A few Photos of Winter Happenings…

                        

An engagement….

…bottle babies who still get away from the barn and make a bee-line straight to the front door and call out to be let inside…this is so going to be a problem when he’s 200#, LOL

 

…quick ear warmers for frosty morning, and several orders from town for hats in this frosty weather. Yes, even in The Deep South we get frosty, though it’s fairly short-lived compared to the still frosty northern states!

                                

…but as soon as those hats are finished, I’m hitting the needles for plenty of yarny baby goodness! There’s so many projects in my head and so little time! Good thing the wee bairn will be a summer babe…I can prune a bit of my want-to-make list because of the weather.

                     

…The Queen has been put to good use this season, especially this past week when we saw single digits and high winds. My only issue with her is she’s too small…between dogs and children, there’s never much space left to warm my own toes!

 

…The sweater I crocheted for the company Christmas party…and a  rare photo of chunky ol’ me in need of that weight loss I spoke about in the last post. I’m not monster huge, and I’m certainly active enough, but there’s always room for weight loss, right?

   

…and a special, secret wedding project in the works here. It’s going to kill me not to be able to share along the way, but I guess that’s where the secret part comes in, heh?

In the School room…

We are readjusting the schedule…yes, every year I lament about filling in those dates with pen and highlighter instead of just the non-committal pencil. We aren’t terribly out of schedule, but it needs some adjustment. With the new computer, setting up the Switched-on-Schoolhouse subjects I have was much easier. No, I’m not going over to electronic school work, but I wanted to test a few things with Wild Child and see if perhaps he operates more smoothly with the SOS in a couple areas over the textbooks, lapbooks, and audiobooks. So far, so good.

Like I said, we aren’t leaving behind the textbooks at all, just looking for new ways to encourage better work efforts around here. We have been putting Living Books Curriculum to use in part or in whole over the past 3 seasons and are enjoying it. This year adding in some Queen Homeschooling resources as well, though currently just t for science (this year we grabbed A Nature Walk With Aunt Bessie from their Discovering Nature and Science Series, and it won’t be our last selection)  I still seem to schedule our year around a history core, this year being Westward Expansion. Math and English work still revolves around Rod & Staff textbooks, science is following the Nature Walk book I mentioned above, but all reading, lapbook work, some bunny trail science issues, and our creative projects work all follows our History core. No matter how many times I try to rework the whole vision of schooling around here, I end up with the same general plan…History as our Core. One of these days I’ll stop trying to reinvent my wheel so to speak, LOL.

 

In the Barn…

We have had coyotes running too close to the barn too many nights. Loud little buggers, they so far haven’t stopped to check out the chickens or the goats, but they are well into the property making their rounds through here. We need to deal with that. And there’s a possum interested in the chickens. Haven’t found his home base yet, but every few nights he wanders up to the run and spooks a few hens. The dogs haven’t taken much notice yet, being secluded in the warmth of the barn during the cold. I’m sure they’ll take care of my problem now that the weather has leveled back off some. If not, there’s a shotgun for that kind of problem. Same for the coyotes, though scatter-shooting will take care of them.

Around the homestead in general, we had some wicked wind come in with those single digit temps last week and that posed a new-to-us problem…the roof lifted open along the peak.

Yeah, I was sort of dumb-struck with that concept as well when we saw it. I mean, it’s our roof for crying out loud.

This is Mississippi. This is a mountainside. We live in a doublewide mobile home. On clay muck. Apparently, even with 10 years of our living, compacting, framing, jacking up, lowering down, and all that, this house still settles as it pleases and the mood strikes. We have dropped/settled the front half alone over an inch it seems. This settling, coupled with the high winds, lifted and peeled back the roll paper, liner, and shingle stuff along the peak. I was standing inside, lamenting the fact that they just don’t make wood like they used to because it was COLD in here despite a roaring fire going, and I turned around in time to see fist-sized bits of dust and insulation rain down from between some rafters. Not exactly an everyday sight, even with our constant state of construction around here. I walked over to peer up through said beams, and was greeted by a pretty blue sky and a few clouds. And a whole lotta wind.

Now mind you, I have zero construction saavy, but I like to think I’m well-read enough to know that that just ain’t normal. Of course,being a new adventure in homestead life, the kids were totally impressed by it all. That is, the younger ones were impressed, the older ones had their enthusiasm quelled a bit when they had to get up on the roof and try to fight the wind to roll everything back over the peak and re-nail into place. Not an easy task when you have 35mph winds and temps in the teens to boot. The end result, to avoid further damage, was to roll it all back and line my peak with cinder blocks.

 

Cinder blocks. On my roof. Yes, we have surely arrived to the land of hillbilly now. This is why I like living in the middle of absolute nowhere. I would have been a bit self-conscious if we lived closer to town, to normal folk and all. Out here, pffft…who even notices? Still, in the back of my mind was the whole ‘I never thought I’d have cinder blocks on my roof’ thought. But, whaddya do…sometimes it just is what it is and you have to roll with it.

 

Just Thoughts…

I’ve been contemplating some changes, but I just can’t find a good sense of peace with some of them yet. I’m pretty sure everyone who visits here knows I’m Plain, as in headcovering, dresses, aprons, etc. (Yes, that’s a skirt in the photo of me up there. Thought I’d spare the worksite gossip a bit by dressing more normal for the gathering…). Does a ‘hairstyle’ even matter when I’m covered? Not a bit, yet lately I have really been pondering a change in my hairstyle. On so many levels it’s just silly, but still, the idea just sits in the back of my mind. I don’t know, it’s just a season I’m in I suppose.

Another issue I’ve had lately is the need to cull friends and groups I don’t really interact with as often. Problem is, I do keep up on prayer requests even if I don’t chat and check-in much. I have limited a few friends lately simply because what little we had in common once, we no longer seem to have. And I prayer that is on-going for another friend who has marital issues and doesn’t seem to notice. I’m hardly an expert anything, but when your entire life is micro-managed by a husband…from what you are allowed to eat, how much weight you are expected to lose in what amount of time, to what time you are to get up and go to bed, who you are allowed to speak to and interact with, and so much more…I see trouble. Maybe my own husband should exert a bit more control around here…as many a conservative, Patriarchal, Plain friend has mentioned…but the day my every thought and step is micro-managed like my friends life is will be the day the world comes screeching to a halt and falls off its axis. There are certainly many discussions to be had over husbands standing firm in their God-appointed leadership, but that kind of micro-management is simply emotional abuse imo. Perhaps that’s another soap box for another time though.

I imagine a few more friends will hit the proverbial door with that comment. sigh. I’m too worldly for the Plain folk, and too Plain for the worldly folk. It’s both a curse and a blessing I suppose. Needless to say, prayer is big part of my online life gatherings. Prayers for my own control as well as the various prayer requests of others. Scattered as my presence may be online, I’m always lifting a prayer for a friend out there. I don’t want to lose that.