I’ve watched this video a lot, and when I saw that they had ice castles a half hour away from my grandparents, I had to go. Great place for some good pictures and fun exploring.
This sad little boy had cold hands. Luckily Mom had better gloves for him. 
The kids were amazed at the ice lighting up with different colors when it started to get dark.
PB did try to eat much of the ice. And the really gross snow on the ground. 
There wasn’t a panda there…just my sister in her panda hat.
This is a bit on Mr. C. He has been good at making good stories for his mom to tell lately.
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When I had a bunch of family over, C destroyed a roll. I had to vacuum that up. Soon after he pulled out all the games upstairs. I even had put the game shelf in the closet to avoid such messes, but he was a having a blast in the closet that someone else opened up for him.
I ignored the mess until the next day. While I went up and cleaned up all the games, PB came up and informed me that C was making a big mess. (I’ve asked him to tell me.) He had emptied sprinkles all over the dining room and stairs.
I vacuumed that all up, and was just about done when I looked over and there he was with a ripped cereal bag spreading cereal all over the hall. The little vacuum was very full when I was done. He finished out the morning with a very full diaper.
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At a final family Christmas party, C was very easy to get to come eat. I showed up with a brownie and he shouted, “Cake, cookie!” and came running. Later on, I found him with seven cookies in a bowl, all excited and ready to eat. He is a little cookie monster, but I’m glad he’s not picky and eats just about anything. Joe made some cookie dough and left it in the fridge. I have gone around the corner into the kitchen several times to find him sitting on the floor with the bowl between his legs eating as much cookie dough as he can. He was very distraught over the makeshift fridge lock soon after.
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C will say, “Watch this,” or more like “Waashiss”, before doing a little stunt–going down a slide, jumping on the bed. It is cute. He copied PB, as PB does it all the time. I don’t mind the invitation to watch.
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C got out the potty and wipes and said poopy. He sat on their for a while. Ten minutes later after his diaper was back on he actually pooped. I think this kids is going to be much easier to potty train that PB who took until he was over 3.5
So this post doesn’t necessary apply to my normal audience, but the thoughts were up in my brain, so I’m writing them out anyway.
I’ve recently began studying permaculture, which has been very fascinating to me. Permaculture is ecological design, or fitting human needs into natural systems. In the garden, I like to focus on systems and problem solving. I’ve never quite been a plant enthusiast, as many gardeners are. Permaculture is a good fit for me. But a main problem with permaculture is it can get complicated, and hence will not be for an average landscape owner.
What we do see in average landscape is a bunch of lawn, hopefully some trees, and maybe a small mixed bed and vegetable garden patch. It works, but it isn’t particularly attractive, low maintenance or ecologically friendly. I don’t see many people outside because, in addition to other reasons, of the boredom and lack of functionality of a normal landscape.
I think the layout of our landscapes has been greatly determined by what facets of the industry have been simplified effectively. Lawn care is not in actuality simple–I took an entire collage course about it. But the industry has simplified the process with readily available sod, four-step fertilizer programs, and an abundance of lawn care companies. Simplification has transformed lawn into the landscape solution of choice…if you’ve got empty ground you plant grass. One plant (not really, but that’s what people see), one set of maintenance tasks embraced by big box stores, and a multitude of resources available. Lawn care isn’t necessarily simple, but by portraying at such, it has enabled the saturation of lawn care products, and maintenance and chemical companies that keep prices cheap, and help easy to find.
Lawn is useful, but the unworthy of the monopolistic role it has in our landscapes. Other options exist, but now require a lot of effort for an average homeowner. It usually requires quite of bit of work and research, it costs more, and maintenance isn’t as clear cut. What often happens is a what could have been a beautiful mixed border ends up a weedy patch of unwanted plants and dead flowers.
I love ecological methods like permaculture, rain gardens, wildlife gardens, natives, edible landscaping, xeriscaping, and forest gardening. There are thousands of beautiful, durable and useful plants all ready to create amazing landscapes. But until the industry simplifies such methods, they will never catch on past the garden enthusiast.
One way where I have actually seen a garden method catch on is square foot gardening. It simplified the implementation and maintenance of a vegetable garden. I don’t agree with everything in square foot gardening, but it is an example to others wanting to push for new methods in landscaping. Simplify it, make it applicable to everyone, and perhaps even a product to be sold at big box stores.
Although it would be nice if people turned to landscape professionals and independent garden centers when they needed landscaping, it doesn’t happen. In my mind I should be very busy doing garden consultations, helping people understand the diverse and wonderful word of landscapes and gardening, but I’m not. Most people aren’t interested in horticulture, they just want cheap quick fixes so their landscapes aren’t weed patches.
If we want wide scaled changes in the landscape we have to simplify ecological design, and make it approachable for everyone including those that want cheap, quick fixes.
Endnote for average person: If you are someone who would like to get away from traditional lawn and move toward ecological design or simply something lower maintenance and beautiful, go for it and know that there are lots of resources out there if you look past the basic big box store. It isn’t higher maintenance or more expensive, just different.
Here are some of my favorite pictures from this year:
I had a rough time for a few weeks. I liked my life, but felt a little down. I wasn’t depressed, I was just tired of the same things and facing the same problems, and not being able to keep a good attitude as much as I wanted. But one day, I received a nugget of good thought, that I needed.
Think of who you want to be, not what you want to do.
I focus a lot on tasks. What I’ve done, what I’m going to do. As I’m thinking about all the things which I need to get done, and then turn around and repeat the next day, it is discouraging. Doing things, often very repetitive things, is both boring and exhausting.
But focusing on being someone great is exciting. Trying to follow Christ’s example of peace and charity, trying to be a better person with His help, makes life mean more. What matters in this life isn’t what goals I accomplish, it is the person that I become.
So the kids are not wanting to go to bed at bedtime. Instead of getting mad because it is bedtime, and they must go to bed, I think of how I want to be a good mother, how I want my children to obey me because they love me. We took a magic couch ride to several volcanoes, dinosaurs, and a train station. And when the kids started to wrestle me (boys are like that), I ran away from them and trapped them in “cages” which were their beds. I wasn’t focused on just tasks, on getting them to bed. I wanted to be a good person, and it meant not getting mad, it meant having fun, creating games. It wasn’t exhausting. It was liberating, so much easier than fighting with them to get to bed.
My focus needs to change, so my thoughts are focused on striving to be the best person I can, the person I want to be. That’s not accomplishing a million things. For my life, it can be accomplishing little but snuggles and games. It is about being present and enjoying life, not for what can be checked off at the end of the day, but for the joy that comes in just living.
I love our town. There are great sledding hills and snow. And when you go out sledding on a Saturday morning, there’s only a few people out. We went with some friends. Incidentally, last year, just a week after we moved here, we went sledding at the park, and this same family was there. Didn’t know each other then, but I thought they looked like a fun family, and now we know each other quite well. Smallish towns are fun, I like to bump into people over and over.
I got this picture through a window after PB was playing by himself outside for awhile. He was sitting in a fresh snow angel eating snow, I love kids happily playing by themselves. Sometimes it needs to be documented, as a reminder that they are not dependent upon me for everything.
I remember back in college, a fellow student complaining about the tall fescue infesting bluegrass turf, ruining the solid green color and texture.
When did we start desiring moncultures?
A monoculture is growing one plant, and only one plant. They are unnatural, unhealthy, and boring.
Here is my idea of a healthy lawn:
This is at my grandma’s. She hated it. There were violets, clover, dandelions, all growing up together. She saw a weed patch. I saw wonderful beneficial relationships. Clover providing nitrogen, leaves overlapping to maximize sunlight use. Not only that, but there were purple flowers in the spring, yellow in the summer. And it was actually producing edible crops in the form of the violets and dandelion greens.
There aren’t any monocultures in nature. There is a reason for that. Moncultures invite pests, require fertilizers, more water, more work.
I hate the smell of 2,4-d on lawns. It’s nasty, even worse when it is somewhere where my kids are. There are some weeds out there that might need eradication. But common lawn weeds are often edible, and beautiful. Dandelions have yellow flowers, edible greens, they provide nectar to bees. Clover fixes nitrogen: more clover, less fertilizer. Wood sorrel is edible and medicinal. Why would we get rid of free flowers and food?
I’m going against the grain of traditional landscaping. One of the main goals we have developed for our landscapes are perfect green lawns. Why, and at what cost? We dump chemicals on them, so we can look at them out our windows. I like lawns. They are fun to play on, and hold up for tons of outside activities in a way no other replacement can. But I’m never going to spray 2,4-d on my lawn to get rid of clover. Actually, I’ve considered seeding in clover, violets and other “weeds.” It is simply healthier, maintains that durable play surface, and simply means less work for me.
If your main landscaping goal is a green boring lawn, just ask the question why? I’m not saying rip out all the lawn (although I have plans to scale back a lot of mine), just find a different vision. Instead of trying for a monoculture, hold off on spraying that clover, let the lawn grow a little longer. Stop looking for all the problems, and instead find out what a dandelion green salad taste like.
Our home buying process was very atypical. I thought I might share some of what I learned. If you aren’t buying a home, feel free to skip this post. If you are at all interested (and I think some people out there might be which is why I’m writing), read on. I spend many hours researching real estate transactions. It paid off, because we were able to buy our home without a real estate agent.
Reasons why not to use a real-estate agent:
Reasons why you probably do want an agent:
Going on…
Desiring a Home
We wanted to buy a house. Joe had a good job, we knew the market was pretty good. We wanted to have somewhere where we didn’t have to answer to a landlord and could work on the projects we wanted to. Our family is going to get bigger (hopefully), not smaller, so we also needed more space. We decided to buy a home when our lease ran out. We talked about what we wanted, occasionally glance at signs and listings, but still had a couple of months before we really wanted to buy a home.
Finding a Home
A family from our ward (church group not hospital) was selling their home after moving far away. It was only three blocks from where we were living. It was still in the fix-up-to-get-ready-to-sell-stage, and my husband stopped by and looked around. Then we both went and saw it. It looked like a construction zone. We looked at it a few more times, and decided to buy it. We didn’t go through another home. The timing was sooner than we wanted, but the house was exactly what we were after.
Making an Offer
We talked to the seller (it was a FSBO), he told us the baseline he wanted for the house (around $7,000 under his initial listing). So we offered that amount. He accepted. No counter-offers, or any extended negotiation. It took 15 minutes. That is a horribly simple, but effective, way to negotiate. While making an offer, we used this purchase contract, and this addendum if you have a government loan. It has all the legal garbage in it, and it is the form used by real-estate agents.
Getting a Loan
I found my loan guy from an online ad. He responded to me the quickly, and we did all the paperwork over e-mail (there are secure ways to do so). I never met him. I contacted him initially before making an offer. I wasn’t pre-approved, more pre-qualified, but the home was far under what we were quoted as what we could afford. After making an offer, I sent him the purchase contract and got to work on all the paperwork he sent me. They sent an appraiser up as well, who appraised the home over our purchase price. In a little over a week, the loan was sent off the the USDA, for a rural-housing loan. Then the government shutdown, and we had to wait even longer than expected. Then meant filling out an addendum to the purchase contract, lengthening the deadlines. We finally had complete approval two months after beginning the process, which luckily fell right at the end of the month.
Seller Property Disclosure/Earnest Money
A disclosure is need according the purchase contract above, and if your seller isn’t on top of things, I recommend printing a form out and giving it to them, as soon as possible. We never paid earnest money, though not every seller is certainly not going to agree to that.
Due-Diligence
We talked to a friend, found an inspector, and got the place inspected. Told the seller what was wrong, gave him a list, and he fixed it. He was also doing a lot of improvements when we made the offer, so we spend a lot of time following up and seeing how everything was coming. It went rather slowly. And I also recommend bringing up anything you want done, even things like the neighbors cats. Go through the house a lot, and ask for everything to get fixed. They aren’t obligated to fix everything, but it never hurts to ask. I did, and although every tiny thing I found didn’t get done, I was a lot better off than not asking. (The cat concern sparked the process resulting in their eventual eviction.)
Moving
We were tired of waiting on the loan, tired of seeing little progress on the house, and needed to know what to do with our current apartment, so we decided we were moving on a specific date. We moved before our loan went through, and before the seller was completely done with moving out/fixing things up. (He did only have a shed in the back to clean out.) In some ways, this was nice. If we found any problems, we could talk to the seller who was still the owner. The work did finally get done as soon as there was a deadline as well.
Closing
The loan went through two days after we moved in. (Happy surprise) The next day, we were at the title company signing papers, and the day after that, we officially owned a home.
Our process wasn’t by the books. To re-cap, here are the thing you probably shouldn’t or won’t be able to do:
But for us, it all worked. Any questions or suggestions, please comment away.
*This site is where I got most forms listed above, more are available.
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