Early this past Saturday (April 23, 2022) a lovely little red haired angel came into the world and her name is Bethany May! She's got ten fingers, ten toes, and a little tuft of bright red hair!
Right now she's also the center of attention in this family!
I started labor on Friday early in the morning and it wasn't my easiest labor. Bethany was born at 2:12 AM on Saturday and she welcomed in so many ways!
I'm doing pretty good and so is my baby!
Thank you Jesus! 💖
Hi to everyone!
We're starting to see the snow sticking around the peaks and this next Sunday we're supposed to get a real snowstorm! After a very warm Summer and a nice Fall I'm ready for the cold! It's nice to get out the winter blankets out of mothballs and air them out. I know it's weird but I like the smell of mothballs because it means winter to me.
The crops were okay this year. We didn't get many cherries but there were enough apples that I got all the pies I needed to put up for the year. I thought about buying some frozen cherries for the pies but it's like cheating to me to do that. The blackberries from along the creek didn't last very long but we did make some nice ice cream with them.
This last year my big cooking experiment was Bolognese sauce and I have it down now. The thing is to be patient and let it sauté on a low to medium heat to reduce it. You have to stay with it and stir frequently so it doesn't scorch.
My next experiment will be Carbonara sauce. My first effort was too dry and I didn't use enough Parmesan cheese. The next effort will use more cream and more cheese and I'm hoping for a better result.
It's also interesting that with shipping being a problem and prices going up that I have more orders for eggs! I was expecting people to order less from me and not more so this is a nice surprise! My flock is right now around five hundred birds with most of them being Wyandottes of mixed breeding. The Wyandottes do pretty good in the cold and they lay well. My best layers are still my leghorns and Rhode Island Reds but those girls don't like the snow so much and they tend to stop laying when the skies get dark.
We sold off our bison earlier this year and for a few weeks we had some goats and sheep on the ranch just to get the grass down. I miss seeing the bison but at the same time it's nice to be able to go out on the ranch and not worry about getting charged by one of them. They can get scary at times. I have no idea if we'll run cattle or bison again.
The kids are doing well. All through this thing with the Chinese flu we've been fine. Aside from the usual colds, allergies, and runny noses everyone has been fine.
Steve is home for the season and not looking to go back to work until the spring. I am so happy to have him home and it's weird to sometimes have the anxiety of wanting to get things ready for him to leave and then realize that he's not leaving! It's really great and I'm looking forward to the day he retires and stops working away from home.
How are all of you doing? For those who email me I am sorry but I don't check the email very much anymore. Life is too busy it seems. But it's busy in a good way!
Hugs,
Megan
After a very hot and smoky summer I am so happy to welcome the Fall! It's my favorite season as we bring in the harvest and then prepare for the cold of winter. And it's supposed to be a cold winter some people are saying.
Hope you like the new picture! Sometimes this place is so pretty it hurts! 💖
There's not a lot of news to share right now and that's a good thing. No bad news either.
Just wanted to say Hi and say we're still here!
Megan
I had these questions from the other day:
Hi, Megan. Thanks for the update. Glad to hear you are doing well. And good luck with conceiving a new human life. So happy for you. Will this be your 10th baby?
I am curious what line of work Steve is in that he can afford airplanes and to support such a big family. It must generate a lot of income!
This will be my tenth baby and the ninth of my children in the house, God willing. Steve does construction work and it takes him out of state a lot. The airplane is really needed for him getting around and to transport parts sometimes. It can make him a lot of money but sometimes surprises will cut into the profits a lot so we always take care to be good stewards of our blessings.
Jack wrote to me in email and had some questions:
Do you always sleep in the same bed as Steve or do you retire to you own bed and how do the other wives sleep?
We each have our own rooms we can go to and be alone. Steve sometimes joins us in our room but we usually sleep with him when he wants company.
Are you considered the Senior wife as the official Mrs W or does that not exist in your home?
It's not a formal thing but it is a thing. Being the first wife or legal wife has some status to it and people look to you for wisdom and to make up your mind about things when Steve isn't around. It's not something I always want.
How do you handle or how does Steve handle conflicts in the home?
You just deal with things as best you can when they come up. The first thing is putting the family and the kids first.
Is hubby considering another wife?
No. Steve has made it very clear that he is not looking for another wife. I'm really happy with this decision.
I know you all must really miss Christie. How are her children doing? Are they feeling lost in the mix?
Christie's kids are doing good. It hasn't been easy for them or for us and we all miss her a lot. I really wish she were still the first wife around here. I miss her being in charge of things.
Does Steve tell you his deepest secrets or does he not get vulnerable with his wives?
Steve does tell me things and I know he has different conversations with Macy, Cyd, and Amy.
I saw the comment on my previous post:
Megan - are you alright? We haven't heard from your in over two months, that's not like you!
And wanted to say I'm doing just fine, really! 😊
Just haven't posted on here in a while is all. Sorry!!!
A few things that have gone on around here is Pastor Sandy left our church and I'm kind of happy about it. He came from outside and he had ideas that were not very Christian. I also really didn't like his choices for music. Contemporary Christian Music to me is massively boring, some of it is heretical, and it's like all a big monotone with no ups or downs. It can be like chanting but in the Eastern sense of chanting and not like Gregorian chants which I love.
I like that one man on You Tube calls it 7-11 Music: Seven words repeated eleven times.
It is very true! I know they're old but I love hymns because they're mostly based on Scripture and they're an easy way to learn and memorize Scripture. Since Pastor Sandy left we've brought back the hymns and no one has asked for the CCM to be brought back.
Steve was looking at moving us to Texas for a while. We looked at an old school as a possibility because it had so many rooms and Steve could make the gym into a big shop for his trucks and equipment. Then we looked at a closed Christian resort as a place for the family and finally some legal issues made us let the idea go. I'm kind of happy to be staying where we are. To me this is home and I love it. 💗
When I first joined the family Steve had a King Air twin engine plane for getting around to jobs that were out of state. He'd bought it at a low price and fixed it up and made it airworthy. Then a few years back he sold it and made good money on it. At that time his work was all pretty close by. Then he started getting a lot of work in Texas and Christie found another plane and got a really good price on it so she and Steve bought it. It got worked on and updated a lot and now it's really nice. So last year I got my pilot's license and then got my multi-engine rating. The checkride was honestly a lot of fun as the examiner kept asking me a ton of questions and I still love questions!
I got to do a landing on one engine and then the checkride was over and I passed! What's crazy is I could drive a 737 if I wanted to! I don't think I will but it's nice to know I could. My longest flights have been to Texas and back with one flight to an airport north of Lodi, California. I enjoy flying and it's kind of a surprise to me that I can do this. One thing I manage pretty easily is talking on the radio because you're not supposed to be emotional when you're on the radio. That's easy for me! 😛
We are trying for another baby. It hasn't happened yet but I'm hopeful.
The bison were all sold off because we were looking to move to Texas. I miss them but at the same time it's nice to be able to hiking on the property and not have to worry about them getting upset at you. Bison can be really sweet and then they can also be really dangerous! The problem is you never really know what mood they're in.
We let go of the land we were leasing for the herd and we're down to just the property we own. We're probably going to adopt some wild burros to keep the weeds down and prevent fires. The burros do a pretty good job protecting themselves from predators so you can just let them go on the property and just check on them when you can.
I've currently got about 750 chickens and they're doing pretty good. Some of them are still pets and they get to live out their lives just because they're nice and they keep the bugs away from the house. We added two jungle fowl last year that we adopted from someone in Cody and they've been excellent bug hunters! Their eggs are like 2/3 the size of the regular birds but the eggs are just as tasty!
My twin girls turned eleven this year and they're starting to notice boys. It's a whole new stage of parenting and motherhood for me and I pray that I don't screw it up!
The past year my cooking focused on pasta sauces and I've managed to make a very good and very consistent Bolognese sauce. It's on the thicker side and it's not watery at all. I've also played with the basic recipe and made it into a pretty nice chili con carne!
I love how so many things in cuisine are fundamental to all sorts of cuisines. Like how chili and pasta sauce are so similar. Or like how every culture seems to have a kind of flatbread. Like Mexico has tortillas, India has naan, Greece has pita bread, Americans have pancakes, the French have crepes, and so on. Or like how everyone has some kind of ravioli! Empanadas, ravioli, wontons, and etc. are all very similar.
I know this will upset some people but I've used tortillas as pasta in things like casseroles because the tortillas hold up better. So I'll put the fettucine cutter on my pasta machine and then run the flour tortillas through for easy fettucine that won't get limp in a casserole!
The drought here basically ruined our cherry harvest this year. We got maybe 5% useful cherries out of what we'd normally get. We usually run the orchards on rain water but since the cherries failed we've been irrigating the apples. I really depend on the cherries and apples for pies and for a little extra money so the apple crop this year will have to make up for the cherries.
We should have the monsoon hitting pretty soon and I'm praying for some wonderful thunderstorms and downpours!
I'll also mention that there's an online community of poly Christians I've spent more time with over the last year. I think I joined in like 2017? In any case I will admit to being very intimidated by their massive knowledge and wisdom with the Bible and pretty much stayed away from saying much. Around the end of last year I started getting more active and was so happy to get to know these very wonderful people! They sometimes have meetups and I am deeply wanting to go to one of them and bring a couple of the kids so they can meet other poly kids.
I've also recently learned about Torah Keepers. They're Christians who keep many of the laws of the Torah like not eating pork, not eating shellfish, and keeping the Sabbath as a holy day. I'll be learning more about Torah Keeping as I can.
That's about all I have time for right now so I'll end here and wish you all a wonderful summer!
If anyone wants to ask any questions feel free to do so!
😎
Just some random thoughts on my experience with autism.
I'm not a fan of loud conversations or loud rooms with lots of conversations. I've noticed over the years that you can be in a large room with a few people and those people will all be having very quiet conversations. Then more people come into the room. At some point one person suddenly starts TALKING REALLY LOUD and then everyone else jumps up their volume! That's when I leave the room.
Loud TV commercials make my anxiety go crazy! The worst advertisements are the damned truck dealer ads! Why do they have to yell their damned heads off to sell a truck? It's part of why I don't watch any local TV is because of these awful ads with the screaming idiots.
Wokeness is lost on me. Sorry, but to me a guy in a dress is a guy in a dress. He's not a woman and no matter how much surgery he has or how much hormone therapy he has he's still a guy to me. There's an old story called The Emperor's New Clothes that illustrates how people sometimes fool themselves into saying things that are obviously untrue just because everyone else is doing it. It's really stupid and I wish people would stop trying to force everyone else to play this stupid game.
I mean if a guy wants to wear a dress I'm like so what? Wear your dress and call yourself whatever name you want, that's fine with me. But don't expect me to play along with the pretend game of saying someone like Bruce Jenner is instantly a woman just because he says so. It's not true and you people who insist it's true are deluding yourselves. Please stop asking me to play along with this!
Lots of the other stupid ideas in wokeness don't work with me either. All I see with woke people are people who claim a moral superiority in order to bully and intimidate other people. Like saying that math is racist because some people do poorly at math. Math isn't racist, it's just math. It's like calling water racist because some people can't swim. Just stop.
At the same time I don't understand actual racism where people hate other people just because of how they look. Lots of mean people look really nice. Lots of evil people are attractive. But hating someone just for how they look is stupid as hell when no one has a choice about how they look.
Empathy is a challenge for me. Especially when stupid people get themselves hurt or killed. Like I have a very hard time feeling bad for someone who protests on a high speed Interstate highway and then gets splattered by a large high speed vehicle. Duh. If anything I feel bad for the person who hits the protester and then has to deal with vehicle damage and the police who often blame innocent people for the predictable outcomes of other people's stupidity.
Social rules mystify me. Like why is the truth offensive to some people? Why do you say "Hello" when you answer a phone? Is there a law? I don't think so. Why do people shake hands all the time even when you know too many people don't wash their hands after using the bathroom? Why do people get to insult you and you're not supposed to call them out on it? When someone bad dies why is it impolite to be happy about it? Why do people stare at the door of an elevator when they get in it? Myself I like to watch everyone in the elevator especially if I don't know them. Why is looking at people in public considered rude? If they don't want anyone looking at them they should stay inside.
Why isn't politics like actual science? I hear people argue politics the same way they argue about their favorite sports teams. It doesn't matter how much someone likes something in politics, all that matters is does it work? Why aren't political ideas measured the same way as scientific ideas or medical ideas where you test it out and test it again and again before you decide to go with the idea?
I don't understand sports teams and fan loyalty. Like the NFL, MLB, and NBA are actually three big businesses with lots of franchises. It's the same as McDonald's, Burger King, and Subway. They're just businesses and people spend billions watching other people play games. Why not watch your local McDonald's do business and cheer them on? What's the difference? And why get all insane saying nonsense like "WE WON!!!" when you did nothing at all to help the team win? And like someone says "New York won the World Series!" when sometimes absolutely no one from New York is on the baseball team? It's like Kuwait saying they won the wars against Iraq when no one from Kuwait did any of the fighting.
