Summer Update

What's been going on lately?????


  The garden is coming along quite nicely!!!  I did however, have to replant onions (they rotted..too much rain!!!), cucumbers, watermelons, mushmelons, and pumpkins.  And we won't even talk about my tomato trouble!!!  But it's all growing beautifully now!!!  I've had lots of help from my Papaw Busick, he's been amazing!  My lettuce is ready to harvest any day.  I froze some jalapenos yesterday for the salsa we'll be canning this fall. I also dried a bunch of cilantro and basil yesterday too.  I plan on canning tomato sauce for all our pasta and pizzas that we make. 

  We are now proud owners of 19 meat chickens, 2 layers, a Rhode Island Red rooster, and two baby chicks.  So it looks like we'll be butchering chickens before long to fill up the freezer!! 
 
  I've been working my way through Maxwell's book "Managers of their Chores" and trying to come up with a master list and chore packs for the kids that will work for us.  It's very stressful, seeing as I'm not quite the "scheduled" person.  I'm more a fly by the seat of my pants kind of girl.  But I do enjoy lists and orderliness, so I'm hoping this will bring more peace to our lives.  I'll have to update you more on this as we go along.

  I'm very excited to announce we will be using Heart of Dakota this year for school!!!   A dear friend of mine, Angela, is letting me borrow her curriculum, and I will definately be purchasing more of it for myself!!!  I am so excited to get started.  However, I truly am enjoying summer with my children and husband this year.  I don't really know how to explain it, but summer has been very hard for me, since Hannah.  She was born in May and passed away in Sept, so that year my entire summer seemed to have passed me by in a hospital room.  Then the next year, I just couldn't quite figure out life without her and the yearning I had to have another baby.  Then 2010 seemed to be blur, having Leah, moving, and Derek's first official year of school.  So this summer has been the first "real" summer I've had and got to enjoy in a long time!   We've been enjoying swim lessons, gardening, church camp, 4-H, we had lots of kittens, playing baseball with our homeschool group, catching fireflies, and spending lots of time with Daddy now that he's home every evening!!!  

  I sat in the garden tonight weeding, and just looked around at the kids playing and the baby sitting next to me playing in the dirt and just soaked it all in.  Because just as quick as Hannah was born, she was taken away, and I know that just as quick as these three are young and wild, they will soon be grown and gone.  I thank the Lord for every precious moment I have with them and my husband.  And I praise him for such wonderful summer memories.