Backwoods Wife

In the mood for baking and making

It is FREEZING here today (-40 to be more specific!).  I really don't want to go outside.  I want to stay inside and eat warm, yummy things.  We made some tea biscuits at lunch (the oven also helps to warm up the kitchen!) and I'd like to try some bread later today.  The kids would also like to try making "Wookiee Cookies" from the Star Wars Cook Book.  Just reading the cook book and looking at the pictures is fun, if the recipes are as well tested, we'll likely have to get its sequel as well.   

Star Wars is huge around here right now!  It seems to be the favourite topic of play and conversation amongst all 5 and 6 year old boys we know.  Yesterday, Hendrik went to a birthday party and came home with an inflatable light sabre and a plastic mask for some sort of trooper or other (Dwayne is the Star Wars expert around here).  It was a bit conflicting for him as the bad guy wouldn't have actually used a light sabre, but who wants to put down a light sabre?  His sisters didn't quite go for playing the bad guy either so he alternated between mask up and mask down and also morphed good and evil into one character for a time so he could wear both at once.

The little girls are very into paper and glue at the moment.  I think this afternoon will bring the creation of more paper chains.  I'm going to try to locate some scrapbook paper pads that I picked up for 80% off last fall at a craft store and let them cut and glue to their little hearts' content.  There are also some very pretty/girly/sparkly projects on our list from some of the Usbourne Make and Do Books as well.  Abby chose "Things for Girls to Make and Do" at the library the other day and has been perusing it every day looking for the projects that have pink and/or hearts.  We've found a few others inexpensively over the last couple of months and have been enjoying what they have to offer.

            

Riley has been making little things with assorted materials - paper, pipe cleaners, and pinecones.  She's already made an ornament which she is itching to present to its intended recipient.  

I'm feeling a bit excited as well, knowing that soon-ish I will have a bit more space and some room to sew!  

 

This is the day that the Lord has made!

From upstairs...the sound of Riley singing, "This is the day, this is the day that the Lord has made, that the Lord has made.  I will rejoice, I will rejoice and be glad in it, and be glad in it.  This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.  This is the day, this is the day that the Lord has made!"  This was followed by Abby and Riley singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing".  I love it!

Back to school for Mom, sort of...

Yesterday the Rosetta Stone French program that I ordered arrived.  I was so excited!  However, I had to wait until today to give it a try, we were hosting the book club that Dwayne is a member of last night.  (For anyone curious, the book they discussed last night was Broken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon.)  So far, I am really enjoying it!  Some of the basic French I learned at school is coming back to me and I am finding the program great for working on my (horrible) pronounciation.  I understand much more than I am able to speak, and largely because I know my pronounciation is way off.  I'm hoping that I will be able to catch up with Hendrik and maybe be able to speak French with friends and my Quebec family members.  Yay!  We purchased the Homeschool Edition with the girls in mind as well.  

I'm hoping Dwayne will take it up as well.  He actually has a far better French accent than I do, despite not being able to understand a thing that he is reading!  Haha!  It is always immensely entertaining to me when the kids ask him to read them French stories at bedtime.  I love it!

 

A great Saturday!

Our sweet girlies

This afternoon Hendrik had Jack Rabbits (cross country skiing for the small set).  It was his first time of skis.  He had a blast!  Afterwards, he and I went for hot chocolate at a local shop that was also having its grand opening today - hello yummy goodies and a beautiful ceramic travel mug freebie!  Hendrik, Emma, and I also checked out a brand new shop this afternoon in town.  Much more exciting for me than either of them - a women's clothing store!  I've always admired the owner's sense of style and her clothing, so I was thrilled to hear that she was opening up a shop.  I picked out an awesome tunic and a funky silver necklace today.  I will be back again, sans children, to take a better look and find some pants to match.  Love, love, love!  While I was out with the eldest and the youngest, Dwayne kept an eye on the middle two.  Riley and Abby had a great time fashioning cakes out of Play-Doh and Dwayne milled more lumber for the addition (I will have to get some photos tomorrow of he and the mill in action). Tonight we are watching Star Wars Episode III with the kiddos.  It may be too much for the girls, we'll see.  Hendrik is beyond excited.  He goes to bed with a Star Wars book every night and Dwayne gets asked a multitude of Star Wars questions when he gets home from work each evening.  Off to enjoy some BBQ'd burgers before we settle in on the couch with our movie.

Hendrik and company (he's in the red jacket wearing a blue and white toque)

A little video

Cheerios!

The best sleep in recent memory

Well, last night was probably the best sleep I've had in several weeks.  Emma has been teething lately and so I've been woken up frequently at night while those slow moving chompers came in.  My "best sleep" probably isn't what many of you would think of - it wasn't perfectly silent, it wasn't uninterupted, and it wasn't a marathon snooze, but it was gooo-ood.  Yes, you know you're a little sleep deprived when children talking in their sleep, babies waking you to nurse, strange and fascinating dreams, and a wood-weevil crawling on you and later, biting your face (miserable things creep out of the firewood every now and then) constitute a good sleep.  On another sleep related note - we ordered a new mattress yesterday.  I might feel completely human by the end of November.  Lovely!

You would think I'd learn...

I did it again.  I left the wipes package in the play yard (apparently it's not a "play pen" anymore - got to love political correctness!) with Emma while I went to throw away the diaper and wash my hands.  I came back to find a scene very similar to the one in the photo above from a few weeks back.  A very pleased (and quiet!) baby was grinning up at me as if to say, "Thanks for the fun, Mom!"  No harm done, just a mountain of wipes to try to squish back into the package. :)

Lost and found

Oh.  My.  Goodness.  What a week!  We went from having a tiny dusting of snow on Halloween to having a nice fluffy coating of snow 3 days later.  The temperature also went from being comfortable (around freezing) to being -17C with the windchill.  Brr!  (We are such wimps at the beginning of winter.  Come spring, we'll be running around without jackets at -17!)  Suddenly the push was on to make sure that I had all of the winter gear ready and accounted for.  Adults - yes.  Three older children - yup.  Snow gear for the baby - nowhere to be found.  I searched high and low.  I looked inside the house, or in bins in the storage trailer outside, or at our shop, or at my mom and dad's.  Nuthin'.  I was starting to feel like I had lost a small portion of my mind.  Normally I can find things.  I can help other people find things.  I was running out of ideas.  I asked my sister if I had sent snowsuits home to PEI with her last March when she was up visiting.  No luck there.  I thought maybe I had worse baby brain than I thought last winter.  I started shopping around online to see what MEC and Hanna Anderssonand eBay had to offer.  

After about a week of searching, I hadn't found what I had been looking for but I did find a long lost box of my childhood toys at my mom and dad's and a playpen that has been M.I.A. for about 9 months too (hello crawlspace!).  Anyway, I digress...

I had pretty much given up on finding the snowsuits.  I thought maybe the snowsuits were accidentlythrown away or given away or something.  I prayed that I would either find them in the next day or find a good deal on something online.  

Then something happened.  I ran out of laundry soap.  That probably sounds like nothing, but it took me on a path I wouldn't have otherwise traveled.  Each time my parents-in-law come to visit they stock up on basics for us like toilet paper, paper towel, and laundry soap.  Things that are expensive to buy up here because of freight costs.  Living in a very small house, we don't have much room to store such bulky extras so we keep them at our shop.  I went into the utility room at the shop yesterday for laundry soap.  On my way out I thought I better have one last look in one of the storage rooms in case I had missed the bin or bag (I was doubting my memory by this point).  It wasn't in the room but I found a potential fire hazard.  A big plastic garbage bag containing extra paper towel had slid against the heat register in the room that we thought was turned off.  Apparently not.  It must have come on with the recent cold weather, despite the thermostat being turned all the way down.  It had melted through the garbage bag, the plastic bag around the paper towel rolls, and had started to turn the paper towel a slight golden shade.  YIKES!  I grabbed the bag, restocked the bathroom and kitchen with paper towel and then proceeded to go back and check all of the electric registers in the building to make sure there was nothing touching any of them.  When I got to the kitchen register I noticed a blue bin peeking out from underneath a stack of paint trays (one of those projects that I keep intending to get done!).  I opened it up and - voila!  Baby winter gear.  I screamed and jumped around and laughed and did a happy dance.  Thankfully the air compressor was running so the two guys working in the shop at the time didn't hear me.  Although, at that point I probably would have hugged anyone who walked by.  Yippee!  It turns out I did give away the smallest sizes of snowsuits (it started to come back to me) but I do have a small snow set that will work for Emma for the next month or so until she is big enough to fit into the next size.  I'm so thrilled!

You never know what will happen when you run out of laundry soap...

 

Halloween

We are not big into Halloween around here.  The kids play dress up pretty much every day so that aspect of things isn't novel for us.  The candy, however, is a very popular aspect of the day.  The pumpkin carving and roasted pumpkin seeds are big hits too.  We live in a rural subdivision (for lack of a better term) and have yet to have a single trick-or-treater come to our door in almost 4 years.  We've learned to buy candy that we like because we WILL be eating the leftovers!  In previous years, we haven't really bothered doing much.  I don't like celebrating the scary and gory so I'm happy just to hang out and eat piles of mini chocolate bars.  This year Hendrik is old enough that he knows much more about what other kids are doing for Halloween and so there was a lot more talk about it leading up to the day.  In the end, we decided to have a small bonfire in the yard.  We burned some brush that needed to be burned anyway, roasted marshmallows and enjoyed the firelight.  My dad and my sister came for supper (Dwayne barbequed hamburgers) and the early part of the evening.  The night before we had carved our pumpkin into one of the "Angry Birds" characters from a template I found at AlphaMom.  We sat our angry chicken on the porch and let him glow for the night.  It looked really cute!  The kids went to bed on a sugar high with two of them not having dressed up at all, and one who dressed as a fairy princess for about 5 minutes before she realized that going outside like that was just not a good option.  All in all, it was a nice family evening without any scare factor.  I think we've almost finished the candy. ;)

Our pumpkin

 

By the fire

Snuggling with Aunty Christen

 

Us!

 

Next year we'll have to try to get photos of Dad, Emma, and Riley outside.  Riley was back and forth between the house and the fire so many times that I missed her with the camera, Dad and I were taking turns being inside with Emma (no snowsuit yet!  Can't find the bin ANYWHERE.).