Hot Chocolate Smile

We spent the morning moving wood from outside to the basement so that we would have a goodly supply for the next month or two (depending on the outside temperatures). After lunch all the kids enjoyed hot chocolate for their hard work. Most of them ended up adding other sweet stuff but I just enjoyed the cocoa. Harmonie really enjoyed it and made the biggest mustache. Just thought I'd record that we are still using the wood furnace to heat our home, so that means we are still hauling wood from the front yard to the basement (and Kevin should be cutting down trees and gathering wood but he's really busy as of late). The kids fight, argue, and complain throughout the work. I try to change the subject with word/mind games or singing songs. Sometimes it works and other times they just want to be angry. But at the end of the day most of them write in their journals that they enjoyed hauling wood. Maybe that's because it's the only thing they can think of for the day but at least we have it on record that it brought them joy to work with their family (in not so many words).

Showing off a bit

This is what my hard workers did over Christmas break. We had emptied this stack on the north side of our driveway and it looked really strange. Now it looks normal and we are happy to have a supply of wood to keep us warm next winter.

This was also collected, but couldn't be split because the splitter stopped working. Kevin figured out that it was the hydraulic pump. He bought a new one, replaced the old one and it works like new! Now Kevin just needs to find the time to split the wood - and go get more!

Kevin has been busy, when he's not busy with doctor stuff. Fortunately, we have a wonderful neighbor who has hooked us up with a goodly supply of lumber that Kevin can cut down and haul away. The work continues and the wall grows ever taller. We are stacking it higher than we did last year so that we can have a larger supply, in case we have a normal cold winter at the end of 2012. So I thought I'd let you see how it's going so far.

We also get a lot of kindling to start the fires with, mostly during fall and spring when we don't feed the furnace all day long. I collect it into boxes that we keep in the basement.

Doing what they do best.

Marissa was invited to a friend's birthday party on the north side of town. Kemiah and I went shopping while Marissa was at the party. That left the other kids home with Dad and we all know what he does in his free time - gather, split, stack, or haul wood (or any combination of the above). So after they hauled home a couple loads in the morning, Marissa, Kemiah and I left for the party/shopping trip. Domonique went to bed to take a nap and the others headed outside. Normally, I help the kids stack the wood after it has been split, but since I wasn't there Kevin got out a ladder so the kids could stack on their own. They worked together and did a great job.


Between those two trees is all the split wood they stacked by themselves.

They also stacked all the whole logs to the right of the tree on the right. All that wood to the right was gathered since we got back from Christmas. So we have burned all the wood that was stacked here last year.

Good works! Thanks guys for doing such a great job!

Back to work!

After a nice vacation over Christmas, we came home on Monday. Kevin had the rest of the week off so he got right to work on collecting more fire wood. We are a little worried that we don't have enough for this year, and we can always start collecting for next year. The four oldest kids are his little helpers so they have been busy as well. They probably only worked the last three mornings, and then Kevin goes out after lunch to cut up more so it's ready to pick up the next morning. Today, when they got home, Ben said, "Dad's working the heart and soul out of us." It made me smile. I know they are hard workers and their Dad keeps them going. It was just funny how Ben decided to phrase it. Fortunately, the weather has warmed up again (relatively - high 40s instead of low 20s, for this time of year) so the kids were actually a little too warm and ended up taking off their coats to stack the wood they collected. I'm so thankful that the snow hasn't come yet because it really would be awful to do this kind of work in the snow or wind or rain. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for the beautiful week we have had!

You live where?

Oh, we are the two-story salmon colored brick house on the west side of the road. You know, the one with the wood wall around it. We've heard the neighborhood is going bad so we wanted to protect ourselves. Just kidding. The neighborhood is fine. We just know we'll need a lot of wood to keep our house warm through the winter - if it's anything like last winter - and we are being prepared. Last year Kevin built a fort around the garden in the backyard. Much less visible but it was a trek through the snow to reload the basement wood storage area. So we decided to put it out front and see if that was easier. It also makes a great fence for the kids to keep them from going into the road. I just thought I'd let you see how it's going. Of course, we're not done yet, as you can see from the pile of split wood and the other pile of not yet split wood. (These pictures were taken Friday and Kevin did more work Saturday so the yard already looks different than what I'm showing you here.) Kevin has been hard at work gathering all the wood from different locations and then splitting it all. I have split some but my main job has been stacking the split stuff with the kids as my helpers.

Notice what he's wearing... He found a use for those old flight suits he used to wear. That's nice because we have about 20 in a box just waiting to be worn. It makes it much easier to clean up when he's done because most of the saw dust and stuff is on the flight suit and not on his clothes.

These are heavy pieces of oak that he had to cut up just to be able to get them to the splitter. It was amazing how heavy they were, and how big some of them were. That hole in the wall behind him was filled on Saturday so it's now a complete wall. But there is more wood - split stuff on the left side and the rest on the right. I'll post more later.


The wall goes around a ways but isn't quite as tall as it is in the front.

Here's a look at the second portion that is on the other side of the driveway. It will be added to as well, so it will go farther back and we'll see how much we end up using through out the winter.
It was really bugging me that you couldn't see what it looked like now so I went out and took a picture of what it looks like now. You can see we all have a lot of work to do.