We're Stumped!!!

Last week went by like a blur as we were busy getting ready for winter.

We have 2 wood stoves to heat our home and so lots and lots and LOTS of wood is needed to be gathered.

I think this "wood" probably be one of our favorite work projects together as a family!

We get to enjoy the great outdoors, everyone can pitch in...even the toddler :)

It's kind of like were on an adventure!

And what a great sense of accomplishment when we see all the wood we have gathered, split and stacked.

Below is a photo journey of what we did most of last week.

Here's Mark our main chain saw guy. He had to work fast to keep us all busy!

Josh was our second chain saw guy and helped out when he could....bless his heart :)

 For some loads we brought the log splitter right to the bush and split them before loading them on the truck.

We used to split our logs the old fashioned way, with an axe! But a couple of years ago we purchased this wood splitter which makes the splitting a LOT easier!!!

The reason we split the logs is to make them small enough to fit in the wood stove.

Also when the logs are split they burn a lot easier and start a fire better.

Jen was our bush log splitter.

Here is everyone carrying logs.

It didn't matter your age or size, if you could carry one log or 6....

whatever you could do was a BIG help!

Mikaya was a trooper and spent a lot of time out there with us.

Brooke...don't let her size fool you!

By the end she was showing up some of her older brothers pretty good!

We probably went through a lot more food this week with all the big appetites we had!

Talking about food,

Kerri was the one who stayed home and took care of the littles and kept us all very well fed!

Thanks Ker.


Nathan....probably is wondering about now when lunch is!!!

Jesse reminded me of an ant in the amount of logs he could carry!

This guy carried lots and lots of logs!

I would load him up and he would just stand there and give me that look of....

more please!!!

So I would give him more!

I think my little boy is turning into a man!!!

My job was to keep the crew going! I would follow Mark around with the chain saw and load the kids up with logs. I also inspected the wood to make sure it was good. When a tree has been dead for too long it gets too rotten and is not worth taking up space. These logs burn too quickly and are often soggy. So we try to find the most solid logs that are worth taking up space! Logs can be so deceiving. They can look great on the outside, but a rotten in the inside. I'm sure there's an object lesson in there somewhere!!!

Here's yours truly carrying a tremendous amount of logs!!! Meg sure knows how to capture me working :)

Here we are back at home splitting and stacking the wood. Again, every hand was well appreciated!

Even Josiah was carrying logs!

Nathan or Jesse brought the logs to the back of the truck.

I sorted out the ones that needed to be split and the ones that were small enough to be stacked.

Jen and Josh would split them.

Mark would load up the kids.

The kids would bring the logs to the wood room.

Megan would stack.

And here's our stacker herself!

She would stack the trucks at the bush and then when we got home

she would stack the wood in the wood room.

She had to be pretty quick with all those wood carriers!!

And once 13 loads of wood were cut, split and stacked, this is about how happy we were :)