Spring... I think!

This has been an very interesting spring. One week, it was -8. The next week, we were running around outside in sandals at 68. The next week we got 5 inches of snow in about 24 hours' time. Now we seem to be climbing out of the trough of colder weather into decent weather again--and I'm sure not complaining! I'm looking forward to when it decides to stay above freezing!

I was just getting some photos off the camera today and realized that it's been awhile since I've done it--which also means its been awhile since I posted anything on this blog. So, here are a few pictures of what we've been up to since the last post!

One thing we've started doing is giving the boys a few more chores. With Mama's waist expanding and backaches being more common than not, household help is appreciated! And since we can't seem to find domestic help, it's time for the kids to pitch in a bit more. They've already taken over loading and unloading the dishwasher, and Jaron takes care of the chickens. But we've added a few Saturday chores--and the kids are thrilled!

Jaron's newest job is to clean the main bathroom. He's delighted to follow his little checklist and get to use all those fancy cleaning supplies!

Eliott's job is to sweep the stairs with a little dust brush. He's disappointed that he doesn't get to spray anything, but proud that he's needed.

And Leanna's caught the cleaning fever. She begs and begs and begs to PLEASE "pray" something! So I try to find places she won't hurt by overspraying and let her have at it.

Here are a few more general family activity photos taken since I last posted. 

Jaron had to do a school writing project on making a banana split. Problem is, he'd never heard of one! So we got the ingredients and had a banana split special for dessert one night. By the way, this is Daddy's bowl. The rest of us had half that amount or less!

Leanna decided to hang out on the laundry sorting shelves. After I took this picture, she added a pillow, blanket, and ever present Teddy to make a cozy bed.

Eliott enjoys mopping!

After one snowfall Jaron made a snowman all by himself! He was quite proud of it!

An after-supper romp. 

Handsome hunter.

One evening after I was done making Pico de Gallo for supper, these two munchkins begged the leftover lemons from squeezing and happily sucked the remaining pulp dry. I was shuddering watching them, but they were thrilled with their treat!

Another big project lately is trying to get the rest of our big remodel projects done. I'm delighted to announce we're finally finished with the upstairs bathroom--one of the biggest single room projects we had. And, it's the first room in the house to be DONE. Well, with the exception of the hand towel ring. These are some mid project pictures--I'll have to go take some of the finished product one of these days. I'm totally thrilled with the way it's turning out!

This past week I was privileged to throw a baby shower for my sweet sister-in-law. We had a very sweet, blessed time. And, I had lots of help to pull it off, after struggling for an entire week with migraines... Thanks girls!!!

Snack table

The cake one of the girls made.

The special lady. She was surprised!

With very current news. Jere is in Haiti at the moment, on another SALT trip. He's been gone most of this week, and will be gone yet part of next week. We miss him awfully, but we're managing to survive, somehow. And then, today these showed up at my door. I think I must be one of the most blessed women alive!!!

Missing from the action...

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since my last post. And I just haven't been able to keep up.

SOOOO, biggest news first, to explain! There's another little Hege planning to join the clan the end of July! I've been fairly sick so far, so that's part of the reason I haven't been saying much. I don't feel much like writing, taking pictures, or fooling with getting pictures loaded onto the computer. Or doing anything else, for that matter. The children are very, very, very excited about a new brother or sister, though they're all voting "sister" at this point. We have to continually remind them that we can't choose--that's God's job!--and we'll be happy for whatever he/she happens to be. Please pray for a healthy baby!

Let's see... our puppies were all sold and are gone. Whew! Whisper has been removed from our family since it seemed like she had a vicious tendency, and had it out for any cats we tried to have around. However since then our other dogs got in a fight with the neighbor's dog, on the neighbor's land, and so it looks like we're going to have to get rid of the other two as well. Which we're very sad about, as we like our dogs a lot. But, such is life.

Little Miss with the last puppy waiting for it's owner to come pick it up.

The first two eggs from Jaron's chickens. He was SO excited!

A "normal"crazy at our house--all three kiddos decided to try their hands at combing Mommy's hair. Hmmm, good thing my head is tough!

November 4 was Treasure's "Angel birthday". Jere had flowers delivered--3 red ones for our children with feet, and one white for the baby with wings. He's such a SWEET man!

Little Miss had a birthday, which we celebrated with a little friend of hers who is only a couple of hours younger. They are just too cute together!

From there, life was kind of a blur of nausea until Christmas, when my family came for a visit. They came loaded with food and fun, and didn't let me do much of anything except give directions on where to find this or that. It was so nice, and the first time we were all together since Jaron was a baby! Unhappily some sickness came along too, so a few people were rather out of it during our time together, but we had a good time together otherwise.

Making lefse. A Hendrickson family must-have for the holidays!

All together!

 Now for some random shots.

Jere came in one evening to find us all asleep in one bed! Guess everyone was tired...

The upstairs bathroom mostly ready for paint.

Jere's been working hard on our house. He had the basement bathroom pretty much done before our Christmas company, so that was nice to have two bathrooms with lots of people here. And it's VERY nice to have a bathtub again after more than a year without! After Christmas he tore into the upstairs bathroom and it's ready for a paint job now. Yippee! Only wish I was feeling up to doing it... At least now all the major tearing apart stuff is done in the house, so it just remains to finish getting things put back together. We'd like to push it pretty hard and be pretty much done by late April, but we'll see. Any volunteers to come help us?!!!

And the latest big happening was Eliott's birthday! Jere made the cake, from scratch (we did buy the icing, though...) and I was so proud of him! It ended up a pretty cute cake, I think. And Eliott is really, really happy to finally be 5, as now he doesn't have a scheduled afternoon nap. Li'l sis is taking that just a wee bit hard, but she'll adjust.

Not sure what else there is to say at this point. We're hoping my nausea will let up soon, but know it could be there for another couple of months. We have several activities on the radar, such as an EMS conference and another SALT trip to Haiti for Jere, but not real sure yet. I'll try to keep things posted a little better, but no guarantees! :-)

Happenings

First of all, I'm sorry I haven't been updating more. Whew. Life has been crazy here. As if it ever isn't, but... we'll leave that for another day.

On August 18 Jere and I went on a little trip with another couple to attend a meeting. Jere is on the SALT Haiti board and they were having their biannual meetings that he needed to be at. We learned a lot and caught something of the bigger vision for the program. However, my sleeping during that week was pretty limited. From Monday morning when I got up to Friday at 4 am when we got home, I'd slept a whopping 13 hours! So... that made it a bit hard to catch up with things at home. I think I'm finally recovering now. Maybe.

We came home to week old puppies, and lots of catch up work with emails! A week later, Whisper had her third litter, of 8. So, we are inundated with puppies right now! Unfortunately one of Tundra's 5 had heat stroke one hot day and died. We promptly got a window air conditioning unit for the doggie barn, when we don't even have one for our house! Never thought I'd see the day...

The only female from Tundra's litter, and the last one available.

A pup from Whisper's litter, 2 weeks younger than the others.

 

Eliott during art class.

A gorgeous double rainbow early one morning!

 

Something else we did recently was going camping. We didn't get to go all summer last year, and decided that it was high time we made time. As always, it feels like too much work to pack, and even more to unpack and deal with smoky, sandy clothes and bedding. But we had a wonderful time, and felt it was well worth it. Thankfully we picked the only nice weekend sandwiched between two rainy weekends! It was a little chilly at night, but that's what makes a fire feel good, right?

Our campsite all set up.

Eliott. Somehow, Mom, this photo reminds me of Josh! 

Jaron

Leanna

Breakfast!

Eliott learned to ride his bike without training wheels!

Leanna washing up the dishes.

"No, Daddy! I'LL wash!"

Jaron chopping at some firewood.

Busy days

Little Miss helping out

We've been staying busy these days! But have found time to have some fun too. Last Sunday was a milestone for us--we finished a 6 year project, and completed all 101 miles of state bike trail! Here are a few photos from that:

At the end of the trail!

Tundra's first litter was born yesterday! 4 boys and a girl--now we DO have our hands full!

First day of school!

On Monday we had our first day of school! It was an incredibly hectic day, but the children were SO excited about getting to do school again! I was actually seriously thinking about setting it back a day since we didn't get the bookshelves and desk installed until fairly late Saturday night, leaving me very little time to get anything organized. I have had the books organized for the better part of a week, but all of our supplies, odds and ends of art projects, etc. were still tucked away in the little, old, falling apart dresser we used to store our things last year. Everything had to be moved out of it, and onto bare shelves, before we could get it out of the middle of the floor. So it would have been nice to have Monday yet to finish up getting ready for the "perfect" first day of school. BUT the children wouldn't hear anything of it! So I got up late (more on that later!) and tried to find other things to occupy little hands while I finished trying to figure out how everything that had been in drawers was supposed to look neat on shelves. Thankfully I had on hand a handful of clear plastic "shoe boxes" I had gotten for something else and hadn't gotten around to using yet, and the art supplies fit nicely in them. Whew. There are a few things I still wish I could hide in a drawer or behind doors, but hey, at least I have shelves, and a MUCH nicer setup than we had last year!

We still have some bugs to work out of the schedule. Schooling two formally this year, and with an over-eager preschooler determined to participate in everyone else's schoolwork too, makes scheduling a challenge when there's only one Mama who also has to think about laundry and meals... I love to teach, though! And am anxious to figure it out!

The schoolroom all fixed up bright and fresh. The shelves and the desk Jere built over the last week!

Leanna starting her preschool books.

Eliott is beginning Kindergarten for 5-year-olds!

And Jaron is doing Second Grade Phonics/Language, and Third Grade math. Smart boy!

Here they all are at their workstations.

Eliott's Bible story coloring page from today. Gotta love that deer! 

 

Now, I said I would explain about getting a late start Monday morning. Leanna has had a cold over the last number of days. I've been fighting it too, and being fairly successful on myself using essential oils. But with everything else going on I wasn't being as observant as I could have been, and Leanna's cold kind of got away from me. And then Saturday night came along. I was feeling extra tired from trying to get school things ready, plus a few of the Saturday chores done around the house. Jere bathed the children and put them to bed while I was working at getting things set up. Once we finally got to bed, Eliott and Leanna spelled each other waking us up crying and/or coughing. About every hour. No one was getting much sleep! Then I decided enough was enough, and since Leanna's coughing was getting really nasty sounding, I doused her up with a couple different oils. She hardly coughed again the rest of the night! We got up late and got to church late, and though the boys both had runny noses for the first time, she didn't need her nose wiped and she didn't cough, and acted perfectly fine. So, Sunday evening we wanted to get to bed early. But then we had a campfire and roasted hot dogs for supper, and it just got late on us. And then we put oil on all the children before bed, and they slept great! Only... the dogs didn't. So I didn't sleep too well, and with still fighting my cold I knew I needed the extra rest. Maybe one of these days I'll have the privilege of sleeping through the night again...

Here are a few pictures from Sunday evening...