Inedible Fruit

Wow, you guys are good! I believe the "weed" with orange pods is indeed a Chinese Lantern plant, or husk tomato. I like the term Chinese lantern, because that is exactly what the pods look like. I've checked inside a few of them, and most have a very tiny fruit inside, and many are shriveled, so I doubt we'll be harvesting any.

The white-flowering shrub looks to be a black chokeberry. Mine is much bigger than described on the sites I found online, but I think my bush is pretty old. It is supposed to get pretty black/purplish berries in the fall, but the ones on my bush have already shriveled and dried. Again, I think it's because it's a pretty old bush. Apparently you can make jams from the berries, but they don't taste good right off the bush.

At least I have some veggies in my garden coming up. I saw some pea pods on a few plants, and I have some green tomatoes. I saw one flower on my watermelon plant, so I don't know if it'll grow and ripen in time to eat this year. We planted a lot of other seeds, but most were more than a few years old, so we didn't know if any of them would grow. Next year we'll be able to plan more in advance and hopefully do a better job!

Success! and Thanks

To those of you who suggested Sweet William for the white flower, thank you! It is indeed a dianthus barbatus. I found a picture online that is identical to my plant. I also was able to identify my pink flower. It is a dianthus armeria, called Deptford Pink. Woohoo, I love solving a mystery!

Ok, now that that felt so good, let's do it again ;-)

Here is a bush that flowered behind my north-facing chimney, it is mostly shade there. It bloomed at the end of May. I'm thinking it might be a kind of honeysuckle?





And this is a plant that spread like crazy once it came up, so very weedy. I guess it is a kind of ground cover since it spread so easily, but it is tall, over a foot high. The white flowers have fused petals, and grow beneath the leaves. It grew in a very shady corner, it gets almost no direct sun. It started flowering in early June, and it is still getting new flowers even while the seeds on the older plants are ripening.







After about a month, they developed these pods, which are turning a cool orange color:



When you pull open a pod, there is one seed inside:



So, flower detectives, what do you think?

More Mystery Flowers

I have some more pictures of flowers from my yard that I can't figure out. Maybe some of you can find out what the names are?

Here is the first one:





I only have the one plant, it grows in mostly shade, and it bloomed in early June.

And here is one I have blooming now:



and a close up of one bloom




Any help would be appreciated!

The Prize Peanut

Well, our first round of campers is half way through their week away. Unfortunately it has been in the low 70s and rained half the time. I hope they are having a good time anyway. We go to pick them up Sunday, so I'll get the report then.

Now I have some pictures from the Pathfinder Fair that Troyer and Noah went to last month.

Here is the group marching in the line-up. They actually have 16 members in the group, but only 8 were able to go to the Fair.




They participated in some competitions, which as a group they did pretty well. Two firsts, two seconds, and 2 thirds. After the events, for fun they do a Peanut Drop. Since the Fair is held at a school that is next to a small airstrip, the organizers arrange to have a small plane fly overhead and drop peanuts into a field. Some of the peanuts are marked, and if you pick one of those up, you can turn it in at the prize table and pick a prize. There is one *special* peanut, out of the thousands that are dropped, which is worth a free week of summer camp. Both boys were begging to go home early, each year they have been there they haven't been able to find any prize peanuts, so they didn't want to bother again. Well, I made them stay and look. Troyer was so funny, he headed out in the opposite direction of most of the other kids. There he was wandering around at the edge where few other people were. I kind of laughed to myself. Noah went right into the thick of the crowd, but he was unlucky and didn't find any again this year. Next thing I know I see Troyer walking towards me with an adult following. I jokingly said, "Don't tell me you won the week of camp?!" and laughed. Guess what? He did! Woohoo! with 4 kids going up to that camp this year, winning a free week was a big help for us.

The Winning Peanut

Driving Lessons

Troyer is only 13, but he had his first driving lessons yesterday! No no, not in a car, on the riding mower! Now, it was pretty exciting for Troyer, but even more exciting for his father and me. He will finally be able to mow the lawn! Woohoo! The first tangible benefit of having a boy! (not that 13 yo girls can't mow - I did a few times when I was 13). He had some fun, but little does he know what lies ahead for him... mwaahaahaahaa

A Busy Month

I know it's been a long time since I've updated here. Sorry about that. Some of it was because I was feeling a bit depressed for a while. I was looking forward to warmer spring weather, and a cold May didn't cut it for me. Also, the adrenaline from moving wore off and I was left with a lot more to do but a lot less energy. And of course, the Cold That Wouldn't End. Ugh. I'm suspecting that I may have some allergy issues here. I didn't consider that at first because I have never suffered allergies before.

Aside from all that, May is the end of our school year, so things get hectic for me there, too. A brief recap for May: Troyer and Noah attended the Pathfinder Fair, where all the groups around our Conference meet to compete in skill games, and also have some fun. I'll try to post a separate post about that. Next Troyer and Caleb have been taking Spanish classes for 6 weeks. I have to drive everyone about 20 miles each Tuesday to drop those two off for an hour. The rest of us hang out for the hour trying not to get too bored, then we all drive home again. Troyer really enjoyed the classes, at least. I took all of the boys to the zoo on Friday before Memorial Day. Instead of driving all the way in, we drove to a Metro station and took the train/subway. The boys loved that. We had a great day, and the weather was perfect; but whew, was I tired by the time we got back! At least when we park there, we start and end at the bottom of the hill. On the Metro, you start at the top. Ugh the walk back up at the end of the day is HARD! LOL The oldest 5 boys also went along on a field trip with the local Adventist school to tour the battlefields in Gettysburg. The weather finally had turned warm and sunny, so they had a good time on that trip as well. Add in 2 doctor's appointments and a dentist appt, plus school evaluations (read: grading Mom on how well she can gather all the year's papers etc and present them to the evaluator) AND dressing all of us up in church clothes on a non-church day so we can sit for a directory portrait, and Wheww! I'm glad to see the end of this month! Yeah!

One picture, though I have more to upload later: All the boys plus two of their friends who, along with their mom and dad, came along with us to the zoo:



I admit to some photoshopping on there, but it came out great!

Another Birthday Party

On Tuesday Micah turned 6! We were going to celebrate that day, but he woke up and got into trouble before anyone else even woke up, so I made him delay a day, conditional on his behaving the next day! Luckily he did not copy Caleb's 7th birthday, where he had to wait over 2 weeks before he could have his birthday, and we were able to celebrate yesterday. We went to Walmart and picked out a cake and some soda, and when we got home I made pizza. I let him open presents first, so they had something to do while I cooked. He got Star Wars legos, a clone trooper figure, and a movie.








I'ts been stinking cold here this past week. It went down below 40 several times overnight. Back when we had a warm spell (even hot one day!) Chris turned off the heat. We'd used a lot of oil in just the two months we've been here, so I didn't really complain. I figured it wouldn't get that cold, and even if it did, it would warm up enough during the day to make up for it. Well, when it only gets up into the 50s, that doesn't warm the house back up again. Ugh, it is soooo cold in here! Not good for all of us who are trying to kick this cold thing for good. Poor Jacob, he had finally had a few days without his nose running, but yesterday he had a fever and his nose was running again. Waaah. I'd like spring to come back and stay this time!

While it was warm, Troyer and Caleb worked on a project out back:



They built a tree fort out of boards and old doors they found in the barn. It started out with a rope ladder, but that broke, so now it has an old ladder they found. The fort has 4 levels, so room for everyone! Noah spent a week reading books up there. :-)

Mystery Plant

Can you help me identify this plant? It is small, low to the ground. It is kind of like a crocus, except it just came up in mid April. All my crocuses had already come up and finished before these bloomed. I really like them, but I have no idea what they are. Do you?









In other news, I have been sick. Ugh, SICK. I got the flu last week (and somehow managed to not pass it on to anyone else in the house!) and caught a cold on top of that. I am still trying to defeat the cold. I have a nagging cough that keeps me up at night, which makes me very tired during the day; plus my left ear filled with fluid and won't drain. Luckily it is not infected, so it doesn't hurt, but it is very hard to hear with that ear. While I have been sick, the house has gone waaay downhill. The boys can barely manage to behave themselves without drawing blood when I am not on top of them; nevermind taking over some chores for me. Chris did some dinners, which helped, but didn't clean up after them. I also fell more than a week behind on laundry. The drawers were literally empty of clothes. oops. I am happy to report that I am feeling well enough to catch up, but it will take a while!

We're Free!

Last week, Chris and I went to the closing on our old house, got our check and got outta there! WOOHOO!!!! Who'd have thought that we would be able to sell our house so quickly, in today's market? We certainly didn't. Our buyers had already tried to bid on another house similar to ours and lost to someone else, so they were eager to grab ours. Luckily we were eager to get rid of it! LOL Inspections went well, conditions agreed to rather easily, and they requested to move up closing by a month. No problem! So now we are free of a very heavy weight - namely, a second mortgage payment to find money for. We had saved some money aside for that expense for 3 or 4 months, but since we closed so quickly we ended up not even paying one month of double payments. We are planning to use that money to pay down the mortgage on this house so the payment is approaching reasonable. I suppose that for a lot of people out there, what we pay now is already reasonable, but it is twice our old payment, so too much of a shock to the budget at this point. Reammortizing will bring the payment closer to that of our old house. So we are one-house owners once again - Whew!

Signs of Spring

The weather here is warming up, slowly. I can't complain too much, since we don't have snow (and I am HAPPY for that!) but I do wish it were a few degrees warmer. It didn't feel too much like Easter this Sunday, but the sun was out and it was less windy than it's been the last few weeks. I found these out in my front yard on Sunday morning:







I also have some daffodils starting to come up as well. I really like living down here; the area we used to live in won't have any flowers for another month!

We went over to MIL's for Easter dinner on Sunday afternoon. Dinner was yummy, and we got to spend some time with Chris' sisters and BIL. After dinner, the boys went outside to hunt eggs. FIL colored the eggs, and then he and BIL and Aunt Shawna hid them. I was glad it was sunny and nice out, even if chilly. Last year it was really cold and the boys didn't have much fun. The way they hide eggs over there is funny. For the little kids, they do the obvious hiding spots on the deck, so the eggs peek out a bit and are easy to find; but for the older kids they really make it a challenge. FIL went out into the yard and just dropped the eggs in the grass. Then he moved leaves or grass over top of them to hide them. They boys had to wander around in the yard hoping to come across the eggs. Even funnier is that FIL doesn't pay much attention to where he drops them, so by the end of the hunt, we are all desperate to find the last of the eggs, LOL.







Finally, FIL decided to offer cash for eggs LOL and announced he'd pay a quarter an egg to whoever could find the last 2. Noah was all excited to come up with them, but just at that point MIL yelled out that there were still another 2 missing! FIL upped the payoff to $1 an egg, and everyone looked even harder. Since Levi and Jacob found their eggs on the deck, Levi kept looking there. MIL and BIL told us that all the deck eggs were found, so we just thought it was cute that he was still looking. Well, lo and behold, he came up with one of the eggs! It had rolled under the deck. Samuel found the other egg out in the grass, and FIL gave out the money to each of them.

Here are some pics of the boys playing by the barn. They love using the ramp to pick up speed. Too bad we haven't had enough snow to use it for sledding. Maybe next year!

A Room With a View

One of the things I love about this house is that every room has a great view. We are surrounded by farmland; we only have 2 neighbors that we can see from the house. I love looking out every window. Here are some views:

Living room window, facing north:


I think those deep sills are awesome too!

Living room, facing east:


Kitchen, facing east:


Out the back door, facing west:


Ok, ignore the hand prints on the back door LOL. You can see, we have a back porch, which will be great in the summer, to sit in the evening and watch the sunset.

Very Belated

Jacob turned 1 last month, right in the middle of our move. We waited another week until the kitchen was unpacked to celebrate with a cake and a new movie. Troyer baked the cake for him, and he really enjoyed it!

A Nibble

and not from a mouse! We have gotten an offer on the house already! A full-price offer, which we have accepted. Whew, what a relief. We had visions of our house sitting on the market for months. Pending the usual inspections, we could close as soon as the end of April! Yahoo!

Things Are Crazy (and Dirty)

Wow, I thought I would have had time to post some pictures by now, but we've run into some issues that are taking a while to correct. Biggest on the list is the hot water. We noticed last Sunday that there didn't seem to be any hot water, but the inspection report said the heater was working, so we weren't too concerned. We figured it had to be turned up or something easy like that. No such luck. You see, we have a solar heated system, so usually the water is heated that way and stored in the tank. I had to call in a repairman to look at the system to see why it wasn't working. First off, the computer on the controls was bad and needs to be replaced. Next, there is a back up for the solar, that is the boiler (furnace). The repairman tried to turn off the bypass from the solar so the water would go through the boiler, but it killed the water pressure. It took him 2 more hours to figure out that all the valves were clogged with iron deposits. As in, clogged completely shut. Well, that explained no hot water. So, after replacing several valves and such, he got the water working, but told us the tank was shot and needs to be replaced. Cost for a solar hot water tank? About twice the cost of a nice electric heater from Lowe's. Ugh.

Now, since the heater was ruined by our hard water, we decided to have the water tested and get some figures for installing filters and softeners. After all, we don't want to get a new tank just to have that ruined too. Last night we had a rep from Rain Soft come in and do tests on the water at the kitchen sink. Of course, our water is bad. Bad. BAD. Highly acidic, which is why the copper pipes are leaching copper into the water. Full of iron, which is clogging everything. Luckily we have a UV light to kill bacteria, so he didn't have to pitch one of those to us; but on the opposite side we have high nitrates. Were you keeping track? That's three systems/filters we need installed. Like, immediately. It will cost money we do. not. have. Ack! We explained to him our situation, about how we haven't sold our old house yet, and all our cash is tied up in that right now. Once we sell, we will be able to do repairs. But that could take months, or more if we are particularly unlucky. He did take pity on us, and offered us a super super deal on financing, and included all installation and any parts that may need to be replaced once they start taking everything apart to install it. Considering how the water tank went, that could be considerable. We are leaning towards taking the deal. Oh, he also said he could have it done within 2 days of signing a contract, so it could be as soon as next week. That's how sorry he felt for us, since we have small kids drinking this water. We have Culligan coming in tonight to see what they have to offer. I'm betting they will have a hard time beating last night's offer though.

So, in light of the water issues, the mice pale in comparison. After all, they are keeping to just one cabinet, and I don't even have food in them. I've been putting poison in there, but I know there are too many to kill off that way. I put a trap there too, right where I can see the opening, and it gets set off twice a night, but it hasn't caught them yet. Smart little buggers. A cat is moving higher up the priority list.

As Promised, Some Pictures

We made another run (actually two, I forgot the key the first time - Oops!) today, and it was a nice sunny day, so I got a few pictures. Of course I then wandered around the house thinking, OMG it is so small! What was I thinking? How will we fit? And then to top it off, the kitchen was littered with mouse droppings. UGH! I guess the sellers had been coming in daily to clean those up, so we didn't realize how much activity there was. I had assumed some, but obviously we will be setting traps and putting out poison. Yuck.

Also, it looks like I won't get my fridge tomorrow. We are due for a snow/ice/sleet storm all day tomorrow, so even if the delivery truck made it, there is no real way *I* could get there and back. I have rescheduled the delivery for Sunday. That will work, since there will be a lot of people there, helping move in!

Both of my sisters are coming, and bringing their families, so it will be a kind of family reunion, and we plan on having some fun once the work is done.

Ok, here is the house from the driveway:


And here is a shot of the barn. It is very close to the house, which is nice and convenient. Not sure how much I'd like it if there were cows in it... LOL

It's Ours!

We are now the proud owners of an old farmhouse! With awesome barn. Lots of work to do to clean it up, and ack, it seems smaller inside now that we have to figure out where to put everything. But the potential is heady. There are so many things we could do with it.

We have been packing and moving boxes all week. On Sunday, Chris took 5 loads over in the van, with the benches out. I have been driving over once a day with just the back bench out, and the boys have been helping me unload. Last night I went out and bought a new refrigerator. It was a little tricky, since the space for the fridge is in a tight spot, so I had to maximize volume while minimizing depth. I did ok, though I suppose most people would think 18.2 cu ft is small for a family the size of ours. But the best part was that it was on sale! It was last year's model and they already had the new models out, so I had to take the floor unit. I got a 10% discount for a tear in the cardboard on the back, plus they were having a special for free delivery. I got my new fridge for $400!

At closing, Chris got a good look at what our payments will be until we sell our current house, and got a little freaked out. Our plan is to reammortize the loan once we get our equity back out of this house. We won't be eligible to do that until June even if we sell now, so we have 3 months of very high payments. It is a bit scary, but we planned for it, and have the money in savings to cover it, at least for a few months. Let's hope this house sells quickly! (and for asking price - we are listing it at what we consider to be a reasonable price, instead of trying to play games with counter offers etc etc). The market around here is picking up a bit, and Spring is traditionally a busy season for real estate. My fingers are crossed!

No pictures yet, but I will be at the house on Friday to clean (and await my new fridge), so I can get plenty of pictures. I think most of them will be "what were these people thinking????" kind of pics, but they will make great "Before" photos! LOL

Almost There

Closing is less than a week away! We're signing the insurance policy this afternoon; we got permission to get in the house on Sunday so we can move some stuff early. By the end of next week, we should be ready to shift the bulk of our living from here to there!

Packing is going, um, slowly. Really, how can you know what to pack when you need most of the stuff that is out? I think mostly the boxes in the attic, some in the garage, and the little I have managed to pack so far are what is going to be moved on Sunday. Chris will have the last week of February off of work to finish getting everything out and clean up. Hopefully we will find a buyer quickly!

He Walks!

In January, Jacob took his first steps. By the end of last week was up to about 5 steps at a time. This week, he is choosing to try walking everywhere before he gives up and drops to the floor to crawl. Right in line with his brothers, he has walked before his first birthday!







In other exciting news, the house is officially ours, and we are closing on the 19th! Yes, only 2 weeks away! Ack, off to pack...

Things You Didn't Know That You Really Didn't Care That You Didn't Know

I've been tagged for a meme by Lisa so I guess I'll play. I have a feeling that most of the people reading this blog know as much about me as is worth knowing, but here goes...

The rules for this meme are:

(1) Link to the person that tagged you.
(2) Post the rules on your blog.
(3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
(4) Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
(5) Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.


hmmm not sure I can think of 6 people who haven't already been tagged LOL

1. I like Diet Coke and won't drink Pepsi no way, no how.
2. I like angel creme donuts, and can't stand chocolate donuts.
3. I went to Germany for 3 weeks when I was a sophomore in high school, as an exchange student.
4. I ended up graduating from college as a Math major, even though in high school I regularly slept through my Calculus class (as in, I fell asleep with my head on the desk, and I sat in the first row, oops!)
5. Green is my favorite color. Not mint green or pine green, but hunter green, the color of early summer grass and leaves.
6. I like to swim, though I don't get much chance to anymore.


Ok, so now to pass on the fun:

1. Paula
2. (the Other) Gretchen
3. Kim
4. Jenni
5. Heather
6. Aimee