Christmas was wonderful, busy, and a perfect passage into the new year. Our kids were very giving and creative (as always), and they totally deserve the gifts that they received. We spent our Christmas Eve at home, together. Tiffany arrived in the evening and is staying for a few days, and we enjoyed David's (Kait's boyfriend) company from Christmas Eve through breakfast. On Christmas day, we visited Grandma's house, then Shelby's family, and, finally, my parent's home to wrap up the night. It was a happy and exhausting day! Now we rest and prepare for a new year. We have gone through so many changes this year and look forward to even more during 2012. One of the family gifts from us this year were two alpacas that we are scheduled to receive next month from Spruce Hill Farm. The kids are so excited, and we now have a defined start time to our livestock farm. We will put up temporary fencing until we can put up our barn in the spring, and then we will also add shee...

I was going to start looking at my goals for 2012, but I figured I should look at what I had planned for this year, and see how well I followed through. Or not. So, here we go: My New Year's Resolutions for 2011: Get a job! Looks like we are good staying in the SW Ohio region for Shelby's work, so we're running with that. Which means I can seek employment, preferably teaching, or something somewhat in the education field. Hmmm...I don't have a full-time job yet, but I am subbing pretty regularly until I get there. And I am actively looking. So we'll extend this into 2012. Get a house!! Oh, how we've waited for this! We should be ready and able to get our family farm sometime before the kids end this school year! We're forecasting our buy using Shelby's paycheck only, but we're definitely going to need to get my career going, as well, to keep up the pace. YES! Huge accomplishment! We did not get it before last school year ended, but we did...

Life is an amazing thing. You think you know where you are going, or what you want, and so you guide the reins in that direction. Yet, somehow you arrive in a totally different place. When I was divorced from my first marriage, I assumed that I might find someone some day, but that kids were probably not going to be a part of that relationship. Then I met Shelby, and my world changed drastically for the better - we have three beautiful children together, plus the fortune of having our two girls from my previous marriage in our lives as well. When we moved to Florida, we were ready to settle forever and buy a house close enough to the beach to be able to go after work whenever we wanted. And now, here we are, planning the livestock and garden of our new home in rural Ohio. Our journey would make a great book - our adventure has always been to move forward, strive to reach our goals, but to never, ever lose the fun and love in life and our family! The difference of our life between Jan...

Last night we turned the clocks back and gained an hour sleep, which was awesome because I have some sort of bug that is stuffing up my nose and making me cough. Not too bad - just annoying and tiring. Seasons out here are different that where we lived before. We've enjoyed watching the corn grow in the fields behind our house, and the soy beans grow in the fields across the street. The seasons are marked by planting and harvesting, newborn animals in the fields, and the bravery and friskiness of animals who are ready to mate. It's a beautiful way to watch the year pass, and it all puts the season and life in perspective a little bit. Fall festivals make a little more sense when they coincide with harvesting crops and marketing mature animal products, and Spring is even more renewing. Right now we're dying to see the corn field behind us be harvested, as have most of the other fields in the area been in the past few weeks. Most of our trees are planted and much of our b...

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 sto...

FYI - We are (have been) recycling again :) We do have to take it to a recycling "center", which is a recycle dumpster at IGA or by the landfill, or in Morning Sun, I think...that one is pretty vague. Anyways, I just wanted to hit on the fact that "green" is still very much a part of our plan. Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

http://yourmemoriesbymandy.weebly.com/  Here we are, a relaxing Sunday morning before a relaxing Sunday day! The weekend before now has been a busy weekend of visiting with friends who dared to make the long drive out here, and back, to see us. It's weird how our apartment life seems so far behind us now - a closed door that I dare not forget but care not to open again. Since we moved in, nearly two months ago, we've been able to have family and friends over to visit and even stay overnight. Our open house brought thirty-nine people into our house, comfortably! We (I'm sure I can speak for all of us here) absolutely love having the space and the surroundings to enjoy having guests, which was not the case in our apartment. I also appreciate knowing that we have still have good ties with friends and family, even after the years that we did not see much of them because of our apartment. It is so nice to have people over, to cook outside and sit on the porch in good weather...

Oh, my goodness! So long without a post so I need to at least throw a few lines down! We did get our house, the Blue House, after a drawn-out closing that included the new septic (which we still need to get the down-low about from the Health Inspector). Or, I guess I should just say WE GOT OUR HOUSE!! We love every inch of it, from the curvy driveway to the poor back yard. We closed and moved in on June 29th and have been SO busy ever since with moving, Aullwood, life, etc. I had a great summer teaching at Aullwood's summer camp, but the drive ends up being around an hour each way, which will have to be a consideration next year. We are mostly moved in and the space is very comfortable. Our crap-ton of living went from the tightly packed apartment and flowed into the open spaces of our two-story home, garage, and yard with much relief. Like pouring a five gallon bucket of water into an empty tub. Like releasing the air from a balloon into the atmosphere. Like cutting the ropes of t...

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.9

I've gone through so many papers tonight - ideas, worksheets, and themes that I've used and collected over the past five years. It's been a great look backwards at the experiences I've had in this process towards becoming a teacher. I SO need a classroom of my own and need to get this party started!Looking forward to watching my teaching develop and grow with my career, hoping for that opportunity at a school soon! Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.9

My back is achin' after a very busy day yesterday! We packed, packed, and then packed some more! Mostly in the bedrooms - Shelby and I played keep or toss and cleared off the over-stuffed shelves in our bedroom and closet...then we took down the shelves. The kids, all of them, started packing their stuff and put a pretty healthy dent in that process. We worked pretty much all day, made a trip to KFC (drive through) for an 8pm dinner, and managed to finish up for chillin' at around 10pm. Then Shelby kicked my booty at Skip-Bo (again) before we collapsed in bed for the night. Hopefully Grandma won't check her garage/our storage for a little bit...at least until we can tell her that it will be out by ______ :)  Gotta do it all over again today, this time in the dining room (shelves), pantry, and hopefully, closets. Then I'll start on my Aullwood teaching prep tomorrow. It's gonna be a busy week, and a busy summer (hopefully). I think we can, I think we can, I think we ...

 Summer break is finally here! At least for the kids, that is...they are out of school, but things are (hopefully) ramping up for our move! As it stands: the appraisal was performed last Wednesday and we should hear the results early next week. If that went well, we're looking at moving on the week of the 20th :)  If it did not go well, then we're delayed. That would be bad. We're now to the point where we have to move forward with the moving process in order to be ready in time to move. We've started packing, and Kait gave her notice at work in to transfer to Richmond July 1. Tiff has decided to move in with a friend in order to stay in Dayton - not sure that I agree this is the best for her, but she feels that it is and I hope that it is. We canceled the paper and will be canceling cable, so that we can be sure they both definitely stop before we leave this apartment. Most of our potted trees and bushes are doing great, but a few did not make it through the winter. I ...

  April was a very busy month...time to catch up without being too wordy :) I've enjoyed subbing at Greenmont several times in the past few weeks. So far I've taught kindergarten, first, and second grades in this role, and I really have enjoyed them all! Next week I will sub in Cora's class - that should be fun! And I have an interview with Oakwood for a music teacher position on Thursday. That should be interesting, and good practice. I've also kept busy throughout the month with free webinars and classes, as often as I can get them when I'm available. It's a great way to stay in the game and keep my brain in teacher mode. Montgomery County Solid Waste had an awesome Population Connection class with plenty of teacher materials, for free! I am big on community resources, and we are lucky to have so many in this area! Other highlights this month: Grandma's 96th at Aunt Barbara's house, visited Shelby's old roommate Le while he was in town, went throu...

Shelby's Crocus  Spring is finally here, officially! Yay! SOOOO glad I can say "winter is over", at least as far as the calendar goes :) Life is becoming busier as Shelby's home shows and our school events come into season. I subbed for Greenmont on Friday, which was good for me and so nice for my teaching ego. Hopefully it was as good for the teacher - I'll have to follow up and make sure I'm making the impression that I want at this school. Shelby and I took the kids to Greenmont's Family Fun Day yesterday, and they roamed the school well enough on their own while Shelby and I worked the bounce house. And we won a night at Magic Castle from the raffle that we invested in! Afterwards, we, and a couple of the kids' friends, enjoyed our first root beer stand meal of the season - Mmmm! The warmth of the season has hit often enough to allow the trees to bud and the crocuses to bloom. All of these things seem to brighten the place, and our spirits, a b...

So, I realized that it has been nearly two months since my last written post, which is not what I wanted from this blog. I get busy, or frustrated, or blah, and the blog settles to the bottom of my list. So here I am to bring things back up to speed and to catch up. First of all, we're still here. So there's that. We remain a family of seven, dreaming and creating our life together, and supporting each other through the frustrating times. We are all lucky in that respect. Shelby has finally received her promotion and is getting paid the appropriate salary for that jump! She is so awesome and has deserved the title and paycheck for so long - we're all so proud of her, especially me! It looks like Annie will be her Field Coordinator once she gets through the admin process, which will be a great help. So we pretty much have the green light for the Dayton area (unless fate changes that), and also Indiana, which Shelby will also allegedly have both hands in. We're looking a...

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.6

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5 A mid-winter thaw :)

It's a warmer day in the middle of January, after a long weekend which we stayed busy looking at houses/areas, attending a birthday party, and visiting with friends. The snow is nearly melted with the slow and steady rain, but we're expecting colder temperatures and some minor snow later. We'll enjoy the grass while we can! Shelby is at a meeting and the kids are not home quite yet, so I'll try to post some thoughts. We went looking at houses on Saturday - houses that we saw on the internet and decided to check out in real life. We're not ready enough to look inside these homes, but wanted a sense of the areas these homes are in and the actual condition of these homes behind their strategic photos. We discovered a beautiful part of the state out west in Camden and all the way down to Oxford. We drove by an awesome home in College Corner! A bit above our price range, but a beautiful home in a beautiful setting - what a great town! We had lunch in Oxford at a place ca...

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5 We received a lot of snow today, just a little to late for a snow day off of school! This is me picking up the kids from school :)