Highlights During Construction

While construction was going on at the house, there were a lot of things that happened in the background that didn't make it into the last blog post. Here are the highlights for you:

Rylee turned one! I made her a turtle cake since her most favorite movie of all time is Turtle Tales with Sammy the turtle. 

She got a beginners knife for her birthday from Momma and Daddy to start learning to cut with. 

The kids and I went hiking in Frankfort with Pippa. 

We made old fashioned pull candy for my birthday. I forgot to get a picture (for shame, I know), but I will admit that mom and Nene were experts while mine was disastrous. I need more practice pulling!

William turned four months old!

The kids had a really great Christmas seeing some of the immediate family. My Uncle came over for a small get together that involved him dressing like Saint Nicholas for the kids to take their picture with him. Be impressed that we managed to get this picture without Rylee crying. For those of you who saw her picture last Christmas...she still hates Santa Claus.

William turned five months old!

William is so close to sitting up by himself!

Rylee's apron finally fits, and she likes to help me bake in the kitchen. 

We hatched chicks for Dad for Christmas. Out of ten eggs, six of them hatched. One of the chicks had a nutrient deficiency of some sort and died. Of the remaining five, we are pretty certain three of them are roosters and one of the two hens has scissor beak. Sigh. 

William also wants to crawl. Really badly. 

Rylee learned to do/say the sign of the cross all by herself! She's getting so big. 

William is such a happy baby (when he's not hungry. Goodness that child gets hangry!) And he has the cutest little squeal of a laugh! He gets tickled over the littlest of things. 

I don't have a picture for it, but a big congrats to my AMAZING husband who got a new job and is now officially an Aerospace Engineer! How cool is he??

In terms of a quick update on the house: 

Now that the contracted work is done (a big shout out to Benjamin and his crew for all the work you did at the farm. Thank you all so much!), we have a lot to do before we can move back in. 

One of the first things we have to do is remove and replace all of the sewer and plumbing lines because most of them look like the below picture on the inside (rusted and clogged).

 

After taking out all of the accessible piping, we started removing the ceiling in the den to access the piping to the upstairs bathroom. While removing the ceiling, we ran into A LOT of raccoon poop. 

If you want to see how much gross poop was raining down on us while we worked, just check out this video. It's pretty gross. 

In fact, the raccoons had apparently been living there for so long that they chewed/dug out over half of one of the floor joist boards. It's kind of hard to see but once you see it, it's impressive. Those boards are 10 inches wide, so those critters removed a lot of wood to be able to wander freely through the ceiling.

After cutting out all of the accessible pipes, including the ones in the ceiling, all that was left was to start removing the pipes in the floor. 

Sam took out one of the walls in the bathroom so that we could access the pipes in the floor. Which leads us to (drumroll....) our VERY FIRST VLOG! 

Click on the picture to watch the VLOG. We are calling the series: A Farm From Scratch!

In the vlog, you will see that we purchased a concrete saw and are using it to saw up the concrete slab in the den so we can remove the rest of the piping and dig the holes for the new plumbing and sewer lines. It's going to be a massive (to us) project. Sam is hoping to be done in a month and a half...(I'm thinking it will probably take us until summer, shhh). 

And here's something that should put a smile to your face...After the contractor was done with the excavator work, we still had 60(ish) hours on the excavator left that we paid for that were unused. Sam took it upon himself before and after Christmas to make up those hours (he got down to 15 hours before the company had to take the machine back), and he spent the majority of it tearing down trees on the property. Just watch how he smashed through the Bradford Pear forest in the field above the barn lot!

He had a lot of fun using that equipment and while the farm looks MUCH messier now due to the hundreds of brush piles lying around, it also looks MUCH better because you can start to see what the land is going to look like once it's all cleaned up. Anyone up for a million bonfires this spring/summer? I'm seeing lots of s'mores in our future!

And because I can't help myself, here are two AMAZING recipes to add to your repertoire. You will never buy tater tots or cinnamon rolls from the store again. Just sayin'. 

Tater Tots

Ingredients:

4 large potatoes

2 TBS flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

3/4 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp paprika

vegetable oil for frying

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 then bake the potatoes for 30 minutes. 
2. Let potatoes cool until you can handle them without burning yourself and peel the skin off. 
3. Using a grater, grate the potatoes into a bowl. 
4. Add the flour and seasoning and stir until the potatoes are well coated. 
5. Add oil to a deep pan until 1/4 of the way up the side. Allow oil to heat over medium heat until it reaches a temperature of 360*F. 
6. While the oil is heating, remove small amounts of the potato mush, shape it into tater tot like shapes, and set aside. 
7. Once the oil is the right temperature, fry the tater tots until they are golden brown (should only take about 5 minutes or so). Set on paper towel lined plate to dry and try not to eat them all before dinner.  

Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients

2 cups milk

½ cup butter

½ cup sugar

2 ¼ tsp active dry yeast

4 cup flour + ½ cup

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ TBS salt

3 TBS butter

1 cup brown sugar

3-4 TBS cinnamon (to taste)

½ bag of powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

¼ cup milk + more as needed

2 TBS melted butter

Dash of salt

Instructions

1. Scald milk in a pan over medium heat. When it is almost boiling, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sugar and butter until the butter is melted. 
2. Wait for the milk mixture to cool down until warm to the touch and then stir in the yeast.
3. Pour the mixture into a medium sized bowl and add 4 cups of flour, the baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir together until all the flour is incorporated. Allow to rise for an hour.
4. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and use the remaining flour to knead into a smooth but sticky ball. 
5. Roll the dough out into a large rectangle until the dough is about 1 inch thick. Brush with melted butter.
6. Combine the brown sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle liberally onto the dough. 
7. Beginning at the longest side, roll the dough tightly across until you have a giant log roll. Cut the roll into about 2 inch sections and place them face-up in 1-2 greased, deep casserole dish(es) so that the cinnamon rolls are almost touching. 
8. Cover with a towel and allow the cinnamon rolls to rise for 20 minutes. 
9. Preheat the oven to 400*F then bake the cinnamon rolls for 15-20 minutes.
10. While baking, combine the powdered sugar, vanilla, ¼ cup of milk, salt, and 2 TBS of melted butter. The icing needs to pour easily, so add extra milk as needed. 
11. When the cinnamon rolls are done baking, remove from oven and cover with icing. Enjoy

Pax Domini cum spirito tuo temper sit,

Torey, Sam, Rylee & William

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