Month Long Hiatus

My apologies to my friends and family and those that follow this little blog!  I just realized a whole month has passed since my last post.  I didn't even post birthday party photos (for shame).  My dad told me at my nephew's birthday party yesterday that I should at least put a post up telling people I haven't perished.  So, if anyone was worried I'm fine (frazzled but fine).

On the train for the boys' birthday party!

What happened a month ago?  Well, after much prayer we decided my husband should take a new job.  When he applied we never expected a school would offer us the salary we would ask for but we ended up to be very wrong.  So, Alan is leaving his job as Executive Secretary/Treasurer of the Iowa FFA and will be moving back to teaching high school Agricultural Science.  With our young family the schedule will be much better and will allow Alan more time to spend with the family - which makes everyone happy!  We are also moving back to his childhood home.  The boys look forward to spending more time with Grandpa Spencer.  Trust me mom - this is hard for me to move another 2 hours further away from you guys too.

So on top of being now 8 months pregnant I have been in the process of cleaning and packing, and painting and more cleaning.  My poor body is exhausted by days end when I normally blog so therefore the blog kind of got set on the back burner as it were.  This month has gone incredibly fast.  We actually had not expected to move anytime soon and we have slowly been working on remodels to the house.  Now, all those little changes and finish jobs have slammed into us!

We listed the house/acreage on Friday - expecting that we would still have some time to finish a few things.  We were sorely mistaken.  We have had 3 showings this weekend and another scheduled for tomorrow.  If anyone has tips on keeping the house clean with 2 little boys running around the house I'd love to hear them.  The obvious choice would be to ship them outside but it is either super hot or raining around here lately.  I have packed up 90% of the toys leaving them with only a small box of Legos, their Thomas trains and track, some Little People, a small set of crayons and a couple coloring books, some wood blocks and some books.    Quite frankly these may be the only toys going back into another house :)

So all of my sewing stuff is packed (except for my sewing machine because I have this absurd notion that I want to make a christening gown).  All of my plans for the Iowa State Fair for 2011 have at this point been wiped out.  Even the few things I thought I would take won't happen (since we'll probably be in the process of moving into a new home).

Just a reminder for all of you who might be entering this year though 

- most entry deadlines for the ISF are due this week!

However, we aren't letting good produce go to waste.  Although I don't plan to do much canning this summer that doesn't mean we can't pick and freeze it to put into yummy jams and jellies and other good things later after we're more settled.

Obviously the broccoli hasn't made it into any freezer bags.  That' OK - it's much better fresh.

I love the fact that the first day we picked our first head of broccoli Clark just happened to be wearing his broccoli t-shirt.  Honest, this was not staged or planned!  This was my first try at growing broccoli - I can't believe how nice the heads were!

We picked and froze 6 quarts of rhubarb from our little patch!  The boys loved learning how to pick rhubarb and get rid of the big, POISONOUS leaves!

We also went strawberry picking at the Berry Patch Farm in Nevada.  

Clark tried hard to explain the color red to his little brother.  We still ended up with a few white and green berries in Grant's basket.

All in all it was a good hall of strawberries.

And last week Grant discovered the mulberry tree.  I was impressed that he was hesitant to eat the berries until his daddy showed them they were edible.  Then there was no getting the child away from the tree.  I than proceeded to show his brother how to pull lightly on the branches to get more berries in reach.  This provided at least an hours worth of entertainment for them.

 

And as if this post isn't long enough I do just have to say that I had a happy afternoon at the fabric store today.  Since we were kicked out of the house for the entire afternoon we decided to go to Alan's office where the boys could nap and Alan could catch up on a little work.  Once the boys were down I headed off to the fabric store.  I enjoyed the afternoon flipping through pattern books and wandering through aisles of fabric.  I didn't find the fabric I want for the christening gown but I did find this adorable swaddler pattern that seems pretty quick and easy to make (it was a Kwik Sew pattern so how bad can it be).  Found some cute owl fabric on sale and some matching fleece and may try to whip it up at naptime tomorrow.  I realize I have a million other things to do but I would like to have at least one nice little project made up for the new baby.

So there you have it - I haven't disappeared completely.  I will miss exhibiting at the ISF this year but I plan to be back in full force for 2012!  Meanwhile I'll try to keep you better updated of the goings on around here.