A 2 year break... and I'm BACK!

So it's been about 2 years since I've update our little blog. Two years ago Sunday that we closed on our new house and moved our family onto a farm. What an epic 2 years it's been! Since I can't catch you up on everything that has transpired in the last two years, I'll hit some of the highlights.

The kids. Jaron just finished 5th grade. I can't believe I have a 6th grader coming up! He's 11, and growing so much in so many ways. He gave his heart to the Lord a couple of months ago, and we are so grateful. His current dreams are to be a well-drilling missionary doctor. I've told him that may be a bit much to handle... but I'm not going to discourage him from all God has for him! It helps him have a reason to dig into his school work and learn all he can now, and to save up for college some day. He attended 2 soccer camps last summer, which was an enjoyable new experience for him, though he has other things he wants to do with his summer this year, like helping me train the pony so he can ride Chief without a lead rope. His dearest dream is being able to chase cows on his spunky little friend!

Eliott finished 2nd grade in May. He is a huge help, and pretty much took over the mowing of our large yard. He loves machines, engines, and moving things. He's our self-proclaimed mechanic, taking apart everything we allow him to get his hands on. Every time we drive by someone mowing, he watches them as long as he can, dreaming of starting his own lawn care business as soon as we'll let him. He's been working with Jere a fair amount this summer, begging to go along to work to earn a little spending money... which he wisely spends on tools or puts in his savings account, mostly. He's been taking guitar lessons, and loving it!

Leanna is 2/3's of her way through 1st grade. I'm ok with that, as that means she's 2/3's of a year ahead! We're working at her pace, and she's excelling with the flexibility. Once summer break started, she decided she wanted to read the Little House books, so she's been working hard at that, and doing an amazing job reading far above "grade level". Whatever that's supposed to mean. Her greatest delight this summer is every 3 weeks she gets to plan a whole week's worth of supper meals, and help me make them.

And last but not least, is the firecracker of the family! Candice is 2, and keeps us well entertained with her pithy use of words too long for her little tongue. She is our youngest to stay dry all night without a diaper, and while summer has caused a relapse in the potty training department since she doesn't like to have to leave her play to potty, she's pretty much fully potty trained and I'm SO happy to be mostly done with that stage! Candi is by far the most active, energetic, and intense little person we've had. Some days she's a struggle for this introverted mama, and some days she's a great delight. She's standing next to me right now, as usual, cradling a baby doll in her arms, her horse baseball cap on, purse hanging from her shoulder, and the hem of her dress soaking from some water she just came in from playing with outside. She loves babies of all kinds, all of our animals, and all the people she meets.

The house we bought 2 years ago was in pretty sorry shape, as it was a foreclosure of a group home for mentally unstable adults. Fully furnished, including food in the cupboards, and not lived in for 3 years. It was an incredibly daunting task to think of taking on another such intense remodeling project so soon after just completing our last house, but for the price and with the acreage, it just seemed like it was right. It has consumed our "free" time, and most of our energy, just trying to get things livable. I'll make a separate post for descriptions of what we've been doing in that regard. In a snapshot, it's gone from a jungle to a working farm.

And on the farm end of things... as of this morning we have 13 cattle, including 4 calves just born in the last couple of weeks, with one more on the way. Tomorrow our steer goes to the locker, and soon we'll be enjoying some wonderful grass fed beef again! (If you want some, let us know. We have half still available for sale.) We just raised our 8th litter of Alaskan Malamute puppies, and said goodbye to the last one on Saturday. We acquired a second female last spring, so might have 2 litters next summer! Last fall we also adopted a little black mutt, who I hope will become my running partner. "Dixie" is thoroughly enjoyed by the children, while she grows up a bit before she can actually come running with me! Since last August we've added horses to the farm--an addition I couldn't be more excited about! We have a pony for the kids to enjoy, two adult females that were rescues, and a new little baby born 3 weeks ago who is the cutest thing EVER. So far we haven't been able to ride any except the pony, but I've been working with their training and hope to soon be riding the one who didn't have a baby. It's been a very sweet and demanding journey for me getting back into horses again after so many years, and the ones I have are quite challenging from a trainer's standpoint, being "older" horses who were either neglected or abused. But they have been also very therapeutic for me, in many ways.

Mama and baby

The last two years have been incredibly difficult ones for us. Underneath all the exhaustion of raising a family, remodeling our home, working the farm, and work, there has been a lot of things going on in our hearts. Difficult things, yet they have been good as well, as they have produced good fruit. Over the past number of years, we've come to an increased realization that we were missing the heart of God. He said to love... I chose to worry what people looked like and whether they were following the unwritten rules that spoke of being a "true" Christian (that were no where to be found in the Word of God). It would take a whole series of blog posts to even begin to touch the surface of where all we've grown in our spiritual lives, how our lives have changed so much for the better, and the healing Jesus has brought to the deep, dark, painful secrets and memories that used to haunt me. We've not "arrived", there are still hard days and hard situations, but the depression I've struggled with for years is gone. Beauty has meaning again. The colorlessness of life has burst into spring time. I am so grateful. So grateful for freedom... freedom from fear, freedom to love, freedom to revel in God creating me just how He wanted me, and He loves me.

GRATEFUL. THANKFUL. BLESSED.

6 months old! And wintertime stories...

I can't hardly believe our baby is 6 months old already. And what a big bundle of joy she is! Though I must admit the last month has had its challenges. Starting out the month with a cold wasn't fun, but then about the time she got over the cold she started crying at night. A LOT. I attributed it to teeth, of which she had 2 and three more on the way in. But one morning she woke up with ear drainage, so we took her to the clinic and here she'd had an ear infection, complete with a ruptured ear drum! No signs at all--no fever, no pulling at her ear, only the very explainable crying at night. She's been doing better since then, despite poking two more teeth though and one more start swelling. For a total of 4 teeth in and two almost. Yes, she is ahead of schedule! As is usual for her. The official report from the clinic, a week before she turned 6 months, was she weighed in at 20 pounds, and was 26 inches long.

Over the past month Candice's physical abilities have been blooming as well. She is ever so close to crawling, easily crawling backwards with reciprocal motion, and has gone forward just a bit a time or two. She rolls both ways, and pushed up to sitting. Using all these modes of movement, she travels quite a bit! And gets herself stuck. Thankfully she has big brothers who love to help her out!

Our winter is a real Wisconsin winter. Which is different than a real northern MN winter, which makes it hard for me when people are fussing about the "blizzard" we had recently. I didn't see any blizzard, just for the record. (Nevermind we probably couldn't get out the driveway right now even with the truck due to blowing snow...) But anyway, I'm happy with the winter we are having! We have enough snow to make it fun to have an all wheel drive vehicle, and it's not super cold, barely getting below zero. The children all have been thoroughly enjoying sledding, skating, and making a snowman. I'm so grateful it's warm enough for them to enjoy the snow, AND that they're all big enough to pretty much bundle themselves up!

We have been busily getting our house finished. Almost there, and it's such a joy to see final details being nailed in place. To see pictures of the rooms as they're getting finished you can check out my photo album here. I put new pictures in it as we get each room done. Hopefully we'll have a few more to add by the end of the week!

Another project we have going at the moment is another adorable litter of Alaskan Malamute puppies. We have 7, and they are all sold. Two more weeks and they should be gone! We enjoy them, but it will be nice to have our chores cut down on again.

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!

Belated update

Summer, as you may have guessed, has been a busy season of life for us! With three little folks growing up SO fast, it's hard to keep up with just them, never mind house and jobs and normal life. Which has also been taking our time and energy.

Our garden decided to not do anything this year. With the house in a different spot, it seemed most convenient to move the garden as well. We didn't have time to properly prepare the ground, due partly to a very wet year, and then the grass grew. It's been growing much more thickly in the garden then it's even pretending to do in the yard, and with it being wet I wasn't able to really do much about it, till it was too late. Our corn is only knee high, and tasseling. The tomatoes never grew after I set them out. But the carrots and peas are doing well, and I'm still hopeful we'll end up with a few zucchini and maybe some cucumbers. The garlic is looking fantastic, and that reminds me it's about time to dig it up! The flower gardens are looking quite nice, though, so I'm enjoying the food for the soul...

 

Work on the house has been almost to a standstill, with so much going on outside. We finally have all the landscaping done, and are preparing to tear into residing part of the house, hoping to get that project done before it thinks about getting cold. Meanwhile, I spent a few hours yesterday cleaning lumber out of Leanna's bedroom (lumber waiting for us to work on our upstairs bathroom, which will be awhile yet I'm afraid) and getting it girlified. Thanks to Grace for sewing up the curtains for her! It feels so much more finished, even though we still have flooring to put down, and Leanna's tickled pink. Or is it purple?

Leanna's bedroom 

The new railing and gutter on our front porch.

 

The Princess enjoying the porch

 

 Another project we've had is chickens. Jere finally broke down and let me get some laying hens, and we are also raising another batch of broilers. The broilers will be put in the freezer sometime next week, and the pullets are running around making our yard feel really homey. There's just something about the pert little layers foraging around for bugs and other tasty tidbits that makes a place feel so comfortable. Guess that's what I get for growing up around chickens! (Dad, can I blame that one on you?!) And our other animals are still around, mostly. Bossy had another bull calf a few weeks ago, and Buster, our two year old steer, is about to go in the freezer. Button, the heifer from last year, is getting big enough that she should be able to have a calf next spring. Our faithful Mama Cat had raised a litter of two kittens before being hit on the road last week. But we had just picked up 3 more kittens (one for each child) the week before, so our cat population actually went up. Both of our lady dogs look like they're going to be having puppies in late August, so that will up the work load for a few months. I'm super excited to see Tundra's pups--they should be nice ones!

 

A pullet and young cockerel taking advantage of the lovely day.

 And last but not least, look for a post next week as we begin our school year!