My sweet girls

Just a few pictures of my darling girls in their Sunday best. First time we've ever used hot rollers in her hair, she loved it!

We were so happy to find a pretty Sunday dress that had a matching outfit for Emma's doll. Wow!

She thinks if someone else is getting their picture taken, she ought to have hers taken as well.

This is our newest girl. She currently goes by the moniker "kitty", or "Kee-cah" in Savannah's vocabulary.

What Do I Need?

I have been scouring the web for "simple" houseplans, because it is a hobby of mine to think about building a house with my own two hands. Please note the very important word - think. I don't know if I'll actually ever have the gumption, opportunity, and strength to actually build anything larger than a backyard shed from a kit. That particular venture was more difficult than it should have been because a)It was frigid cold January rain the entire day, b)The kit was designed to fit on a 8X4 pallet, even though the end walls were 10ft tall, producing lots of irritating connections that wouldn't have been neccessary if we'd done the thing from scratch, and c)It was the first time I'd ever tried anything that big before.
Today I ran across a website for kit homes at http://www.shelter-kit.com/. I wandered around the site for way too long, looking at all their info. and wondering if I would buy the barn-house, the lofthouse, or just a barn (interior work on any option is done onsite). The thing that I keep coming back to is how to make something like that simple, yet functional and beautiful. I also keep coming back to all the hoops one has to jump through in order to build a house. I know there are permits, inspections, subcontractors, supplies, lenders, yada-yada-yada. Then I just think, the simplest thing to do is buy a house already built, that meets as many of our needs as possible, and adjust from there.
Which leads me into my main question: What are my NEEDS? Do I need 4 bedrooms? Could we squeeze into three? If the house had a loft, could we make it a bunkroom and toss all four up there? Do we need a large kitchen? Do we even need a dishwasher? Do we need a "master suite"? This one I can answer in the negative, seeing as we've lived without a "master suite" for all but about one year of our marriage.
Then I think about all the stuff. I didn't think we had a large amount of stuff, until we had to move it all last month. We have a ton! It's outrageous! And in our new house (which is bigger) I look at bare spots and think, "What do I need to get to put there?" It's crazy!
Here's what I think our family needs. We need a bathroom with a bathtub. We need a functional kitchen. We need a bedroom separate from the offspring. We need bookshelves for our books. We need seating and lighting. I realize even some of those may seem more like wants than needs, but to be happy at home all day with homeschoolers, we need access to books and comfy spots to read, as well as a sanctuary from others.
Shonee and I sometimes toss around the idea of living in a very tiny house and clearing out a lot of the stuff we have accumulated. I doubt this will happen while we are still raising our kids. They come with a lot of stuff, multiplied by 4. But maybe our retirement home will be some ultra-efficient, super-streamlined, cozy cabin in the woods.
So, simple is a pretty complex thing to figure out. But I think just recognizing that I don't really NEED all that much will help me as I keep working toward simplicity.

Negatory, Good Buddy

We had a list of a few animals that we were going to get once we moved to the "farm". Now that we're here, we've been researching them one at a time. First, dogs. The owners of the house don't really want us to have a dog inside, so we thought we'd get an outdoor dog. Every book we've read says that dogs need to be with their "pack" family and should be indoors except when exercising/playing. So that is a no go for now. Next, Shonee took to bees, so we got a book from the library to teach us the basics of beekeeping. It was all good, until he read that the bees won't produce excess honey until their second year, and that they hate to be moved. Since we only plan to be in this rental house for about two years, it just doesn't make sense to invest in a hive right now, since we won't reap the benefits soon, and could very well lose the hive when we move out. Our next animal investigation is cats and chickens. We've learned that cats will kill chickens occasionally, so if we want the cat to catch the mice, and the chickens to eat the bugs, we'll have to come up with a movable pen for the chickens to keep them safe from the cat. Oy! Alena in particular wanted a dog, so she's pretty bummed out that we're postponing it yet again. I think a kitten will soothe her, though. I'm also contemplating a little goat to eat our blackberries that are growing where they shouldn't. Haven't researched that one yet. Part of our deal out here is that we want to try the typical "country" animals to see if we want them. We've learned in the last month that we definetely love the space and privacy of the country, so it's pretty much for sure that when we buy again it will be a good-size piece of land. But we want to test the animals too, as much as possible.

The Great Homeschool Experiment

Well, we've been doing homeschool for a full two weeks now, and everyone is still showing significant signs of intelligence. They seem to actually enjoy the morning work/afternoon play schedule. They hop down to the kitchen table and gather their supplies for writing, math, and reading, plus grammar for Tana.

We've got a little bell, like you ring at a counter for service, that I ding when it's time for school to start. Actually, we ding it at any random time one of us wants to hear that special sound; dinner is another favorite time to ding the bell.Savannah tends to wander around in the morning. She learned quickly that I will not do much for her when I'm working with the other kids. This morning she got out playdough and had fun near our workspace. All in all, I'm pleased with how things are going, and I think the kids are happy with the setup too.