Joyful Motherhood in a Rural Family

Early the next day, a dense fog arose outside the house.

Actually, snowy days are not the coldest, the coldest are the days when the snow melts.

The melted snow began to form icicles under the eaves, the longest one even reaching one to two meters. Hanging in front and behind the house, wherever there was water on the ground began to freeze, slippery and unstable to step on, so cold that one lost the courage to step out of the door.

Watching Di Yelei moving in and out of the house without any reluctance, shoveling snow, sweeping the ground, feeding chickens, rabbits, and horses, he was kept very busy.

Liu Sisi barely managed to lift her heavy eyelids and pushed the quilt aside.

A wave of cold air immediately invaded the warmth of the quilt, causing her to shiver from the cold. She hurriedly crawled back into the warm quilt.

Her naked body touched the warm cup, causing her to let out a sigh of satisfaction.

It’s so cold!

She felt like a bird shivering in the cold!

An odd sensation from her body urged her to shift positions, alleviating some pressure.

Remembering the love scene from last night, her face flushed and she quickly buried her face in the quilt.

She had actually taken the initiative!

So embarrassing!

She covered her face with her hands.

Di Yelei came in and lifted the curtain, to see just this scene.

“What’s wrong? Are you…not feeling well?” His eyes fell upon her smooth back, instantly deepening his gaze.

“Hey! How…how come you are in here? Get out! ”

Even after having so many intimate moments, in his burning gaze, Liu Sisi was still blushing all the way to her toes!

“Alright, alright! I am going, I am going, Sisi….”

However, his feet were doing the opposite of what he just agreed to.

“Why don’t you move your feet!”

Of course, Liu Sisi noticed his movements, her eyes widening in embarrassment, quickly covering herself tightly with the quilt.

Only then did he chuckle, stepping back and closing the curtain.

“Hey, I…I moved the firewood in front of the stove, I….I will fetch water, hehehe…”

He laughed heartily, with his footsteps gradually fading away.

Only when she couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore, did Liu Sisi slap her blushing cheek, frantically starting to dress herself.

After heating water to wash her face, arranging her hair, only then did she venture outside.

The ground outside was wet and icy. As soon as she stepped on it, she felt the dampness seeping through.

Liu Sisi shrunk her neck and rubbed her hands together, gathering the courage to step outside the room. It really was so cold! This kind of weather was indeed irritating.

After the continuous heavy snowfall, thankfully the stable never stopped providing heating. The baby bok choy planted in the bamboo tube outside the stable looked weak, yet a few managed to survive.

Liu Sisi plucked a few. The green leaves of these vegetables would make the pork bone soup taste the best!

When she finished preparations for the soup, after some thought, she took a detour to the cellar behind the house and brought out a jug of unopened soybean sauce.

As soon as the lid was opened, the rich aroma of soybean paste immediately drilled into her nose.

“It smells so good! I could smell it from far away, I really wish I could eat it all in one bite.”

Di Yelei carried a pole of water into the room, pouring the water from the buckets into the water tank.

“The well in our house is really good! I didn’t appreciate it at first, but now look, in such cold weather, steam keeps coming out of the well’s opening. It’s clearly a spring. The water quality is also good. We hit the jackpot!”

“You just realised now? I always wash clothes directly by the edge of the well. The water there is warm and doesn’t freeze my hands.”

Liu Sisi looked at him with amusement, took a clean bowl and scooped out a bowl of soybean paste: “We’ll use this for our meal this morning.”

Di Yelei happily put down the shoulder pole.

“Of course I knew. But I didn’t know that originally there was only a tiny underground spring, and nowadays such a large amount of water sprays out. It’s strange.”

Liu Sisi placed the soybean paste on the table, casually wiping her hands on her apron: “It must be related to the collapse of that mountain over there! Anyway, it was after that day that this spring water suddenly increased by many times.”

“Mmm, it should be that reason.”

Di Yelei nodded: “By the way, are you going out today?”

“Didn’t you say you’re fixing the house today? This house leaks every day and can’t wait.” Liu Sisi said as a matter of course.

“That’s good! Make some more food later. Everyone are fellow villagers, don’t let the people who come to help go hungry. That would be bad.” Di Yelei said, as he climbed up the stairs to the attic and pulled down a large piece of beast meat.

“Don’t worry. After all this time, when have I ever been stingy with food? On the contrary, you still have internal injuries. Don’t exert yourself, let them do the work. It’s fine if it takes a bit longer, just one more meal to prepare.”

Liu Sisi was full of concern.

As expected, not long after breakfast, the fellow villagers arrived one after another.

In fact, it wasn’t just their home that suffered from the disaster, but because Di Yelei was popular, when he called, naturally more than a dozen villagers came one after another.

Everyone joked around with each other and helped to fix the house.

The first task was to remove the straw from the roof, then dismantle the wood, trim the adobe brick, and finally replace the rafters, purlins, and beams… The sound of knocking and pounding echoed without stopping.

Elderly Mr. Di had difficulty moving, but he firmly stood on the edge of the courtyard wall, watching everyone work. The two children stood to his left and right to watch the commotion.

Liu Sisi was busy in the kitchen, preparing steamed buns, buns with various fillings, pork bone soup, fried balls, and fried willow twigs, bustling around.

Perhaps seeing everyone else busy, Liu Zhi’er walked over to the stove to help make a fire.

Liu Sisi took a moment to look at her, chuckling as she wiped off her sweat: “I must say, cooking lunch for so many people by myself is tiring.”

Could it not be tiring? She was cooking food for so many people!

At the moment, Liu Sisi is cutting sweet potatoes.

These sweet potatoes had been stored in the cellar since early morning. When she went to the cellar to get the soybean paste, she took ten or so. Now she washed them clean, cutting each into cubes, and mixed them with turnips and turnip leaves to fry into meatballs.

“Are you preparing to make meatballs again? Isn’t there a basin of them over there?” Liu Zhi’er asked with curiosity.

Liu Sisi looked over: “Those are made by mixing a few dried small fish and dried shrimp with sweet potato starch. When frying, they’re shaped like large fish. We don’t have any large fish at home, and it wouldn’t be right to have a dinner table without fish, so I thought of this simple method.”

“That was made with small fish? Sisi, you’re really resourceful.”

Liu Zhi’er looked amazedly at the fried fish that looked to be about half a pound each. She was particularly delighted.

Fish was expensive in winter, and for holidays and celebrations, the table should naturally have fish. If they used small fish to deep fry, that could save dozens or even hundreds of coppers. This was a considerable sum of money for poor families.