There goes the neighborhood!

We are feeling more and more at home in our new house. The term "breaking it in" comes to mind, literally and figuratively. Oh the things these walls have seen and heard in 2 short months. I doubt in it's entire 70 + years has it experienced as much action as it has since we moved in! We are slowly putting our roots down in this little cottage. And s-l-o-w-l-y remodeling by adding a bedroom, 2 bedrooms for 6 people is a wee bit snug. My nesting instincts are already in full swing just from moving into a new place, and fall and winter make me even more nest-y, so I'm antsy to be more settled, and to get mattresses off the floor and bedrooms officially decorated and homey. I love that this house is old, traditional, charming, quaint ~ but we are a young, wild family, so I hope that once we are officially settled in that it will reflect both. And speaking of "charming," Todd says that's a code word for "really old and is either broken, or about to break" and when I describe the house as "adorable," our friend Dan says that's just a nice way of saying it's small;) Regardless of their definitions, when I say "charming" and "adorable" I mean it in the best of ways. And now that the house smells like a mixture of our laundry soap, clorox wipes, and whatever is cookin' in the crock pot, it's starting to officially feel like home.

Here are a few of our favorite things about our house...

Ella and Dawson love our long, sloped driveway. Tons of fun when you start at the tippy top, sit on your scooter and give yourself a power boost. Luckily we have installed a very white-trash-inspired mesh gate at the end of the driveway for fly-away kids;)

And on the other side of the yard...another slope between the play house and potting shed. Perfect for flying down in a wagon, of course Ella thought up this game. Then Todd added an element of competition and danger by marking where they stopped each time and having the kids try to beat their farthest run. On their best go at it, they ended up about 10 feet away from our rock wall, I see a great sledding hill in our near future {and a couple more ER visits}. I'll have to post video of this soon, it's hilarious.

We have a Mama deer and beautiful twin fawns in our yard all the time. They come right up to the house, just a few yards from our back kitchen window. They love to eat the apples that have fallen from the tree. We have tons of wild turkeys wandering around our yard too. Our yard is an interesting little ecosystem, between the slugs, toads, enormous insects and other creatures, I feel like I'm camping when I go outside!  Doesn't that make you wanna come visit? We've always lived outside of town, but this particular area is like a mini zoo!

The kids LoVe the play house, but the pink trim just didn't seem like an appropriate color since 3/4 of the Rufflings are boys. It just didn't work as an army fort or gun shop. So I painted the trim a buttery yellow, and the top of the door in chalk board paint. Now they can write signs on the door so I know whether it's a doctor's office, house, bunker, super hero hideout, or restaurant {they named their restaurant "The Green Leaf"} from day to day.

I love this chandelier. Todd thinks it's gaudy, and I don't know why it makes me so happy but it does. One thing that I adore is that every morning it makes rainbows all over the main floor. How can you be crabby when you wake up to these little beauties twinkling all over your house?!

Everybody loves the little nook in the kitchen. It's just the perfect place for breakfast, snack, lunch, dessert, coffee, deer watching, homework...

...deconstructing smoke alarms...

...and is also a great place for Hispanic immigrants to view the wildlife that's indigenous to our area. You know, normal stuff like that.

I love my banister, it's just begging to be decked out in Christmas garland, white lights and bows. And I LoVe this baby boy. Delish.

I also love that the wood stairs are exposed, but have a carpet runner, the best of both worlds. I've always wanted a wood staircase with carpet just up the center, God is sweet to me. And speaking of sweet, look at the twins in these photos, they are so in love with each other.

 Todd and I always planned to add a water feature at the old house. I wanted a little waterfall and stream. I feel so spoiled to have this at our new house. There's nothing like the sound of water, so serene and peaceful. A complete juxtaposition to what's happening just a few feet away inside the house;)

                                                                                    

                                                                     

                                                We also have the cutest little Dutch door that leads to a small covered porch. The kids get annoyed with  me because I always have the top of the door open even on chilly mornings. I love fresh air and it seems even fresher coming through this door:)

Dawson cracks me up, he made devil horns in one and then gave himself rabbit ears. Whose responsible for these hooligans?

We have a root cellar too, and even though I wouldn't say it's one of my favorite things about the house, I think it's a neat little piece of history. My in-laws are excited to fill it up with carrots, potatoes and onions from their garden, and we're excited to eat all of it and pretend we didn't.

We have delicious, juicy, sweet grapes in our yard. They are so pretty and the kids and I love walking by them and grabbing a handful. We were learning about the sun in home school last week, and one of the projects was to make raisins. I realized I'd forgotten to get grapes over the weekend then remembered I had them growing in my yard! Wow, that's a lot of grape pictures, sorry about that.

And our yard is turning gorgeous colors right now, I've been hacking away at this poor bush, sticking branches of it's colorful leaves and red berries all over the mantle and anywhere else I can stuff them. I can't wait for our giant maple tree to dump it's leaves...

"The heart of education is the education of the heart." ~ Harvey Mackay

1st day...in the big K! 

Here is Dawson's 1st day of Kindergarten at Ruff Academy;) I spent a lot of summer nights worrying myself to sleep about home schooling, but I absolutely love it. I also foresee many days when I will feel the complete opposite;)

Our 1st unit was on creation. Day one: God separated the darkness and made light, so we made these fun light jars together. Here we are hiding in my dark closet;)

And here he is leaving for his 1st day at the NWC Home School Link, which he goes to on Thursdays for a full day! They do science, Spanish, P.E., art, music, and history each day. And the all-important, favorite subjects of all time, lunch and recess.

Angry Birds back pack: check. Toy Story lunch box: check. Fake smile: check. Hiding behind this cheesy grin is his upcoming melt down:(

 I love how his eyes are suspiciously surveying what's behind me...a scary place called "without my Mom for a whole day." Bless his little heart.

Poor, sweet boy was so nervous. This is a kid who hasn't made it to Sunday school without tears but twice in his life, so all day away was a BiG deal. He cried and cried, then freaked out, then cried again. I finally had to leave him because the twins and I had to scoot to a doctor's appointment at 10. It saved me because I think I would've caved and stayed even longer if I didn't have somewhere to be. I held it together for his sake, then as soon as I turned the corner out of his classroom I lost it in a puddle of tears. This is familiar territory, I remember Ella's first full day of school and I did the same thing. But leaving Dawson when he was upset added another heap of pain to my heart. It was such a long day for both of us, I looked at my cell phone 72 times to see if they'd called, and at the clock just as many times. The minutes just inched by and I really missed him and was worried about him. I talked to the director and she said "it was so cute, but so sad ~ Dawson started crying again in P.E. and when the teacher gave him a hug and asked what was wrong, he said 'my family left me here all alone with nobody I know, and my Mom is never coming back!" 

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Here's Ella on the 1st day in the 3rd grade! Holy macaroni necklaces, what a big girl. Growing like a weed, or like a Bean in her case. 

She's a pro at this whole thing now. Although I have to say, she was really nervous on the first day and I love seeing that vulnerable side to her. It makes her seem so innocent still, and when she's nervous she's sorta mellow and calm. I enjoy that, very, very much;) Amazing that someone so little has to figure out division, multiplication, adding and subtracting 17,000 numbers at once. Book reports, memory verses, science projects, geography, cursive, grammar...Poor girl is gonna need a spa day and a massage once a month just to get through 3rd grade! Ella's only complaint about her first day was that one of her friends got upset when she wouldn't play with her at recess. I asked Ella why she didn't want to play and she said "cuz I was playing football with the boys!" Go figure.

To  my Bigs,

I love you and am so proud to see you growing and changing and becoming the people that God imagined you to be when He created you. You are so different and unique, but I love you both the same ~ with all my heart and with every little piece of me. Enjoy your school days, they seem hard now but believe me, it gets harder, and in college they don't have recess. Be good listeners, respect your teachers, don't eat your boogers at school {or home for that matter}, wash your hands before lunch and after you go potty, be brave, don't be afraid to stand up for what's right ~ even Christian school kids can be naughty, just take a look in the mirror for proof. Ask questions but raise your hand first. Tell Mommy if someone hurts you, your heart or your cute little body. Remember that I love you, that I think about you the whole time you're away. Oh, and eat your healthy stuff first at lunch, if I find out that you ate your treats and threw away your sammy and fruit, you're in big trouble.

Silly Boy

Well the Ruff family has been keeping our local hospital in business the past couple of weeks. Todd had a procedure a week and a half ago, then Charlie needed sutures on Labor Day, then Todd was back at the hospital for surgery this past Friday. Phew. So on Friday, the boys and I were finally called back to see Todd while he was waiting to go into surgery, and when Dawson saw Todd in a hospital gown he asked concerned "uh Dad, where's your shirt? Are you wearing any pants?" Then "Dad, why do you smell funny?" "That's just the smell of the hospital, it smells like bandaids" I told him. Next question ~ "what are those pipes going into your arm for?" "They give Daddy salty water." Dawson turned to Todd and said "Daddy, are you un-thirsty now?" So cute. Then as he took a closer look at the "pipes" in Dad's arms and the sharps container {which was dripping with blood, this excited and fascinated Charlie enough to make him jump out of his seat and run over to see} he announced this with his hand on his forehead, "can we leave now, this place is making my head feel swirly...."

The boys picked out a book about blood sucking creatures at the library. Charlie and Dawson asked me to read it over and over and over...Gross. The book had creepy leeches, bats and so on, as well as magnified photos of fleas, mosquitoes, lice, which of course makes these tiny creatures look pretty enormous and disgusting, and probably kinda frightening to a kid when combined with the paragraphs that went on and on about the whole blood sucking situation. I explained to them each time we read it that the bugs were magnified many, many times and that they were really only the size of  a freckle. But I think in their mind, fleas and lice and mosquitoes come in size XXL. We were on our way home from peach picking and I  looked in the back seat to see Dawson with a diaper sack covering his head. I asked what he in the world he Sillwas doing and he said "protecting myself from lice!"

Summer is Sweet

This was our first {of many} trips to the Bluff this summer. I only made it about 3 days after we moved back home before we had to take a break from unpacking and head up for 
raspberries. And we went back for raspberries again, and again...We made jam, peach~raspberry crisp, lemon raspberry cake, jam, and more jam. Oh, and if you've been a recipient of our jam, I promise the batch that the kids help with is always the batch we keep. Once they're tucked soundly in bed I make the incredibly sanitary give-away batch;)