Penelope Says

P:  I'm a genius, Mom!
Me:  What's a genius?
P:  It flies with wings.


Seamus has been telling lots of knock-knock jokes, and everyone but he and Penelope have now left the table.  Seamus begins again, "Knock! Knock!"  And Penelope shouts out, "Come in!"

24/28 days

This Spring has been exciting with our cat being pregnant and a hen deciding to sit on a nest of guinea fowl eggs!  Not to mention the usual excitement of Spring after months and months of severely cold weather. 

Our kittens are one week old today.  Their eyes are still closed.  What a fun surprise, waiting to see how many kittens she would have and what colors they would be!!  I could hardly contain myself - going out there two or three times a day to see if she was still pregnant! 

And now we are T minus 4 days for guinea eggs to begin hatching.  I don't expect high fertility rates because I sold some eggs to a local woman and she didn't have very good success hatching them in her incubator, but one or two new guinea keets would be so exciting for me!  Look at all my exclamation points in this post!  I really am living my dream.

May 5, 2018

Yesterday Seamus turned SEVEN.  Where did time go?  This year one of my kids will reach double digits!  I've been a mother for nearly ten years.  I think I just need to sit with that for a while. 

I try to pay attention inside of every day and every moment.  I try to live that way, aware of right now.  And the reality that ten years has passed still takes me unawares. 

Important things that I haven't written about that are a huge part of our lives:

• For nearly three years I have made sourdough bread every week for my family.
• November 2016 my Mom got Guillan Barre syndrome, and suffered a brain injury.
• March 2017 we moved to Dead Horse Creek and started living the country life.
• February 2018 Derek's dad developed a brain bleed and suffered brain damage leaving Derek some really big shoes to fill at work.
• I have been learning about meditation, essential oils, vibrational frequencies, and how all these things tie into my faith in God in really cool ways.
• I have grown a set of wonderful friends over the last six years, at church and through the homeschool community, but a few have become my family:  Angeline, Jennifer, Rochelle and Elaine.
• For three years now we have butchered pigs in the Fall with Mike and Angeline. 
• Six years ago we began attending Covenant Mennonite Church
• Making the decision to buy into the family business
• Learning about parenting and homeschooling through authors like Shefali Tsabary, John Holt, and Gordon Neufeld

I am sure there are many more.  But for today I will leave it here.