Well, I warned you this would probably happen, didn't I? Yup, I dropped off the face of the earth.  That's what happens when you don't have internet for weeks after moving, since phone blogging isn't great and I was single-handedly about to max out our data plan for the month...

Anyway, I could tell you all sorts of stories, like how I couldn't find Peter one day but then all of a sudden there he was, outside eating cat food! Or how I was so proud of myself for getting so much laundry done uninterrupted when I walked into the kitchen and saw Peter had opened the wood stove and was happily cramming ashes into his mouth while Mary Claire sprinkled more on his head. Or how (this seems to be a theme, doesn't it?) the twins were quiet for too long and I found them sitting on a white comforter in our bedroom, covered with blue eyeshadow. 

But then again, it's probably good that I couldn't blog, because things were rather rough, what with moving with 5 small kids who no longer have any sense of boundaries because it's a new house and therefore even if they weren't allowed to strip down and take bubble baths in the middle of the day in the OLD house, clearly they should be allowed to in the new house, right?

In any event, the twins are quite clean.

I could blog about how horrible our first official day of homeschooling was. And what a yelling jerk I've been because I think I adapt to change WAY worse than the 6-and-under crowd.

Or I could write about the fact that I thought we would be immune to any "large family" comments around here, since we're surrounded by big families and are no longer an anomaly... But the comments have been even more plentiful! Which I really don't mind, and it makes sense because people are MUCH friendlier around here. And even the pointing and laughing in the parking lot doesn't get to me because truly, if you saw a woman who looks approximately 20 years old pushing a cart with two little blonde girls in it, one hanging off the edge, a little boy trailing behind and THEN you realize there's ANOTHER baby on her back? Really, I'm practically a pack mule - we're an amusing sight!

Really, we're very happy and things are falling into place and going well and we're no longer at a horribly-messy-boxes-everywhere-going-insane sort of phase, so my sanity is definitely better. And it's so freaking beautiful out here, guys. But I have laundry to fold and a house to clean and have been at the computer for way too long...

So I'll just leave you with these pictures of my mom pulling the four youngest kids in the wagon while I made dinner. Because it's the cutest thing ever, right? Right.

How to Hike With Kids

Alternate title: Make Sure the Trail Isn't Too Long BEFORE You Start Hiking

Because "1.4 miles" is apparently more like 2...

And although Peter slept for the first half, there was rather a lot of complaining from Cecilia.

Mary Claire was pretty sure she'd be fine on the whole hike - somehow the more physical energy she exerts, the cuter she gets - golden hair turning to ringlets in the humidity, cheeks pink, eyes sparkling...

After far too many questions about how much farther and how much longer until they could have trail mix, we sat down on a log to have a snack and reassess. Yes! We COULD go on, refueled by goldfish, raisins, and chocolate chips!

20 feet later, Cecilia was complaining again and we decided that with a mile more to go AND the return trip, we might as well just turn back... But we DID see some frogs and water skimmers when we crossed a creek, so we're building those up as highlights.

The rain started pouring down as soon as we pulled away from the parking lot, so it's a good thing we DID turn back! Plenty of time for hiking another day, now that we live so close to so many awesome trails!

Back at home we're attempting to settle in, which is complicated by the need to complete a lot of tasks *now* before we can actually unpack... Boxes and boxes of books are sitting ignored because we can't move the bookshelves until we paint the trim, and oh! There's no shelving or rod in our closet and oh! The water in the guest house doesn't seem to be drinkable and oh! When we turn the water to the guest house on, there's suddenly a huge puddle of water in the yard where previously it was dry and oh! The whole guest house smells like smoke and oh! The baby pooped all over the rug AND my carrier and...

Well, I could go on forever. I don't think we'll ever be done with projects around here. But we sure are going to learn a lot dealing with it! 

Here We Are!

After a long, long day yesterday (including a rather embarrassing but not totally disastrous vigil Mass with all 5 kids and only 2 adults), we're moved in and everybody (except Peter) has beds!

The kitchen is full of boxes while we figure out where to put everything - apparently I was overly optimistic in my estimations of space, because we're really going to need to figure out shelving for the bare walls in the kitchen SOON! 

In an attempt to get out of the way of the movers, we took a nice long nature walk and picked wildflowers, ate apples and peaches from our trees, and even found an egg shell!

John Paul has been naming various parts of the yard - this is one part of The Evergreen Path, which is full of tiny trees that will very likely serve as our Christmas trees for years to come. However, tramping through these waist-high trees leaves many a scratch on uncovered legs, and he has been warned to wear JEANS if he's going to continue this exploring. I probably need to get some for the girls, too - leggings only provide so much protection... I got some for myself when Twice was going out of business, and after wearing a pair for a day I was reminded why I stopped wearing pants... Ah well, if they keep me from picking up ticks, I can deal.

I ate breakfast on the porch while the kids were at Grandma's house (Hey, everybody's being obnoxious - who wants to go to Grandma's house???). Then a man drove by on a tractor. I love this :)

And I keep thinking about how cool it is that when our house was built in 1890, none of these other houses or power lines were around - how awesome it must have been to wake up every morning to see the sun rising behind the mountains! I'll trade an unobstructed view for the modern convenience of electricity, though :)

We have a bunch of these bushes around the yard, and a friend helped us figure out that they're Autumn Olive bushes - invasive, but edible! Maybe we'll try making preserves?

I was hoping this would be something tasty, but sadly it's just Bradford Pear, only edible for birds.

Much as I'd like to spend today resting, there's a lot to do with these boxes everywhere and kids who insist on opening them and dumping things like Epsom salts all over the floor... Plus Andrew has his last day of work tomorrow before he starts his new job next week. It's going to be a long Monday! Some day we'll rest :)

Kitchen Musings: Before

You will very soon get tired of me asking for opinions on all things new house, and I totally understand if you just skip these posts! But if you're not easily bored and want to give me some kitchen advice, I'd love it!

Okay, so here you see part of the kitchen from the living room (also painting supplies and a whole bunch of junk) - Cecilia's in the living room, and then the pillar and the brick column separate the dining room from the kitchen (I'm fairly certain these all used to be broken up into separate rooms, and much prefer the way they've been opened up!). So now that I think about it, we might be able to gate off the area between the wood pillars, the area between the brick column and that other pillar, and possibly the area from the brick to the back wall to keep Peter away from the wood stove, right? Theoretically?

But how hard is it to screw a baby gate into brick? Pretty hard? Not a great idea? 

Looking at this picture, I'm not realizing that Andrew didn't see that that top left corner up there is still yellow, not white like the rest of the kitchen... And will very likely need priming & painting in the near future so we don't have a random yellow square up there. Whoops!

The kitchen is currently full of a TON of stuff because we got the wood floors sanded & sealed this week, and thus couldn't put anything on them. Hence the exercise ball randomly by the sink.

Also ignore the door that fell off the cabinet above the ovens. Ovens. I used to think I would never need a double oven, but now if I want to I can bake FOUR LOAVES OF BREAD at once! And ALL the pizzas!

I'm still trying to figure out how to arrange things in here - I think *total* we've got about as much counter space & cabinet space as our current kitchen, but it's not laid out in the most efficient manner, so I'm trying to figure out where to logically put things... Like those glass cabinets above the range? It would make so much sense to have baking stuff and spices and things up there, but those things aren't pretty (aside from my mixing bowls, which are pretty) and don't make sense in glass cabinets!

Also, why is there a range and that handle there but nothing but dead space under the range? And the same under the ovens - wouldn't it make sense to make that into some sort of cabinet?

That sink! All that sunlight!

Those shelves, though... I'm trying to come up with a solution to replace them - I adore what Ginny has going on here and we *do* have a couple fallen trees on our property that need to be dealt with, but I don't see that happening any time soon! 

The dishwasher is to the left of the sink, and there's no cabinet above it, so I'm trying to figure out where exactly to put dishes... I suppose I could put them in the glass cabinets? Or to the left of the dishwasher, there's a kind of pantry area between the dishwasher and the fridge, so I might take the top shelf of the pantry for dishes. I just don't know.

I think we could pretty easily mount something like this to the wall above the dishwasher, but I don't think it would actually hold enough dishes... Actually, I wonder if it would fit on the walls next to the sink? But it's $80, and I have to imagine we can probably come to a less expensive solution.

And add to that the fact that we're in need of new dishes since we have hardly any left of our current set... Well, it's just plain hard to choose dishes! We started our marriage with a cheap IKEA set that ended up breaking over the years. Then we got our current set, which has also slowly ended up breaking. 

So we've been looking at a million different sets of dishes online, trying to decide what we want... I think just something solid-colored, easy to match, cheap enough that we can replace it if it breaks. We're down to these two:

Blue, simple, little detail (but Andrew thinks it might be too close to the wall color we chose, although I don't know why that matters)

White, no mugs, more place settings (we never use the mugs, so I kind of think it's a plus NOT to have them to deal with!)

And now I'm going to stop writing because this has never been a blog about home decorating or anything like that. Maybe I can convince Sheena to fly to Virginia and make all these decisions for me? Emily's probably too busy with her own remodel to help!

Building Your Instrument Library {Music Education In the Home}

One of the things that was beaten into our heads when I went to music school was that in the music classroom, the distinction must be made that instruments are not toys. So every time I see one of those giant plastic drums full of "instruments" shaped like animals, I cringe inwardly. When I see a "band in a box" at the toy store, I desperately want to hide it so that nobody buys it. You can get decent instruments for toy store prices, but you're not going to find them in the toy section at Target!

I'm not judging you for owning those toys - I know your kids love them! But they're not going to encourage anyone to love music!

So where do you start if you can't afford a piano or a guitar? It gets expensive to build up a supply of decent musical instruments! Here are some of my favorites that we've acquired over the years:

-- I love the quality of Remo drums, plus the kids love the bright colors. I recommend tossing any mallets that might come with them - they just end up getting used to whack each other over the head in our house, plus they make the instrument WAY louder than it needs to be. They can get pricey (especially for the larger drums) so maybe 1-2 a year as gifts to build your supply up slowly.

-- All our kids have loved these Nino egg shakers, and they're 6 years old and still going strong for us! A really great baby toy, but also nice to have as an inexpensive percussion instrument. Fun colors, good quality, simple for keeping a steady beat and just fun to shake! You can also get their maracas, but I like the feel of an egg shaker in my hand a little better.

-- There are a million brightly colored toy "xylophones" (technically not xylophones) on the market, and they can *sometimes* be fine for purchase if you can get one in person and ensure it has proper tuning. Sometimes they're totally off, and some instruments don't even have all the notes in a scale! For a basic "xylophone" (really a small glockenspiel), I love this Hohner Toddler Glockenspiel, because it's an *actual* musical instrument, not a toy, so you know the tuning will be right-on. And the sound is more pleasing than our Fisher Price Xylophone, that's for sure!

-- An 8-note "xylophone" is a good start, but if you want to play more complicated songs, you're going to need something a little more expansive. This is a great affordable option that has actual accidentals (sharps and flats) and more than an 8-note range, so you can play a wider variety of songs. The bars come off, so this is one you want to keep away from toddlers!

-- You probably have horrible memories of squeaky, obnoxious "recorder choirs" from your childhood. It's a popular instrument for a reason! It introduces kids to a different way of reading music and basic fingering, which will give them/you an idea as to whether you might want to explore the option of studying a woodwind or brass instrument privately. Do NOT buy a cheap, colorful plastic instrument. The wooden ones are beautiful, produce superior tone, and will set you back, but Yamaha and Angel both make perfectly lovely plastic instruments that still produce a nice tone and won't break the bank!

Anything you'd add to the list? I'd love to hear about it!

Amazon links are affiliate links, which means I get a tiny percentage of your purchase if you happen to click through my blog! Thank you so much for your support :)