The Noordmans Dark Ages

Not necessarily dark like depressing, but rather, I'm sure there are a number of people out there who are wondering what happened to us the last few months. One guy from our last church who came out to have Randy tune up some bikes even said he was concerned that we weren't doing so well; he thought we had had to sell the house and downgrade to a dumpy pole barn. I laughed pretty hard. It could look like that, I suppose! But we assured him it's actually a long-term upgrade...

As it's been such a long time since my last post, I'll just breeze through our LONG winter story, month by month.

Not a whole lot happened in January. We finished the pole barn after returning from our WI Christmas (sealed the concrete floor, finished trim work, and started moving belongings that we didn't need every day). Teddy turned 7! And we had some families over for a pot-luck/chili/birthday-cake ice-skating extravaganza in our “backyard.” It's really handy to have an outdoor ice arena about 50 yards from where you live, immaculately maintained by the city. We put it to good use this winter as a family, too.

Our home-school art project was a success! I walked Teddy and Bridget through a step-by-step acrylic painting of sunset/mountains/lake. It touched on color-mixing, layering, and mirror imaging, not to mention fine motor skills with tools!

February came, MORE snow fell, and we decided to just go ahead and MOVE IN to the pole barn. Randy ended up being kept quite busy working for other people/businesses, and time and space were just not allowing for those “indoor creative projects including pottery” we thought we would be doing for the rest of the winter months. Turns out, planning a home-build takes a lot of time. Ha!

Living at Vlad and Lexi's apartment was a good stepping-stone, as the only real losses (besides living right next to friends!) were the stove/oven and a clothes dryer. I admit, we enjoyed our time living in the town of Pequot Lakes in general, too.

In the pole barn, we have plenty of things to cook with (electric skillet, electric pot, crock pot, microwave, bread machine, grill, waffle maker!), and the kitchen sink is also the bathroom sink, and we do catch as much of our gray water as possible, so that we don't have to pay a septic pumping service every WEEK to empty our holding tank. So I get a workout hauling 5-gallon buckets of water outside for every load of laundry. :) But it IS really nice to have all our belongings in one spot, and it was nice to take care of one location as well, as the snow continued to pour down, bumping this winter into the top 3 record snowfalls. Once I heard it was in the top 3, I ignored the rest of the snow news. It may have made it into 2^nd or even 1^st place.

When the sun rose on that fresh snow, it was quite a breathtaking view to wake up to. Sorry I don't have a picture! You'll just have to imagine open fields with big drifts of snow, a perimeter of forest, everything covered in clean snow and the early sunshine playing the colors and sparkles. There you go. Here's something similar, but not really. This evening's view.

The kids didn't want to move, at first, but then they really started enjoying the new “digs.” The pictures are a little outdated, but you can get the idea.

Not only is there a well-maintained ice rink in “our backyard”, there's also a (dry) retention pond between our pole barn and the ice rink, making “our backyard” the best sledding hill option for the immediate area. Andrew didn't enjoy playing in the snow this year, and at first it was a LOT of work for Randy and me to make a sledding track in the waist-deep snow. But Tedster and Bridgie would spend a good hour at a time out there once they had some trails and tracks established. They are usually the best of friends.

Bridget turned FIVE in February, and we waited to have her birthday cake at my parents' during a visit in March. She decided long ago that she wanted a bunny cake being eaten by dinosaurs. I did my best.

She has been surprising us the past few months by showing courage in unexpected ways. She decided she needed to learn to ice skate, so she accepted very little help from her parents while practicing. She's also quite the artista.

March blew in and we got some really refreshing MELTING temperatures before the last blizzard came in April. Teddy helped me start on a retaining wall with some extra rocks we have lying around.

We spent a family day at the “Everything Expo:” local (Brainerd area) businesses represented, mostly. The kids were sure to visit every booth that had something interactive and/or treasures to hand out. Here, Bridget surprised us with bravery again, as she was the only one of our kids to initiate giving a high-five to a guy in a Clifford suit, and she willingly punched the air for a few seconds at a health-and-wellness booth in order to gain a prize. Bridget has typically been the type of kid to NOT do what anyone suggests, and the harder you get her to try something the more she resists. So when the guy at the booth told her (and showed her how) to punch the air... in my head I was saying, “no WAY, stranger” but then she DID IT and my jaw dropped.

Home Depot was there with some small build-it-yourselves craft, so the boys built little wooden helicopters and Bridget opted for the whiteboard and easel set. Plinko was visited a few times, and the adventure was completed with planting flower seeds in tiny pots (one of the prizes).

April rolled in and with it, a septic system and building site prepped for the house!!!

The kids wanted me to take video of just about every dump truck that came, but I'll spare you. They sure enjoyed watching heavy machinery get stuck in our soft driveway, and very skilled machinists transform the ground in a short amount of time. They arrived Thursday morning around 10, stopped around 5pm, and were back at it by 7am Friday to finish up around 3pm. Friday morning it was a little surreal to be making waffles and sitting at the kitchen table while dump trucks made their way around/past the pole barn, and then the roller-compactor made us feel like we were eating breakfast on a vibrator. Fun!

And then we got our last blizzard....

and had to build a snow guy because finally we had PACKY snow!

and Teddy and Bridget had to enjoy sledding for a couple more days.

We had another family-adventure-day at the end of April, which included Randy driving home his new-to-him OLD loader-tractor from Camp, the kids and me visiting the Pequot Library for some “free play” activities, trying to smooth out a bumpy yard area with random junk found out on the land, and shooting lessons.

Randy is giving his old workplace (Trout Lake Camps) 2 days of work per week to help them out in a transition period and be the handy mechanic guy on grounds who is uber-familiar with the place. He's also building his own powder-coat oven a little sooner than initially planned, so that he can powder-coat a set of disc golf baskets that he's building for a church that's putting in a 9-hole course this spring. He'll be finishing that project, working at camp, and starting a house all at the same time.

Most days, the kids and I do chores and school together and play outside. We've started having guests over for meals again, as we can use the outdoors more and not be crammed into the pole barn.

We should be starting to install rough plumbing in the house “pad” by the end of next week! More posts to come on each step of a BIGGER building project.

Besides all that, Randy's mom's fight with cancer (over the past few years) has gotten more rigorous and difficult in the past few months. A recent visit to the ER revealed some fractured vertebrae and a suspicion of the cancer's taking over. She is currently on hospice at home, but by no means given up fighting. The family is all pitching in to help; my troop is scheduled on Thursday mornings to help with housework. I believe the immediate game-plan is to get her pain under control (meds make her very sick and unable to keep food down) and gain a little weight back, and then see what's next. At this point, she should not be alone.

God continues to provide in astounding ways.

- Randy sold 3 of his Teamcycles in the span of 3 weeks this spring, providing some income and clearing up work space in the garage.

- Randy gets paid well while he works very part-time at Trout, and he occasionally gets to bring home leftovers...

- Randy worked for a commercial mushroom farmer who recently moved his business to the area and lost a dozen employees, and in the process we connected with a WEALTH of information about growing things to eat, AND he's offered us equipment he's not using for aquaponic gardening (indoor, fish-growing, water-based gardening).

- A retired guy we've connected with at church is going to drop off his Bobcat with backhoe, bucket, and forks so we can use it to build a house.

- The ICF supplier we'll be working with can deliver direct from manufacturer and save us about $5/brick in the process!

- The excavator that installed our septic system and prepped the building site cost us less than other excavators would have charged us just for a septic system.

- The lumber company we'll be working with is the only one in the area that offers FREE DELIVERY! Yahoo!

- People we know in the area continue to offer volunteer labor...

And there are lots of other ways I'm not even thinking of right now.

Not to leave out the 6th member of the family, here's Charlie before her spring haircut. I think she enjoys living here. She's got a lot more time off the leash exploring, and she's only successfully run away once since we've moved. One other attempt, she ended up inside the fence at the highway department shop (our neighbors) in really deep snow, so that as I was driving out to go find her, I saw her struggling to get all the way around the building (still inside the fence). I couldn't help but laugh at her, and laugh for relief that I didn't have to drive around town only to NOT find her and then get a frantic call from a stranger and hop in the van again to go pick her up. :)
At 8.5 years old, she's finally starting to lose some of her hyper puppy-ness.