The funny things they say...

Corryn:
"Baby farted! Webbody (read: everybody) say Eeeeewwwwww!!"

1st Grade

We have officially started our 1st grade homeschool work. We're starting our 3rd week of it actually. This year, I decided to go with a curriculum instead of trying to come up with lots of fun educational things myself. As much as I'd like to think of myself as someone that can do this, the reality is that I am someone that drowns in dirty dishes and laundry instead. I found that after doing all the daily home maintence-type stuff plus just the regular kid-care stuff, there just wasn't the energy to come up with educational things.

I decided to go with Oak Meadow. It's very imaginative/activity based. No worksheets involved, which is good, since I'm pretty sure Dillon would not learn well that way. There is a weekly plan with a lot of leeway as to how to implement it. 2 weeks into it, it's going pretty well. She likes the stories and activites, and we are both doing better with the structure it adds to our days. Corryn participates sometimes, sometimes she does her best to derail us :) My hope is that having consistency will help us with the up-in-the-airness that is our life right now.

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Making cookies

Still here...

Just thought I'd try to stop neglecting the blog and post some recent pictures. We have a teeny, tiny little zoo here that has a petting area. There are several pygmy goats that just had babies. We've made several visits and the girls are just loving it. On top of it, the county fair was this week, so there were more goats to be loved upon there. I'm seeing goats in my future. Little ones :) They are really lovey, though they do chew on everything.

As for life here, there are still changes coming. I still can't say what. After what feels like the longest year ever, I've started reaching out to friends more, so that's helping. I've had more headaches here than I've had my entire life. Recently, after the umpteenth one, with me telling the girls that I couldn't take them to the petting zoo right them because my head hurt too badly, I promised myself that no matter what else was going on, I was going to start managing my own stress. I've gotten a massage, visited a chiropractor (during which I swear every single vertebrae in my back popped!), have been exercising and have been listening to a relaxation CD. What a difference! I can't say I'm all relaxed all the time, but I'm significantly better. We actually spent 3 hours at the fair yesterday & I enjoyed all of it. Up to now my ability to manage 2 young kids alone in public places was more like 1 1/2-2 hours. They loved it, too.

So, one step at a time. As I've started relaxing, I feel much better able to handle everything else. I wish I had done this earlier.

A follow up picture

Here's our Robin babies about 10 seconds before they flew for the first time. They scared the mess out of us! Peaches immediately ran over to one on the ground, but I stopped her before she hurt it. One of them hung out in the yard in various spots for the rest of the day, trying to figure out how to fly. By the next morning, it had figured it out and was gone, too.

It was so fun watching them and we've really missed them.

Changes are coming

I can't say what right now because I don't know exactly what. Dave & I are fine, stressed, but banded together as we always have been. The job is still far, far too many hours with little hope of becoming better. He recently worked over 170 hours in a 2 week period. His stress level is through the roof. The difficult, stressful parts of the job are really outweighing the positive. While I don't dislike it here, there are some disappointments. Dillon-super social Dillon- has had trouble really finding friends. She has a few, but it isn't coming together for her like it did in NH, and we see her lonliness in the behavior difficulties we've had since moving here. She will still, out of the blue, say she wants to go back to NH.

So, we're trying to figure out what's next. We've made amazing progress on bills and will have all credit card and bank loans (thought not student loans) paid off within the next 4-5 months. There's money going to retirement funds and we have money in savings again.

We've been struggling with this for a long time and it's steadily becoming clearer that the current situation isn't working for us. So, changes are coming- we just have to figure out what they are.

Our babies

We've been watching this Robin's nest for about 3 weeks. It's on our electric box outside. We've watching the momma incubating the eggs, then had the fun of discovering the chicks on Mother's Day! Dillon thought it was so funny that the newly hatched chicks all sat there with their eyes closed and the mouths open waiting for someone to drop something in. We even rescued one when it fell out of the nest just a few days after being born. The parents weren't there when it happened, so it must've just gotten too wiggly. It was so fragile-looking! I put gloves on, then carefully picked it up and put it back in the nest. We weren't sure how it was going to do, but couldn't just leave it. It has done fine

We knew there were four eggs in there, but are only three chicks. I knew eventually we'd see the other egg kicked out of the nest as the babies got bigger. Sure enough, there it was on the ground this morning. We picked it up and brought it in to look at. 5 minutes later, Corryn dropped and broke it releasing the most awful rotten egg smell.

Homeschooling at it's best. We now fully know what a rotten Robin's egg smells like.

Pretty soon the chicks will start learning to fly, so I have to figure out how to keep Peaches away from there. The dog eating a baby bird would be a heck of a lot more traumatic than the rotten egg!