Life has been surprisingly calm the last few weeks. It has been such a blessing.
We started school 4 weeks ago, the first week was a shell shock to me, the mother hen and teacher of this coop! I knew school would take more time, but I hadn't anticipated the length of time nor the mental exhaustion I would be hit with every day. The second week was a little smoother, by the third week, I realized that this was just the new season I was in. School is going to take longer. Period. I can either choose to be frustrated that I have even less free time than I did before, or I can embrace the fact that school just takes longer and deal w/ it rather than being a whiney mommy!
We planted a garden this Summer. It was a late garden because we were waiting to borrow a tiller from my in-laws. The squash was doing terrific until squash bugs came and ate one of the plants completely before I even realized what was going on! I was able to salvage the other plant but it didn't produce much more squash. I don't even know what happened to the kale, but it died w/out any critters attacking it. We were able to harvest 2 kales out of the batch. The watermelon plant was doing phenomenal and we were able to harvest 3 sweet watermelons until the dumb squash bugs attacked it as well... and then the 2 baby watermelons that sprung up out of nowhere were gleefully picked by Josiah before they poor things had a chance to grow bigger than a golf ball! Our tomato plants have been the biggest blessing. They are going haywire even though some bugs tried attacking them! We also have 6 corn plants that have survived all the chaos, but I think they still have another month of growing before they are ready to be picked. All in all, it's been an exhaustingly great experience for us. Next year our plan is to double the garden size and to have a separate strawberry patch because our strawberries didn't do well in the garden w/ all the bugs and other stuff competing for nutrition. Can I just say that having a garden is hard work, but it wasn't as hard as I had anticipated. Josiah helped me w/ the watering and we gave up pulling weeds about one month into gardening. LOL!!! A special thank you to Rhonda's friend who texted me gardening tips just about every other day when a new bug would start feasting on our crops!
Can I share a secret with you? Come close. Are you ready for this? *takes a deep breath as she prepares to share a dream with you* I would really like land...then I can have an entire acre of garden goods to share w/ friends and then I can learn to "can"! :) And we found out this Summer through asking on FB that 3 of my girls are highly allergic to something they put in the water to make it safe for consumption...so really, we need Well Water in order for them to be rid of this allergy. And chickens would be sooo wonderful! We go through 4-5 dozen grassfed chicken eggs every single week. Having our own chickens would save us a pretty penny! And a few cows, those would be nice. Grassfed beef for Josiah's grain intolerance is super expensive. So yeah, we need to live in the country and we need land. :) *happy sigh, thank you for letting me dream with you!*
I can't remember if I shared with ya'll, but this late Spring we had the wonderful opportunity of speaking at New Life Church in Blanchard about Foster Care. There were about 15 people there. This church chose to adopt our family for 6 months. They have been such a source of encouragement to our family in more ways than I can even explain. Foster Care has been such a life changing experience for our family. It has also been a pretty lonely one. As we have chosen to put these kids before our own needs and poured ourselves into them in order to bring healing to their lives, we have fallen out of touch w/ our local community of friends and pretty much our previous life. Being adopted by this small body of believers was the Lord's way of whispering to us "I see you. You matter. You are changing lives. You are NOT alone." They may be a small church, but they made a HUGE impact on our family and our kids' lives. We believe that one of the reasons many foster homes shut down so quickly after they open is due to a lack of support. New Life Church in Blanchard has been that support for us the last 5 months and we are so thankful to them. They walked alongside us as we dealt w/ some pretty tough stuff with one of our kids. Thank you New Life!
If your church would like to hear us speak, you can get in contact with us by emailing my husband, Matt, at togodalonetheglory at yahoo dot com. He's the speaker. I'm the child wrangler :).
Last week we received some fabulous news... Tiny's adoption is getting VERY close! We have our Disclosure in 2 days and then the Court Date is set for September 22nd. Sunshine girl's adoption is going to try to be finalized the first week of November. The Lord has been good to us!
Thanks for sitting awhile with me. If you have any questions about foster care or adoption feel free to email me, my address is tomorrows_memories at sbcglobal dot net.
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