Jake's latest project

A new end table for our living room. I love it! I think this is my favorite thing Jake has made yet.

Happy Easter!!!

King of the Mountain

We already have all of our heat for next winter. There is an empty lot down the road that they are preparing to build on. There were a bunch of trees that they cut down. They cut them down, blocked them and stacked them by the side of the road to entice people to take. Free wood! Jake jumped on that and brought home 12 truck loads! The pile is huge. It looks like it might be more wood than we had this winter. Gotta love free wood - even if it is cottonwood.

Thanks

Winter is almost gone. We have made it through another winter with enough wood to burn - thanks to my wonderful husband. He spent many weekends and evenings this last summer cutting up trees, loading it into the truck, hauling it home - just to unload it again. Stacking, chopping (which is not an easy task), stacking again. Cord after cord. The finished product: FREE HEAT. That is not all. Most days he would bring home scrap wood from work. He (and a little help from Sierra) would bring in stack after stack of scrap lumber and stack them in our "lumber" wood pile. It is sort of funny, we have piles of wood of different types of wood in our house around our stove. We have the split wood. The lumber. The big blocks of wood, and kindling - usually cedar (left over scraps from Jake's work). A few winters of burning wood day after day and you learn which type of wood burns hot, fast or slow. Which type is ashy or not so much. I absolutely love having a wood burning stove. As long as we have enough wood to last, I can heat the house as hot as I want - I love a hot house in the winter. One thing about having a wood burning stove that I am very grateful for - is that I know how to start a fire. Not only start a fire, I know how to read the fire and maintain it. An important skill in my opinion. I am very grateful for Jake putting in all the man hours and hard work it took to build up more than enough wood for us to heat our house this winter.

Random

A few random pics.

Jake and Sierra on a semi-warm day. Check out Sierra's cute new sweatshirt, dress and shoes.

Maddie's first time crawling outside.


Yee -Haw!

Cute girls!

Cookie Time

Sierra was the only one who stayed to finish eating (I mean decorating). All the other kids were off playing.

Today was cookie decorating day. I invited all of my friends and their kids over for some cookie decorating. It was fun. I have been trying for a month to get this day going. First Sierra was sick, then of course as soon as she got better, Maddie got sick. Then, one of my friends girl got sick... you get the picture. Finally, a month later we were able to make it happen. There were 9 kids three and under running around. It will be fun this spring to have all the kids back over to play outside.

Some of the kids. (Sorry it is blurry.)

A few moms and kids.