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Timber!

Life is still at a fast pace, as always with our family of seven, but the pace is now down this road we chose instead of in circles. We have our house and we're settling in nicely. I am fortunate enough to have several substitute teacher opportunities to tide me over, and one elementary school that is close by seems to be happy enough with me to schedule me pretty regularly :)  My hopes are, of course, that subbing leads to a full-time teaching position, so the more, the merrier! I am also applying to other positions that are education related (the line is sometimes fuzzy) in case the school arena doesn't pan out. Besides my teaching, the house projects keep rolling along. Shelby is very ready to tackle the big jobs, which has resulted in several downed pine trees (eight so far, more to come), including the large one in front of the porch. Our fruit trees and other trees are in place for planting, which may be happening tomorrow if plans work out - a friend of ours may be stopping by with a digging machine to knock that whole process out (fingers crossed). There is still plenty of cutting to finish up before our yards are free of pine branches, but that will happen soon enough. Our Health Inspector should also be stopping by tomorrow to give us the scoop on our septic (bad choice of words? scoop? septic?), and then we can move ahead with the back yard plans.

The kids are doing well in school, and even Gage is adjusting. Shelby is doing great in her job, and it sounds (knock on wood) like her position is going to be around for a couple years. I am placing my Master's plans on hold for now, until I find a job. That just seems to make sense to me. I would love to go back, but after I have a job to customize my degree towards, and after I am able to bring a regular paycheck into the household.

So there we have it: my update! Fall is in the air - hence the rush to plant the trees. We need heating oil and a plan to weatherize. I am not looking forward to winter, really, but it will be much nicer here at our home in the country :)  There are plenty of indoor projects to keep us busy - we have a closet to build, which leads to a better storage room upstairs. And we have a basement to get ready for canning and planting. And we haven't even been in our attic yet - who knows what that will lead to!

I shall go for now, and get back to work at home while I have some time. This weekend is the Pork Festival, so that should give us more to write about! Bye for now!
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