restart

Well, here I am again. So much has happened and changed in the time away. Sadie is a middle schooler, Max started pre k, nate started school and was laid off. And I... well I grew an addition to the family :) September 26th we added a sweet baby boy to the mix. His name is Samson and he is living up to his name. At almost two months he started rolling over front to back then back to front shortly after. Strong little man. He is 5 months old and bringing so much joy to all of our lives, and Sheer terror!he has been sick once a month and all but the last had potential for a hospital admission. Hopefully that is gone! At one month he had a random high fever. At two months an abscess on his bum. At three months influenza type a. At four months just a cold! We are now a family of 7, plus two dogs, a cat, and for a little while some guineas. For those of you that don't know what a guinea is, its like a cross between a turkey and a chicken. They are a wilder variety of poultry not very easily tamed. We started with 9 keets and ended with one very tame 'porch guinea' primarily because our lab realized she was a fan of the birds! And by a fan I mean she thought them very yummy. Our porch guinea we named seagull and she was great friends with the cat. They would snuggle and the cat would rub her. Both of them In the morning would come to the sliding glass door and ask for their food. Seagull would peck at the glass and cinnamon would (and still does) paw at it for her food. It was so amusing and we loved it! But then we decided to try some full grown guineas. Those darn guineas took our porch guinea and ran away! Guess well try again this year. We are also talking about trying ducks. I am anxious to start my hobby farm! As we decided on Sammy over a baby goat that has to wait. We will start with birds (I think well try guineas again) learning from our mistakes, and do some Muscovy ducks. Guineas get rid of fleas and ticks and muscovys are said to get rid of mosquitoes and flies which are quite abundant here (we live on a pond/swamp). I also want to adventurously try our first family vacation away this year. We had friends invite us to Orlando with them, but we didn't want to spend that much with nate being laid off. We also were just invited to williamsburg this summer. My stepmom and sister are going and have a timeshare. Id love to do that as its a great starter vaca, and also more reasonable than Orlando. I think the kids would all love colonial williamsburg to say nothing of busch gardens if we decide on that. Now to talk to my dad to see if he'd be upset if we went (he and Faye just got divorced) and talk nate into it :) kids are coming home early today because they called a half day due to snow (even though there really isn't any added to the ridiculous amounts we already have.) Time to go get ready for all the kiddos. Nate still has class.

Second Day of School

I thought today would be an appropriate day for beginning my blog. Second day of school for the two oldest, Sadie in 5th and Ethan in Kindergarten. I have both Max and Connor by themselves today for the first time. First I'll tell you a little about the kids, Sadie is a beautiful ten year old girl who tends to be a bit of a drama queen. She is having a bit of difficulty adjusting to being a big sister of three from an only child. Although I think she's doing fabulously. The hardest parts for her are not getting what she wants because the budget is tight, and there are four kids to provide for now, and also four kids to spend the extra on. Ethan is the sensitive 5 year old. He is in a lot of ways his mother's boy. He is also Sadie's 'magnet' She nicknamed him that and is becoming very protective of her little brother. (yesterday she was worried about him at school so her teacher let hr go check on him) Ethan and Sadie are the worriers of the family, Sadie not as much as Ethan because of age, but I'm sure they will both be worriers when they get older. Now for the younger two. Max is the three and a half year old and is lovingly known by his family as MAD MAX because he tends to be wild and crazy. He's the brother that beats up on his little brother and gets rough playing. He is a rough and tumble little boy. Last year at daycare he pulled a tooth out because he took a bite of an apple and it was a little loose. That gives you a little taste of our Max's personality. He also has these facial expressions that just make you crack up and this laugh that sounds almost demonic, but is so infectious. When you tell him to be gentle; for example when petting the animals (I'll tell you more about our pets later) he stiffens completely up and sloooowly extends his hand to pet them, I think because he doesn't know how to be gentle otherwise. Connor is the sweet and unassuming little brother. He's two, and just beginning to fight back when Max picks on him. Connor always has a smile on his face and even when throwing a tantrum (a new addition to connor's personality) you can easily make him smile before he goes back to screaming. He's gentle and tries so hard to keep up with his big brothers. He does a great job of it too. He is often on the other end of max's shovel, or bat, or toy, or soda bottle or anything else Max tries to hit him with, his mother told me that he learned to walk before he was one so he could run away. I have been in these boys life for a bit over a year.