on it! Yay! We’ve waited for 2 years to have our zipline up!