New Blog

Well, I guess now is as good a time as any to really start the new blog. It's still pretty bare over there, but I do have an About page up.

I may do a few more posts here, but for the most part this blog will just become my archives and you will have to go to the new one if you want to keep up to date.

So without further ado, I'd like to introduce Nasha Dacha.

Sleepy Time

Well, I think I've settled on a name. I've got a site published, but I've still got quite a bit of work to do on it. I kind of want a break from all of this blogging stuff. . .

In the meantime, I just want to share that since we visited my sister's family last weekend, bed times have in general been much easier. It was a very nice and sudden change. He doesn't even need me to sing to him most of the time.

Ethan went to bed well tonight, but then he was having a hard time falling asleep and after a while cried out for me. I finally went in to him (again) and rocked him into dreamland. It was a little frustrating at first to have to go in again when Terral was ready to help out, but Ethan just wanted me. Then as I rocked him I felt the peace of holding my child and I thought, "I am needed. I am wanted. I am loved."

I am so very blessed.

Change Coming

I've decided I'm going to create a new blog. I figured out the photobucket thing, but it's just not worth the hassle. It's hard enough to blog as it is, and I don't want to put unnecessary time into it. And I've been toying with doing a different blog for quite a while. But, blast it, it's difficult to settle on a name!

Thanksgiving Tables

Turns out you can only post one photo at a time from Flickr. (Unless someone can enlighten me with another method. . .) Lame.  So I had to open another account with photobucket. blah.

So here goes another experiment. :)

As I believe I have mentioned, we hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year. I was rather excited about it.  It did get a little crowded when everyone was trying to get their food, but other than that we all fit just fine!

I got the idea to do a doodle table runner here, but since I couldn't find where I had packed my tablecloths, I decided to cover the whole table in kraft paper.

Ethan had fun with it. :)

We wrote and drew what we were thankful for, and whatever else we felt like too. :)

Crazy Hair

DSCF6012, a photo by merry fox on Flickr.

Experiment #2, since #1 didn't go so well. . .


*okay, so this one worked, but I only know how to post one picture from flickr. Argh! Blogger doesn't seem to recognize the url, even though I linked the accounts. Any suggestions?

Thankful for Hair

Sorry about the absence. We decided kind of last minute to go up to a family reunion in SLC, and we've been busy enjoying the company of awesome people. But now we're back, and I get to tell you about all the fun we've had the past week. :)

But first, there is that little issue of my pictures, and the fact that we are rather sleep deprived after all our late nights talking. So for tonight, I'm just going to do a little experiment and share with you a picture of Ethan's awesome Thanksgiving morning hair.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mama_lisitsa/8222185165/in/photostream

More Fun with Friends

We love having visitors. It's so nice that we have a place to put them up now! We've had a very enjoyable day with our friends, and now we are all tuckered out. I feel a little lame doing this little post, but I'm much too tired to stay up longer to do more. So just know that it was a fun and full day. :)

Goodness, I almost missed the day! We had a really great Thanksgiving, but it's late and we still have visitors, and I haven't had time to figure out my picture dilemma. So I'm basically just checking in today.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We've got visitors, so it's another quick post tonight.

Today was lots of cleaning and painting. The lower cabinets are very close to being done! I'm rather excited about it.

We have much to be thankful for. I hope everyone has a very Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow!

No Space = Race

Well, my plans for tonight's post are have been foiled. I'm out of picture storage space. I know there's some way to work around it, but I need time to figure it out. So for tonight, I will refer you to Terral's blog post about the race he ran in on Saturday.

No Words Needed

The Stairs are Clad!

There was quite a bit of back and forth over whether my parents would come this weekend or not, but in the end they decided to come on Saturday. Terral and I rushed to get the protective coat on the stringers before they came because the coat that goes on the stringers is different from what goes on the steps, and the two can't overlap at all. Luckily it all worked out and we were able to get it done just in time.

Terral had a race in St. George, so he wasn't here for the first half of the day. Things went much slower this time because dad needed breaks and mom and I weren't skilled enough to do the precise measuring and cutting. But that was totally fine, because of course I wanted dad to take his needed breaks, and there was less that needed to be done.

Here's a picture of the stairs with the newly-cut risers and a few treads put on. You can kind of see the color difference between the risers and the railings. Once the railings (that we love!) were up, we felt that the stain turned out a little too orangey-red and it made the other wood tones in our house look. . .different. . . so I tested out a couple scrap pieces and we decided to put a coat of walnut stain on top. It didn't make a stark difference, but it tones down the red and I think fits our house better now.

 And here's the view from the top with just a couple treads put in.

 As dad cut the treads, mom and I glued and nailed them in. Mom was thoughtful enough to make sure there was photographic evidence of me working on our stairs. :)

 Ethan spent the morning with Terral's parents, and I met them in Cedar to watch the storybook parade when Terral came back from his race. Ethan really enjoyed the parade, and I did too. The floats were way better than what you see in the 4th of July parade. But mostly I just had fun watching Ethan.

 He was so tuckered out afterward that he fell asleep in the car within 2 minutes!

When we got home,  mom helped me put some wood filler on our cabinet fronts, and dad installed an outlet and switched out a broken one to make our kitchen more functional. Terral and dad finished off the drywall and some more trim on the stairs. Dad was pretty darn beat by the end. He is such a trooper. I'm very lucky to have the parents I do.

There is still plenty of work to do (sanding, staining, filling, topcoat, etc.) but we love our new stairs! I think they are beautiful. Even covered in construction dust. :)

Lethargy after Work

I never seem to feel like blogging after spending a whole day working on the house. My parents came down and we got the rest of the stairs clad. It's awesome! But I felt bad for my dad the whole time. His ribs are doing much better, but his foot is still really bothering him.

Hopefully tomorrow I will share pictures and more details of this very full day.

Garage Door

The garage is pretty much all painted. I say pretty much because 1) there is some touch up work to do, and 2) The back side isn't painted because we are likely going to put siding of some sort over the plywood. But that could change.

In the meantime, here's a before and almost-after of our barn garage door. ;)

Ultrasound Results

This morning we went to St. George for our ultrasound. We were really happy to find out last month that the ultrasound tech we went to in Vegas last time now makes trips to St. George once a month.

Everything checked out beautifully. She looked perfectly formed. Oops, did I just let slip the fact that we're having a girl? Well, we are! The feeling we had is now confirmed. :)

She was a bit of a contortionist. Look at that spine curvature! She had her feet above her head a lot of the time. She made it a little difficult to get good shots because she was moving and twisting so much.

 

 But the tech was able to find everything he needed to let us know that her growth and development are right on track.

It feels good to say "she" without qualifiers. :) We're very excited to meet this little girl and find out what her personality is like!

Ethan did pretty well during the first part of the ultrasound. He liked to point at the screen and say "baby!" But after a while he lost interest and just wanted to go play with the big exercise ball in the waiting room. Who can blame him?

After the ultrasound, we took a little walk and then went to our midwife appointment, which also went very well. Yay for good growth!

Instead of driving straight home, we stopped at the pioneer park place so we could hike around a bit. Ethan loved it!

 He saw daddy climbing,

 and he wanted to try it too!

 So he climbed,

 and climbed,

and climbed!

It was a wonderful day.

More on the Railings

It's about time that I filled in a little on the progress we made last Saturday.

It was a snowy weekend, so we weren't sure my family was going to come, but they did! Matt and Karalee traveled as far as Delta Friday night after work, then they rode down with Mom and Dad in the morning. Diane and Mike were here by noon in spite of the snowy mountain between us. Everyone was such a big help and we are so grateful they braved the weather to come to our aid!

Matt and Karalee tore out the drywall next to the stairs.

 Mike helped quite a bit with the construction of the wall next to the stairs and figuring out some of the details for the hardwood.

 Dad was supposed to just supervise, but we couldn't keep him down. He did try to not overdo it though. And it's great that he was feeling well enough to do what he did.

 Once all the sanding and staining was done for the remaining stair pieces, the women didn't have a lot they could do, so I asked for their help getting started on our cupboards. Terral and I bought a couple of 1/4" thick MDF boards to make trim for the doors. Dad helped me double check the measurements and cut the strips. He did the cutting at first until I asked him to just teach me how to do it. Once he did, I took over at the saw. :)

 Mom and Karalee nailed the trim to the cupboards and drawers, and they even put a primer coat of paint on the lower ones! I can't tell you how excited I am to have this project underway!

 While we were all busy with construction, the kids were busy playing. I just had to snap a picture of Ethan and Lucas together. :)

  Finally it was time for the railings to be put in! Happy day!

 Matt and Karalee made quite the team. :)

 Made had made all the parts large so they could be cut to the right angles, etc. Dad did a lot of that cutting.

 Ethan sure loves it when family comes to visit. He often points to the stair rails and says, "Matt" or "Karalee did it!" It's fun to hear him try to say Karalee.

 Here are a few more views of the stairs with the newly-installed railings. We love having them up!

 And the landings is one of my favorite parts. These pictures really don't do justice to the stairs. They look so good!

 Here's Ethan going up for the first time!

 And just for fun, here he is after everyone left and he decided to put on my boots.

Am I a blessed girl, or what?

Blocks

Lately Ethan's really been enjoying playing with blocks. He likes to have his tractors "dig" them up and gather them in a pile on our laps. And of course he likes to build towers and knock them down. One day he just started lining them up on the couch and calling them a train. It's so fun to see him make connections and use his imagination!

Last week he was building a train again, and this time he called it his "Hallo" train. Since he was a train conductor for Halloween, he now associates trains with Halloween. :)

And here he is playing with blocks (that were really filler pieces for the stairs) with grandma. He was so excited about the house they built. :)

After Ethan's nap today, he and Terral went outside to play for a while. Ethan ended up playing with his outside blocks and his tractors and didn't want to come in, even when he got cold. He built another "Hallo" train and was excited to show it to me. He wasn't quite as excited by the time I got the camera, but it's still fun to hear him talk about it. :)

Then this evening I went to a Relief Society activity. When I came home, Terral showed me some pictures and told me how Ethan got out his blocks and drill (a taped piece of paper roughly in the shape of a drill) and kept saying, "House? House?" So he and Terral built a house. Ethan was the creative force, and Terral was the stabilizer. It's a pretty awesome design!

Friendly Dinner

This evening we had some friends over for dinner and a quick family home evening. It's been quite a while since we've been able to do this, so we really enjoyed it. It went by too quickly.

We set up a little table for the kids. It was cute to see how they had fun together and wanted to be near each other.

After dinner they went upstairs to play, and when things got quiet, we found Audrey reading book after book to Ethan. So cute!

*Something to Remember: This evening Terral dedicated our home.

Homesteading

Terral and I have really been enjoying our homesteading lately. We have a lot of plans for things we want to incorporate into our life to become more self-sufficient, and we've started doing a few of them.

Getting chickens was one of those things. Terral was noting yesterday some of the things we had going. I fed and watered the chickens and mucked out part of their coop, then gathered eggs. We have couple jars of our own sourdough starter in process. We are drying some jalapenos.  I cooked a whole chicken yesterday (it turned out so yummy with a perfect tenderness!) and today I finished making my first bone broth. Terral cooked a pumpkin and used it to make muffins this morning, and he also roasted the seeds.

Anyway, it's just really exciting to us to actually be doing some of these things we've talked about for a long time. And I just love learning new things. I've been reading a lot lately on how to preserve with lacto-fermentation. It has lots of health benefits and is easier than doing a hot water bath. We're also learning how to utilise more of what we have. Like feeding kitchen scraps to the chickens and making mineral-rich bone broth. It's just cool!

And it's because it's cool that I felt like sharing. The end.

Stair Railings

We are so very excited about our new stair railings! My family is just amazing. They accomplished so much today, and did so by braving snowy roads. I can't thank them enough!