The Update

It has been a while since I have done an update post. I'm hoping I haven't forgotten how. Yeah, like I could ever forget how to talk. So here we go.

Some of my friends are curriculum reviewers for a homeschool magazine that I subscribe to. It is a fantastic thing. They receive curriculum in exchange for their review being posted on their blogs, chat groups, facebook, and whatever social media outlets they participate in. I had signed up to receive a couple of unit studies to review to become a reviewer myself. I have since decided that if I did that , it would add one more thing. One more thing that would take my focus away from our family, one more thing that would take my focus off what our goals are, one more thing to add to our list of things to do. As much as I would love to do that, I just cannot justify the time. I think the constant reviews and changing curriculum or adding curriculum would not benefit my family at this time. Maybe in a couple of years it will be feasible for us, but not now. To my reviewer friends, party on. I enjoy your reviews and have benefitted from many of them. Thank you for the time you take for the rest of us.

The baby girl had her very first birthday party. She normally gets a special day, but this year was different. She wanted her friends to come over. She gave me a list and I invited them. We had such a good time. The kids ran around and played, we ate cake and ice cream, we beat a pinata half to death, and she opened presents. I'll post pics later. It was a fantastic day and she was surrounded by the people that are important to her and that she loves and is loved by.

Our family took the opportunity yesterday to attend an open campus day at the United Methodist Children's Home. We went with a group from our youth group that inlcuded 12 kids and 5 adults. We got to see our former associate pastor, who is also a great friend to our family. We were served lunch and got to take a trolley tour of the campus. It was bigger than we all thought it was going to be. We were able to tour two of the houses and given insight on how they live and what their daily routines are like. The tours were given by the kids that live there and were very well presented. We were part of the traffic and clean up crew. Our older kids went and directed traffic to make sure that cars and trolleys and golf carts were all going the right way. The rest of us on clean up were given a gift. Every place we went to clean up had already been done. Ok, and thank you for that. It was a beautiful day.

The weather here for the most part has been crazy. We are used to a few days of cold, usually a couple of days at a time, maybe a week, then warm. Not this year. This year has been cold and rainy for months now. We're so water logged we squeak when we walk. Hopefully, our aquifers are full and the lakes are up. Even with all the rain, because it was so windy, we had a high fire index. Our sinuses have been overly active and have made for some miserable days. Our saving grace has been the neti pot. If you don't have one, get one. It has done wonderful things for the boy's nose. His allergies are even worse than mine, if you can believe that. They have gotten better with the introduction of organic produce and the supplements and herbals we take. But the neti pot has been fantastic for cleaning out all the extra gunk. Even the big girl, who has the least active allergies in the house, has needed it. It was a little weird for the kids at first, hubby, too, but they sure liked what it did for them. Clear breathing and less snoring has been happening here, and that is a good thing for all of us.

We had to buy a new water softener system. Ugh! Ours has finally given up on us. The bad thing is that it is still sitting in front of the washing machine, which is where hubby put it for now. He was going to install it today, but it rained. Our system needs to go outside where the other one was. Rain was not in the plan for installation. Hopefully tomorrow will be the day. We did test the water coming from the well, and it's good water. All the levels were well into the acceptable range. The only problem is in the softness. I'm ready for this to be done with. We just replaced the pressure gauge on the well, so I'm all done with water problems for awhile. We love being homeowners.

No news on Texas. The interview went well. Now we are waiting to find out if hubby got the job or not. The limbo status we are in is torture. We are living our lives as normally as possible and are trying to take one day at a time. A soon as I know something, you will, too.

Coming up we have an Easter egg hunt at church, a youth sponsored dinner, and Easter. It is going to be busy for the next couple of weeeks, so we'll see how high the stress level gets. I am trying to take one activity at a time. You know I'll be there with my trusty Kodak taking as many pics as I can.

That's the run down. I'm sure there are things that I've left out. I will also post about our field trip and then some pics of somethings the kids made that are really cool.

Have a great day!