Sariah's Corner of the World

2009-11-04T07:17:00.004-07:00

I've always enjoyed reading while nursing my babies, but right now I am low on reading material because I haven't made it to the library in over a month. Well, I made an exciting discovery yesterday! It is possible to sew and nurse at the same time! Seeing as Leif's favorite hobby right now is nursing and mine is sewing (my favorite hobbies change with the seasons) this is a great combination. For any nursing mothers out there who may be curious how to do this- the Boppy pillow makes it all possible! I bought my handy dandy pillow at a used children's clothing store for an affordable price. '

Where have all the duck eggs gone?

2009-11-03T15:24:00.004-07:00

Our duck, who we had always assumed was a boy, laid her first egg the morning Leif was born. She produced an egg every day for a week or so and then she ceased to produce. Was it the cold weather? Was a wild animal or the free ranging rooster eating them? It was a mystery.

This morning Taylor solved the mystery!
Aflac had found a soft warm nesting place by the pump shed and had accumulated 17 eggs! It was a jackpot morning for Taylor! :-)

Sewing

2009-10-28T17:59:00.012-06:00

I've been sewing a few little projects during my free moments. It is scrap buster month at Sew Mama Sew so they've been featuring fun ideas for using up small amounts of fabric. (By the way, I love that website. It always gets my creative juices flowing again.)

Here is a binkie holder that fits 2 binkies. I can throw this in the diaper bag and keep the binkies lint and crumb free. It was so fun to make that I'm making a few more for baby gifts. So don't look Mandy! :-)
Here's the view of the inside. I sandwiched a stiff iron-on lining between the fabrics to give it more shape.

And these headbands have been totally addictive to make. I've made about 20 of them. They'll probably be showing up as Christmas gifts.....

I planned to sew one of these Moby style baby slings but I couldn't find the right kind of fabric for a decent price. I found this on Etsy for cheaper than I could have made it! It is very comfortable and snuggles Leif quite nicely.

Working Together

2009-10-18T10:22:00.010-06:00

Remember the bridge frame that Torsten fabricated this summer? A few weekends ago, Torsten, Hailey and Taylor completed the project by screwing on all the wood decking.

It included getting into the canal to get the job done. They really didn't mind that part one little bit!

Wahoo! The bridge is done and now Grandma has a place to shuck corn with the grand kids again! (Shucking corn is fun enough- but even better when you can throw the husks in the canal and watch them float away.)

The day after Leif was born the boys spent the afternoon splitting wood with Dad. I'm glad the kids have so many opportunities to learn how to work.

Zzzzzz.....

2009-10-18T10:08:00.007-06:00

Leif Smilebox

2009-10-17T14:47:00.004-06:00

I wanted to share this smilebox that my mom made using pictures of the days before and after Leif was born. It makes me cry when I watch it- actually it makes me cry typing about it! (am I a bit hormonal still....?) I'm a little embarrassed about the pictures with wet hair and no make-up, but that's okay. :-)
It was so nice to have my mom here for a whole week! She cooked and did laundry and drove the kids places and played games with them. I was very sad to see her go home.....but as you may have noticed, I did survive.

Make a Smilebox
slideshow

Baby Leif Pictures

2009-10-10T12:43:00.007-06:00

Baby's here!

2009-10-09T10:26:00.004-06:00

Hello!! I had a moment today to post the exciting news! :-) Joel and I had a big healthy baby boy born to us October 7th! Leif (we pronounce it Layfe) arrived in the world around 3 in the afternoon, born at home, and weighed a whopping 9lbs. 1 oz. What a fat little cutie he is! The kids are constantly hovering around him to hold and touch and laugh at his funny faces- grandma says she's hardly even got a chance at him because he is always surrounded! I am so sorry for the lack of pictures- we have redone and redone and REDONE our computer so much in the last 3 weeks that I am completely lost again as to where pictures are at. But I had to at least get the news out and I'll add photos later! (Maybe tonight when everyone comes home again someone with techno smarts can help me out....) But I'll just say for now that Leif was a completely different birth than any of my others- very slow and spaced out contractions. Usually I have my babies in a matter of a few hours- this time it was more like 13 hours! I woke up at 2:00 in the morning feeling like "this is it", so I cleaned the house and puttered around a bit, getting things ready for the birth. But contractions stayed very mild and 20 minutes apart and I decided to try and get a little more sleep. Morning came and I listened to the kids practicing their piano, got out their school stuff for my mom to do with them in the basement and I worked on some sewing projects until my midwife came at 12:00. Connie found I was at dilated to a 6 but contractions were still almost 15 minutes apart! Finally, we (Leif and I) decided to get down to business and he was born at 2:58 on a beautiful fall day. Yay!!! I think I hear him trying to wake up now, so I'll end this ramble and go feed my little man. :-)

Sweet Respite

2009-09-29T06:52:00.008-06:00

A wonderful neighbor of ours invited us to come swim in their natural hot water pool last night because she said when she saw me at church I was looking very uncomfortable. (She certainly read me right!) It was such a beautiful night and the warm water and bouyant feeling was such a relief to my aching bones. I actually felt good for about a half hour afterwards. So if I just go dip in their pool every hour or so......I'll get nothing done, but boy I'll feel great! (wouldn't a water birth in a pool like this be so awesome?)

Doesn't their pool have the prettiest view of the river and the canyon walls? It was so lovely.

A not-so-quick update....

2009-09-23T08:01:00.013-06:00

*Went to Time Out for Women two weekends ago with my mom, grandma and Mandy, my sister-in-law. It was lots of fun and great speakers! Here we are at P.F. Changs. I'd never eaten there before and it was mmmmm....delicious! By the way, Mandy is expecting too, about Thanksgiving time. Soon, it will be baby time around here!

*Had a 2-skunk night the other night- that heart burn keeping me up at night is good for something, I guess. I heard a wild sounding scream outside about 1:30 am and went out with a flashlight to see what it was. A skunk was just leaving the garden/chicken coop area! I yelled into the house to wake up Joel and we traipsed around the hills, like 2 hilly billies in a state of half-dress, until he found and shot 2 different skunks. We're still not sure if one of them was the original one I saw, but oh well. By the way, something had dug 4 or 5 holes around the edge of one of my coops that night but for some reason hadn't entered in! So Abigail and Stinky Pete are still safe and producing their beautiful eggs for us.....

*Grape picking time. No, the deer and birds didn't leave me much after all. I didn't get to pick a single green grape this year. (The fact that I have about 45 feet of healthy green grape vines makes that pretty maddening to say the least.) For some reason the Concords aren't bothered quite as much. So the kids and I picked about 3 1/2 enamel bowls full.They produced 16 quarts of juice after adding in some grapes from my mother's vines too. Don't you love to look at your canned produce lined up on the counter at the end of the day? Sometimes I leave it there a day or two just to look at it. :-) Sorry, this dark picture doesn't do them any justice, but I just had to add it.....
* Have I mentioned that Hailey has really caught the crocheting bug? Here is her latest purse she created:
*My dear grandma (see top photo, above) was chauffeur for my kids yesterday, on our busiest day of the week! It is the day that begins at 11:30 for handbell choir, proceeds to homeschool soccer for everyone, then to piano lessons for 2 kids and clogging lessons for 3 kids. It really doesn't sound like much but it can be a logistical nightmare and it doesn't end until 8 o'clock. Grandma offered to drive the kids around all day so that I could get some projects done at home. I got most of the baby's bedroom painted! I wouldn't have been ready to paint if it hadn't been for my mother's and grandma's help removing all the wall paper. They have come twice to help do that! I am so grateful for all their loving help!

*Torsten has been working on a welding project at my parents house this past spring and summer. It's a footbridge for their canal. Here are some photos of the day he finished it up and they pulled it over to the canal:
They worked until after dark to finish digging fence posts too. The canal runs right by the house and they are fixing the fence to make it safer for little kids to play in the yard.*And to conclude - only 11 days until my due date, but who's counting?

2009-09-15T06:21:00.002-06:00

Hi. I am still here and alive! But besides the fact that we are back to "school in session" around here, meaning free time is rare, our new computer is throwing a small kink in my blogging. Do you know why? I haven't figured out where to find pictures that are from our camera when there is no camera icon at the bottom of the main page. In the computer world, I function by complete rote memorization- so when something gets changed I am very lost! I need to figure it all out by the time the baby comes so I can post pictures.....

2009-09-01T23:35:00.005-06:00

I'm afraid it's here- I've reached the beached whale stage. It's been 5 years since my last baby, so I'd forgotten about this little part at the end. Well, it's all coming back. I'm glad Joel is so accommodating to my predicament- he's the best! He helps me turn over in bed at night like an oversized helpless turkey on a spit..........that's not a pretty picture is it? Maybe I'll change the subject.

On a happier note- we've started school back up- Yeehaw! Latin phrases, geography, literature.....lots of fun! I need to get our new math curriculum's CDs loaded on the computer so the kids can try it out. We've always done Saxon math in the past, but we are doing a new thing- Teaching Textbooks. I'll let you know how we like it.

Last week our family delivered 2,200 phone books around town! We did this little fund raising project to help Hailey and Taylor raise money for their clogging studio's trip to Hawaii next summer. Rocky Top Cloggers will perform at the Polynesian Cultural Center, participate in an international dance festival, dance in a parade, and of course do some sightseeing and playing at the beach. It will be such a great experience for them! Our kids have never even seen an ocean before, in fact- they haven't seen Yellowstone Park and it's only a few hours away- poor deprived children. What kind of pathetic parents are we anyway? :-) So, in the mean time, we have a lot of work ahead of us to help them earn enough for the trip.

Computer Crash

2009-08-31T07:59:00.003-06:00

Have I ever told you that I am no friend of computer technology? Oh sure, it can come in handy sometimes and all the nifty gadgets are quite amazing- but seriously, I only seem to know enough to be completely lost when something I've come to depend on -FAILS. Our main computer, for example. It has died- at least its "mother board" has. (Doesn't that word sound so "Star Trekish"? Like - 'mother ship' or something?) Our computer lasted for 7 years- well, I should qualify that statement: it had an overhaul 3 years ago to replace its motherboard, hard drive, sound card and power supply, so maybe I should say: it's outer shell lasted for 7 years. In the modern computer way of thinking that's probably considered plenty long, and so, of course, we were way overdue to go in and buy a bigger and better model (actually, make that a smaller and better model). Can I tell you my opinion? I think the modern way of thinking is messed up. But, I don't know what to do about it. So today, I'm going to go sew on my 40 year old sewing machine that still runs like a champ and has never needed its insides replaced, **pat, pat, "yes, sweet Bernina, you're momma's favorite", pat, pat**, and forget about this cold cruel world of poorly built computers that misplaces all your email addresses, favorites and passwords in one fell swoop........

Party at our House

2009-08-25T07:15:00.008-06:00

We've actually had quite a few parties at our house lately- it's been lots of fun! First we had the homeschooler group over for a potluck picnic and water games and more than 60 people attended. Then we had everyone over again for swimming in the river the following week- the water swing that goes into the river is a real hit! The kids can spend hours and hours on it. Unfortunately, I forgot to make use of my camera on either occasion. Then, on Saturday, my extended family came for a BBQ so that everyone could meet my sister's new boyfriend- Hunter.The kids had a great time playing with their cousins!Mom, Grandma and Mandy helped me get some wallpaper off the "soon-to-be-baby's-room" wall that afternoon. It took hours and we didn't even get close to finishing, so I am so glad they were there to help me out. Who invented wallpaper?? It seems to be the bane of every home owner's existence! Here's Grandma in front of one wall, newly devoid of plaid wallpaper.
Me and the baby getting ready to cook some pork ribs.... only 6 weeks left, by the way!
And here's the whole family! -well most of them. And I can't get the underline to turn off and I'm ready to run out the door- so just ignore it! :-)**Note** I guess it is not underline- just red font. Still, I can't get the darn thing to turn off.....

Yeesss! One skunk down.....

2009-08-14T05:43:00.004-06:00

So I woke up yesterday morning, at about 5:45, smelling skunk so strong I could taste it. I frantically woke both the boys up and we went out with flashlights and the .22 but could not find any trace. We searched high and low. It's lingering presence was smelled until afternoon, so we knew it was still around.

Well, this morning at 5:30, Joel saw through the kitchen window, a skunk trying to get into the kitchen coop! (This is actually the third time we've seen or smelled this skunk and it is always at the same time! If it would have just gotten up a bit earlier, it could have accomplished its dirty deeds while we slumbered...) Oooh, nasty, nasty things. Have you ever seen the claws and teeth on a skunk? They are certainly not designed to be herbivores. The previous resident of our house had all 6 of his hens killed in one night by a skunk. It ate their egg ducts out and left the rest. Isn't that horrible??!! So, back to the story: Joel grabbed the .22 and chased the skunk through the garden where it eventually came to its demise in the raspberry patch. Oh my does it STINK right now. After we all took a closer look to admire it's vicious teeth and luxurious striped coat, and our kitties joined in too, in quiet curiosity, Joel then disposed of it in the dumpster because it happens to be trash day and luckily our garbage men come really early. In fact, they just came by and I bet they are wondering what is up with our trash today----the smell is strong enough to knock you over!
Aaah....what excitement owning chickens has added to our mundane lives. It has turned the simple nuisance of having a smelly skunk hanging around the property, into a personal "us versus them" battle to keep our hens safe. But for now, I think I'm going back to bed....

Rifles, scopes and summer evenings.....

2009-08-13T07:31:00.003-06:00

Joel and the boys are enjoying the .22's we picked up on our Utah trip. Joel purchased some scopes to go with them to make our skunk and raccoon hunting even more accurate and exciting. (he heh hee....) The scopes had to be "tuned in" so they spent some evening hours and 200 rounds of ammunition, having quality father and son time.
Joel observing the accuracy with his binoculars.I know they did a great job because I gave one of them a try when they were done and hit 4 targets in 4 shots. Now I just need to practice with moving targets.....because right this minute I can smell a skunk so strong I can taste it. I better go and make sure it's not in the garden trying to get my chicks.

Making Fruit Leather

2009-08-13T06:37:00.010-06:00

During free afternoons I've been making fruit leather with apricots and plums. (While we were gone to Utah the birds ate our apricots, so thanks Jenny, for finding me another source of free apricots this year!)

Here's a quick "how to make fruit leather" for anyone who may want to know....

1. Let your fruit get good and ripe for the best flavor. These aren't quite ripe.
2. Take out the pits and cut away any gross parts on the fruit.

3. Fill up your blender with fruit and blend until smooth. I don't add sugar and my kids love the flavor just fine. Homemade fruit leather is one of their favorite snacks.
4. Spread the puree thickly, on trays that have been lightly coated with vegetable oil. My trays look like this:Want to see what happens when you forget the oil? I missed a tray when I was doing a big batch and we had to pick the leather off in little tiny bits. What a pain.
(By the way, if you are using a square dehydrator you will need to tape plastic wrap to your trays because they don't come with these handy plastic trays. I grew up with a square dehydrator, but I have to say I've found the round dehydrators more user friendly and it seems they are cheaper too. I've seen them at Wal-mart in the 30 dollar range. I was lucky and had my dehydrators handed down from my great-grandma and found another at a garage sale.)

5. Dehydrate for roughly 24 hours. You know it's done when you press the trays with your fingers and don't feel soft or squishy spots. The color of the fruit will be darker now- that's okay. This is how it usually looks:6. Peel the leather off, (which should be easy because you remembered to oil your trays!), and roll up in plastic wrap. Fruit leather can be stored for months and months and months- though your kids will probably eat it up much sooner. :-) Try different combinations with whatever fruit you have on hand. I've done peach-plum, apple, cherry, strawberry-apricot, etc. Our personal favorites are apricot and plum because they are tart. Mmmmm....yum!

Our new roosters

2009-08-10T09:15:00.006-06:00

Here's some pictures of the chickens we got this spring as little chicks. They've grown a lot and now we've found out that the 2 unsexed banties we purchased are roosters. Darn. But they are still cute, especially their adolescent attempts at crowing. All the chickens are so much fun. I think they make much better pets than a dog. And what dog gives you eggs every day? In the video at the bottom, listen and you can hear the duck quacking in the background.

Niagara Springs Homeschool Party

2009-08-06T09:09:00.008-06:00

Yesterday we had such a fun time at Niagara Springs with our homeschool friends! Besides playing in the freezing water, the kids caught bugs, chased muskrats, climbed trees and had some algae and mud wars.

Here's our clean little girls before:
...and after a couple hours of playing:
Boys vs. girls algae war-
Hannah and Hailey had a great time. (even when their lips were turning blue from the cold water)
Taylor and one of his favorite buddies found a great perch in the russian olive tree.

Niagara Springs is such an awesome place for an August afternoon!

What a catch!

2009-07-31T19:38:00.002-06:00

We went to Koosharem Utah for 6 days last week. The older kids fished every day with Grandpa Pearson and Uncle Thad. It was their first real exposure to fishing and on the second day they came home with some great fish! Hailey's was a 3 pound rainbow trout.

Easy Eggplant and Yellow Crookneck Lunch

2009-07-30T13:45:00.004-06:00

The eggplant lunch was so good the other day that I decided to have it again. I added yellow crookneck this time and it was even better! Fry up both veggies with olive oil, minced garlic (from the jar), Vietnamese chili garlic sauce, and salt and pepper to taste. So good and fast!
I use the chili garlic sauce in everything, from Chinese fried rice to stir fried fresh green beans, to add some heat and flavor.

3 friends, 1 ice-cream cone

2009-07-29T13:41:00.003-06:00

The ice-cream was too expensive at Roaring Springs for me to want to buy more than one cone. I laughed at the girls solution- they each got one side because they didn't want to "share germs". I'm sure there were no germs shared!

Fun Weekend with Emily and family

2009-07-29T07:17:00.015-06:00

A week and half ago, Emily, one of my favorite friends from long way back, came to visit for the weekend. That's Emily with her back to the camera. She came to be a part of the family a month before I started college and now my kids call her kids cousins..... I still love to reminisce with Emily about our summer working together picking corn and watermelon for a local fruit stand in the Hagerman/Bliss area . We had lots of scrapes and adventures - like flooding the farmer's melon field on accident, almost backing our boss's pickup over an embankment (one tire was hanging over and he had to come save us!) getting so thirsty after picking melons for hours in the heat that we drank from the canal (disgusting!!!) and driving my dad's old tractor to work one day when we couldn't get any other vehicles to start. We also picked blackberries while floating in inner tubes and discovered a mysterious cold, cold pond down in the valley.....fun, fun times......so anyways, back to the present: Emily's sister was the official photographer for the weekend since I forgot to get my camera out much at all-- thanks Christine! Our kids played and played on the trampoline with the hose since it was so hot and we went down to swim in the river too. I love it that our daughters match up in ages and are friends too! Here's Hailey and Hannah...
and Heidi and Katie.Emily's girls down at the river-
During their stay we had to walk over to see the falls of course! They were still pretty even though the flows are back down.
My sister, Havilah, came over to visit with Emily too and went with us to the falls. Thanks for getting this fun sister photo, Christine!
Oh, and Christine took a family photo for us too- no silliness around here.

Summer Abundance

2009-07-27T19:34:00.011-06:00

After returning from our Utah trip, I spent the morning out walking and weeding in the garden, indulging the agrarian side of my nature.....
The grapes seem to be keeping ahead of the deer this year! Maybe I'll be able to put up lots of juice -- Yahoo!
And the volunteer hollyhocks growing in the raspberry patch are looking pretty. In my book, if something has a flower on it, it's not considered a weed. :-)
Today's menu will come from the garden: stir fried garlicky eggplant for lunch and vegetable stir fry for dinner. I was thinking today, why do I like eggplant so much? I really don't know.....it's kind of weird.
Take a look at the branches of the plum tree! They are loaded and I plan to pick them a little under ripe this year so that I can get to them before the porcupines do.Now, after sharing all this garden loveliness, I need to post a disclaimer: I want you to know-- my gardens are weedy, the morning glory is growing like crazy, my beans hardly germinated this year, etc. etc. A friend of mine, from out of state, told me she never visits my blog because the garden pictures last summer made her too jealous. Aaack! That's certainly not my intention. So to keep it real around here, I'll share what my "other" garden looks like this year. You know, the one I grew pumpkins, squash, potatoes, artichokes, beans and corn in last year..... the one Joel rototilled twice for me this spring but then I never got around to planting anything in except gladiolus and asparagus....Please don't ask where the gladiolus are- I haven't a clue.

Margaret Thatcher

2009-07-16T08:40:00.003-06:00

I am reading a biography of Margaret Thatcher right now entitled- "There is No Alternative- Why Margaret Thatcher Matters". The title may seem a little strange, but the book is riveting! Where we are headed as a country right now is so similar to what Britain looked like in the 1970's. My brain is too slow right now to type up an actual review of the book- so here is a review from Amazon:

“I strongly recommend ‘There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters,’ by Claire Berlinski… Mrs. Thatcher clearly understood that the great threat of socialism was moral and not economic. Socialism is bad because it destroys freedom. It destroys self-reliance, destroys individual initiative, and transfers power from the citizen to the politician and the bureaucrat. Every American who wants to know how dangerous it is for the government to have such enormous influence over AIG, Citibank, Chrysler, etc. should read Ms. Berlinski's study of Mrs. Thatcher......."

Well, I just want to put it out there that this book is a great read and worth looking for at the library. (after I give it back, of course....)