Category Archives: Country Living

Ready for the races…well, mostly.

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Oh.My.Gosh. This weekend was gorgeous!

After running some errands and visiting with our “second family” for a while in the morning, we went home, ate lunch and after Ry’s nap we spent the entire rest of the afternoon outside!

We even took Ry’s bike outside. You know…the one she got for Christmas and has been riding it in the house ever since. {Yep, apparently we’re those parents}

Turns out, when you get pretty good at riding your little bike on carpet you’re a rockstar on the road.

But? It also turns out that when you learn to ride your bike on carpet, you have to constantly keep pedaling in order to keep moving forward and that’s not so much the case on the smooth ground. Learning the art of coasting is sort of a tough concept for an almost 4-year-old to grasp.

This would be the look of determination…in case you were wondering. Those fingerless riding gloves kill me!

Ok seriously!? These two and their smiles. I love their excitement here! {And oh yes, that’s my hubby…the poster boy for Pepsi, Carhartt and Crocs. The only thing missing are his Oakley’s.}

More determination. She was pedaling uphill…very serious stuff.

Daring dog was daring. I was totally waiting for him to take one more step and end up completely under water!

Oh yes, and then there’s me…well, my shadow anyway.

It was a perfect day.

I totally overdid it though, because Sunday I woke up and was pretty sore and I had a headache. Boo.

We pretty much took it easy for the day.

But, I did made these creamy chicken taquitos for dinner and let me tell you…SO good and pretty easy. Next time I make them I will be doubling the recipe and freezing some.

Amazingly Normal

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It’s hard to believe that what I’m about to share is any semblance of normal, but considering the last 2 weeks? This weekend was as close to normal as it’s been in a very long time.

And it was perfect.

Friday afternoon I saw SUN! And since we were going on over 48 hours of no power, we decided to BBQ some dinner. Ry & I swung into the store to grab some chicken breasts, fresh bread and a pineapple. It was such a nice change from fast food/takeout. We rounded out the evening by cuddling up on the couch and watching a movie on my laptop.

Saturday morning Ry & I were munching on some stale bagels while Andy snoozed on the floor of the living room. All of a sudden we heard the beep of the microwave. Finally! After 72+ hours of no electricity, we had POWER! Hooray! No joke, within 45 seconds of realizing we had power, Rylee asked for Saturday morning cartoons.

We were still lazing around all in our PJs. No teeth had been brushed. We still had no water, so no showers were taken. Heck, I hadn’t even put a bra on yet. When we hear a car pull down the driveway. The medical examiner for our life insurance was here! We had completely forgotten about our appointment. Dishes were STACKED in the sink & on the counters of our kitchen. Blankets were strewn all over the living room from sleeping near the wood stove for the 3 previous nights. Our house, and we, were a big fat hot mess. Thankfully I at least had time to put on a bra before the guy made it to the front porch. Andy met him outside and warned him. He was totally cool about the whole thing, but, seriously, talk about embarrassing!

After we peed in our cups, had our blood drawn and went over mountains of paperwork, our plumber friend was over to officially fix our water system! Power and water? In one day!? It was like a dream come true. And just like that, I was no longer feeling like Laura Ingles Wilder. I did dishes! I started a load of laundry! I showered!

After a quick trip to Target, we spent the afternoon doing more laundry and dishes, I cleaned out the fridge…that was depressing, and then we started getting Rylee’s new “big girl room” ready for the big move! I even got to cook dinner that night…using my oven. Seriously, it was a good day.

Depressing empty refrigerator...

Sunday we hit Costco and the grocery store and spent a small fortune restocking our fridge. Then the rest of the afternoon was spent doing more laundry and finishing up Rylee’s room. We still have a couple of projects to “officially” complete her room {I’ll do an official post on all the details then}, but for now here’s a quick sneak peek…

Dinner last night consisted of grilled cheese sandwiches with avocado, bacon and tomatoes. Oh.my.gah. They were so good! Andy and I both agreed we could have another. {For the record? He already had 2 and I already had 1 and a half…they were that good}

Oh, and while cleaning out what’s now Rylee’s room, we needed some storage tubs so instead of buying more, we decided the most logical thing to do was to start getting the newborn clothes out to free up a tub. That didn’t start freak me out or anything…homegirl still has no name, but has a dresser full of clothes…

Power. Water. Big girl room. Family time. All in all? Awesome weekend.

How was yours!?

Either God hates me or He’s got a sick sense of humor

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It’s been quiet around these parts lately…and it’s definitely NOT for lack of excitement.

I swear it’s been just one.thing.after.another.

I wrote a little bit about our water drama here…ok, I was mostly complaining, but…well, whatever. Andy and our plumber-friend were up until 2:30 AM getting the water going. Yes, TWO-THIRTY in the morning. They are nuts. See also: amazing.

Long story short, it wasn’t all the way fixed, but it was functioning. Then later in the day Sunday, after 2 loads of laundry and washing all of the pots and pans something else went wrong and we lost water AGAIN. This time, Andy was able to fix it on Monday evening after work. YESSS!!! So between Monday night & Tuesday after work I did 4 loads of laundry and ran two loads of dishes. I was pretty much doing a happy dance.

Then Wednesday morning, my alarm went off at the usual 5:20 AM. I got up, showered and was headed to the other end of the house to dig some {finally} clean clothes out of the laundry baskets when we lost power.

Now, keep in mind we had just had fully functioning water for a little over 24 hours. And in the country, no power means no water.  {are you freaking kidding me!?}

An unexpected freak snow storm did some major damage to our area’s power supply. According to our power company’s website we should have power restored sometime late this afternoon.

Rylee was all sorts of excited to look out the window and find 8 inches of snow with more coming down!

We spent all day yesterday hunkered down in our house never straying too far from our wood stove, as a family. And you know what? It was so amazing. We played games. We talked. We laughed. With all the water drama happening, we’d hardly spent any time as a family over the last couple of weeks, so this was a much needed surprise.

Sleeping on the floor next to the fire at 22 weeks pregnant was a little less than amazing, but I was thankful for our wood stove so I’m not complaining.

Who knows what this means for the contents of our fridge. I have a feeling I’ll be doing a major restocking of condiments this weekend.

This morning I headed into town to my mom’s house to shower and get ready for work. And apparently in my haste to pack a back {and I use haste loosely, I was in no hurry at all}, I forgot to pack a bra. So yea…thank God for my obsession with camis that have built in bra’s because this could have been way more awkward. {just keeping it real, folks}

Andy and our plumber-friend will be back in the pump house on Saturday finishing everything up, after which I’m highly contemplating throwing a “COME TASTE OUR AWESOME WATER” party.

I’m assuming we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled blogging from here on out, but with our luck? I wouldn’t make any bets.

Happy Thursday.

{seriously, how is it Thursday!?}

H2-Oh Eff {AKA-The Rice Curse}

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So it’s Saturday afternoon and instead of washing dishes or folding laundry like I typically do during nap time {stop laughing, it’s the truth}, I’m sitting on my butt. This time not really by choice. I have no water again still.

We’ve been having some major water drama over here for the last 9 days or so. When our plumber-friend came over that first night and “fixed” the problem within an hour, I couldn’t help but think that was too god to be true. And well, I was right. Then after coming back over and working on the system all day last Saturday, turns out we need a whole new filter system for our pump house/well. Ok, not the end of the world, right? We were able to bypass the broken filter system so our house and the rental could have water for showering, flushing the toilet, etc through the week. I figured I’d wait to do laundry because our water straight out of the ground has a really high iron content and I didn’t want it to discolor our clothes. We also figured we’d just use as little water as possible so the high-iron water didn’t damage our water heater.

Well, as Andy and our plumber-friend were working out a plan for our new filter system we found out a few things we hadn’t known previously about the state of our water. After some water testing, we found out that not only does our water have an extremely high iron content, it also has a funky ph level and traces of bacteria. All of which are certainly not the end of the world individually, but combined it meant that we couldn’t just get one type of filter system or the other, we have to get both. Nearly doubling our cost. Kind of a tough one to swallow, but for the best, so ok, fine, whatever.

Our plumber-friend was able to order up our new system to have it ready to install today {thank GOD!}. So yesterday, while Andy was home he decided to prep the pump house for the new system. While moving something around or something {I’m fuzzy on the details here} a pipe was broken causing a leak in the pipeline to the rental. Andy had to completely shut off their water…they were less than pleased, obviously. Andy told them when they were ready to shower to call him and he’d go down to the pump house to turn their water back on, but it meant that they couldn’t do any laundry.

Ry & I went grocery shopping this morning, stopping for Subway on the way home to feed the guys {I’m kind of over cooking in my kitchen right now}. When I brought lunch home, I find out that, of course, things are not going as they should and we might not have water turned back on until sometime tomorrow. Something about having to trench something and blah-blah-blah.

I swear Andy is cursed. I call it the Rice curse, because his dad kind of has it too. Basically, whatever they’re working on, whatever the project might be, no matter how long it is “supposed to” take, something will go wrong and said project will take at least 3 times longer than it should to complete. It doesn’t matter if the project is something as simple as changing the oil in the car. What should take about 20 minutes, will ALWAYS take 45-60. Working on something on the farm truck? What should be bolted on with a standard bolt isn’t standard at all and in fact requires some special tool that will cost a shit-ton of money and take a bunch of extra time. Nothing ever goes right for him.

Look, I know it sounds like I’m complaining here, and well, I kind of am. I realize it’s probably way more frustrating for him than for me so I really try to stay positive in any situation, but…well, sometimes it’s really hard. It seems like it’s just been one thing after another with this water-drama and it’s wearing on me.

I always try and find the “silver lining” but I’m having trouble this time.

I feel like my house is in complete disarray. There is laundry piling up beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I am wearing the same pair of pants for the umpteenth time since the last time they were washed.

And my kitchen? Oh even thinking about my kitchen has me totally overwhelmed. I’m thankful Andy’ grandparents bought us a 12 piece setting of flatware, but at this point we’re down to 2 clean knives and 3 clean forks. I think I have 1 pan and 1 pot that are still clean and usable. We’ve been using paper plates to lessen the load of dirty dishes, but that only helps so much…

I am thankful that all the dishes have at least been rinsed so my house isn’t smelly on top of everything else.

It’s going to take a while to get all caught up on laundry and dishes…especially if we don’t have water until tomorrow sometime.

I really wish I could have a bottle glass of wine.

Once this new system is in, it better be the best damn water I’ve ever tasted.

Wordless{ish} Wednesday: Weekend Review

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Since it’s already Wednesday, I figured it was a little too late to do a full on weekend recap, so here it is via photo highlights…

Our weekend started out with a Starbucks & Doughnut date in the grocery store…

Then that afternoon someone couch napped for THREE hours while I worked on my laptop for a bit {then snuck in a two hour nap myself}…

Sunday I started that craft I saw on Pinterest for decoration in Ry’s new big girl room. And they actually turned out pretty well…now I just need to decide if I’m going to put them in a glass bowl up on a shelf or hang them from the ceiling. Thoughts?


And, we’re still having water issues, but we have water pressure and we can shower so it’s not all bad. Turns out we’re getting a whole new filter system! Yeow! Vacations? Who needs ’em!? We’ve got a fancy new filter system! Our life is seriously so glamorous. The fact that it costs a boat load of moola hurts a little less when I remember that we’re getting an awesome deal because we “have people” and because the new system means we won’t have to use water softener salt pellets anymore so it’ll pay for itself in just a couple of years! And bonus…it’s a tax write-off because it’s for the rental too!

Oh, and there’s the fact that I’m enjoying THIS this morning…

It’s a little known fact that cookies & coffee help make everything better.

Happy Wednesday!

Oh and P.S. if you have an iphone and you’re not on instagram, GET ON IT! (and follow me while you’re at it because you’re clearly missing out on all the awesome photos I post on there.)

Linking up with BabyBabyLemon, Parenting By Dummies, The Paper Mama and Jenni from the Blog.