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...