Ok, I'm still here, just been canning, dehydrating and freezing like crazy.  My DH says I'm going to snap like a green bean if I keep up this pace.  What he doesn't understand is that I love doing this.  It's fun to me to see all my hard work lined up on the shelves and my freezer full.  The Lord has blessed us with quite a bounty when I thought we wouldn't have much due to the garden being in so late.  So... I can, freeze and dehydrate.  Praise God.

I did get out my books and such to plan for our lessons.  Yep, got them out all right.  Ok, next topic.

The goat baby aka Pepper is so cute.  It's going to be hard to sell him when the time comes.  I've decided we need goat babies around all the time.  I love them.  Our calf will be coming home in another month.  We can't wait!  We've been looking at milking machines for both goat and cows.  I think we'll probably milk by hand at first then switch to the machine.  I guess it depends on how hard it is and how much hassle either one can be.  Seems to me that hand miliking would be easier than dealing with machinery.  But the word has it that the machine would keep the milk cleaner.  I guess we'll figure it out when we get to that.

I get back to this blog more faithfully as the season winds down.  Keep checking back!  God Bless

We have a brand new bouncing baby boy!

The Lord is amazing to us.  We were coming back from lunch and church and we here this horrible bawling from the goat back by the barn.  We went a running to find her in labor.  10 minutes later we have a baby boy named Pepper.  God's timing is perfect.  We got to see the birth of our first animal on our new farm.  Mom and baby are doing well.  I'd give weight and such, but I dont' know these things! Ha!

Isn't she cute?  What shall it be?  Peaches or Blossom?  She's only 7 weeks old right now and not weaned yet.  She won't be coming to our farm until October.  We love her already.

Sunsets are amazing around here, the colors of this sunset are very true this particular evening.  There is a storm riding along the southern edge of this one making these colors I think. But truly, they are amazing here, plus being in a corn field, you can see for  miles in every direction.  Storm watching is fun too.

Sunrises can be great, too

The other day the boys and I saw an ugly creature.  Can God's creatures be ugly?  this one was!  It was a bee on steroids.  It was huge!  The insect was attacking a cicada and stinging it over and over.  It was horrifying but intriguing to watch all the same.  It seemed like it saw us looking at it from the back window of our truck when it lifted up its tail end and squirted at us!  It continued to sting the cicada, picked it up and flew off with it!  Uggghhh it was awful!  I wish I had my camera to take pictures of it, but we were leaving to go somewhere.

Speaking of creatures, I found two red hornworms.  Does anyone know what these are?  I can't seem to find any information about them.  They look just like a tomato worm only a beautiful red and they like the grape leaves (of course).  Any help on this one would be great.  I've had a bit of picking to do with regards to the tomato worms.  The chickens love them!

Our summer lessons are moving along nicely.  Yesterday, instead of doing lessons, we went to an early American museum for central Illinois.  It was very nicely done and the boys enjoyed it.  Out behind the building there was a childeren's garden that was fun to walk through.  Many types of heirloom varieties in the vegetables.  They also had a one room school museum to go into fully equiped.  I liked explaining what the switch was for and made a suggestion about incorporating it into our school.  It didn't go over very well    They did learn new things which was my goal anyway.  Over lunch I found out what three things each boy had learned that was new.  It was nice to hear them talk about the items and we had a great conversation.  This to me is learning at its best.

My garden is going crazy!  I've run out of things to do with cucumbers.  Any suggetions besides pickles since I think I've made every variety there is.  I'm manging to keep up with the zucchini and beans.  The squash will be plentiful, now I just need to figure out when to pick it.  My sweet corn looks great but the bugs think it looks great too.  Don't know if I will get anything from these stalks.  Pumpkins are forming and I found a small watermelon.  For this garden going in a month late, things sure are looking good.

Tomorrow we go to another church although we've been to this one before.  I'm looking forward to finding a place to be.  It's hard not having a church home.    Pray for us to have discernment for finding a place to go and call home.

Yes, the goat is due with a kid.  Not sure when though and we are excited about it.  Our chickens are growing and look like miniature little versions of what they will be.  One night Ben forgot to count his chickens before putting them to bed and in the morning he found one outside.  He was so mortified about it. So now he remembers to count his chickens!  We have also acquired two kittens a couple of weeks ago and they are cute.

Today we had a great connection for us regarding a Jersey calf or even a cow.  Who knows what the Lord will provide.  At this same place I was able to get my raw milk and honey.  I was so excited and happy to at last have my raw milk.  Now I can make my yogurt and actually eat the ice cream I make.  I'm also going to try making some soft cheeses.  This was indeed, a good day.

Our lessons have been going along ok.  I was wanting to accomplish more days a week but oh well.  They are doing so well with what we are doing plus all the new things we are learning every day on this farm.  God has indeed blessed us and put us right where we need to be.   We are still looking for a church home and I know we'll find one eventually.  We had a pastor and his wife over from one church we are interested in.  We'll continue our search and interview as we go.

My garden is doing great and starting to produce.  I've been picking zucchini (surprised?), two kinds of cucumbers and a random tomato.  I've also had some lettuce and spinach.  The spinach has bolted already so I'll try for a fall crop.  We decided in this family that we love rhubarb.  We've never had it before and this house came with quite a stand of it.  So I picked some and canned a sauce and made a cobbler from one of the jars. Boy was it yummy.  I'm planning on canning more of that!  I've also been playing with my dehydrator that I purchased.  I've been using it for zucchini, rhubarb and apples.  Tomorrow I will do more applese from our scrappy apple tree.  They aren;'t pretty to just eat but are great underneath the skins.  I have quite alist of foods I want to can this year so I'm just getting warmed up.  We went blueberry picking at a U-pick place and I think we will be going to a pick it yourself sweet corn for freezing.  I love this country living.

I really have no news regarding homeschooling yet.  Maybe when we start up in the fall I can get back on track, probably after canning is over with.  I have a feeling we will be busy over the next couple of months!

We acquired a goat on Friday and she is a cutie.  She is very shy right now and I hope she comes around to us.  We saved her life actually, she was going to be someone's dinner.   Now Aaron has his animal to take care of.  We are still looking for a Jersey calf to raise up.

Below are a few pictures of what God has blessed us with:

Ben and one of his Jersey Giant chicks

Our new goat with no name - I like Daisy

Jersey Giant chick

Our new farmhouse!

My 2400 sq Ft veggie garden.  It really looks better than this, it didn't photograph well

One of our barns.  This is the original one made of wood.

We are loving it here and getting use to a schedule.  It is difficult to choose a new church, but we are taking our time in finding a new church home.  Even though we are in a pretty remote area, we are blessed with many options. I was hoping to find a church that has AWANA for older children, but that doesn't seem to be the case around here.  I probably will have to drop that idea and the boys are disappointed in that part, although they said it would be okay if our new church doesn't offer it.  Maybe this is what the Lord may want us to do?  Start a Trek AWANA?  I guess we'll see!

I decided that since we moved to a farm in Illinois instead of moving to Tennessee, I better replace my template with something more appropriate.  This reminds me of our red barn we have and although we have an old tractor, ours is orange and NOT American made.  Hey, it does the trick.  This is more of what it look like around here.  We have a John Deere tractor dealer down the road from us, so we get to look at all the cool machinery.

Our pool is finally up and running.  Today it's pretty clear even after my big mistake yesterday.  This job is for me and the boys to take care of, but the machinery is to be mine and since I don't know much about them, I'm learning very quickly what NOT to do .  Yesterday I decided to clean out the skimmer basket due to there being lots of bugs and such in there.  Not a problem, so I accomplished that.  Then there's this basket in the pump area also full of beetles so I thought I would just unplug the pump and unscrew the cap and empty the filter.  Well to my surprise mega water came out at me !  I was able to get the cap back on thankfully (the beetles were flushed out by now as you can imagine) and replug in the filter.  Just as I did that, my older son said "OOhhhhh that's gross!!!"  so I ask what and he says "Mom!  LOok what's going into the pool!!!!!  Well it was all the nastly water from the filter and it was backwashing into the pool !!!!!  Oh Brother!!!   I've read the instructions on this equipment, albeit very limited and it doesn't say anything about this happening or what I did wrong.  Well my hubby came home and said to check for valves on both ends of the pool lines to shut off the water coming out of the pool (which we don't have) and the valve for the water going back into (I think this is on the filter)  That would at least stop the outpouring of water.  It doesnt' explain the nasty water that ended up back in the pool.  At least this morning it looks much better again.  Probably will swim in it tomorrow.  I think this was an America's Funniest Home Video moment! 

We are managing 2 days a week for lessons.  My hubby has been taking alot of Fridays off and that messes up our days.  Oh well.  I love our new piano teacher.  She seems to be able to connect with the boys really well.  Yesterday she taught them how to make oragami birds! (after lessons of course)  I also love the fact she comes to our house.  Really love that.  I've been loving this pace for us and I hope we can get into a better groove in the fall.  When I think of all the things I want to do, I have to remember what it is that God wants us to do.  He has such a way of changing plans.  

We are learning so much every day about our surroundings and things that I don't necessarily want a lesson in (the pool) but they are lessons none the less.  Aaron is learning about the different plants Japanese beetles like/love (he gets one cent for every beetle caught), where the praying mantises are, how to best climb every trees we have, managing money, and learning to use small tools to build things out in the barn, how to care for the cattle and hopefully soon he will have a goat to mind.  Ben is learning all about chickens, how to look up info on the computer about them and take care of them, building things in the barn with Aaron (he bought himself a hammer yesterday) he's loves medieval things (hence the building of weapons ei swords, shields, daggars out of wood in the barn) and both of them are learning alot about responsibility.  We have a lot to take care of now and we all need to really pitch in.

Tomrrow the hubby is taking the day off and we are going to our local fair.  People around are upset because I guess this year there are no rides.  I don't know why they don't have them but I don't mind and the kids haven't said anything.  I believe it should be this way since it is a true country fair.  We are looking forward to going regardless.  Who knows what we'll drag home!

I love this farm life!! God has so blessed us.

Well we've been on the new homestead for three and a half weeks now and we are lovin it!  There's lots to do for work and the boys are usually very busy with some chore or another.  I've been busy cleaning out gardens (slow process, they are very bad), planted a new veggie garden of 2400 sq ft! Yikes! and just putting the house together.  In a few weeks the kitchen will be torn apart for a remodel job.  Lots going on all the time and never a dull moment.

I've decided to put Weaver on hold until fall maybe.  I gave the boys a month off for the move and now I just have them doing math, devotions, and a simple geography workbook I found at Sam's and piano 3 days a week to keep their minds engaged.  I am looking forward to getting on some schedule and we are getting there slowly. I'm not even sure about fall since I got my garden in so late, I figure I'll be behind schedule for canning and such.  Have to play it by ear.  I did manage to find all my homeschool books and have found a good spot for them, at least for now.  Boy was everyone complaining about having to move all my books!!!

We got our baby chicks last Friday and are they cute!  We are now hoping to find a bottle calf Jersey milking cow, too and maybe a goat.  In the spring we will be getting a couple of piglets and some cattle for the freezer.

Gee, all this talk of the farm.  Maybe I should be on the homesteading blog site instead?  Naw.  This is learning at its best as far as I'm concerned.  It's good to get our noses out of the books and learn what is real.

God has so blessed us for this move.  It was difficult and a bit messy but we made it and we are having a ball.  I will have pictures soon. 

Today Aaron found baby praying mantises.  We have a lot of them to find, too.  The egg sacs are all over the place.  Very cool.  God's creation is all around us and it's fun to explore and learn about it.

We are nine days away from finally moving to the farm. It is not the farm below, but it is just as wonderful.  We are all excited and eager to get going.  Our packing is going well and the house is half empty.

God is so good and His timing is perfect.  It was hair raising at times, I'm not going to lie, but I tried to keep my faith that the Lord would carry us through and give us great things.  It was definately a test of waiting on the Lord. Whew! 

We started our break for about a month so I can focus on finishing packing and such and then of course the move and getting use to our new surroundings.  I figure after about a month, we'll find some little things to keep us engaged, math, science projects, just something to keep us fresh.

I'll be out of service for  awhile so I hope to have some pictures when I get back,

God Bless

Greetings!

It's been awhile and for good reason.  We've been trying to get moved and it is not going very well.  Our house has sold twice since I last wrote and we are suppose to close May 29th.  Now the pretty little farm below has been nothing but a bummer since the beginning.  So we don't know if we will end up there or not.  We also have started looking elsewhere and found another wonderful place in a different area.  I'd say we are running out of time here, but the Lord knows when the time will be.  I have complete faith that God will take care of us and plant us well.

In the middle of all this, I've continued to do lessons most days.  We are now in Vol 2 Chapter 8 with the focus on God's protection.  I ended up redoing the schedule for this one.  It just didn't initially flow for me.  So instead God decided we should break out each body system we are suppose to learn about and do a lapbook.  These have been fun.  I have to applaude being able to purchase lapbooks from either Currclick.com or Knowledgebox.com.  You can purchase ebooks for lapbooks, print them off on neat paper, and cut them out.  You still fill them in yourself and do the research but everything is right there for you.  Some ladies are awesome at lapbooks and spending the time coming up with ideas, well I'm just not good at that and I thank the Lord for these companies I can get materials from.  It's nice to break up things once in a while.

We finished our heart lapbooks and are continuing to gather our little books for the entire human body.  This one won't be finished for a while until we hit all the diffferent body systems.  We are adding to it with the entire cardiovascular system and the nervous system plus the brain.  I remember something in having to do with the eyes also.  I smell an eye dissection coming up!  Below are the pictures of the lapbooks.  I will add the heart my one son decided to make out of clay another day.  He's not finished yet painting it.

There is another page but this will not let me upload it.  Says I dont' have enough space whatever that means.  Maybe I need to clean out my picture folder.

Today we went to a park with a lake and did our lessons outside today.  It was a beautiful day early on.  Then the guys spent about an hour poking around to see what they could find in the water.  I wish I had more thought when I started to pack and not have put all my field guides away.  I did that since I thought we were ending up in a certain place.  Now I'm regretting that.  Oh well. 

Over the next two weeks we will continue to work on this chapter.  Next week will be the nervous system and the brain.  For our final week well will be doing the weaponry (catapults and such)  Sounds like fun.  This will put us a week and a half away from moving and I can concentrate on that then.

Please pray for us and that we continue to have faith in God's timing for everything.  We believe we are in God's will, but struggling with the timing. 

Yesterday we went to a Native American Indian museum for our field trip on the Volume 2 chapter7 study on Indians.  It was a great exhibit and hopefully the boys were able to get a glimpse of what life was like for them.  I was particulary interested in them knowing about the Indians that lived in our area.  I guess it's sort of difficult depending on what time period.  It seems there was a lot of pushing and pulling with the different tribes.

The boys have started to build a diorama of an Indian homeplace.  They both have tepees, but the Indians from our area lived in wigwams.  I guess we need to rethink that one!   Today, we'll focus on crafts and maybe food that they ate.  This museum was great in that it showed all of this stuff.  There was even a life sized wigwam and some 3rd grade kids had built a wigwam model for 6-10 family groups to live in.  Personally, I don't see how 3rd graders could have built these without a ton of adult intervention just having raised three of my own.  It was a wonderful project though and very detailed.

We also have been looking at the holidays and their orgins.  Each holiday I get hung up on something.  (see below for Christmas!)  For Easter, it's the timing of it.  Why do we follow the solar calendar for Easter and not the lunar?  I would think it should line up with the Hebrew calendar since Christ was crucified at Passover.  It just makes more sense to me and makes me realize how messed up we have become.  Seeing eggs all over the place and bunnies and such.  Ugh!  For Sunday school, my hubby and I did a Messianic Passover meal with the kids.  I went to the store to find a lamb made out of candy or anything that was a lamb to be in place of the real thing.  Do you think I could find any?  NOOOO! But there were sure lots of chicks, bunnies and eggs to choose from.

The boys also made bread and unleavened bread.  It turned out fabulous but they thought the unleavened was horrible.  We follow the recipe in the Weaver book and it wasn't very good at all.  I was thinking more along the lines of a tortilla but this was different.  Their bread turned out just great though.  It was fun playing with the yeast and watching it sponge.  I learned quite a bit about yeast I never knew before.  It amazes me how many things we take for granted and know nothing about!  I love homeschooling  I get smarter everyday!  I just hope my audience is too!

I'm wanting to finish off this chapter by the end of the week. Next week we'll take a spring break.  I'll need to figure out if I want to start the next chapter or not.  It's 25 days long and it would take us into May since we do co-op on Fridays.  Maybe we'll put Weaver away until after we move in May or until fall.  I was wanting to get to the tabernacle project for the summer and do the American History in the fall.  Not sure if it will work out that way.  I"ll need to look more closely at the next chapter and see if I can squash it into 16 days.  Then again, I would love to take the summer off and enjoy our new home. Decisions, decisions.

The purchase of the new place and the sale of ours seems to be rolling along just fine so far.  I've started packing and the boxes are piling up.  My hubby says I'll have it all done in the next week!  I doubt that, but I do want to pack at my leisure and not have to just throw things in boxes because I've run out of time.  I want to know what's in the boxes so I can find stuff at the other end.  My plan is to unpack on rainy days this summer and not focus too much on it.  Of course we have different needs at the new house.  Here, our computer station is built into a closet, so we'll need to come up with a compter area.  Here we have a couple of built in bookshelves, there we'll need to get more shelving put up.  I'll also need to set up our homeschool area.  Here we have a nice room with counter tops to do projects on and cabinets to store supplies and curriculum.  There, well I'm not sure what I will do. I have ideas though. 

One thing that I like but will be interesting is that the rooms have lots of windows.  We have them here too but I still have lots of wall space.  There, there isn't as much wall space to work with, especially in the bedrooms.  I may get my wish and the kids will just have to get rid of a lot of their stuff since there won't be much room to store it. Besides, they'll be too busy taking care of all the animals! 

We just started Volume 2 chapter 7 this week.  Again, due to the upcoming move, I seem very disjointed.  I did create a schedule for myself and it is working for the most part.  There is occassionally a disruption but really it's not so bad.

Today we were suppose to learn about yeast and bake bread and unleavened bread but we didn't get to it.  Tomorrow is the day. 

We have been using SWR for the last month and a half.  Boy is there a learning curve on this.  I really like it and I'm learning so much about our language and the boys are catching on to it also, but it does require me to spend a bit of time preparing for it.  It's worse and Weaver!  I love to plan Weaver, but this is hard to do.  The planning is easy, but it's implimenting it that is hard for me.  We 've been so relaxed over the past couple of years about spelling and such and now I know it's time to get moving on it.  It seems to help with waiting so you aren't reteaching the same thing over and over.  It seems that they catch on fast now.  There is automatic review built into the program which I like.  It's just sitting down to learn the next chapter before I teach it to them.  They are also at different levels so that makes it harder.  I do like the program though.

I've ordered the boxes for moving so I guess it's really happening!  I decided to buy boxes instead of running around looking for used ones at grocery stores.  I do not want to invest the time into that so I chose to buy them.  It's really not too bad if you do some research.  They should be here tomorrow.

Here's the new house

The newer barn

The old barn

I can't wait to spend time on the porch!

And how about hanging out at the pool!

And finally, a swing out by the pond overlooking the fields

God has been busy at our house lately.  His goodness is overflowing and wonderful.  This road we are travelling hasn't been without trials, but He has said we are to work for all good things.  This new life is a blessing from above.  May 30th is the big day.  I'll keep you posted as time goes along.

I can't believe it, we're moving onto our dream farm!  The Lord has been busy at our home lately and has sold our house in 6 days, and a contract on a beautiful farm in the country.  We'll have 16 acres, a large pond, an old farmhouse that's been redone (it's a peach!), a big pole barn with the old barn still standing.  It also has many mature fruit trees and vines and brambles that crank out produce.   There's eleven acres in alfalfa and fescue for baling.  We are soooo excited.  I'm not looking forward to packing up 14 years worth of stuff though 

Because of all of this craziness, our homeschool has suffered academically.  It has been hit or miss and I've been basically dumping their work on them saying, "Here, get'er done!"  This is not my style as I like to be very involved in the learning process.  So starting today, I have created a schedule for myself (horrors!) to keep myself on track the next 3 months until moving day.  I've been letting every little thing get ahead of my usual priorities of being with my boys.  No house stuff until after 1:30!  My mornings are dedicated to the boys and that's final! (Although tomorrow we do have to evacuate for the home inspection, but we'll just go to the library for our studies instead, sigh)  It would be a great museum day, but I'm broke until Friday. Oh well.

We are in the home stretch of Volume 2 chapter 6.  We'll be done with this one on Monday.  I've liked it well enough, but like I said, the house stuff really put a crimp in our days lately.  I feel disjointed so I need to get off of the computer and move on to my next activity to stay on track.

Pray for smooth sailing with all this house stuff.

I finally managed a family picture minus my daughter.  It's not very good so bear with me as I slowly learn how to do all this techy stuff.

My dd is home now and I'm so thankful for this.  It's great having her back.  She is enrolled in the local college and is trying to find a better job.  Besides wanting her own business, I've turned her on to possibly dog breeding.  So now she will be researching what breed to have and all the work and costs involved.  I'm actually excited about this since I love dogs so much.  This is only one business item she wants to do. She will look into other things and hopefully get a few things going.  I'm hoping we can come up with a family business together.  I feel she can thrive now and grow into young womanhood.  Now we just need to get the boyfriend back to college so she can have more focus

We will be starting back with Weaver on Monday and I can't wait.  I know we all need a break from our normal duties but I don't like it very much.  I didn't mind it last week but this week has been too long.

We had a wonderful Christmas and it was relaxing and meaningful.  No stress at all.  Loved it!  Christmas Eve we went to church to sing songs and worship the Lord, then we went for Chinese food that was totally delicious.  We came home and opened our gifts and had dessert.  Lovely.  Christmas morning was our stocking exchange.  This went really well.  All these years I've filled the stockings and nobody ever did mine so I bought my own stuff.  Well I decided that enough was enough and we drew names for the stockings.  It worked out very well and the kids had a ball at the dollar store to fill their persons stocking.  After this my dad came over and we had brunch and hung out at our house until evening.  I had cooked a roast in the crock pot to take over to my grandmas house for dinner since she doesn't drive anymore and lives a bit far to drive her back and forth.  It truly was a devine Christmas.

My picture is of us horsebackriging in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia after Thanksgiving.  We had a grand time.  The image came out a bit weird in the trasfer so I need to get better at this.  Hopefully you'll see more of us in the future.

Happy New Year and may God Bless you in it.