hailey is almost two and other stuffs

Hailey will be TWO years old on Friday!  I have been kind of slowly getting ready for her party.  I'm not really making that big of a deal of it, it's just like...people come over and we'll have cake, mostly, and not really decorations or any of that.  She has become obsessed with Cinderella ever since she lost her cinderella baby in the puget sound...I sewed her a Cinderella dress (I'm so happy with how it turned out, I just hope it fits her, ha) and am planning on making her a little Cinderella themed cake.  I never said anything to her, but she must have heard me say something, because every time we ask her how old she is going to be or mention her birthday, she replies by shouting, "Cinderella party!!!" ha.  So hopefully that will be fun!  My family is just coming out for the day on the 4th, and possibly some of Jeremy's family will join for cake time, but I always find it difficult to merge our families for gatherings, so we will see.

She has been wearing her new "sun hat" whenever we go outside (a bonnet I sewed for her last week), and the other day she wanted to be naked, so I took the kids potty out and she was obsessed with sitting on it.  She did manage to even pee on it, but apparently she thought she was supposed to stand like Shea.  I'm glad we have tile.  And I guess I have some training to do.

These are from Sunday.  I hung out with Hailey in the nursery for a bit during children's church.  I sometimes wonder why I even go to church.  I basically am just in the nursery by myself playing with Hailey or trying to keep my kids quiet the entire time.  

We also went for a trip on Sunday to Centralia.  I don't remember if I ever mentioned this to any of you, so sorry if this is just repeat, but we were looking into buying a hotel in Centralia.  It has been ongoing for a couple of months now (It's the Old Wilson Hotel if you are interested in googling it and it costs 250k).  It is an awesome building in a really cool location, and a really unique opportunity, but the amount of repairs would cost between 500k and a million dollars.  The place is HUGE though, and a few families could live there and it has retail space we could work out to support it. We were trying to figure out if it was something we could repair over time while living there, the point to turn it into an intentional community/ministry thing (the possibilities are endless!).  It needs a lot of work though, I mean, it would really become our lives.  Its sort of unique, because we could live there AS IS if we wanted to (with holes in the floors and ceilings and all) and then work slowly on bringing it up to code, although it would need some things immediately from the beginning, like new plumbing and electric.  Anyway, maybe if we didn't have kids.  I'm not sure.  Jeremy keeps saying its just like if we were missionaries to another country, but actually, possibly better living conditions than that.  Anyway, we're pretty sure its not going any where, but we'll see.  It's almost impossible for me to wrap my head around leaving our home in Indianola, but who knows!

Although my Etsy store isn't really running right now (I allowed all my listings to expire), I am hoping to sell my stock of things and a few new items (such as these foldover clutches I have been working on) at Indianola Days this year.

And, we have been out in the garden a TON lately.  Shea and I worked on this village the other day.  He was so excited!  We painted the castle together and worked on houses then set it up.  He played out there for 4 hours in the morning, and then when he came in for lunch he said, "I can't WAIT to play out there more after rest time, mom!  I played 3 different games and have even more to play!"  Oh I love his joy and creativity!  I have been working on setting up the inside of the fence as more of a play area for the kids, and we have been trying to make the fence a little more purposeful and less of an eye sore.

I set up a crude little "mud kitchen" for them and a "sound" wall, where I hung up a bunch of lids and pots and different objects from around the yard and house and recycling bin for them to hit with drumsticks.  There is a lot more on the wall since I took this picture now.  Oh and I'm not quite sure what Hailey is doing in that picture, so I threw it in.

My garden is finally starting to look fuller, although I have no pictures.  I finally got some good soil amendments and compost and everything started perking up.  All of our chickens seem to be laying now, too!  We have been getting 2-3 eggs every day. It has been so nice to not be buying eggs and getting them fresh for breakfast has been so rewarding!  They are almost no work these days and we always have so many scraps to feed them, it hasn't cost much at all.

I hope you have been able to get out in this SUN lately!  We have a busy weekend - the annual rotary auction on  Bainbridge is tomorrow, so we will be up early for that and we invited people over for a bonfire in the evening.  Sunday we have a birthday party and I'm going to an essentials oils class a friend is hosting in the evening (I am looking forward to my mom's night out!).  Then strawberry fest at our church is next Saturday, so I am helping making pies and prepping for that, as well as getting ready for the fourth at our house.  I've been at home so much lately and just with the kids, so it will be nice to be around people this next week.