little house

Here are a few stories about the last 24 hours and how much our life rocks now that we live in our own house in a small town in a rural area.

Yesterday a neighbor kid came over for the day. I was watching him because is regular babysitter and his back up babysitter were both unavailable. Plus, my kids think he's pretty great. S.A.M. likes to play with him, and Benefactor always NEEDS to wear a "church shirt" when he sees him. I don't know why. He's 2. He does strange things like that.

Coincidentally, Tyler also had the day off. He was working on digging down a section of our yard that runs along the parking area so that it can be low enough to get some of our allotted hour of irrigation water. We're putting in a grape arbor there, and the grapes need water to grow. (and I wonder if I can call it a grape arbor. Is that right? Grapes are vines and arbors refer to trees. Someone help me with this.

So, he was digging heaps of dirt, and piling it in another area of the yard that we wanted to raise up a bit and which will someday support a wood oven/grill. And in those heaps was not only dirt but lots and lots and LOTS of broken glass.

It's not really a great idea to have kids running around on ground that's covered with broken glass. They could get cut.

And the kids were looking for something to do.

So, they each found something to dig with, and something to store in, and dug for buried treasure for maybe 2 hours. And ended up with buckets full of broken colored glass.

I'm such a good mom. And babysitter.

But that's rural living, right?



I mentioned that we get an hour of irrigation. That's one hour of water flooding our yard once a week. And we got our first hour last night. Tyler woke before his alarm went off at 11:50 for his midnight date with the ditches.

By 12:15 he was at the back door calling to me to get the emergency number for the irrigation people because some guys had come and diverted his water and we were missing out on our precious water time. I found the number for him, he went out and called and got no answer. And all that woke up Benefactor. So I went and settled him while Tyler re-directed the water back to us. I got to go back to bed (but not to sleep) while he got to have a tiny little confrontation with the guys who had diverted it in the first place. They finally realized that they must have gotten their time wrong, and their water hour began at 12 PM not 12 AM. A sad mistake.

Meanwhile, we had missed out on some of our water time. Our generous neighbor let us take the first little bit of his irrigation time, and today we have a muddy, muddy yard, and some muddy kids to show for it.

Tyler got back to bed around 1:20am, and neither of us could fall asleep until around 2am.

Ahh, the quiet, peaceful, bucolic country life.



Here's a bonus third story just because. My baby belly is pretty huge by now. I have something like 3 months left, and I don't know where all that baby growth is going to go. I really notice the size of my belly when I'm doing two things in particular; the laundry and the dishes.

When I do the dishes, my short little arms have to extend pretty much all the way out to reach to faucet and scrub. And my belly is pressed against the counter and always ends up wet. (I'm in serious want of an apron.)

When I do the laundry it takes me 2-3 trips to get the dried laundry from the dryer to the couch (where I do the folding). 2 or 3 trips!! I used to easily fit it all in my arms in one trip!




See? All around, life is better. The kids are happier, we are more rested, and we feel physically better than we ever have with all the work we do to keep up with our house and yard.

(For the record, and because I suspect my older sister is about to have a heart attack of worry over the danger I put my kids in, I want you to know that the glass is all old and dull from being in the ground for decades, and no one got even a little cut. Promise.)