farewell rosemary

Our week-long vacation at Rosemary Beach made for a great time of rest, sun and warmth, and time with the kids. Good thing, because we heard our town had two frosts while we were gone! A week was just long enough; we are ready to get home, but a little part of us hates to leave all this behind.

Snapshots of our week:

Mom and the girls

 

 

Winston and Shep playing Liebrary- a new game to add to our collection. Maybe for Christmas?

Beach volleyball

beach bum

How can you resist a store called The Sugar Shak?

 

 

 

 

 

Meals for 19 three times a day

Building model ships...brought back some memories for Warren!

Sunny days

I know I left my last blog post with great expectations of getting right back to it the next day. That's my optimistic personality. Sure, I haven't blogged for months, but I will blog again tomorrow, friends!! No matter. As it turns out, getting ready for a week of relaxation is a lot of work! But so worth it. We are here, the kids are playing hard and going to bed exhausted, as are their parents. Not really- if we are tired it's just because we can't make ourselves get to bed at a decent time. But there's not much waiting for us in the morning except more play, so that's okay.

Cousins in their mostly sand-free place

Ten minute book review, part one

Well, I didn't realize how many people wanted to be happier and more productive. Who'd have thought? I've received threatening emails and everything!

I really do want to blog more often, but I need to learn to make it short (and probably to get up earlier). The time before 7:30am is so precious! It's 7am and my kids have been up for about 20 minutes doing what all kids love to do in the early hours of the morning: make clothes for their stuffed animals out of old socks. I need to ban these early rising habits.

I really do need to qualify and say that I put off reading this book for months, even though a friend gave it to me for Christmas. I read the section on preparing for babies, and then put it aside. I guess I had some preconceived ideas that this would be the run-of-the-mill organization book, and I've read so many of those (not that I'm practicing all those ideas...). My mom is the organizational queen. I read Organized Simplicity, and while I thought it was a beautiful book, and well laid out, it was a little disappointing in how little it offered me.

Even though I love charts, and schedules, and anything that makes life more peaceful, I think a teeny tiny part of me was worried this book would make me want to be an organizational robot, or that it would only "work" if I did everything exactly the way they recommended. And that didn't sound very appealing.

But this baby girl, as much as I love her, has rocked my world (and not necessarily in the slang way). After five months, I still did not have a regular laundry day, grocery time, etc. I just could NOT get into any kind of groove. It might not be her as much as adding number four. She hasn't taken well to much of a schedule (well, at least she doesn't want to follow one!) and while I'm okay with that, it made life tricky. Throw in homeschooling, starting a new business, raising animals, gardening...most days I just wanted to throw up my hands and say "it's too much!" I went to bed almost every night wishing I could race to sleep so I could wake up and start my never-ending to-do list before it ate me. Ministry and hospitality? That was sort of a dream because everything else was piling up and slowing down enough to enjoy company was hard to justify. Work first, then play, right?

And while my work load hasn't changed at all (in fact the opposite is true...love the fresh milk!) :) it all seems much more manageable. I was working so hard, but overlooking some obvious ways in which to bring order to our home. Most of the information could be gleaned from my Mom, or other friends in similar stages of life, but the great thing about this book is that it's all in one place. No need to call your mentor at 11pm wondering how to get the mending done when you can barely get your laundry folded.

So, my ten minutes are up, but I'll try to add more tomorrow:

Long lost hello

Doesn't everyone take 4-month breaks from blogging? I think I come by it naturally. Except when my Mom posts she is hi-larious. I do not come by that naturally. Must have gotten my dad's serious genes.

I can't even begin to catch you up on life around here, but it is full and good, as usual. The baby has enormous thighs (she comes by that naturally), and is the joy of our house. She is a high-maintenance lady, but as my mother-in-law says, "All women are high maintenance." We still love her like crazy, and since we've done this four times over now, I find myself a little more willing to roll with the personalities God sends to our family. She's almost 7 months old (!!?!) and not quite crawling. That's fine with me, because we are heading to the beach in two weeks and I'd really like her to wait until we get back. I don't think she's going to acquiesce to my desires. Last month I cut about an 1 1/2 inches off her hair. It was in her eyes, and hanging below her ears in a few straggly places. I'm pretty sure I gave Thomas a major haircut around the same age, and they seem to have very similar hair.

We celebrated our 8th anniversary in June. Eleanor celebrated it with us, and was up all night with a fever and cried almost the entire time we were gone on our day trip. We got these pictures...but nothing together. Kids do change things! We are learning to appreciate the seasons.

 
The kids enjoyed Cousins Camp in July right after that crazy storm we had that knocked out our power for three days. There are twenty-three cousins (for now...one more girl coming in December!) 13 and under on Warren's side. Here's the woman who started this week-o-fun with just 5 cousins back in the day. This picture was taken at a 4th of July picnic we had during Cousins Camp week.

 
Tomorrow begins week five of school for us; we started early to get in a good groove before stopping for our beach trip. I think that has happened, although we are finding new challenges to school this year. Thomas wants to be with us all the time, but isn't interested in much of what we're doing when it comes to real school work. We started using Tapestry of Grace in a very very laid back way, and he does love that. I love that my three year old knows about Egypt and where the Red Sea is on a map. Although this is also the child that points out the "Eiffel Tower" every time we pass a cell phone tower. Anyway, school chat could be an entirely different post, but that's not looking good with my record. The older two are taking off with reading (hooray!) and last week I found Adeline curled up on the couch with The Boxcar Children.

Warren is presenting the older kids with their first Bibles

 First day of school pictures...well, actually third day of school pictures. But close-enough. Cooper got the fishing gear for his birthday so he wanted to include it. Adeline has taken to wearing a bonnet as often as I will let her, although I draw the line when it comes to wearing it in public. Thomas doesn't sit still much, so the picture was apropos.

In farm news, next weekend we will process and sell our last batch of birds. We are sold out, which is always a blessing, and it will be such a nice "finish" to our second season of raising pastured poultry. We are also sold out of pork, but the pigs will stick around a little longer. We need them to get bigger and we'd like to put them on our garden plot and let them tear it apart. Warren is outside now building a stanchion for....brace yourself....our cow. Yes, we have a miniature jersey as of yesterday. I've spent the last two weeks watching a gazillion Youtube videos on cheesemaking. I'm already making yogurt on a regular basis, and I've made some ricotta from the whey, but those things take no skill. I think I'll just work on mozzarella for a few weeks, and that will give us what we need for some great pizza and lasagna. Then, once I get back from the beach I will tackle some cheddar.

Other than that, we've gardened, canned, dehydrated, finished the summer reading program and enjoyed the prizes, including trips to two local water parks, helped Warren's parents make a monumental move from the home they built 30+ years ago (located over an hour away) to just a few minutes away from us. Our church is renovating a frat house and turning it into a brick sanctuary; Warren is on the building committee and I'm on the aesthetics committee. I've learned all kinds of building terms, none of which are very interesting. But the building is looking great!

My book-reading plan has been a total flop, but I really want to tell you about one book I did read that has made me a happier mom, given us more time, and brought a huge amount of order to our lives. That will have to come another time, too.

So, my last four months in a nutshell. I think about blogging all the time, but that requires sitting down for longer periods of time than life allows. Is there some sort of voice memo blog app where I can just speak and all my thoughts get typed out for me? Did I forget to mention Warren bought me an iPod touch for my birthday? I was extremely hesitant about it (don't laugh...I know this isn't exactly new technology) but it's been great. He jokes that he got it for me so I could listen to children's music all day. :) And I retort that we do not listen to children's music all day, although we spend an inordinate amount of time listening to Story of the World.


The advantage of blogging four times a year is that a lot of the hard stuff is forgotten and life really looks rosy. There's plenty of hard stuff I'm leaving out, and even more I've forgotten. But God is good, all the time. And we are happy. See you in 2013!