It's A New Year!

Where do I begin....

Dear Friends & Family,

What an amazing year 2011 has been.  Robert and I have never been more eager for this year to come to an end.  As you've followed our progress you might remember some of our highlights this year.  It is hard to believe a year ago we moved into the 'little house' in January.  Although the house wasn't ready, I think we were ready to move out of the trailer.  I remember Robert wiring the part of the house for electricity and having heat. I also remember he had to trench a long way to get electricity to the house and how remarkable that day was.  Of course moving our furniture from Weatherford really made the 'little house' feel like home.  It was special to sit on our sofa and sleep in a bed without walking two feet to open a fridge...teasing about the size of our living space in the trailer and reminding myself I can do many things beyond my own expectation and living in a travel trailer with two children in school and limited water for 1/2 the school year was one of those things.

Spring is usually my favourite time of the year, everything started out green, but quickly dried up like our drilling for our well.  Water this year was heavy on our hearts and desires.  It's interesting how much we take for granted in modern living and how essential certain things are that we don't think about.  As some of you read about our drilling experience and getting a dry cavity.  We ended up using plan B and trenching over half a mile from the co-op meter we had to pay to install at the end of our lane and piping the water 1/2 mile back was the direction we ended up taking.  It was a miracle that Bud made happen with a lot of sweat, hard earned money and his amazing determination and will power.  Having running water at the house was our idea at the time like finding that pot at the end of the rainbow.  I pray that we'll always be grateful for what God provides us.

Water is never far from my thoughts as we witnessed the WORST DROUGHT in Texas History.   But as the saying goes, Texas does everything BIG or BIGGER!  Of course we had to add another record of having over 70 days in some areas of temperatures of 100 degrees.  Lakes, rivers, ponds, stock tanks and our land dried up before our eyes.  All the beautiful wildflowers that I had waited for, died or never bloomed.  However, having a garden hose and a slip and slide the children managed to have fun.  We were fortunate that our large pond was deep enough (possibly spring fed) and did not dry up, but went down 8 feet.  It did allow us to walk around the pond and experience different parts of nature that we hadn't when the pond was full our first summer here.

I suppose I could skimmed over Robert actually plumbing the water into the house and flushing a toilet for the first time and I hope the children learned how much work that is involved in having a flushing toilet, because they saw their dad out side for days digging a hole big enough for our septic tank and trenching two long lateral lines.  I have learned more about plumbing than I'd liked to know...smile.  

We also managed to plumb in our bathtub and it's been a luxury that I have enjoyed having back in my life.  

As you can imagine we couldn't wait for school to start because it meant Summer is over and hopefully we'd see the temperatures drop.  Robert managed to move the front loaders out to the house and when I hear their little tunes play at the end of the cycle, it feels like the heavens have opened and angels are singing.  As many mothers might relate to laundry being one of their least favourite chores, imagine that and then hand washing it outside or for several months we actually took it to the Weatherford house to wash and I can say, I did manage to avoid public facilities.  I was so thankful to have my lovely front loaders here and try to remember to appreciate being able to do laundry for the rest of my life, because when you think things are hard, honestly they can be a lot worse.

The Little House is steadily becoming more and more as one with the land and our family has reaped what it's sown and abundantly more from this past year.  As some of you might realize, we're living our dream, but living a dream isn't like dreaming one, it requires a lot of hard work, passion, desire to make it happen, disappointments and ups and downs on the way, but the bounty that we've already experienced reminds us so often how blessed we truly are to be a part of this creation.

We'd like to thank everyone who has been following our journey and we hope you're living your dreams, too.

Jennifer, Robert, Audrey & Jack

Nature in November

I definitely fell behind this Fall with the blog, but hopefully you'll notice there are four new entries for the month of November....smile.  Although we do not have the changing of colours anywhere close to what the North has, we do have this sense of coming alive after the heat of the summer and this gratitude that it's come to an end.  I love the autumn in Texas, the weather is wonder.

Our poke plant, which we found growing down by our large pond and is also called poke sallet and although toxic, there is a method to cooking the new leafs earlier in year that is suppose to be similar to spinach - we're researching using what grows native and hope to try this next year.

the leaves turn these beautiful colours in the fall - the berries are definitely not for eating

the berries were used long ago for dying things - we had some fun with them the other day, we're going to pick more and try to paint with them.

moss everywhere - I walked through the woods after the rain and saw green everywhere on the huge rocks

 I did note that when I went back with the children for a walk and it was no longer as fresh looking - so definitely something I need to capture while wet to see it looking so beautiful and velvety. 

we found a little seat in one of the many large rocks laying around

favourite large rock at the big pond

children canoeing on Sunday - trying to give perspective to how large the rocks are....smile.

pencil cactus with berries

amazing bird to capture - red shouldered hawk in one of our mesquite trees

People often comment about how much our children seem to love being around each other and they really do get along almost all the time.  Although I pick and choose what photos I share, they are probably the sweetest brother and sister  and we're so blessed to have the joy they bring to our lives.

One of our favourite trees ('big huge' cedar oak) the children love climbing on

Audrey & Jack
November 2011

The Gift That Will Keep On Giving....

Turning the Big 40!

the foundation for our little house

So last year for my birthday we decided to start our venture to build our little house on our 72 acres.  Robert ordered the supplies and they were delivered for my birthday.  This photo was posted last year, but I thought it would be fun to show you how far we've come in a year.  This year was a big birthday for some, not such a big one to me, but I turned 40.  Robert and I have tried to stay practical with our lifestyle while we are trying to sell our house in Weatherford. (which is finally listed)  He came up with the perfect present, which was to start building our wrap around porch.  The wood was delivered by, The Home Depot on my birthday.

chili relleno from our favourite place, Mi Familia 

the porch is 8 feet deep, adding over 1,000 sqft

the silly guineas visit the front door - they think there are birds in our house

Audrey's been practicing her cartwheels.

anyone that knows me well, knows I'm a martini gal - perfect place to drink one!

The porch floor is almost done.  Like every project, it takes a lot more work and many more hours than you'd like.  Robert's doing a great job.  It will add more than 1,000 extra square feet for us to enjoy and eventually we hope to cover it with the same copper metal roofing, stain the floor a warm brown.

Thanks, Bud for building me a little more of our dream!

I also want to say a very special thanks to my sister, Suan and her husband John who are currently living their own adventure in Ethiopia, while working in places like South Africa.  She wasn't able to come visit me for my birthday and wanted to give me somethings special being my 40th.  As many of you notice our blog is filled with more photos then writing.  I was fortunate to have a Nikon D60 when I first started taking photos and she generously gave me one of the most amazing new camera bodies, a Nikon D7000.  Thanks, Suan and John, I hope I can live up to the camera with improving myself in photography.

Falling Rain Brings Flowers in the Fall

Butterflies, Wildflowers and Nature around us...

We did not have many wildflowers this year after May, which was very disheartening.  However in the Autumn we got a burst of colour from these lovely purple gayfeathers.

There was a huge concern with the drought that there would be nothing for the monarchs that migrate through Texas, but thankfully some of the gayfeather and the rain in October helped.

Narrow Leaf Four O'clock - morning dew - these little beauties bloom late in the night and the flower closes early in the morning - I was fortunate to learn from one of my Texas Wildflower friends when to capture the bloom.

Asters everywhere after the rain.

rock daisies which bloom in the spring and fall

some false garlic - which are part of the lily family

Falling Behind in the Fall...

October brought RAIN!

As I've blogged our happenings this year, this summer in Texas we suffered the worst drought in history and the temperatures were brutally hot, many places having record highs over 100 degrees for more than 70 days in a row.  We survived!

Audrey and I taking a walk the morning after it rained almost 6 inches.  

we got to see the water everywhere the creek beds were flowing

running & dancing through the wet woods!

This photo was taken at the end of September - here's a deer feeder and our sad little kayak on the dried up bank.

Robert trying to figure out what to do with the deer feeder 

When Audrey and I got down to the pond, we had no idea what we'd see..... we were so SURPRISED to see the pond that was 8 feet down was now completely full.  Our area got around six inches of rain on October 8th, which was my birthday.  I will say, it probably will be one of my most memorable birthdays because we'd been praying for rain and it was by far the best gift I could haven gotten. 

Nature had a burst of energy all around us from the rain, here are some blue darner dragonflies mating.

I guess in the Fall, all the damselflies and dragonflies are feeling the 'love'......smile.

Audrey convinced Jack to go swimming on October 16th!  It was warm out, maybe the low 90's that weekend.  They were so excited to be able to canoe and kayak around the pond and although our pond didn't completely dry up, we did not do a lot of swimming this summer.

one crazy and happy girl...

one very happy pond full of water (an acre in size)