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!

If she weren't so cute...

Last night I was getting Corryn to sleep. She was laying in my lap, looked up at me and said with the sweetest little sleepy voice
"Momma nose"
W: "Momma nose" (because if you don't repeat what she says she says it again. Over and over and over.)
C: "Momma eyes"
W: "Momma eyes"
C: "Momma booger"

She's home!

Peaches came home today. A friend picked her up for me since I haven't been able to take care of getting my car licensure stuff taken care of yet. She looks good, still a little wobbly from the medicine she's on, but doing well. She's sticking pretty close to me, much to Dillon's chagrin since she'd like her close to her. Turns out it was something she ate out of the compost bin. We had been messing around with it, looking at the worms and compost. You know, homeschooling kind of stuff. She ate some that made it out of the bin- no more than a couple of bites, but that's all it took. She started having tremors within a half hour of doing so that progressed to full blown grand mal seizures. But since we got her to the vet's pretty quickly and got her taken care of, all seems to be pretty well now. She's going to be on anti-seizure meds for a month or so, but should be able to wean off.

So I'm feeling better. Now I just need my car title to arrive from NH so I can take care of getting IN plates.



Oh, and here's a couple of picture from my class:

I can't even think tonight

Let's see.... I started my photography class I've been waiting for for a year. It is awesome. I love it! I'm learning a ton. I even got the "opportunity" to get in some extra practice after my computer erased all the photos on my camera card.

It was 82 degrees today. We found a robin's nest with 3 beautiful little blue eggs in it. In our backyard, no less!


But we spent the afternoon at the vet's office, then the vetrinary ICU with our very sick dog. She suddenly started having severe seizures this afternoon with no apparent cause. I love this dog dearly and have spent the afternoon crying. She's still in the ICU and doing better, but we can't find a cause. Most all the obvious things are ruled out.

I got pulled over on Wednesday, didn't have my driver's license with me and had expired plates. I now can't drive anywhere until I change the plates, which I can't do until we find the title, which we can't find. A duplicate is on the way from NH. Thank goodness Dave was available to take the poor dog to the vet today.

Corryn didn't nap today. So, I'm exhausted and a little numb tonight. Yay for a Magic Schoolbus movie to keep Dillon occupied at the moment. I need sleep.

Hanging out

Ah, the exciting life we lead- sitting here on a Saturday night, listening to the pouring rain out. The rain that is going to turn into snow tomorrow. Dave and Dillon are playing a board game- or at least some version of it. Corryn's asleep and I'm taking care of very important computer business (haha). Really, it's good, especially in light of all the recent should-we-stay-or-should-we-go turmoil.

The job still seems to be going in a positive direction. We're thinking we're going to buy the house we're renting. I feel really conflicted about it now- 'cause you know it would be too easy to not feel conflicted about something. It's a nice house, but it just isn't our dream. I want to look out and see trees. Instead, I look out and see houses and concrete and cars. The area is ugly- lots of railroad tracks, big industrial plants. But, from a financial standpoint, it's truly a gift to be able to stay here, finish paying off bills (oh, those painfully large bills), and save for the dream house. And given how difficult the transition has been for Dillon, it just doesn't feel like the right thing to do to discombobulate her world all over again by packing everything up.

Maybe 3 more years of being here and we can have a sizable chunk of money for the dream house. The girls will be old enough to handle moving to a new house a little better. Some land, woods, a place for a real garden. A place without pink carpet since between the old house and this one we'll have had 8 years of it by then!

I'm going to make the best of it and grow a little container garden in the meantime. And oh yeah, on Monday, finally get to start the online photography class I've been waiting a year for. I am super excited about it!

So overall feeling a little more settled, though settling is a slow process for me. New Hampshire was a hard place to live up to, I have to admit.

The view from the upstairs back of the house-