'Tis winter

It's cold and I want to hibernate, but alas, I can not. :)

 

Progress on the house is slower, but still steady. I think.  Conrad put in soffits and this is the beginnings of a laundry shoot!  Don't mind me trying to be mature and not squealing constantly.   

The ground was really soupy a few weeks ago.  Most of what's exposed right now is slippery clay and it just gets mucky when it's not frozen.  I'm unclear on who got the lift stuck this time, if it was the roofers or the carpenters.  😏 Marv came to the rescue with his tractor... I happened to be out there and it was fun to watch. Asa got a bit of a ride in the lift... haha.  

Safely dragged to solid ground.  :)  

"Is it so fun to pick things out for the house?"  Weeeellll, right now I've been picking things up for the house. Out of the deep muddy ruts they were trying to fill so as not to get the lift stuck.  That's fun?  In all seriousness, Litwiller was going to come move some dirt around so somebody had to pick up all the stuff laying around in the yard and that somebody was me.  #farmgirl  

First bit of siding so that they could mount electrical panels. eeeeeeeek.

Porch ceiling and soffit are in and looking crisp.  

Apparently exterior light fixture and outlet siding blocks do not come in our siding color. Which is weird, and I didn't think white would look right behind dark brown/black lights.  So I volunteered to paint them.  First mistake was not asking if they could color match to Ben Moore paint.  They could color match, but only to the cheaper brand.  Which meant I could only buy a gallon because it doesn't come in pints..... Next mistake was following the instructions on the paint can; I scrubbed the blocks with 'mild detergent' and 'no primer needed' started painting.  I could scratch it off with a fingernail almost immediately.  So the older girls and I had a paint removal party.  *sigh*  

I went and bought the most heavy duty hard surface primer Menards had, scrubbed with TSP substitute, primed, and repainted.  So far, that stuck tight.  And I still have most of a gallon of paint for touch ups. 

Rooftop conferences... and I can not get over those kicked eaves.  😍

 

  We took the kids out to do some clean up on Saturday.  It was chilly, but sunny.  These two picked up plastic-everything comes wrapped in plastic or has plastic that peels off and invariably some of it blows away.  

 

 Emmy was sorting the scrap wood in the house and my parents stopped by to check things out and did some cleaning too.

It will be nice when we can start taking things out to the house; this house is already full.  I ordered a faux beam sample that quickly became a military installation.  :)

The guys were building a new platform for the lift while the peanut gallery was spying from the garage stairs.

Garage doors!  

And the craftsman brackets came in.  :)  They go on the garage, not the house.  

And then there was the spelling bee.  Emmy decided she also wanted to try it this year.  Cecily practiced and studied every day, Emmy started cramming a few days before.  I was quite nervous for both of them.  They both made it through the first round of words, then Cecily made a silly, nervous mistake.  She said later that her mind just went blank and she couldn't remember how to spell 'dirge.'  She could spell all of the harder words after that one though of course... 😜 So that was disappointing, but Emmy was still in it for another 2 rounds and there were only four kids left! She missed a word and I thought she got 4th, but the girl after her also missed that round.  Spell off for 3rd place.... they went back and forth for a bit until the other girl missed and Emmy spelled syndrome and safari for 3rd.  Talk about a roller coaster of emotions!  I'm so glad my kids aren't into sports- I couldn't handle the stress.     

Cecily was disappointed, but excited for Emmy.  By the time they got home that afternoon she was already making plans for a trophy shelf for their bedroom for spelling trophies. 😆And they think that next year Emmy should try for second so that they can have one of each trophy.  

I didn't want to take Perrin to the spelling bee so Savannah came to hang out with him.  I was hoping that he would still be asleep when she got there but he was up extra early that morning and had parked himself in front of the computer watching 'moovs.'  Later, I asked him if he had played with Savannah at all and he said he looked at her a few times.... eeesh.  haha.  

More windows!  So exciting.  :)  The girls think it's fun to talk to whomever is on the lift out the window.  One day they told me they had borrowed Daniel's hammer through the window... they are a great crew to put up with our nonsense.   

We need our house to appear nice and sell quickly so of course everything is breaking.  The bathroom vent fan has not been keeping up with all of our showers so we replaced it with a stronger one.  I also cleaned out a scary amount of dusty cobwebs. ick.  Bob had to take a phone call, so Cecily got to be my unwilling assistant. hehe. 

We had a Friday half day so we picked up Kenna and went ice skating!  We almost had the rink to ourselves... SKS had some nephews and niece there, and there was one other family.

Perrin just wanted to watch, so he drove his monster truck around the bleachers. 

Miri is doing a little better on the ice, though she would still rather somebody else push her or hold her up than actually skate.

Emmy would love to have her own ice rink.  

From the ice rink out to the woods... this particular afternoon the first thing Conrad said was, 'have I got a story for you!'  And it was quite the story.  haha.  So the neighbors dog is very friendly and likes to roam... she shows up on the game cameras all the time, and she comes to the house at least once a day.  She's come in the house before and we'll shoo her out, at least once we've seen her jump out the window onto the porch and run off.  Well.  The guys were all working on the lift or the second floor putting in windows and cutting siding and Jackie (the dog) came trotting up the stairs.  They were trying to shoo her back down the stairs and out of the house, but she was going around in circles through the studs, not going back downstairs.  So then they said she hopped up on some boxes that were stacked underneath the window and jumped right OUT THE SECOND STORY WINDOW.  It is about 16 feet straight down.  😐   Oh. my. word.  But she got up and walked off! It was still pretty muddy so she left prints in the mud... to the left of the darker dirt clods you can see body and head prints.

I would have loved to have seen all of the guys faces when she jumped....  haha.  Bob talked to Chad about it, and thankfully he had seen Jackie later that day, not even limping, but he also said they would not have been too sad if she hadn't made it.  Apparently she can be a bit of a nuisance.  😂

The ground was frozen by the next day and we were out measuring to flag where the geothermal wells are so they don't get accidentally trenched through.  I was paying too much attention to the tape and not enough attention to my feet and tripped and went down hard.  So I have a softball size bruise on my leg, and abrasions on my calf... so not fair: the dog falls 16 ft and is unharmed, I trip and get nasty bruises.  

When it freezes, we pull taffy.  😀Michelle and Nathan had the cousins over for a taffy pull.  

Michelle and Matt each made a batch using Grandma and Pearl's recipe so we could compare their taffy making skills.  

They both pulled amazingly, and the cold made it so crispy.  It was good taffy.  :)  

Training the next generation of taffy pullers.  

Cecily caught Kenna's brief illness and spent Sunday evening and most of MLK day on the couch watching the LOTR extended editions. 😜

Doors got delivered and I had to peek!  eeeeeee.  Sorry, there will probably be a lot of squealing in the next months. 

More windows!  

Proof of life from the dog.  She didn't even try to follow us into the house. 😂  

A little bit more siding.  I still like the color.  I was worried it would be too bright, but it seems to show up brighter in pictures than it is in person, which is just fine.  

Not all of the kids like my door choices, but you know what, they haven't read 'A Field Guide to American Houses' yet either so I don't have to listen to their opinions.  

And then the stairs were blocked so I tried climbing through the studs and managed to slam my knee into a step and wound up with another bruise and a cut. *sigh*

Slow but steady progress on the back of the house.

The lake behind Nathan and Michelle's froze so we headed over there after school the day before the deep freeze.  The ice was so smooth.  It was glorious skating.

Resting on Uncle Ron's dock.

They found a tiny pile of snow or something.

The next day was an e-learning day due to the windchill.  They did their packets.

Played games.

I cleaned out a closet in an attempt to reduce the number of our possessions.  The top shelf was all computer/tech stuff and it was full to the ceiling.  I asked Bob to sort through it all and he ended up throwing away a lot of old stuff.  And it was his idea too.... for the record, when he suddenly needs that one old cable he hadn't used in 15 years.... haha.   We still have too much kid stuff but they couldn't possibly part with any of it.

In the clean out process a keyboard fell off the shelf onto my foot, so now I have another bruise.  My poor legs... I've gone ice skating twice with no injuries, so maybe I should just stay on the ice where it's safe.  

Pocket doors.... eeeeeee...... like I said... 😁

Blessings. 

December

This will be long, we had a lot going on. 
They have been making slow but steady progress on the house in spite of the weather.

I took this picture after an acquaintance posted her sewing room... that is professionally decorated and everything is behind closed doors and if you didn't know, would think it was a sitting room in a magazine. Yeah. This is mine. Half of the mess is the girls' projects, but the rest is all mine. 😏 

Christmas tree shopping!

They all have opinions on what constitutes a perfect tree.

 

 

 Driving up to this house just makes me smile.

Less than ideal weather meant there was time for stairs!! Hooray for no more ladders!! 

 

I took a wreath out just for fun and discovered that the studs weren't centered... they added some blocking later so I can hang whatever I want over the fireplace and not need an anchor. 

Some of us went to the hometown Christmas.   

It was fun, and COLD.

The tree finally got decorated.  I felt like I was running a few days behind with Christmas things this year.

We borrowed Bob's Dad's truck and also borrowed Rustin and Sharon and went and picked up another shower.  It took them forever to find it at the store, and then we took the long way home driving really slowly.

The four of us got it unloaded and into the house in the dark and bitter cold. 🥶

They finished framing up the garage roof! Somehow our simple old house has a couple of complex roofs.  

There were fun frozen puddles around the geothermal wells.

And Dan was pushing snow off the roof onto Cadence, which she thought was great.  (In the hopes that the roofers would come start if it was snow free.)  

Program and Concert season.  Woot.  I was very unenthusiastic about all of these this year.  ha.  The road construction in front of the HS made it even harder to get in and out and I just get tired of getting kids dressed up and out the door to sit there for 1.5 hours to listen to them sing for 10 minutes. The middle school concert was only marginally better.

One perk of interesting stick framed roofs is unexpected storage!  Perrin says this is his hiding spot. :) 

Have I mentioned that these guys make me nervous?  

Bob and Trent's Sunday school class did Gifts of Love for their service project.  We took them to Pizza Ranch and then shopping.  Emily and I shopped with the girls.  They were being hilariously practical about everything, i.e., suggesting a dark colored throw blanket in case in got spilled on and stained. 

Quite the crew. 😊

Wrapping gifts was interesting, but it all got done and there was only one minor injury.  

Things thawed out and all that snow turned to mud.  The guys got the lift stuck.  They had an excavator come pull them out... much joking about how they should add 'Towing and Recovery' to their excavating business. 😛

Perrin went to his first program practice.  He didn't sing. He was much too interested in something on the ceiling.  At the actual program he did sing... ish.  He was loudly emphasizing random words and made everyone laugh. woot. If I wasn't so over programs, I might have been embarrassed.  

Bob and Perrin and I went to visit Grandma Beutel on her birthday. Perrin enjoyed her balloons and fluffy the teddy bear.  😊

Cadence's friend had a birthday party at the school- both parents are teachers so they had a movie night with the big projector screen in the cafetorium.  So fun.

So our church hosted a funeral for a distant relative-in-law.  They needed singers for the choir so I went... in a snow storm.  *sigh*  We were all glad we didn't have to go to the cemetery,  we sang the cemetery song in the foyer.  But, stinking snow storm, the girls and I had tickets to the Nutcracker that afternoon.  The village hadn't plowed at all, and the weather reports and traffic cams online didn't look like it was clear in Peoria either, so we didn't go.  I was pretty bummed.  A couple of the girls dressed up and did a short ballet to cheer me up... 

Miriel got sick the Sunday Morning of the Christmas Program, and Perrin did not like that I stayed home from church with her and was wreck for Bob... huzzah.    So we switched for the evening (even though Bob's a teacher).  I despise sickness season.

We take turns cutting out gingerbread cookies... Mr. Buster is very enthusiastic.

The threenager did not like the color of bowl his ice cream was in.  Well, too bad, and I put it back on the counter while he threw a fit about it. A little while later he quietly pulled the stool over and was quietly eating it.... 🙄

There is less obvious outside progress right now, but I think they were just getting the porch posts up and roof framed out.

One side of the garage roof got shingled!  There was great rejoicing! 

I'm excited about the front porch.  

And we got attic stairs!  So I got to go up and see it for the first time.  eeeeeeekkkk. It's so authentic and I love it. 😁

We decorated cookies.

It goes a lot faster than it used to. :)

Perrin wanted to help and did not lose interest so we have quite a few interestingly frosted gingerbread.

Grandma invited the kids over for a sleepover... Cecily and Perrin didn't stay, but the rest of them did. Most of the beds at the farm were full... haha.  I'm not sure that it sounds like fun to me, but they all had a great time, even grandma and grandpa.  

This might be my favorite room in the house.  All it needs are generations of treasures.  😉

On Christmas Eve Cadence came and helped us sweep up piles of sawdust and pick up scraps.   

Discussing garage attic access.... It's not to code, but we got it in writing from the county that it doesn't need to be.  

Conrad brought my doors over to figure out the pocket.  So exciting!  

Big Koch Christmas- Perrin thought these snakes were fun.

Christmas Morning stockings.

They all got Story Orchestra books, whether they wanted them or not.  Perrin likes the Fossils page from Carnival of the Animals.  

*sigh*  Merry Christmas! 

We were supposed to go out to Bob's parents' house, but they were ill.  So we did our own family Christmas instead.  Tomato soup and grilled cheese after church on my second best dishes.  

Presents!

Cheese!

Much racing.

I thought I was going to go to the grocery store again before we celebrated so supper was a bit of a scramble, but I had pork tenderloin and corn in the freezer, and potatoes, and pudding mix so it was sort of elevated.  We ate on china so that made it fancy.  

 Christmas at the farm day 1: lunch, then presents!

Perrin really, really wanted tanks for Christmas and he told everyone he was going to open tanks.  Thankfully, he did get tanks. 

Hehe.  When you want to find landscape paintings at thrift stores/varagesale/marketplace they are scarce... I managed to find one eventually and had some fun with perler beads.  Good memories playing duck hunt with cousins long ago. 😆 

Many battles were fought.  Sometimes he informed me that I was on a team and then gave me 1/3 of the troops.  Somehow he always won.  

We made a Wyss family Guess Who? game. 

And threw together a nativity play.

This is the part where all the baby angels were poking each other with their wings... 

What a bunch of characters.

Christmas at the farm day 2:  the cousins descend on Firefly Woods. 

The roofers were there- I'm not sure what they thought of all the running and shrieking coming from inside the house.  

Then there was a doll tea party.

Plus Perrin, because he really wanted the snacks.  😂

Miri made me play her new Gabby's Dollhouse game.  You have to wear a headband with kitty ears.  😆

Sunday morning started out dramatically.  We could see the storm rolling in, so we were rushing kids out to the van so we could get to church before it hit.  Except the power went out so the garage door opener didn't work and we all went back inside to wait until the worst of the storm went past. It hailed. Which filled up and blocked the gutters, and then poured so we had water seeping into the basement from the bilco doors and along the west side of the house.   Anyway, as soon as it seemed to clear up we headed to church a little bit late (certain of the children wondered why we couldn't just stay home... well, because somebody has lunch all ready, and we can at least go eat it for them! If nothing else. 🙄).  There was no power at church either and no Sunday School, so we had church in the dark.  They had the cemetery mic and amp hooked up, and phone flashlights, and battery powered work lights... such an adventure.  :P  The power came back on halfway through lunch so the kids went to Sunday School in the afternoon.  You know how holiday weeks are so disorienting and you don't know what day it is? Try doing church backwards! Good times.  And then we went home and mopped up the little bit of water in the basement.  Woot.   

That evening was the rescheduled Koch Christmas, even though Bob's mom still wasn't feeling well enough to join us.  

Cadence invited us over to the Beutel's on Monday evening. Ha. We got to see Greg and Tirzah's New Zealand pictures, which were very cool.
Emmy got sick the next night.  And Cadence got to spend time at a friend's house.  I stayed home from New Years Eve church with Emmy and Perrin.  Bob took the healthy ones to his parents for the evening.  Cadence got to go to another friends house, and we got a short break from social things.

I bought gingerbread house kits before Christmas and told Perrin we had to wait to do them until break.  He kept asking to 'take a break' to make the house.  Finally, we had time to decorate them and he was so excited.  

The girls got preserved oysters with cultured pearls inside them for Christmas so we smashed them open with a hammer. 😊They found eight pearls in interesting colors- pink, gray, purple, blue, and only one white.

Garage attic stairs to nowhere... 

Last up was the big Wyss Christmas.  Starting with breakfast, of course.  And then Cadence got sick so Bob took her home.  *sigh* 

Many games of air hockey...

... and whatever this game is were played. 

And presents!

More games.

Someone wanted to go outside, and it was a beautiful day.

Mr. Contrary insisted that I put apple sauce on his bun.

Oh hello Goose!

Thus ended Christmas.  
The problem with getting so behind on posting is that I forget all the funny things that happened... and my updates turn into bullet points.  Oh well.
Blessings.