Home Alone Again

(insert Willie Nelson tune of On the Road Again)

Home alone again
Just can't wait to get Tom Builder home again
It feels like this moving thing is never going to end
And I can't wait to get on with life again

Home alone again
He's gone and left me with these kids again
Crumb crunching children who undo organ-i-zation
Mom has gone and lost her head while home again

Home alone again
I've got two more weeks of on my own again
Who were we kidding
So much for middle May
We'll be lucky if we're ready by Christmas Day

Home alone again
The belly's growing large and round again
Bending, lifting, and climbing stairs are not my friends
Summer heat, and napless Faith confirm
I'll never move again

Home alone again
Just got to keep the faith and think "Little Blue Engine"
Oh, I can't wait to get on with life again.
Oh, I can't wait to get on with life again.

Horsing Around

The kids had the terrific treat this afternoon of being invited to ride "Face". Face is a patient fifteen year old 12 hand pony who is still boarding with us at the ranch. This was the kids' first true ride, and they were tickled at the opportunity. Even Faith "The Bruiser" had her 10 seconds of pony fame.

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I'm A Pooped Pooper Scooper

Day FOUR. One more to go. It's been four days since Mr. Incredible left me with three wiggly children who have not been homeschooled for two weeks. I don't know what it is about homeschooling, but it sets the pace of the day, and gives the children a feeling of accomplishment. It also must give them a sense of freedom when the work is done, because the bickering is much less. But after two weeks of school break and now four days of the "alpha male" being absent, not to mention the incessant moving duties, I'm about to chew my left arm off.

By 4PM all I can think is, "I can't wait until I am tucking every last one of you in bed, and I have a moment of peace." Translation..."I want to hit the farm alone." And for over a week, that is exactly what I am doing. After a full day of managing the home, I am more than willing to get outside in the cool evening and manage the farm. I've been bonding with the miniature horses, who will soon be finding a new home (we are told) at a center for disadvantaged children. With their winter woolies coming out in tufts, and with their current owner never showing up on the premises to pay much attention to them, I made it my mission this week to get reacquainted with horse care and grooming...ehem...starting in miniature.

I only have a year of riding under my belt, and that was back in college. And I'll admit it has taken me a bit to find my self confidence and relearn how to become part of the herd. Believe it or not, the most difficult horse on the premises is the miniature stallion. He can turn at a moments notice and give you a drive by charge. Being preggo with Baby Hope, I've been extra cautious, but still determined to bond with the little dynamo. My heart, however, is set on the gelding. He and I have turned into buds. He patiently lets me harness and lead him, or spend hours grooming him, and in return he gets to visit a green bit of pasture instead of his dirt pen.

Tonight I shoveled miniature horse poop. How cute is that? Horse poop in miniature. The horse poop piles had turned into horse poop lanes, so I decided to get out there and get my hands dirty. Three large wheelbarrows full of the stuff. But it was lovely. Just me, my shovel, the horses, and poop. Nobody said a word. Tomorrow, if someone gave me the choice of 8 hours with my children or 8 hours with a shovel...I think I'd take the mute and well behaved shovel.

But then again, shovels don't give adorable forehead kisses.
Tough call.

From All of Us

A Man's Anniversary

Under normal circumstances, anniversaries are froo-frooey. Let's face it squarely: Anniversaries are for the ladies. We're the ones that in fifth...er...tenth grade started creating anniversaries for our unsuspecting beaus. Our anniversary dates could be anything from your first date, to your first kiss, to the day you first shared a PBJ.

But men, if you hold out long enough, there is at least one anniversary out there that is custom built just for you. Hang in there with that marriage, and by the time you reach eleven years with your one and only, you've earned it. The gift of steel. Arrrrrgh. And like most men, the men in the Knucker Hatch house, love their steel toys:


So, the traditional gift for your eleventh wedding anniversary is steel. How bout that? It sure beats the 10th year of tin and the 12th year of linen. Whoop-dee-do. But STEEL...now, that has possibilities. Tomorrow, Tom Builder and I celebrate ELEVEN years together. And as has become tradition over the last couple of years, the one and only tradeshow we attend for our business, falls on the week of our anniversary. Which has truthfully been a bit of a bummer, since I stay home with the kids and he works his tail off in Kentucky for 4-5 days.

But back to the topic of steel. If I was a really cool wife, I'd have that Bobcat he's been talking about getting, waiting for him on the driveway. THAT's steel baby! (But then that brings back memories of when I tried to surprise him with a fantastic stainless steel grill that I couldn't even get out of the back of the Explorer. I had to nix the surprise, and have him help me get the 200lb box out of the truck, and then he had to put it all together. You'd think I would have got a clue when it took three men to get the box in the car. Lame.)

Sometimes I wish I could be a man, just so that I could surprise my man with manly gifts. I fear that my poor faithful man is going to end up with something light and girly like a fresh new box of Brillo pads.

The Hunter and The Hunted

There are cat people, and there are dog people. The Knucker Hatches are dog people. With one exception...Domino our barn cat. He's cool, calm and collected. He handles Faith's less than gentle touch, without a flinch. His personality is thick and endearing. Domino is no ordinary domesticated house cat or barn cat for that matter. He's more like a free range lion; a refined hunter who has displayed his prowess as master of his dominion in the few weeks we've had to watch his smooth moves.


I've heard of kitties catching a mouse or bird and bringing it back to their owners as a trophy. But Domino spends his time tracking down big game. The children and I have witnessed him catching a snake and a chipmunk. A chipmunk!!! I heard the poor guy screeching all the way as Domino ran off with his breakfast in his mouth. And yet, as the children and I watched him trot off, you couldn't help but admire his skill.

We're not in Kansas anymore.

A Gaze Back and A Glance Forward

Seven years of motherhood. Sometimes I think to myself, "Is that it? Has it only been seven years?", and other times I wonder at just how much water and how many children have passed under the motherhood bridge in such a short time.


As the children get older, The Queen's Grace and Sir Bugga-Lot now take the time to wish me a Happy Mother's Day in their own special ways showing genuine excitement over the day. The Queen's Grace saved a small chocolate bar from church as a gift for me on Sunday, however, when she discovered it still on the counter this morning she asked if she could eat the chocolate she gave me. I laughed, and said "Yes", thinking those are the occasions of motherhood. Real life motherhood.

I think I had one of the best Mother's Days yet yesterday. An afternoon of sun and pooling around with the entire family for a couple of hours was perfect rest after hours and hours of moving related activities. Mr. Incredible picked up take out that afternoon, and in the evening, the children and I enjoyed reading our night time stories underneath a setting sun at the barn. It was an all family day. Something we haven't had in a very long time.

Mother's Day had a 24 hour extension this year. Today was the all important mid term ultrasound of Number Four. A day the family has been waiting to approach for weeks. As the weeks have passed we have collected our votes, changed them, expressed wishes and doubts, and everything in between. Without question, Mama was the most certain about my intuition...75% sure this little one was a boy. The children wavered between what they thought the baby was, and what they were hoping the gender of the baby was. In the end, the final count was Mama and children placing boy ballots, and Tom Builder going against the odds with a pink ballot.

We had an incredibly clear ultrasound this go around, and we are very happy to report that our little one passed inspection with flying colors. No longer will this child be known as a number. Our baby will be known by a name I have been saving since before Number Three, if you remember this post. This child's name will be Hope. The Knucker Hatch family will be welcoming a sweet little baby girl home in October. The weddings are adding up!

Hope was a joy to watch on the screen. In a playful mood, she walked up the walls of the placenta, played with her fingers, and experimented with opening and closing her mouth. Her pictures didn't do justice to the ultrasound. I wish we had received others, but we were able to videotape the ultrasound, which is a treasure that we didn't have the privilege of keeping with the first two children.

Meet the newest member of our family, Baby Hope...


As we waited for the doctor to come into the room after the ultrasound, Tom Builder and I toyed around with middle names at Hope's expense. What about Hope Forthebest, or Hope Leslie? Hope Leslie might end up marrying a wonderful man named Dev Oted Tuyou. One thing is clear, and that is that owning six bathrooms might not be as bad as it seems in the future with our growing gaggle of girls. Jack might stand a chance of finding an available shower still. Speaking of Jack...he took the news in stride. He's going to make an amazingly patient husband. Just like his Dad, Mr. Incredible.

I can't think of a better name for a little child entering our lives at this time. Hope. She's a perfect fit. As for Mother's intuition. I give up. I'm 0 for 4 on the gender game. That's just shameful.

What A Moving Day

What is better than "Two Men and a Truck"? TWO crews of "Two Men and a Truck"! Two trucks. Four men lifting all of our heavy furniture up and away. And NO disasters.

This would have been the day, where I signed my kids up for a Mother's Morning Out at the church or something, but that would require more than half of a functioning brain. So, after an hour of The Princess of Wails being constantly in the way of men holding heavy furniture with white knuckles, and trying to stuff as many boxes as we could to avoid more car trips, I surrendered in retreat. The children and I headed back to the new place, while Mr. Incredible and the men endured stifling heat and box stuffing alone for the next couple hours.

It really was a chaotic day. Picture four moving men, a crew of six painters and three children standing in open doorways meant for four moving men. At two o'clock, all of the furniture had been loaded and the men where heading to the farm with the two trucks.


There are no words to describe what it feels like to finally have furniture in the farm house after living with just a table set, and mattresses on the floor for over a month. Each room in the house transformed into a cushy haven of rest with the warmth of wood along the walls. It was amazing to watch, and like Christmas to unwrap the shrink wrap on the furniture and not discover a single ding or scratch.

Tom Builder had the ingenious idea of numbering each of the main rooms in the house with a sheet of paper. Normally, one might shout to the mover that this or that box goes in the family room, but when there are two of everything, it gets a little more complicated. So the number system worked really well, and Mr. Incredible just shouted out a number as each item passed by. When all was said and done, some rooms were filled and complete, while a couple stood empty. Isn't that how it should be when you move into a house with a round belly? Maybe that is where the term "Wiggle Room" comes from.

The unfortunate fact, is we still need to go back to our house of seven years, and clean out more closets, storage, a garage, and a workshop. Not the most exciting stuff to stay motivated over. I just want to stay here and nest for the next two years (which is how long it will take me to go through these boxes of random junk). But the job is not over.

Tom Builder and I, after many MANY days, finally had the treat of watching a movie on a TV screen, in a comfortable couch on a Friday night. I could at last prop my flattening feet on top of a coffee table, and think about something other than moving for the next two hours. Normalcy is near. And THAT is what keeps me moving.

Confessions of a Do It Yourself Woman

This week was officially declared by Tom Builder to be "moving week". Hence the sans blogging on my part. It has been an exhausting week with sunny visits inbetween. Tomorrow, the movers come to pick up all of the big heavy furniture. Today, the painters come to paint the house going up on the market a neutral color. And this morning, we interviewed our second interior designer to help us with the new house.

Yep...you read that last part right. For two die hard do-it-yourself-ers this is a big step in acknowledging that we can't do it all ourself on this one. Two houses all connected together is a bit much to coordinate. It is also a large step towards swallowing some major pride as a woman. These days, there is great pressure to be Martha Stewarts and do everything by hand. Beautifully. Creatively. Simply. (And then of course for the conservative homeschooling mother, we should be grinding our own grain.) But I'm biting the bullet, and keeping an open mind. As we delve further into the interior deco world, I'm getting more relaxed about the entire thing.

It would take me years to accomplish what an interior decorator with a good hand and reliable contractors could do in hours. And I need to face the fact that what I could whip up 10 years ago (not that I was any good folks), is not happening with land, babies and schooling. I mean, I honestly haven't had the chance to go get my unibrow waxed and my hair cut in almost over a year. Poor Tom Builder has been dealing with scrubs material, for pete's sake. Look at that hair! This is my head all day every day - twist and a clip. (Thanks to my wonderful sister-in-law Kristy who made us an amazing handmade made desk calendar with family photos, I've been staring at the oh-so younger version of me and Tom Builder in our engagement photos this month. It's getting to me.)


But honestly, when am I going to have the time to decorate two kitchens, six bathrooms, and six bedrooms?? I want to dream and plan over chickens, horses, a rip roaring garden, and an adorable baby we'll know the gender of on Monday...and perhaps get my tail back into a salon. Not fuss over fabrics and finishes. Can you tell I'm trying to talk myself into this?

To give you an idea of how controlling I am with things of the home, I would never, NEVER, participate in a Trading Spaces episode. Love to watch the show, but would never want any room my house to be the brunt of someone else's style and creativity. I wouldn't be the one that cried because I hated it, but you can bet I'd be at Home Depot that evening picking out the paint color I'd be using to paint over the newly decorated walls. For me, hiring an interior decorator is equivalent to a person afraid of heights deciding to walk along The Great Wall of China.

We'll also be looking into hiring a landscape design service...another major gulp of pride for me the gardener girl. I must stress this is all rolling out in phases over many years. But this is now our home for decades out, and we want it to feel like a retreat away from home for our friends and family. It needs a professional touch. Someone who does this for a living. It is just really hard to admit that person should not, and couldn't possibly be me the control freak. {gulp}

About This Moving Thing

Honestly? Cards all laid out on the table...This is really hard. How do people with kids who stay at home ALL DAY move? Is there a temporary public school out there that just takes kids for about three weeks while Moms make sixty thousand trips with overstuffed minivans? By the time I take all the children with me and trek back to the old house, and grab our school work to tackle while we are there, I've got a passenger side seat and a trunk available. Its ridiculous. Then there are my really stupid days when I let the dog come with us.

Ken bought one of those nifty WorkSport trailers that hauls a boat load of stuff, but that would require me to be a braver animal then a chicken to haul things with it. And so I creep. Along. Agonizingly. Slow. Each kitchen cabinet in TWO kitchens, needs thorough wash downs to disintegrate the grime and the kitty hair left behind. Meanwhile the baby is found scribbling with four markers on the freshly painted walls of the new playroom, or can be found swishing her hands around in the closest toilet (for the third time that day). And then of course there are all of the daily requirements that don't disappear when you move: the groceries, the cleaning, the laundry, the yogurt, cocoa puffs, ketchup and juice spills in the last 12 hours, dinners. The demanding baby who has discovered how to whip up screaming temper tantrums and is tired of being fifth string, wanting her Mom to just sit and be still.

Add a deadline to the mix of May 15th for placing our old house on the market, that needs its own TLC, and its paralyzing. I feel like I am trying to run in water. So in case you started to think we were all tip toeing through the buttercups, and toe dipping all day in the crystal blue water, this is what is REALLY brewing 95% of the day.

We really do live in paradise though...check out the double rainbow smack over our farm from last week.

His First Miracle

I'll just say it. Tom Builder performed a bona fide miracle this spring. The pool we inherited was so bad, SO BAD, that we never thought once about actually snapping a picture of it to remember its BADNESS. It was thick, dark green, and swarming with swampy life. It looked like a lost cause. At the very least it looked like we would need to drain the pool and start all over. But apparently, draining a pool is a big no-no, and everywhere we read, and those we talked to stood by their chemicals.


It took four weeks of Mr. Incredible's devoted attention to work his mojo. He poured chemicals, took pool samples, poured more chemicals, became addicted to pool sampling, scrubbed, vacuumed, unclogged pool pumps, added more magic fairy dust, and dreamed about sampling pool water. Every day he could be seen with his little transparent suitcase of colored drops and cylinders. The success of his day hinged upon the PH balance of the pool.

For a week the water did nothing. The PH did nothing. And lots of chemicals had been dumped into the sea soup. Tom Builder was a bit discouraged. However, in the second week the pool went from spinach green to cloudy green-blue. Action! Everyday we looked to see if we could see anything beyond the first step of the stairs. Did anyone see the sea monster yet? By the last week, our visibility went from only being able to see the second stair, to seeing down to the full 10 feet depth with crystal clarity.


The glorious water my four floatie Sir Bugga-lot is now swimming in, is the same H2O that looked like it was one chemical reaction away from a nuclear disaster. WHAT IS IN THOSE CHEMICALS?? Unbelievable. But honestly, I can't say enough about Tom Builder's dedication to making this thing happen. We went from owning no pools, ever in our lives, to owning a pool, a hot tub, and a jet pool. We knew squat. However, as in all things he does, Mr. Incredible took the challenge and tackled it head on.

We have a running joke on the farm between us. Because so much of this life is new, and has new terminology, the joke runs a bit like this: "You see, you simply take the mandible there and insert it into the manifold, which is found on top of the lateral dorsal. Then wait two minutes, and turn around six times before activating the implement on the posterior thorax pump in the ..."

By the way, 10 bucks to anyone who can sink Floatie-boy...


The water is still a bit nippy which is why the kids load up on flotation devices to stay as much above water level as possible. But who can stay away from this American dream? The kid's dishes are put in the sink after meal times, the kid's shoes are all neatly in place, the playroom stays clean. Why? Because pools and hot tubs only happen when all else is finished. I've never seen my children clean up a playroom so quickly. It's down right lovely.

Now keeping an eye on stubborn Faith is another beast all-together. The child only wants to throw everything imaginable to man in the pool, and then pitches a fit as soon as it drifts away. (We're going through a bit of a stubborn streak.) The hot tub is more her style, since Mama let's her bumpkin run in the buff. She gets a kick out of her buff-ness as she squeals around on the deck.

The water...is nice folks. Really nice. And the view, is tremendous.
Thanks hun. You're a miracle worker.

Bedazzled In Buttercups

I was not exaggerating when I mentioned that the farm is dazzling. Wildflowers have taken over the farm, and it has all of us feeling like we have stepped into a child's dream, or a TV commercial for allergy medicine...depending on the day. More specifically, we are bathing in buttercup pollen. 300 Google parts per million would be a conservative guess. These are not just your ordinary buttercups, these are brilliant gold Globeflowers.

We have learned in our homeschooling research, that ironically, Globeflowers are quite special as they are endangered in at least 7 states. When Tom Builder heard this report he quipped, "We're the one's in danger!" Guessing this week could only be peak week (does it get more beautiful than this?) we headed out to the back five acres and snapped gobs of cuteness pictures.


Faith was taking her morning snooze back at the house, so the kids and I continued on our trek along the creek. About six weeks ago, we stuck to the edge of the creek and wandered onto our sweet retired neighbor's back property to do some further exploring. To our delight, we found what we now call "our secret spot". And when we have time, none of us can resist visiting it. The creek takes a bend along the property line, which leaves a wonderful bar of sand and silt for the children to wander along. Everything about the place is southern. From the giant leaning sycamores, to the sounds of the birds and bugs.


I can sit on the sand in peace, and watch my children build sand castles, dig for clams, and spot animal tracks. And I can find equal amusement as I watch Hatch practice swimming in the shallows. The place is absolutely enchanting and safe. I half expect to see The Rabbit and Alice in Wonderland running by.


The return back from the creek has become an amusement. Wet feet squeak in rubbery shoes, and we soon look like giant bumblebees with loads of pollen stuck to our legs. The children usually have their hands full of clams and new wildflower bouquets. On the return, my eyes always scan the two things that have me very excited: budding wild roses lining the creek, and blackberry bushes...EVERYWHERE. I have my own grown up dreams that include friends and families with buckets in hand for blackberry picking in July.


The buttercups bring us home, slowly becoming less and less as we get closer to the farm. Because they are bitter, the horses avoid the plants. Horses. A few horses remain. We gave the word a month ago that we would not be boarding. Two of our favorites are still around, and we are tempted to keep them on site. They have become friends we visit every morning and evening. It continues to be a hard decision. But I think we will stick to it and enjoy their gentle personalities until they find a new home. One day, we'll have our own gentle giants. But we'll start small...

When the horses mosey on out, we'll be placing our first order for "The Chicken Project"!!!

The Faith-ster

For our family and friends far away...it has been awhile since you saw the motor driven Faith-ster in action. We owe you a peek. When she gets her motor running, everyone starts laughing, even the grumpy adults. She is officially one year and three months old today.



This movie was taken just before the flu bug reared his ugly head.