Happy (late) Halloween!

Fair warning that I am super behind on blog posts, so you may be getting three back to back. 

We got a lot done at the house while we were waiting for the loan to process. We started with getting rid of all the old carpet, radiant heating, and doors from the master bedroom upstairs. I had the brilliant (and fun) idea of pulling the dump trailer up to the house and chucking it all out the window. It worked quite well and saved us a ton of time. 

After the bedroom, we started on the bathrooms by tearing out the showers, tubs, toilets, sinks, everything. 

The tub we took out using a sledgehammer. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be! I'm glad Sam has the muscles because I barely made a dent!

Good job, Sam. The tub we actually kept for scrap metal. 

We had a great little helper who wanted to watch us pull the tile off the walls. 

Sam turned 30! I made him cheesestraws for his birthday. These are prebaked. They turned out well according to Sam. I'm currently unable to have anything with dairy in it because it gives William really bad gas pains. 

I also attempted cloth diapers again. We don't have the house in a good set up, nor did I have enough time at the moment to use them. Maybe in a few months. 

We FINALLY got the bank to agree on a project quote. They needed to send someone to the house to look at it to see whether we would be recommended for the loan at the amount we asked for. We were a little afraid they would think our house had mold problems if they saw the kitchen drywall, so we pulled the drywall off the walls. Still looks pretty gross but, surprisingly, this is better than it was before. 

The banker was only there for ten minutes but said he would recommend our house for the loan. We received an email from our loan officer a few days later saying they would be scheduling an appraisal soon.

While waiting for everything, we got a few days of perfect weather and decided to clean up the front fencerow. 

I cleaned up the leaves falling on the back patio and had a wonderful little helper who liked to play in the leaf piles!

I also decided to give the chickens another go. It's still killing me that we have 30 hens and only getting 4-6 eggs a day. Ridiculous. After analyzing their coop, I decided maybe they didn't like their nesting boxes. We have some leghorn hens that lay almost every day, and we noticed that they were laying behind the nesting boxes or in different stalls. Sam and I scavenged the shelves from the kitchen and the laundry room closets and made these. So much better.

I saw a baby snake one day behind the nesting boxes and thought the eggs may be being eaten by snakes. I read about a farmer online that uses minnow traps to catch snakes in his chicken coop, so we decided to give it a try. We put eggs into the trap and left it in the coop floor for over a week. The eggs remained completely untouched. We were confident that snakes were not eating our eggs.

Within a week or two of installing the new nesting boxes we started getting 10-12 eggs a day. It was awesome (while it lasted). We even managed to get a twin! Look at the size of this egg.

I also decided to take advantage of the lovely fall weather and take Rylee for walks in the morning. We feed the chickens and Pancake, then I let her lead me on a walk for as long as she wants (usually until she starts repeating "pee pee"). 

We have a lot of fun, and I encourage her to play with sticks, rocks, and leaves. 

We spent actual Halloween in Bowling Green with Sam's family so that we could meet our new nephew Ryan. Such a cutie!

We carved pumpkins before dinner...

While carving, Sam's mom and I gave him an early Christmas gift. We got him sunglasses for colorblind people that supposedly would help him see some colors (such as red and purple) better. Here's the first time he tried them on. 

Sam was so proud of his carving (designed by Sam Burns).  

I carved the Immaculate Heart of Mary along with the saying "Hail Mary" and a rosary. Though, technically, Sam drills the beads of the rosary with drill bits! Saved a lot of time!

After dinner we dressed the kids in their costumes and took pictures. 

Trulee wanted to dress the cousins up as Hobbits this year. I had a lot of fun designing and making my kid's costumes. William's shirt is made from an old sheet of Taylor's and the overalls are from an old curtain (I think) of Cynthia. 

Rylee's dress has three parts. The underneath layer consists of a bodice (the white part) made from an old bed skirt that belonged to my parents, and the skirt is made of the underneath of a tapestry that used to belong to Taylor. I then made a cover for the bodice and an apron out of scrap material. 

I made the back lace up with ribbon and tied a bow with the apron straps. I think her outfit turned out amazing. 

Happy late Halloween, everyone. Keep an eye out for our next blog post to see what we heard back from the bank after the appraisal. 

Pax Domini cum spirito tuo temper sit,

Torey, Sam, Rylee & William

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