New Things About Us

We've started attending a church with which we are quite pleased. They are Reformed Baptist, the pastor and his wife are homeschoolers, worship is family integrated (yay!) and is an all day affair including shared luncheon for those who desire to partake, the teaching is right on (yay! again), and my mom is even coming with us. Feels so good to be back in fellowship with a body of believers after having been out of it for over a year. Oh, and I'm sure our pastor, D. Scott Meadows, would be happy for me to share a link to SermonAudio where his teachings are available for your listening pleasure and edification. He just taught an excellent, eye-opening (for some) series on Luke 19:11-27.

My back is doing better! I won't say my chiropractor is working wonders because it's been a loooong, slooooow recovery. He says I must have had this problem for a very long time. But progress is being made and I am optimistic about being outdoors come spring planting and taking care of the chickens and guineas without fear of breaking in two the minute I pick up a bucket or wield a hoe.

Anna-Rose is signed up to begin taking lessons from a local artist in a few weeks. This will be a first for her and she is quite excited. We know she has a God-given talent, and I have been stymied as to how to nurture her progress; although I'm a creative person by nature, by no stretch of the imagination am I able to draw. She, on the other hand, has been churning out reams (literally) of fanciful and humorous pictures for years. I have countless boxes in the attic filled to the brim with her work. Her homeschool portfolio has pages of her visual interpretations of whatever we are reading or studying. This works out very well for us as she has the type of personality in which both brain and body are compelled to be busy simultaneously.

We are very relaxed (not to say lax) in our homeschool methods, so establishing and adhering to a strict routine of homeschooling in the mornings while reserving the afternoons for other activities is a new approach for us. One of the reasons I haven't been blogging, commenting, or even reading blogs in the past few weeks is that I have had to prioritize, and days will often go by when I have not even used the computer except to check the weather forecast or catch up on the news. Hopefully, in the future, I will be able to devote a certain portion of the day to blogging.

Calvin is getting *snipped* the day after tomorrow, poor guy. For any newcomers to my blog, Calvin is NOT my husband. He is the kitten we adopted the week before Christmas. I hope he retains his snugglesome, goofball personality after being surgically emasculated.

A Valentine's Day snowstorm graced us with several inches on top of the few that we already had. Add to that relentless, icy winds and you have a miserably cold winter. I don't remember ever having so many windy days as we have experienced this year. The birds have hardly ever been able to come out of the coop because of the severe low temperatures and wind chills. I prefer my frozen birds to be butchered first, thank you. My mom tells a story about the time she was a little girl and went to visit her uncle's farm up in northern Maine during one winter. Her aunt brought their chickens in to the kitchen to thaw out and get warm. Wouldn't my crew dearly love that? My brother who lives at the northernmost edge of the White Mountains has about four feet of snow. Their average temperature has been around -10 F. I told him he can keep it. This old house is quite drafty so my best friend these days is an electric blanket.

Poor Anna-Rose is suffering from her first virus of the year. She always gets zonked with a post-nasal drip that upsets her tummy. Not fun when you have a sore throat, too. Since she doesn't always like to take the herbal remedies I offer, my usual protocol is to give her lots to drink with extra probiotics mixed in. That usually does the trick in short order. She's comfortably ensconced on the sofa with her favorite blanket nibbling a rice cake while enjoying a Wallace and Gromit DVD. Watching movies and reading books have been the order of the day. When I get my voice back, we'll continue with The Horse and His Boy, third book in the Narnia series.

Both of the boys had birthdays this month. Dylan turned 29 (gasp!) on the 1st, and Isaac turned 19 on the 12th. Since both boys were born in February, I always wonder if I had another girl whether she would be an October baby like Anna-Rose.

What's happening in your neck of the woods?