I love this song

I guess I'm posting about once a month now... no more pictures for a while because Sadie our newer dog chewed up our flash drive. It was sad.

But I am LOVING this song so much. Just heard it the other day on the radio. You really must listen, it's beautiful!

just some pictures

As you can see from the first picture, we found another dog. Her name is Sadie, and she's a doll. Life in the bungalow is going very well! Plenty to adjust to, but we're really enjoying it. I have a lot more free time on my hands with such a small house to clean and NO INTERNET!! (still missing it, I have to say!) Hopefully soon we'll be back online...

Daniel leaves next week for his tryout at the Salatin's farm... I will miss him, but we're both really excited about it.

Alright I would love to write more but I'm mooching off a friend's internet... talk to you all later!!

Life in the Bungalow

Oh my blog, I miss you! I'm so glad to be writing right now!

We've fully transitioned from suburbanites to urban homesteaders of sorts.... and we're loving it so far. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that we bought a 1984 travel trailer to live in for a while for many various reasons. Well we're now renting out our 1600sq.ft. house to some friends and living in our travel trailer in our church parking lot. We've named the travel trailer "the Bungalow". And life there is good. So much less space= so much less cleaning= more time for knitting/reading/family time/various projects/time with friends. There have been some challenges, including the air conditioner going out, the gray water tank leaking, a pipe bursting at one point, and no internet (yet), but my brave and ingenuitive husband has fixed all problems that have arisen. I'm getting used to cooking in a smaller kitchen, and actually enjoying it. We only took 4 cups, 4 plates, 4 sets of silverware, 2 bowls and 3 mugs.... so we hardly have any dishes. They can all be dirty at the same time and still fit in the sink! (Amazing for me, who isn't a huge fan of dishes). Honestly I don't even miss my dishwasher. I've been more creative with the crock-pot, for which I am imensely grateful. I do kind of miss the "mud room" entryway in our house where dirty muddy shoes can be left... but we're working out a good shoe system in the Bungalow, so I think I won't even miss that very soon. Our church has quite a few (completely paid-for) buildings which include a large nursery, a school, and a kitchen-- and they've given us keys to all these buildings. When we're feeling a little closterphobic in the bungalow and it's too hot to go outside, we go play in the nursery. We're also able to use the refridgerator in the kitchen (the bungalow fridge doesn't keep the milk cold enough and it spoils before we can pick up more from our co-op). Some of the ladies at the church have even started excercizing every morning in the nursery building which is literally 20 feet from the Bungalow, so I've been joining them and I'm happy about that-- I have no excuse not to be there! We've been spending a LOT of time outdoors. Zeke and Tula (our puppy) really enjoy that, and so do I. A few of my friends have children that attend the church's school, and so they stop by every once in a while to visit when they drop off/pick up their kids for school. Life is fun there! Living on the church grounds is really the PERFECT transition from suburban life to off-grid homesteading, farming life. We're currently living some sort of peculiar half-homesteading, half-normal life. And learning how to live in the bungalow with so much support from our church has made the transition so much easier. I can't even imagine moving straight from my nice big house in Texas to an off-grid travel trailer in rural Kentucky---I'm sure that would have been quite a shock. But the Lord has been gracious to us and has provided this smooth transition, the perfect time for learning and growing and preparing for the next phase of our life.

Speaking of the next phase of life, Daniel applied for a four month internship at Polyface Farms, the Salatin family's amazing sustainable farm. The internship would be starting in June 2010. Daniel made it through the first essay screening and has been invited to come to a two day "tryout" where he will be competing with other applicants for the few prized internship spots. We're hoping of course that he will get the internship! It looks like he will be going for the tryout in January, but we're not certain about that yet. I will let you all know what happens! :)

As we do not yet have internet in the Bungalow, I am writing this at a friend's house (actually at our house, as in the one we own-- our renters are out of town and we are cat-sitting). BUT my darling husband bought me something I've been wanting for a long time-- a flash drive!! So my plan is to write blog posts on our desktop in the bungalow, save the posts & pictures on the flash drive, and then upload my posts whenever we have internet access. That's the plan. I want to be diligent about this because I know in 20 years we will treasure all the memories and crazy stories from this time in our life. I have a really bad memory and if I don't write stuff down I just don't remember it later.

Did I ever mention that Daniel caught the kids who had been vandalizing our farm & garden project at the church?!! He DID!! It's a crazy story!!!! I'll let him tell you sometime. Since he caught them and they received a citation from the police we have had no more problems, which is a huge burden off our backs.

Speaking of the farm & garden project, it is going well. Now that the vandalism is stopped, we can start making progress again instead of just repairing all the damage that was done. We are providing eggs for a few families in the church, and we have a new batch of broilers that will be going out on the field this coming weekend. We're planning a work day to put in some winter gardens (I do love that you can garden all year in TX!), and quite a few families are contributing all their kitchen scraps to the compost pile. There seems to be a giant mountain of work in front of us, but I'm really excited to leave a "mini" sustainable farm on the church grounds for other people to benefit from when we leave.

What else is going on with us?? Zeke is doing great! He's huge, he's handsome, he's smart. I imagine he will be walking soon. He just started waving bye-bye this week! It's too cute.

Well I need to go give Daniel a haircut-- I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday afternoon!

The Bungalow

We are officially moved into our travel trailer, which I have named "the Bungalow"! We do not yet have internet there, so I am updating this from a friend's house. Once we're back online I will update this blog more regularly. Our renters moved into our house this past weekend. everything is going well! Our home phone is of course disconnected, so you'll have to reach us on our cell. E-mail me if you don't have that number!

Spider bite update

I went to the ER this morning, waited for a few hours, and saw a super nice doctor who cut open the bite and drained it out. He said it's a good thing that i came in, and that the wound should heal up just fine. He said there is no way to know what kind of spider bite it was without having actually caught the spider. I was in a lot of pain this afternoon after the anesthetic wore off, but I'm feeling ok now. I bet I'll feel a lot better in the morning! Thanks for your prayers and concern guys :)

Crazy spider bite... I'm a bit worried....

Guys, I think I have a brown recluse bite. I put my pajamas on the other day, and then shortly realized that something had bit me. Well I go to take a look, and there were 4 bug bites on my rear (sorry to talk about my rear on my blog). I didn't think too much of it at the time, but they were kind of itchy like a mosquito bite. Anyway, it's about two days later(I think), and three of the bites are just teeny little spots, but one (I'm assuming the initial one b/c it would have got the most venom?) has gotten bigger. After doing some research I suspect a brown recluse bite...? It's bigger than a quarter, swolen, sore, and feels hardish to the touch with a scab in the center (ok sorry too much detail!). It's 3AM and I can't sleep because it hurts and I guess I'm worried about it. I think I'm mostly upset because we're very busy this week and I really don't want to go to the hospital tomorrow, but I probably should. And I think I will. Grrr.

I absolutely HATE HATE HATE spiders (and hospitals). A couple times a year I will fly out of bed from a deep sleep because I had a dream a spider was in the bed. I have to turn on all the lights and shake out all the blankets before I'll go back to sleep. Poor Daniel. I'm not so bad with spiders I can see-- I don't mind squishing them too much anymore (even squashed a very tiny one with my bare finger the other day!). It's those spiders that you can't see-- the ones in your shoe, your pajamas, your bedsheets--- that seriously freak me out.

update tomorrow.... please pray for me!

Stake-out and renters

We've had a rough week with all this vandalism. But it looks like we're making progress with it-- we figured out they're coming some time between 11am-3pm. Daniel rigged up a walkie-talkie and I stayed in our travel trailer today (which is in the church parking lot.... which is fairly close to our chickens) listening for a ruckus. Shortly after noon I had a hunch that I should go out to check on things, and I sat there for not even 15 minutes when I saw someone off in the far corner of the field behind a tree. I got out of the car and yelled at them (it was pretty far, I don't know if they heard me or not) then called Daniel at work and he rushed over to try and find the guys. By the time he got there they were gone, BUT he did find a spot in the woods that looked like a teenage-hangout spot. So we know what time they come, and we know where they hang out. And no chickens were killed today and nothing was broken or damaged. Hopefully we can get this stopped soon. I'm really hoping that if Daniel gets his hands on them he'll beat the crap out of them and then give them a good talking to. Just like in that movie "second hand lion".

In other news, we've found renters for our house!!!! I am soooo excited/relieved/thankful. God is so good to us! We will be renting to some friends of ours, and we will be using our own garage for storage instead of having to get a storage unit. That will make moving so, sooo much easier!! It really will be a great situation, and I'm so glad to have it worked out. I was concerned that we might not be able to find anyone.

Alright I'm exausted, so I'm going to go now. :)

Why do people do these things?

Someone has started vandalizing our farm & garden project. We're really discouraged and frustrated. They broke all the poles holding up the electric netting around our egg layers (they've done this twice now) and smashed all our portable broiler shelters (many salvageable pieces, though-- only one or two are completely ruined). They also killed a rooster. Poor rooster. Also had an electric fence charger and a car battery stolen.

I know vandalism happens, but I've never really had it happen to me before. It's especially frustrating because we're trying to do something good for the local community. But how can we do it if someone destroys everything?? It really bothers me, too, to see all the hard work my husband has done destroyed. And now instead of being able to work on new projects he's had to spend his time repairing everything. Sigh. We know that God told us to start this project, so we'll keep on keepin' on. We need to figure out a solution. We're thinking....

On a more positive note, we can literally see how we've been able to improve soil fertility in our field-- the grass is coming in nice and green where we ran the chickens. Everywhere else it's brown.

Goodnight!

We're progressing!

Today we moved our 5th wheel into our church parking lot. We found out that there is an RV hookup there, so we asked permission to park our new home there for the next 6 months until we move up to Kentucky.... and our pastor and elders said yes! We go to the most awesomest church ever, people. Really. I love our church.

This whole situation is exciting for many reasons.... one, we will be close by to devote lots of time and energy to our church farm & garden project. It is going splendidly so far, and we want to make sure that when we move everything is running smoothly so that someone else can take over and keep providing organic local healthy food for the church, and eventually the local community. Two, we will be able to save a lot of money by renting out our house to pay the mortgage instead of paying it out of pocket every month (we decided not to sell right now cause the market's not so good and there are like 6 houses for sale in our neighborhood already). Three, we will be learning how to live in a 5th wheel while Daniel still has a steady income. We will also have the encouragement of many loving friends who think we're cool for doing not-so-normal things (like living in your church's parking lot in a 25-year-old travel trailer). So we're really excited about the whole situation. I think it works out well for our church too, because we will be there almost all the time to help out with whatever comes up.

Anyway, the plan is that we will get our new home (it needs a cool name... I'm open to suggestions) squeaky-clean this week and move in this weekend. Then we will spend the next couple weeks packing up our house, having a yard sale, and getting it rent-ready. Hopefully by September we will be fully transitioned out of our house-house and into our house-on-wheels. We're going to be so busy. But a good busy. I'm really excited about our new lifestyle. I think we'll spend a lot more time outside.

In other news, we had a fun birthday party for Ezekiel on Saturday. He enjoyed eating his (super healthy) cupcake. It was too cute. He was very serious about it. Actually he seems to be very serious about many things in a cute, kid-like way. He's growing so big. I can tell by the look on his face that there are things he wants to be able to say, but he can't do it yet. I'm looking forward to when he can talk, but I'm also loving the stage he's in right now. He's such a wonderful blessing, I love him so much!

Goodnight!

Happy Birthday!

Has it really been a year?

I can't believe that tomorrow is Ezekiel's first birthday. It's gone so fast! Ok, the first 4 months were super slow. In some ways I'm sad... I don't feel like I have a little baby anymore. He said "dada" today for the first time! He said it about 5 or 6 times, it was so cute.

These pictures make me sad, for a few reasons. First, obviously, he was born too early and spent way too long in the hospital. Second, we didn't really get any good pictures of his first day of life. I think we were just so flustered, and I remember not feeling like I could ask to have his isolette opened up so I could get clear pictures. It didn't feel like we were allowed to act like he was ours because we weren't allowed to touch him or hold him. Nearly all the pictures are blurry and hard to see, or bad angles. We also didn't get any good "comparison" pictures, like of Ezekiel next to someone's hand, or with Daniel's wedding ring around his arm, etc. You know, normal preemie stuff. But I don't mean to complain. These pictures are from his first few hours. Daniel took them-- by the time I got to go see Zeke he was in his isolette.

Giggles

Oh yeah, and those things, too....

I forgot to mention last week that it was my birthday. And our 5th anniversary. Happy Birthday to me, Happy Anniversary to us! I love you Daniel!

Getting to know you

Oh my goodness! What is this I see?

It looks like a puppy!

It's nice to meet you!

Oh my, you have such lovely toys...

...do you share?

I think it's lunch time.

Let's be pals, ok? Ok.

~Welcome home, Tula!~

It's monday... again.

It seems like the summer has been flying by. I can't believe it's the middle of July! I think that rhymed, oh my oh my. :)

We had a wonderfully busy weekend. It was the big chicken processing weekend. Friday Daniel and I processed 16 ourselves to make sure we'd be ahead of the game on Saturday. Friday night some friends from church took us out for dinner and coffee, and we had a ton of fun. I didn't want to come home, but alas Saturday was destined to be very busy so we needed some good sleep (which I didn't get, of course). Saturday morning we went to church and got everything set up for processing, and around 10am we started. We had about 10-15 other people to help, about 8 of whom stayed the entire time. Amazingly we were able to process 53 chickens in about 4 hours. That's pretty good considering no one but Daniel and I knew much about what they were doing! We were exhausted, came home, rented a movie, and went to bed. Sunday after church we spent the rest of the day with some other friends- we went with them to their gym to swim- it was Zeke's first time in the pool! At first he wasn't too sure about things and cried, but he eventually became very curious about the whole situation, and ended up having a splendid time. I'm so glad he liked it! I think we may get him one of those little plastic pools for the yard- how fun would that be? :) Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures! I'm so sad about that- he was super cute in his little swimming trunks. He still smells like sunscreen. Speaking of Zeke, he's crawling everywhere and has started pulling up on things to stand. I can't believe it! His birthday is only a few weeks away. *tear* What a big, big boy!

This week my brother and his band will be touring in San Antonio, and so they will be staying with us for a couple days. I'm looking forward to that!

I'm sorry about the acute lack of pictures lately. I will put some more up soon. I know it's gotten kind of boring around here. We've just been so busy all the time! I'm sure you understand. :)

Coming soon: a new member of the family!

Here she is. And you thought I was talking about a baby! Our friend's dog had a puppy, and so here we are about to be dog-owners (in a few weeks when she is weaned, anyway). I was fairly apprehensive at fist, but I'm getting excited. Especially since Ezekiel is almost a year old... little boys who don't have siblings need a puppy to pal around with! Our friend's kids named her "Tulip". I think that name is adorable, but since she will *technically* be Daniel's dog, he may pick a different name for her. We'll see. I'll let you all know.

The garden

Three plants have entirely disappeared from our garden, except for a few inches of stem sticking out of the ground. One was missing last week, and then today when I went out to check on things, two more. One tomato plant, two pepper plants. I suspect deer, I don't know what else would eat leafy green plants in their entirety. A rabbit couldn't do that, I don't think. Maybe a very large hare? Anyway, we need to figure out a way to protect the 5 or 6 remaining plants. Apparently here in Texas the best time to garden is in the fall, so we will really kick off all the gardening in a few months.

The chickens are doing very well. We've lost quite a few to heat, mostly all in one day when their automatic waterer broke. They were fine at noon, and when we checked on them again at 5pm their water was all dried up and 17 were dead. That's been the worst thing that's happened so far, and honestly that's not so bad considering that we've had a solid week of 103 degree heat. The head index is more like 107-110. I mean it's boiling here. Blah. Anyhoo, this weekend we will be teaching people how to process chickens, and then next weekend will be the big chicken-processing party. Amazingly, there are a lot of people interested who want to know how to do this. You gotta love a church like ours :)

I've had a very miserable pms-y weekend that's unfortunately spilled over into my Monday. I was hoping I would feel all better today but I still have yucky cramps. Not so bad that I'm confined to bed but bad enough that I don't feel like doing much of anything. Oh well. What can you do.

Found, and cake.

Daniel found my keys... in the middle of the kitchen floor. I mean seriously, I looked ALL day long and suffered much anxiety over it all. He walked into the house and found them in less than 20 seconds. Really. Fortunately the chickens were ok.

Today we are headed up to Austin to pick up milk for Ezekiel. I've been transitioning him to cows milk, and he's doing well with that so far. I make his bottles half breast/half cows milk, and I'm so glad he'll drink it because I don't know how much longer we will be able to get breast milk, so I want him to be prepared. He'll eat some solids but he's not a huge fan, he just sort of tolerates it and won't eat too much. I suppose maybe he's just not interested yet, and I don't want to push the issue because I don't want to turn him into a picky eater.

I've been CRAVING chocolate cake for like a solid week straight. Pure PMS, it's true. As a rule we don't keep any junk food in the house, so all week i've been snacking on rasins to try and satisfy my craving for sweet stuff. Finally last night I was going to make a delish cake from scratch, and Daniel requested one without icing because he doesn't like icing. Sooo when I went to buy my cake ingredients I got him a box cake, because my yummy homemade chocolate cake needed to be dripping in chocolate-mint icing. Made the box cake, and then I was too tired/lazy to make my homemade cake, and we were going to watch a movie, so I just had a piece of his cake, and it was kind of gross and not at all what I wanted, and it COMPLETELY ruined my chocolate cake craving. I mean I don't want cake at ALL anymore. I'm so disappointed I ruined my yummy homemade cake expectations with a nasty box cake. But there's no point in making a good cake now because I don't want it. Sigh. Lesson learned, don't buy box cakes. Ever!

Keys

I cannot, cannot, cannot find my keys. I've looked everywhere, all day long. I'm very sad. Plus Daniel has to work late today, and I usually go over around noon to check on our chickens, but wasn't able to do so today, and won't be able to do it until he gets home which will be I don't know when. The chickens really don't do well in the heat (hello 103 degrees!), so if they run out of water, boom, they die in like an hour. I have to admit I'm a little worried about them. But what can I do? It's not far away and I could walk, but I can't take Ezekiel out in this heat. Hmmph. I guess I can pray that they will be alright.

We really need to make an extra set of keys for the car. Sooo should have done that a long time ago.

Hi I sooo should be cleaning my house

But here I am dilly-dallying around on the computer. I might as well say hello to you all out there in blog land, since I've been slacking lately.

News going on here: Dad (my dad) came and visited this past weekend. We had fun :)

Our church farm and garden project is going splendidly. Anyone have any ideas of what we can call this thing? I liked "gateway garden of eatin'" but apparently "garden of eatin" is an actual brand name so I don't want to mooch. We need a better name. The chickens (about 130) are doing splendidly, we planted a small garden, hoping to plant a small orchard this weekend. Lots of people are involved, community is building, it's been fun so far. I'm getting a splendid tan from going out there every afternoon. Oh did I mention it's been above 100 degrees like every single day? I've gone out there dehydrated a few times, and literally after being out there for like 5 minutes I think I'm going to throw up.... needness to say, I am much more careful now and drink lots o water.

So I decided i need to learn how to fiddle... we've got a violin, so I attempted to change the strings and knocked over the sound post. Had to take that in to get repaired- Dad and i did that on Saturday while he was here. We found this cool eccentric little old couple to fix it who have like 5 grand steinways in their house, the walls are covered with violins, guitars, there were 6 cellos lying around. Turns out they both (this couple must be in their late 70's) went to Julliard, are both music teachers, and the hubby studied cello under Leonard Rose (if you haven't heard of him, he was one of the best cellists ever and also yoyo ma's teacher!). They were really sweet, and I decided that I am going to take cello lessons from this guy. How cool is that- I'm so excited!! He only charges $18 a lesson, which is dirt cheap, especially considering how good of a musician he is (or at least should be... I have to admit that I didn't actually hear him play). Oh for those of you who don't know, I have a B.A. in music, and my main instrument in college was cello. But I'm quite rusty now and I think I could use a few good lessons. Anyhoo I'm very excited!!

Oooh what else. Ezekiel is officially crawling, fairly efficiently. He sat up on his own the other day. He's huge. He's cute. He's over 10 months old now!

We are going to come to camp this year. I'm excited-- but also nervous about the 25 hour drive with Ezekiel. Hmmm...

Oh and I am soooo going to get my hair cut. It's all the way down to the small of my back at the moment... and I think I want a bob. No, I KNOW I want a bob. Something really short and cute and cool (as in temperature wise) for summer. I will do before and after pictures for you all.

Ok Zeke woke up from his name and I sooo didn't clean while he was asleep like I was supposed to.

I hope you all are doing well out there!

And the award goes to....

Daniel!  For finally starting his own blog!  You all should pop on over there and leave him lots of comments so that he will keep writing-- he is full of interesting things to say.  :)

We had a busy weekend.  Friday night our dear friends Terry and Natasha came over for dinner and an evening of playing Settlers, our favorite board game.  Saturday morning we went over to help them work on their 1976 airstream-- yup, they bought a travel trailer, too!  They will be moving to KY with us next year.  We (as in Daniel Terry & Natasha... I just watched Zeke) worked on the trailer until about noon when it got too hot and the kids all got sleepy, then I headed home with Ezekiel and Daniel went with Terry to go work on our farming/gardening project behind the church.  He was gone all day. 

While we were working on the trailer, Zeke was in his pack n' play and Maya, T&N's 2 year old daughter, kept walking around Zeke and saying "hi handsome!"  She recently declared that she loves Ezekiel more than daddy and that she is going to marry him.  :)  

The picture below is their travel trailer-- it's parked in a storage area while they work on it, and ours is parked right across the way.  

Too cute to not put up!
Here is Ezekiel *almost* crawling!  

Visitors and deodorant

Howdy howdy.  Well we've got visitors for a few days from Ohio-- friends from camp sychar, where Daniel and I met as kids.   Their son is graduating from Air Force basic training this weekend, and so instead of getting a hotel we asked them to stay with us.  I love having people over, so this is fun for me.  Last night all us girls went out to this fun place for dinner and tea-- definitely somewhere to which I will be going back.  Ezekiel just loves having all these new people around to play with him!  

So I've stopped using deodorant.  It's great-- because I've been using the "all natural" stuff for years now but it's never really worked, so I always smelled like, oh, stinky peaches, stinky lavender, whatever.  But NOW I'm just using baking soda, and it's the best deodorant I've ever used!  I mean it works for like 2 days with no problems at all.  And i've given it a few tests, like hours of yard work in the Texas heat, walking a few miles (still in the texas heat), etc.  And it has yet to fail me!  I'm so excited because it's soooo dirt cheap and it works so sooo good.  Here's what you do: just keep a small bowl of baking soda in your bathroom, wet the tips of your fingers, stick wet fingers in baking soda, and then rub whatever is stuck on your fingers into your pits.  Tada, you will be stink-free for 2 days!  Try it and let me know what you think!

Ok I think I'm off to be productive, as Ezekiel is taking a nap.  

Home sweet home

Here it is-- our new home! Can you believe we bought it?? I still can't! But here we are, soon to be moving out of our 1600 sq ft house into a 36' fifth wheel. Wow! What an adventure!

Here is the kitchen/living room. There's a giant tv and a broken futon that we need to throw out. Natasha's washing her face (we bought the thing in Austin this past Thursday, and a few girls and I had a girls weekend planned in Austin this past weekend, so we stayed in it!)

The kitchen

The bedroom/bathroom area. Obviously the green carpet and 80's curtains are going to have to go. But overall the place is in good shape. There's a shower to the left. The whole thing will need a very good scrubbing before I'm comfortable living in it with Ezekiel, but overall it's clean. There's a brand new hot water heater and a large refridgerator. It's really not too bad in there. Very do-able!

And so begins our homesteading adventure!! Wish us luck!

And we're off

We soooo just bought a 1980-something travel trailer for $3000.  I can't believe we did it!  Forgot to take pictures cause Zeke was crying... I'll get some soon.  

On the one hand I am sooo excited to be mortgage-free (shortly... as soon as the house is sold).  On the other hand... oh my gosh.  This is crazy!  But we're really excited.  

Ok it's one in the morning and I have to be up early tomorrow.  Two dear friends and I are going to Austin for a girls getaway weekend!  We're so excited.  But I can't sleep because I keep thinking about what I can and can't fit in a travel trailer (for those of you who don't know, it's like an RV but you pull it with a pickup truck instead of driving it.  You've seen them before I'm sure).  But we're leaving early so I really need sleep cause it's going to be a long (fun) day.  But our house is boiling hot.  I just turned on the AC but it's not cool yet.  And my throat is really scratchy.  Ok going to bed now.  Wish us luck in our new adventure!  :)

It's almost time...

...for many things.  Ezekiel's about to crawl.  He said "mama" on mother's day morning!  He can sit on his own.  It's almost his birthday! 

It's also almost time for us to move.  Just nine more months here!  I can't believe it.  We called a realtor last friday and hopefully next week our house will be on the market.  I'm obsessively checking craigslist for travel trailers- we hope to buy one soon and once our house is sold,  move into it.  I'm actually really really excited about downsizing- I really can't wait.  There will be so much less stuff to clean!  We will have so much more money!  Daniel promised to buy me a laptop!  I think it's going to be good.  You know how you can take a month long trip with one suitcase, then come home and realize that you have so much crap you can live without?  It really is a relief to be able to live with less stuff.  I'm excited.  :)

It's almost time for our "garden of eatin'" to take off-- 130 baby chicks arrived this morning.  You should have seen me carrying 2 giant chirping boxes and Ezekiel in his sling out of the post office today!

I have 12 lillies blooming today.  They are so beautiful!

Happy Monday to you all!  

Team Pike: 2 Texas: 0

This is the second snake Daniel has killed in our back yard.  Right next to our back door, actually.  The first one was a 4 foot rattle snake. This one was a 5.5 foot rat snake.  It decided to eat our pet rat, blue, who had been living outside in his little home.  It crawled in through a slot in the door, ate him (hence the lump in the middle of the snake.  poor blue!!), and couldn't get out because he was too fat.  I'm too lazy to type out the whole snake-killing story, but the craziest part was when Daniel had the snake by the head with the weed clippers.... he wasn't dead, and he was wiggling all around and he actually wrapped himself around the weed clippers and up daniels arms!  You should have seen it... it was crazy!!  I was inside freaking out, and of course the camera battery was dead.  What a shame!  Anyhoo, so he starts yelling "go get an ax!!" which we don't have, so I grab Ezekiel and run next door, casually asking the neighbor if I could borrow his ax.  Run back home, leave Ezekiel inside, go outside, Daniel has the snake by the neck, I wack at him with the ax to no avail, so Daniel and I switch places and I hold him while Daniel tries to chop his head off.  Still no luck so he gets a knife and cuts off the head.  Oh man, it was horrible.  After he was dead I think I started having a panic attack because I could barely breathe and I was sobbing and shaking.  It was scary!  We had no idea if it was poisonous or not at the time, ya know?  We now know that he wasn't poisonous, and honestly I feel a little bad for him.  I mean he was just looking for food and happened to get stuck in our yard.  But still, he was right by the back door!  

This was our first lilly to bloom this year.  Many more to come!  Today there are about 6.  

Last week, my mom and my grandpa came to visit.  We had a whole lot of fun!  This is the first time Ezekiel got to meet his great grandpa!

Our church farming project is finally taking off- our baby chickens arrive tomorrow or tuesday!  We ordered 125.  In three weeks they will be big enough to go out on pasture and then we will really be rolling.  How exciting!  Speaking of this sort of thing, there is a new documentary out that is really exciting... I will just let you watch the trailer... I don't want to spoil it!  

Edit:  I like my text to be left-alligned but my pictures to be centered.  I can't get my pictures to be centered when i upload them directly from picassa.  Anyone know how to fix that??

Happy Birthday

Someone learned how to "log roll", as my mother-in-law Teresa described it.  He can now roll continuously to get to wherever he's going.  When he runs into something, he starts going back the other way.  He's also sitting up in the tripod position, where he props himself up on his hands.  What a big, big boy!  We took these photos yesterday to celebrate Grandma's birthday.  Happy Birthday mom!  And happy 9 month birthday Ezekiel!

Accepted!

Our offer on the 39 previously mentioned acres was accepted!!  Woo hoo!!  We are so excited.  What an adventure!

Experimenting

I just "made" my own lotion!  Sort of...  I took a bottle of Aveeno unscented lotion, dumped it all out in a bowl (easier said than done), added orange and pachouli essential oils, mixed, and put the lotion back in the bottle.  In the process I got rather messy and now I am totally covered from head to toe in my new lotion so as to not waste the bits I couldn't get back into the bottle.  I smell wonderful!  I just put a little of the essential oils in, so it's really just a light fragrance- hopefully not overkill.  Anyhow, yum.  I just wanted to share.  

We made an offer on our 39 acres yesterday... we should hear back within the next 5 days.  I will let you all know what happens!  

I don't remember if I put this picture up before.  I don't think I did.  It's from a month or so ago, but it's just too cute to not share.  :)

Daniel's home!

Yay Daniel is home!  I missed him so much! :) 

Excitement is in the air!

I hope I'm not writing about this prematurely... but I am just so excited I don't want to wait.

I may have mentioned that Daniel took a trip with our friend Terry up to Kentucky this past week.  Well they are still there, and they spent a few days looking around for land because there are 5 families including us that have this crazy dream of living together.  We all have a desire to live simply, on land that will provide our own food, where we can school our children together, and just be cool like that.  ;)  You could sum it up pretty well by saying that we all think the Amish are pretty darn awesome (minus some religion issues, but you get the idea).  

Anyhoo..... after 4 of the 5 husbands (#5 is still down here in TX making sure all the women and children are ok!) looked at quite a few properties in central and eastern KY, they found this one.... and I believe Aimee and Nathan will be making an offer on it in the next few days (you can read about their adventures with this on their blogs)!!  Wooo hoo!!  The asking price is 75,900 but they plan to offer 70k.  Divided up between five families means that each family pays around 12k, maybe a little more if they don't accept our initial offer.  Isn't that awesome?  Land is so expensive if you want to buy it alone, but in a group it's actually affordable!  We could have it payed off in just a couple of years.  Very exciting.  :) :)  Of course I'm trying not to be too excited since we haven't officially made an offer yet... so we will see.  I will keep you all updated.  

This is really amazing to me because we've talked about doing something like this for at least 2 years now.  Daniel is constantly searching the internet for land and ideas.  I never thought we would ever be able to do this, but it has been very clear that this is the direction God is taking not only Daniel and I, but other families as well.    We are so excited!  You can certainly pray for God's direction for us as we start to actually live out this dream.  We would greatly appreciate it! 

Have any of you ever wanted to do something like this??  What are your ideas, plans, insights??  

In other news, Jenny blogged about guerilla gardening yesterday, and I really like this video clip.  It's such a good idea to just take over little neglected plots of land to make them beautiful and productive again.  This video makes me love people, too, because it takes a cool person to go sneak out in the middle of the night to plant a garden!  

Oh and one last thing... Daniel is eating dinner tonight with Joel Salatin!  More on that later.  :)

Per request of Michelle

Here is a video for you all.  I promise Daniel isn't naked!  :)  

We've had a busy and fun week here.  Tuesday a friend came over to knit, Wednesday some friends from Kentucky stopped by to visit since they were in town, Thursday we had a Sater (spelling?) dinner at our church for holy week, and then yesterday we went to a birthday party at the park for our friend (little) Terry.  He turned 6.   Daniel also left with our friend (big) Terry to go to Kentucky to visit family and look for land! :) :) :)  I miss him already.  I know he will have a wonderful time seeing his new niece and nephew!!  

I have a cool story to tell you all.  So we had no crib for Ezekiel, and we've started to need one because he's outgrown his little moses basket.  He's been sleeing on a blanket on the floor for a week or so, which is totally fine with me, but now he's starting to scoot and roll everywhere, so he needs to be contained!  Normally I don't even think to pray for stuff like this, but since we're trying to save money, I prayed that God would provide a crib or a pack n' play, something along those lines.  Well Thursday night our neighbor showed up at our door with a pack n' play!  She gave it to us, and continued to tell me that they had a whole bedroom set of baby furniture they don't need any more and asked if we would like to have it!  A (practically new, matching) crib, changing table, and dresser!  Isn't that amazing?  It's always so cool when God provides for our needs.  And he didn't just send us the bare minimum-- he overabundantly gave us more than I had asked for!  What a vivid reminder that God loves us and wants to bless us!  

Happy 8 month Birthday!

Ezekiel is 8 months old today!  That means he has now been home as long as he was in the hospital.  I am so glad to reach this point-- kind of like we've "undone" some of the hospital experience somehow.  

Oddly enough Ezekiel is extra fussy today.  He must not know what a special day it is.   :)

Edit:  Has anyone noticed it's already APRIL???!  Oh my goodness gracious.  (If I were actually talking I think I would say "holy crap" but somehow it feels wrong to type that.  Goodness gracious is much nicer in print.)  Daniel has LESS THAN one year until he starts terminal leave.  As in we only have LESS THAN ONE YEAR left in Texas.  I can't believe it!!!!  OK anyway I'm headed to bed now.  I love you all!  Goodnight!

My studious little reader

My goodness, what an awful lot of work.  I'm worn out!  

It's noon and...

I'm just now having my morning coffee.  My house is explodingly messy.  I'm feeling a bit discouraged about that.  

Edit:  Daniel is home from work and I am going by myself to hobby lobby!   Yay!  For some reason Ezekiel has been super clingy/fussy all day and I need a break.  

Coffee and rambling

I had to make a coffee run this morning.  Oh house-wife that I am, I just needed out PLUS we were OUT of (fresh) coffee (I still have 3 bags of coffee from when I worked at starbucks like over a year ago... and they expired, oh I don't know, sometime last year.  One expired sometime in 2007. They're really gross now).  So out I run with soaking wet hair and no makeup, looking pretty frumpy and mom-like.  But that's ok.  I got my tall-no-room-raw-sugar-americano and a bag of Pike's place (the best name for coffee ever).  And I feel better now.  Mmmm coffee.  And now Ezekiel is taking a nap and laundry has LITERALLY taken OVER our house.  I mean it's reallllly bad.  So you can guess what I will be doing today...  

We're getting really excited about our "joseph garden" idea that's been brewing in our brains.  My friend Natasha suggested calling it "Gateway's Garden of Eatin" and I love that name!  Our church has quite a few acres behind the building/school, and we have a vision of turning it into a community garden type thing to provide produce, chicken, eggs, and milk for our congregation/church & school staff/or the community (obviously we won't be able to do ALL that right away).  We've talked to the pastor and he said to write up our plans for the elders to read and approve, so Daniel's been working on that this week.  Writing isn't one of his favorite things to do, and last night Natasha offered to type everything up for him, so he's just going to dictate it into a voice recorder and she's going to do the typing!  How very sweet of her!  I love how in the body of Christ everyone's talents fill a need and work together.  Anyway, we're really excited.  Daniel looked up some of the codes and it's actually legal for us to have a cow back there!!!  Wooo hoo!  Yay milk!  We don't have any experience with milking a cow, but I imagine that SOMEONE in our congregation does. Building community with this project is one of the things I'm really excited about.... Daniel and I know how to do everything chicken related, but we don't know squat about gardening or milk cows (ok we have book/head knowledge... but we don't have much experience).  But I KNOW there are people in the church who do know how to do this stuff.  Which is so cool.  I'm hoping everyone will pitch in their knowledge and ability and that we can have a really awesome thing going on back there... I'm also hoping it will be a teaching/learning experience for all of us as we share our skills and abilities.  I would love to see everyone at church keep a few chickens and a small garden in their own yard, and one of the points of this project is to teach the Church that they are able to do this!  Anyway, I am just rambling now.   I probably should make paragraphs or something.  I'm really excited.  In my head it's super cool... I really hope we can make it that way.  :) :) :)

In other news, my brother David is going to be in Wichita Falls on Wednesday touring with his band, The Crimson Armada.  That's only about 6 hours from us, but I don't think I can go.  I'm really sad, I would love to see him.  Here's a video of their music (caution: very loud and scary-sounding).  Totally not my style, lover of all classical music that I am, but I do love my brother.  He's the drummer.  The music actually starts at 16 seconds if you wanna skip the yelling people.  

I <3 failblog

see more pwn and owned pictures

The new gals

Let's hope they're gals, anyway.  I really don't want to eat them.  

This is the little girl our neighbors brought over to us!  Isn't she too cute?  If I stick my hand in her box she runs over and jumps into my palm.  She's a sweetie.

This is our second chick from our friends the Turners.  They "accidentally" came home with 6 little guys from their trip to tractor supply, and I asked if we could have one to keep our little girl company.  Notice she has feathers on her feet!!

Here they are together on the kitchen counter (I couldn't get a good picture of them in their box!).  They are just so fun and cute!    

I think the first one is a rhode island red, but I'm really not sure.  The second is some sort of bantam, I think, with the feathers on her feet.  I really don't know though... we'll see when they grow up!  If you know what they are, please let me know!  

Today is just lovely-- it's misty and cloudy, and it's thundering!  I think we're in for a storm... the perfect day for lounging around in jammies, drinking tea, reading books, cuddling Ezekiel, and folding laundry....  

Finally some pictures!

Those two of Zeke are from today.  My little pumpkin is 7 & 1/2 months old!  Last week at the doctor's he weighed 13.5 lbs!  Oh my goodness, what a big boy.  I can't believe how huge he is.  Today when his occupational therapist was here, we fed him banana for the first time, and he liked it!  She said he ate well and she doesn't think he will have any problems eating.  

Yesterday Jessy came over and we made soap!  We made a batch of lavender for her, and after she left I made a batch of jasmine-orange.  I wasn't sure if the combination would turn out well, but let me tell you, it is scrumptious.  Mmmmmm!  It's prodominately orange smelling, with jasmine undertones.  I could just eat it.  :)  It's all sliced up and sitting on a window sill to dry out.  And we had a lovely time, Jessy and I.  (I'm so glad you came over!)
Nothing much else is going on... just ho-humming along here in Pikeville.  I feel like there was something else I was supposed to write about, but I don't remember what it was.  Oh well.

Edit:  I DO remember!  Our neighbor showed up at our door Monday night with a baby chick!  She didn't know what to do with it so she gave it to us.  So we have a sweet little baby chicken now.  I haven't taken a picture yet, but I will put one up later.  She's a sweetie pie, I think she's lonely with no chicken-friends.  :(

Dancing!

I just got home from the women's retreat (to an empty house... Daniel and Ezekiel went hiking without me!) and I had a very relaxing time.  I just love spending time with women- we had lots of fun!  I think the best part, though, was that I spoke with a lovely woman at our church named Laura... and she told me that she is going to a park downtown tomorrow to attend a country english dance!!  She invited us to come, too, and so I think we're going to go!!  OOOoohh I am so excited, for many reasons.

1)  If we're going to be homesteaders we're going to have to have barn dances... right?  So we need to learn how to dance!

2)  A long time ago, when I did not yet have a crush on my dear husband, he took me to a barn dance.  That's when I started falling in love with him.  :)  I think it was mutual.  

3)  It will just be so much fun!

I am really excited.  I will let you all know how it goes!!

Oh and I would like to officially welcome Spring to our neck of the woods, since the bluebonnets have started popping up.  I'm glad you made it here, Spring!  I love you!

All better!

I feel absolutely better today.  Thanks for your prayers and love guys!  I actually felt all better late last night, but decided not to make it official until after a good night's rest.  And Ezekiel has had NO fever and doesn't seem to be sick, which is wonderful- I am so thankful.  I would hate for him to get sick.  I know it's inevitable, but I would like to hold it off for as long as possible.  :)

Daniel has been gone since eeaarrly thursday morning, and he will be back tonight.  I am also leaving to go on a women's retreat tonight, so today is all about making food for Daniel's weekend all alone (ok, I get back Saturday night... but still!).  On the list is pizza for dinner tonight, stir fry & lasagna.  And I got him frozen waffles for breakfast which he loves.  There is also plenty of fruit around and some triscuts, so he will not starve at all.  I'm sure he's ravishingly hungry from only eating MRE's the last few days (that's military lingo for crappy nasty dried something-or-another that is supposed to be edible).  So I want to make sure he has yummy food to come home to.  He's supposed to be home at 6, and I have to leave at 6:30 for the women's retreat.  :(  I miss him!  

Alright I'd better go get started on all my cooking/cleaning.  The house exploded the last few days while I was sick, and the cleaning fairies didn't come last night.  We must have forgotten to stick their check in the mail.  

Oh and can I say how much I just LOVE having my volvo running well again?  I seriously haven't driven it more than 3 or 4 miles at a time in like 8 or 9 months.  It's such a great car!  

the flu

I AM sick!  I have a fever (101.5) and everything.  Chills, headache, achey body, listlesness.  Sigh.  I am really nervous about Ezekiel because Daniel is going out of town early in the morning and I will be all by myself.  I don't know what to do!  Should I take Ezekiel to the doctors to get started on antivirals so he doesn't get sick??  I don't know.  :(  Suggestions please!!!  Thanks guys.

Just another Wednesday...

I've done nothing productive today... and it's nearly noon.  I woke up feeling horrible for some reason (nauseated, achey, headache... not pregnant for sure!!).  I'm a little worried I may be getting sick.  Anyhow I haven't been able to snap out of it yet... normally coffee does the trick.  

My little volvo is in the shop today getting fixed.  We weren't sure we would fix it because it's old and needs a lot of work.  But you know, volvos are supposed to run forever and mine only has 193k miles so far!  We decided to fix it and I'm excited to get it back today.  I'm also excited because we have spent 2 texas summers with the volvo withOUT air conditioning... black leather seats... oh my goodness, there were some awful times in that poor car.  But no AC is not an option any more with our little guy.  So I am thankful for that!

So I hosted our church's supper club last saturday, and everything went well.  I met a sweet old widow named Barbara who is going to teach me how to sew!  I'm "sew" excited!!  :)  I think she is too, as she lives all alone and seems a little lonely.

Alright baby's crying.   Gotta go!   :)

Oh the joy

Last night I had the privilege of spending HOURS on end with these two lovely ladies...

Rachel & Natasha

I can't even begin to tell you how much fun we had!!  They both have 3 little ones at home, and rarely get to have a girls night.  Oh my goodness... it was just wonderful!!  FIRST we went to a lovely yarn store, then to a used book store, then to a yummy restaurant with a real, live harpist!!  We asked to be seated right next to him, and the music was so relaxing and beautiful!  We had so much fun together.  I spent more money than I probably needed to on yarn and a book, but that's ok.  Daniel wasn't mad at me ;)  

Let's do it again soon ladies!!  

This morning I went to Melissa's baby shower to celebrate the soon-to-arrive baby sprocket.  It was just lovely to see you two weekends in a row, Melissa!  I then rushed home to clean my house because I am hosting our church's supper club tonight!  It's just a ladies potluck our church has once a month at different people's houses.  I'm excited- I love having people over. And my house was mostly clean from last weeks birthday party, so as long as no one wants to go upstairs, I'm ok.  (The upstairs is so rarely clean.  But I'm ok with that.)  

Alright I have to go get started on my spinach mushroom pizza for supper club!  I hope you all are doing well out in blogger land.  :)  

Rain rain, don't go away!!

It's rainy and cold and dreary and windy here... almost blustery.... (anyone remember winnie the pooh and the blustery day?  One of my favorites!  I love the word blustery, too).  It's the PERFECT day for warm jamies, fuzzy socks, hot cups of coffee, and stacks of books.  Yay!!  I don't think I have to tell you what I will be doing all day... 

Happy B-day party!

  

We had so much fun Saturday at Daniel's birthday barbque!  I just loved it.  Unfortunately I didn't take very many pictures.... I was very busy enjoying all our wonderful friends.  I am still just amazed at the wonderful people God has brought into our lives.  I am so thankful for sincere, caring, thinking, loving friends.  We had such a good time... I think I need to throw a party every weekend.  :)  Thanks to everyone who came and made our time together so joyful and happy!!

Abby and Anna watching the chickens at the party!  The kids (all 14? of them) loved the chickens.

Natasha, Lexi, and Jessy (visit Jessy's blog to see this picture of Zeke and her husband, Greg!)

Ezekiel and our new garden!  It's still unplanted, but I'm glad that we haven't planted it yet because today is really cold (lows in the 40s) and wet and windy.  Blah.  We were going to do a wooden border, but we already had all these bricks so we used them instead.  My only concern is the bricks falling over... Daniel says we can stick a rod or something (through the holes in the bricks) into the ground to keep everything in place.

Just as I was writing all this, I heard my chickens squabbling very loudly outside... I could tell something was wrong!  I ran downstairs and out into the backyard, only to see a hawk trying to get into my chicken coop!  If you don't keep chickens then you probably think it would be pretty cool to see a hawk in your yard... but hawks EAT chickens... he was down on the ground trying to figure out how to get in and have a nice afternoon snack.  Luckily I scared him away and my little babies are all ok, but I imagine this hawk will be back...  I will be really really upset if he gets one of my little girls.

Oh what do you all think of the yellow background?  Does it hurt your eyes?  I keep trying different colors and can't decide what I want...

Banana bliss

Have I mentioned my love for the game Banana Grams before?  It's just lovely.  Sometimes I play by myself, and this...

... is what happens.  Bliss for me is curled up around a cup of coffee in a clean house in my jammies with banana grams.  If I could knit at the same time I don't know what would happen!  *sigh!*

So I am busy getting ready for Daniel's party tomorrow.  I still need to: mop the kitchen & entryway, clean the downstairs bathroom, and vaccume the stairs.  THEN I need to go to the grocery store.  I'm going to try to get as much food as possible prepared tonight so that tomorrow I am totally NOT stressed.  The only thing I plan to do tomorrow is lay out the food, and in the morning I'm going to bake the cake (yum!).  That's all.  We still need to finnish mowing/weedwacking the yard, but that won't take too long, either, and we'll do that tonight. Oh and I need to start marinating the chicken sometime today.  Ok now that my mental to-do list is all typed up for you to read....

We have discovered that Ezekiel loves the saxaphone!  There is a sax player at church, and whenever he plays Ezekiel just smiles and waves his arms... when he stops, Zeke stops.  I love it!  I hope he wants to play when he's older.  He already has to take piano lessons (from his momma) but he's allowed to choose his second, third, and fourth instruments.  ;)  Man I cannot wait to start lessons for him!  It will be great.  I love him so much.

Alllright I'd better go start mopping and such.... Hmm... I wonder how fast I can get all that done....

Geodome fun!

Happy Birthday Daniel!

Today is Daniel's 24th Birthday!  Happy Birthday Darling!!!

I hope he is enjoying his day today.  He got the day off work, we slept in late, got up, I gave him his presents (3 books- what else would my husband want?), made a cake, it overflowed in the oven (so we ended up eating a half-baked gooey cake! Yum!!), I made him steak and potatoes for brunch (while he read out loud from one of his new books to me and Ezekiel), and now he's off to get a massage with the gift certificate I gave him LAST valentine's day.  I hope he enjoys that- he needs to relax!  When he gets home we plan to do some yard work together and FINALLY start our garden.  Daniel and a couple friends went on Monday to go get dirt for all our different gardens, so we have a lovely mound on our back patio waiting to become useful.   

Since it is my husband's birthday, I thought I would write a list of a few of the reasons I love him!  Here it goes...

He loves God with all his heart.

He is sincere.

He is very relaxed.  He stays calm and collected no matter what.

He loves to learn.

He loves to apply what he learns.

He is intelligent and wise.

He isn't caught up in wasteful activities- he spends his time well.

He is handsome.

He is frugal.

He values simplicity.

He is a wonderful father.

He overlooks my faults.

He's honest.

He works very hard to provide for our family.

He's funny.

He has goals in life.

He loves people well.  He's a good friend.

He's fun to be around!

There are a million more reasons...

I am so blessed to have a wonderful husband!  Happy Birthday Daniel!  I love you so much!

No garden yet...

We did NOT put a garden in this weekend... I'm disappointed.  It was super, super windy on Saturday, our planned garden day, so we decided to wait lest our dirt blow away and our tender little plants break.  Sunday we ended up being busy (ehem... with Sunday afternoon naps, knitting, and taking food to friends in the hospital) so we didn't do it then either.  But I still consider Sunday a very productive day regardless.  You're supposed to rest one day a week anyway!  I THINK today Daniel and our friend Terry may go get dirt.  If they don't do it today, they're doing it Thursday.  Either way, hopefully a garden sometime this week will be started in our yard.  

Wednesday is Daniel's Birthday!  There have been many a year where I've forgotten his birthday until the day before and had rather lame plans.  But not this year!  I started planning like 2 weeks ago, and I've already gotten him a couple gifts and invited people over for a barbecue on Saturday. I hope he feels very loved and special this week.  I do love him very much.  

Well since we're having people over this weekend, I am extra motivated to clean...  I think I am actually going to get all the laundry done, mop the kitchen floor, clean out my pantry, vacuum the stairs, you know, all the stuff that generally gets neglected to do other more important things like cuddling with my baby, knitting, reading, cooking.... Daniel's extra happy about the planned "week of cleaning" because he REALLY wants to call a realtor and get our house on the market, which we still haven't done.  Selling our house is the biggest piece of our "leaving the military" puzzle... We're planning to call the realtor NEXT WEEK while our house is still super clean from our party.  I think this is a good plan.  

So Ezekiel has gotten big enough for a jonny-jump-up.  You know those hanging chairs on springs that you put in the door frame?  Someone gave us one, and he loves it!  He doesn't do any jumping yet, but he does bounce a bit on his feet, and he likes turning around to look at different things.  Basically he likes being in a vertical position.  I've been able to get a lot more done lately because he is so content in that thing.  He's in it right now!  :)

Ok I'd better go be productive!