November (finally!)

Finally we have internet!!! It has been a long and lengthy wait, but just before Christmas we finally got connected with the world again. I've been trying to sort through pictures of all that's happened and I figured I would start with a few pictures from November. October was a whirlwind of getting things ready to move and then actually moving them. And then November was a blur of trying to semi-organize the house, wrap up the football season, and generally get ourselves oriented to our new surroundings.

 There was a lot of this. Rooms starting as disasters and us trying to work our way through them. 

Snow caught in our moon.

Little outhouse on the prairie.

In early-mid November I spent a lot of my weekends just hanging out with the woofs.

With the combination of early snow and fluctuating temperatures, as well as the fact that all around our house still looks like a barren muddy construction site, I spent almost every day cleaning the floors after the dogs...

 As well as after my husband.

Thawing camera lens and wooly socks.

The newest little additions to our family. Harriet (Harry) and Sally. They'll live in the shed through the winter and then will be the mouse/rat/mole control team once the spring comes and the acreage is again teeming with rodents.

This shelf was my first little try at building some furniture for the house. Next I would like to try a bookshelf. It's simple but fits in with all the other wood construction in our house.

In all it was a busy month. Once the football season was done we had family come to visit for a while and then I ended up with The Laryngitis which lasted for an astonishing two weeks. The absolute only good thing about being sick with laryngitis is that at least you sound as awful as you feel, so at least everyone knows you're sick and you're not stuck feeling miserable but sounding fine. 

Next up: into December, where it snowed and snowed and snowed and as a result most of my pictures were taken of the Christmas decorations inside.

The Laryngitis

This week I've been sick with the laryngitis. Yes. THE laryngitis. I've decided it needs a the. So instead of talking, I'm typing up a blog. Because it seems the more I try to use my poor infected vocal chords, the slower they heal. I started my descent into croaks-ville on Friday night, had the most terrible fever over the weekend, and now have this lingering croak, which when irritated sends me into awful coughing fits where I die (a little. Every time.).
This is now day three of not being able to work (I went for a few hours yesterday to do paperwork and spent the rest of the day with a nasty and groggy headache). I haven't taken longer than three days to get over anything since I've started working. So this is quite the adjustment.

The problem is, that if I lay here, and rest, and don't talk, I feel relatively decent. So of course that sends me up to go do things. Like try to clean the house (another one of yesterday's attempts), during which I hack up a lung and come out with a terrible headache.

Now usually, I just get tonsitilis. Which I can actually get pills for. But for this stupid viral thing the doctor told me I'll just have to wait it out. Which I took as wait out a common cold, I'll be fine in a couple days, let it run it's course. I thought he was crazy when he offered me a note to be off work for the week (because all I do in my job is talk), "noooo no, I'll be fine" thinking - couple days I'll be up and at em... And now we're into day three (technically day 5) and I'm feeling like an idiot now.

Ah well. I guess blogging is a nice activity that can keep me in bed and not use my vocal chords.

We are still sans-internet so still no pictures to be put up, boo. But lots has been going on. We've been busy trying to set up our little house to feel homey. We finally found nice gently used couches, and I even build a shelf for the entry to hang our coats on. I was all excited to start decorating for Christmas but then I realized that I don't really have anything to put decorations on. No bookshelves. No mantle, no coffee table, no any kind of surfaces. So maybe things will have to wait a bit this year. Which is ok too. Hopefully we have many lovely Christmases in this house :)

I think that's about it for me now. The laryngitis wants to take a nap and I'm going to try my best to do what it says and see if that pleases it enough to go away!

Checking in...

Hello blog friends!

I know I have been silent for the past couple weeks, but I promise it's for a good reason.

Drumroll please.

We are in our house!

Living, sleeping, eating, laughing, dancing, and bickering (cause lets be honest, it's hard to come to an agreement sometimes on where everything should go!) in our very own house.
The little house on the prairie is officially our home. And we are so happy.

That being said. Necessary things like moving and cleaning and unpacking have taken priority. And some of my fun things like music and pictures and blogging have had to take a little break. (Not to mention we are still without the luxuries of such things like internet or satellite tv, so I'm hotspotting a connection off my phone right now to send this post. This is also why you will have to wait to see any pictures, because I don't trust my little hotspot connection to handle a job as big as uploading those kinds of files). Which is fine.The last few weeks have been busy. And tiring. And Keith and I are now officially an old couple who goes to bed at 9-9:30 and wake up at 5:30. It has been heavy lifting. Dirty pants. Warm boots. Freezing fingers. Big sweaters. Fleece pants and long underwear. (The heating is still a work in progress).
But it's been great. I look forward to telling stories to our children one day of how we moved in just before November and had to get by with electrical heaters. It builds character.

I come from a crazy background like this. When I was ten my family moved off the big farm so my dad could take a new job, and we moved the house as well. We moved in the spring, and the night the windows were put in we moved in. I think we may have even just had cardboard over a few places still. No drywall. No plumbing. No heating. No stairs even. Just ladders and an outhouse in the woods and sleeping bags. I know that it definitely wasn't an easy time. But I wouldn't change a minute of it. Because I get to tell stories now of how we did this crazy move and had to go shower at the university and sit in the truck to warm up. I'm not saying I'm hard done by or not spoiled or anything. Because I have had so many wonderful occurrences and opportunities in my life. But crazy things like that make you willing to take risks and do things like that. Who wants to spend an extra month of rent so long as the roof is on there and everything is relatively sealed up?

Maybe we're just crazy.

Thanksgiving (aka any excuse to party!)

Last weekend was Thanksgiving, which meant a long weekend. I was lucky enough to get up to my parents place and it was awesome!!! I haven't been able to get up there since we were up for our wedding in February, and it was so nice to get on the farm again. So on Friday I packed up the woofs, the guns, my riding helmet, my boots, and drove the 9 hours up to the Husch Home in northern Alberta.

My dad turned the big 50 this fall, so we used the long weekend to have a party for him - and all the other birthdays that exist in our household in the fall (my mum is the end of August, Dad and brother in end of September, and other brother beginning of October - I'm the random baby in January, loner). It was the kind of weekend where you just get to soak up doing the things you love with the people that have grown you (kinda like a tree, I'll stop before I get lost in the simile). I was mostly busy with all the fun activities like riding, skeet shooting, bocce balling, and of course eating, but I did manage to take a few pictures along the way.

 The not so glamorous part of skeet shooting - picking up the plastic packings after.

I made my best effort to frame the shooters so they looked awesome.

Awesome.

Thomas took a couple pictures of me shooting. 

They turned out like this...

Not quite as awesome. I know I'm not super great at skeet shooting, 

but now I can't even pretend that I look vicious doing it. 

Maybe you should stick to shooting guns Thomas, not pictures. 

The house I grew up in. And made so many memories. 

Erin came over to visit, I have the most wonderful friends :)

 Now. One of the biggest things when we have a family party is how to cook the meat. We take some kind of pride is this primeval ritual, and this is usually half the celebration. For my brother and sister-in-law's joint stag-stagette party we roasted an entire pig on a spit and it was a whole day affair for the dads. They sat and nursed the pig and a few beers ("a little for me, a little for you") the entire day and I'm not sure what it is about men and cooking meat but they were just so very happy and content to be roasting that pig.

But alas, it's October now and the weather isn't quite so perfect any more to be outside nursing a pig all day, and for something a little "new" (although they've done this before), they decided to do a pit roast.

Our supper is in there. Somewhere.

So, I'm not sure exactly how it works. But they dig a big hole, line it with big rocks, light a fire in there, and throw in a bunch of big pieces of meat. Big. This year we had a huge chunk of beef. Huge chunk of pork. And a huge turkey (c'mon, it's Thanksgiving!). The fire needs to be started soon enough before putting the meat in so that it dies down to perfect cooking coals, and all I know is that usually the night before we eat the men set their alarms for some crazy time of night (3am anyone?) and are out with the pit/fire/meat situation. By the time I get to see it it looks like a messed up part of the lawn. Smack dab in the middle of the lawn of course (whole quarter section of land and the best place to dig a roasting pit is of course in the middle of the lawn).

Papa working for his birthday roast. 

The fruits of our (ok, the guys) labour!

There's a funny story behind this sign, which did its job so well to protect the meat from falling dirt. When we were fifteen Erin and I went camping. And we found this sign in the ditch along the highway. It had obviously been down for a while, it had shotgun holes in it, and we thought we were sooooo cool when we brought it home. Taking the crime watch sign. Crazy kids right. My mum made me feel awful about it and like we were some kind of terrible criminals taking the sign. A few weeks later we found an abandoned road blockade that we brought home and my mother made us feel so guilty about it that we took it back and placed it back in the ditch (what?! mothers don't like their children bringing ditch garbage home??). Such delinquents we were. But somehow the sign made it through the guilt trip of ditch-garbage-stealing and has served all kinds of purposes, at some point it got cut in half, and this latest purpose was to help us cook a bunch of meat. 

Kitty up in a tree. 

What a suck.

Sofi had such a great weekend. She played. And played. And played and played and played. And near the end of the day on Saturday she was pooped. She was so tired she let us do anything (see the above picture - "why won't you just let me sleep??"). It was pretty funny. Everyone immediately fell in love with her - of course.

This is WallE, Allison and Markus' pig. He is the most hilarious animal you've ever met. He's a teacup potbelly pig, only we're not sure what happened to the teacup because he now weighs about 50 lbs. (We say it's all love!) He's really quite the pig and has such a personality. He will let you know right away what he thinks of you, and since they've had him I've gotten to know just why there are sayings such as "eating like a pig". (tip: the way to his heart is food. ANY kind of food! I won him over with horse treats.)

Winston is Thomas and Jocelyn's little dog. He is so full of energy, so busy, and so smart. He too is hilarious. Between all the dogs (there are 5 just from our family and then we had friends bring over more!) and the pig and all the people the house was absolutely bustling. 

Winston chasing the bocce ball game. He chases any thing.

He's very ferocious. 

P.S. bocce ball is AWESOME.

Happy piggy!

Doing tricks for treats.

Winston, Belle, and part of Bailey 
(dogs everywhere! Nova the elusive picture-avoider managed to make it through almost the entire weekend with no pictures).

With my amazing brothers (there's no such thing as too many plaid jackets).

My lovely lovely sisters.

(Psst, see Nova in the corner? Elusive.)

Now, most of the weekend was spent with the big party on Saturday. Sunday night we spent playing Risk (which one should never play with the Husch girls, we got bored halfway through the whole world domination thing and ditched the boys for ice cream - and created quite the upset) and eating left overs.

All the same, I love Thanksgiving. I love what it represents and I think that we should be grateful every day of the wonderful things in life that we're blessed with. I'll try not to get too mushy, but this past year has been quite the amazing one for me.

Last Thanksgiving Keith asked me to marry him, and since then so much has happened that has made me sit there in awe at all my blessings.

Be thankful friends.

Every day.