Almost to the finish line

I haven't posted in weeks.  Mother's day weekend was the weekend of terrible things.  We received a call Friday night that Kevin's aunt had passed, Saturday morning I woke up to a wet, soggy bedroom carpet (bathroom shower pipe busted and flooded the bedroom and bathroom), and Sunday night my brakes started grinding in my truck when we went for ice cream.  Needless to say, as nice as Mother's day was, I was happy for that week to be over.

We took off to Iowa for the funeral.  It was very nice.  Aunt Suz was a wonderful lady, full of energy and life.  She was loved by our entire family and will be missed.

Last weekend, we went to Iowa again for Kevin's sister's surprise 50th birthday party.  She was definitely surprised.  It was a wonderful night and lots of fun.  We had a great time.  We got home Sunday night and Kevin spent Memorial Day smashing apart the tiles on the bathroom floor.  Our bath has a step up in the middle of the floor and is covered with 4 inch tiles from the 80s.  The fixtures are all solid gold 80s.  I fully expect Culture Club to break out into song when I go in the bathroom, lol.  We've decided to try to fix as much as we can as possible so that we can redo the entire bathroom and make it more user friendly.  We hope to bring down that step and make the floor one level.  Kevin's father has lost a leg and this will make visits to our house much easier on him.  

I'm still desperately trying to get my garden in.  Hopefully this week.  I got some done but we've had so much rain this month (over 14 inches) that the weeds in the garden beds are over a foot tall.  All the beds I had cleared out already are filled with weeds again.  I hope to have this all done soon!!!  

This week I'll be working in the garden and taking the yucky wallpaper off of the bathroom walls.  I have to clear out the bedroom too in anticipation of getting new carpet.  It was the nicest carpet in the house too......so sad that we had to replace that one.  Oh well.  

We finished up American Heritage Girls last week.  It was nice to have that finished up.  Next year, I'm only doing advancement coordinator.  This will be much easier on me.  We're looking for a new troop coordinator now.  I'm excited because I've been lucky to have wonderful women step forward to lead different levels so that my current leaders can step down from doing two jobs and only do one.  How wonderful is that!!  Yeah!!
 

The littles will be doing spelling, math, and reading four days a week this summer.  The big girls have another two weeks of science left and then I'll have them do reading and math this summer also to catch us up some.  I'm hoping to have that done by the end of June and then start again mid-August.  We'll start full days back to school after Labor Day when my dad leaves.  

Have a wonderful week!!!

The end of the year always seems like a race

This time of year is always busy on our little homestead.  The raised garden beds are overflowing with crab grass and dandelions that need to be cleaned out.  The grass seems to grow about 4 inches a day.....or so it seems.  The barns need to be cleaned out. Its a busy time of year here. 

This year is not different around here, with a few exceptions: horse and goats.  The horse has been a lot of fun for the girls to ride.  Shiloh is a pretty good horse after working with her for a bit, we got her retrained on her lead rope.  (She hadn't been worked with for over a year so she wanted to do her own thing.)  We have a fairly large ditch in the front that is pretty steep and a pain in the rear to mow, so Kevin put up a movable electric fence for her that opens to the pasture so she can go out there and eat to her hearts content.

 Kevin also finished up the goats' pens.  We have several areas on the property that can only be pushed mowed.  They were set up that way, why we'll never know.  They could have easily extended a fence here or there so that it could all have been cut with the rider mower, but oh well.  We have goats, so we're putting them to use.  Above you can see what our fencing looks like around the pastures but the goats could escape through the holes, so last weekend hubby put wire fencing up along the posts to keep the goats in those areas.  Well, he ran out of time during the weekend so he just put up a flimsy fence.   By Thursday, we had to keep them in the barn as they got out of all three areas.  Hopefully, we'll be able to save up the money to buy fencing for two of the pastures, so that they will have a ton of room.

Above, is the littlest at riding lessons.  Their instructor has been placing her on bigger, stronger horses this year (ones with more spunk) so that she is used to riding ones that are similar to ours.  Here she's riding Charlie.
 
I have been missing Japanese food, so I looked on Amazon and was able to purchase some Yakisoba sauce and made homeade yakisoba this week.  It was delicious and we gobbled it down.
 

 Trey had to take and art class this semester at college and he chose ceramics.  I don't think he realized how much work was involved.  Above, is just one of the really neat creations he made.

The year is coming to a close for American Heritage Girls.  I'm the troop coordinator but also serve several other areas as well.  I'm glad that the year is almost over.  Below is Bug-a-bug serving refreshments at a Stars and Stripes ceremony for one of the girls in our troop.  Bug-a-bug had to organize, set up, serve, and clean up as part of her level award.  She did a fantastic job.

Although Princess is no longer a member of AHG, she came to the Stars and Stripes ceremony to celebrate with her friend, Amy.  It was a wonderful event.  We are all super proud of all Amy did.

Part of being a member of AHG, involves service to the community.  Here a few girls from our troop, including two of mine, are helping to clean out the local history center's buildings for the spring and summer.  We were in charge of dusting and sweeping out the medical building.  It was certainly interesting to see the tools of the doctors and dentists.  Interestingly, the undertaker had a corner set up in the back. 

I'm still working online and have started to work two mornings a week at the greenhouse that Princess and Bug-a-Bug are working at.  Its been a lot of fun.....and a lot of work.  I didn't realize how badly I'm out of shape.  Some stiff and sore muscles.....and  most  all of my paycheck will be buying vegetables and flowers.

I'm also getting ready to start school up in June.  I need to get on tomorrow and order my textbooks.  Fun!!

I think I've laid out the plans for next year.  The oldest are going to be doing video classes for history, science, and language arts.  Math will be a dvd also for Math-u-See.  It will free up a lot of time and stress for me.  I'm also looking into a co-op but its almost an hour drive away.  I'm not sure if we will do that or not.

Have a wonderful weeks!