March happenings.

Dear March—Come in—
How glad I am—
I hoped for you before—
Put down your Hat—
You must have walked—
How out of Breath you are—
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest—
Did you leave Nature well—
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me—
I have so much to tell— (Emily Dickinson)

 So my dream is to build a new "old" house, and when one of the local architectural salvage stores had a going out of business sale I went.  I really wanted this amazing two sided cabinet that looks like a fume hood (it's not), but it was $5,000 and massive.  And tall.  😆 I shall have to adjust my dreams.

 

 

I wanted to buy doors, but since I don't know how many or how tall I just looked.  I did come home with two light fixtures!  All strapped in for safe keeping... 

Hung them up in the basement to show them off. :)  They both need rewiring, so I'll have to figure out how to do that sometime. The girls are fighting over who gets the three bulb fixture- it has painted flowers on the shades.  Bob: so are these for the basement of the new house?  Me:? noooo....  haha.  We have different visions I guess.  😝

I bottled maple syrup.  😁

Warm days call for sliding.

 Emmy really wanted to invite her class to see our maple syrup operation. They're going to study the pioneers at the end of the year, and read in the Little House Books where Laura's family makes maple syrup, and Em thought it would be fun for them to see in real life. The day they could come was a little too warm for sap to be running, unfortunately.  Here they come down the lane to the sugar bush!

    

I didn't get many other pictures because I was too busy talking and answering all of their questions.  They had sooo many questions.  😀    Also, Bob told me later I kept talking about boiling to 219 degrees Celsius instead of Fahrenheit.... ooops.😜  We showed them our different spiles, buckets, bags, and how we filter and boil the sap into syrup.  Then I had some samples ready for them to taste... third grade boy: 'This is the most amazing thing I've ever put in my mouth.'  😂
It was a lot of fun, I wish more of the taps were running though.

FFA strawberries got delivered (woot woot) so I made a batch of jam, and some homemade bread to eat it on.  😝  I am not remotely crunchy, and I kind of bristle at all the self styled homesteaders out there- and then I do things like bake bread and put my jars of homemade jam next to my homemade maple syrup and if you didn't know me, you could lump me in with both categories.  So after discussing with my sister, her newly coined term for those of us displaced farm kids who like homegrown/home cooked food and also like high fructose corn syrup and childhood vaccinations is Little Debbie Homesteader.  It's me.  I'm a proud Little Debbie Homesteader.  🙋

 

The two littles and I were at DG and walked passed the Peeps- Miriel: Oh! Squishy Duckies! Can we get squishy duckies?  DG employee (dying laughing): Did she just call them squishy duckies?!?  Yes. Yes, she did.  Perrin enjoyed his, Miri decided she didn't really like them after all. 😂

 

Tell me you're annoying your big sister without telling me you're annoying your big sister....

Bob's Sunday school class was having a hard time learning their song in 3-part harmony without a piano, so they had a practice at the fellowship hall on a Wednesday evening.  It almost made me miss ACYF days.  Almost.  haha.  Five years was probably enough... (eighth grade through highschool when you go to a small church with not many girls your age.)  It did make me miss singing with a group.  Our kids had fun playing with the toys, especially the paw patroller.

And then we got home and Emmy started complaining that her eye hurt. *sigh*  It was red and goopy by morning, and since I hadn't taken her for a well-child check in a few years, and she also hasn't had an illness visit, they were pretty sure she needed to be seen in person first to get a prescription.  huzzah.  So we went in, exposed ourselves to all the potential bugs in the waiting room, and they looked at her, said yup that's pink eye, and off we went.   😖  This is the third round in as many weeks, we could have done this over the phone.  Emmy thought it was the best day ever though, no school for her and she got to pick out a snack while we picked up her prescription. 

My big little helper boy. 

They built and fought over a very big Titanic made out of duplos. 

Jake and Rachel were in town for the weekend and we went to the farm for Katrina's birthday party.  The kids were wild... they were sliding headfirst down the stairs... and then Logan and Miri were 'vrooming' the barbie cars down the stairs.  'Setty, Ret, Go!'

I couldn't resist the Dr. Pepper squishy duckies... to quote my brother, "What a time to be alive!"

Another 1st grade leprechaun trap is done!  yay!  I think this is my least favorite project at the grade school.  It's just. dumb.  haha.  It's supposed to be a 'family' project, but I think Emmy actually helped Cadence more than anyone else.   

Bob and I got to go to potluck at Jon and Nichole's.  They made pizzas in their pizza oven- it was so good.  And the company and conversation was great as always.  :)

Ok, so, after I bought lights at Whiskey City Salvage, I was looking online various places for other antique light fixtures, and how to rewire, etc.  Scrolling through marketplace and up popped a listing for 'vintage fixtures- we're remodeling make an offer.'  Three chandelier fixtures and four beam fixtures.  And the house they were hanging in looked amazing.  And I waffled between being so mad they were taking the ORIGINAL brass light fixtures out of this gorgeous 1910's four square, and salivating over them.  And then I politely asked what they wanted for all of them.  And even with shipping it was a great price.  So she boxed up two of them and sent me tracking info and I anxiously awaited their arrival.  *sigh*  You can't pack glass and heavy brass in a box with just one layer of bubble wrap and expect the postal service to deliver it undamaged from Iowa.   Two glass shades out of 5 survived, but the big milk glass bowl fixture shade did not. So disappointing, but I can find replacements, and I'm hoping the post office is going to reimburse some because the boxes arrived with obvious damage.

We got a little bit of a sugar snow/slush.  😊  The first two weeks of sap season we got pretty consistent flow, but then it got too warm and we didn't get much after that.  

On Sunday afternoons when we don't have plans, I've been working on another miniature in a clock. It's slowly starting to look more Green Dragon/ Eagle and Child pub like. :) 

Cecily was a little bit nervous about getting braces.

How is she this old already?  mur.  Just the top teeth for now.  Her mouth was sore for about a day and a half and we heard about it for a day and a half. 

Emmy has been diligently working on and practicing her biography day speech. 

Miriel has been trying to make work gloves as cool as carhart caps on the gram.  :P 

She's practically lived in this tutu since we got it, and she was so excited to wear it to Biography day.  Presenting Maria Tallchief, America's first Prima Ballerina.  😁

Bob's class did another quick practice at our house before church on Wednesday. 

Even though the shades broke, the fixtures themselves are still really cool! This is the side you can't see when it's hanging up, so it's hard to tell what you're looking at. 😋 (I realize I'm probably the only person that likes them, but whatever, I'm getting closer to 40 every year, and I care less and less about what other people think is stylish. hehe.)  I started cleaning them in preparation for rewiring- one quick pass with Brasso changed the color and I was worried I was ruining it!  (The right silvery piece is cleaned, the more golden piece is patina and possible nicotine build up.)  But apparently, this is what brass looks like when it's freshly cleaned and polished.  I did take off 100 years of patina, buuuuttt... patina just looks like dirt to me, and it can re-patina itself for the next 100.  😁Also, I like silver toned metals better than gold toned metals.  Anyway, it made me super excited, though cleaning each of those chain links is going to be tedious. 

Mr. Perrin has a pair of overalls and he looks like a little farmer boy.  Or like he'd answer to 'Bubba'.  hehe.

Bob set up the compost tumbler he got for Christmas.... so far the novelty of turning it hasn't worn off for the girls. 

Perrin was very carefully putting connect-4 pieces into the game.  :D  He's getting so big and smart.

Saturday I helped Matt get ready to move for a few hours, and then we had some Beutel kids for the afternoon and evening.  They were all playing an educational game they do at school.  There are worse things I suppose.  😜

Blessings.