Big Universe, Small World... ©2013-2020

  Do not be afraid for I am with you. Do not look around, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will keep hold of you with My righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10

It seems there is always so much to do... Chickens:  A few months ago, a cousin/friend gave us 3 leghorn chicks. The dog killed one and we were left with two. I recently put them in with the bigger chickens. It seems like though we only have 9 chickens, we have 3 small flocks: the tetra tint flock (3), the brown chicken flock (3 americaunas and 1 buff orpington) and then the leghorns (2). My younger son says the buff is multiracial, because she is accepted by the americaunas and the tetras. Funny how we observe our social status situations upon the chickens we have. Odd. :) Since the chicken family grew, Charlie made two new laying boxes from scrap wood of old pallets.     The leghorn chicks are getting bigger and I hope will be laying soon...but, they will have several weeks before this happens.   These chicks are quite confused about the night time routine of their new home. They do not understand that they are supposed to be in the coop at night....

yeah!!!  i know it is an odd title, but i seriously think i am fascinated by weeds lately...     people either have a love or hate relationship with weeds...when i cared about my lawn and having a well manicured front yard (to not disappoint the neighbors, because "what would the neighbors think?"), i hated weeds. they were evasive and in the way. i wanted them dead and gone. the last four years have changed me...i am not sure what about all the changes...   i do remember when my older child was born and i was learning how to cook and trying to figure everything out, almost everything we ate came in a box. i loved those wretched hamburger helper type meals. now i would not touch those suckers with a ten-foot pole. give me fresh veggies and fruit any ole' day. :)  about 5-6 years ago, i started to really care about cooking. i started to like it and the more i did, the fresher our eating materials became. boxed and prepackaged became freezer food more...

What does a homeschooling mommy do when the child is away and the hubby is at work?!?!?  :) I made a birdbath.  And, then I dropped it. Then I spent the next 2+ hours cleaning up shards from all over the floor of 6 rooms of my house where it all splattered to...  :/ I built a raised bed from wood scraps. The compost was turned to add to the bottom. The chicken coop was swept for nitrogen fodder. Soil was added to the top. Six heirloom variety tomato cuttings that had rooted were planted. Trellises were added.     I played with the dog and she enjoyed the water hose in the heat quite a bit. :) I gathered cucumbers and one zucchini from the gardens.  I canned 6 jars of garlic pickes and 2 pints of dilly beans. Goldfish and algae eaters were added to the rainbarrels.      I had to move the broody chicken to be able to collect the eggs.    All the plants were checked for deer damage. She ate most...

My younger son's 4th cast from his rugby injury came off last week and he went to a wrist splint for the next 3(+) weeks...He was finally able to wash his hand and part of the lower arm and commented on how much better it felt. He did not have to support his wrist and hand with the other and this was nice to see...such an improvement. His latest x-ray does still show the wrist is broken, but it is healing and this is a good thing!  :)               :)  

I got this idea on Pinterest...it looked like this:    The link to the pin is within the picture. A friend went with me a few months ago to an antique mall and I bought the class pieces to make something similar. Blue glass is expensive around here...green glass was not. I planned to create a birdbath to put in the front yard or near the garden areas. I played with the glass pieces to create something I liked.                Friends commented and I chose a pattern...and then the glassware set in a box in the house since the end of March, because I have not had time to mess with it again...   So...last week I bought the glue that the dude at Home Depot SWORE would hold so well...   This weekend, I started gluing the sections together. Last night I finished it and left the glue overnight to cure. This morning the project was finished. It looked like this:   I went to go place it outsi...

Do you ever have something that really weighs upon you??  I am sick of hearing about sacrificing for the greater good. My husband and I like to watch the television show Person of Interest   together. I was watching one of the episodes today while working on some stuff for my universities. It was playing in the background. The main character discussed sacrificing one for the greater good of many. Now this bothers me... It mainly bothers me, because this was said to me by a pediatric nurse in relation to my younger child many years ago. I do not remember what the nurse looked like. I do not remember what else I did that day, but I do remember her words. I still hear them. They whisper at me sometimes when we are at the doctor. This happened when my child was 4. He was in 4K at the school at taught at. He had climbed a bobbed-wire fence at the back of the playground to retrieve a ball that had went beyond the boundary lines of the schoolyard. He got cut on the fence and de...

I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because even homeschooling educator mommies can make mistakes!!" It has been a whirlwind of events since May 30. Though in actuality, it has just been life. My younger son was supposed to be going off to camp in the mountains. A colleague from LDA had secured him a place in an adventuring camp. He has been before and loved it. It was a great experience for him before, but it is a bit beyond our finances to be able to afford him the opportunity to go. He was supposed to spend the weekend whitewater rafting, rappelling, and doing a ropes course. I had planned to spend the weekend in the mountains recuperating from what seems like a series of weekdays with no weekends. I was supposed to go on a foraging hike that I had scheduled some time back and wanted to go to the wild foods market. After he broke his wrist, he could no longer go to the camp, so I thought the mountain weekend was out. Alas, despite the broken arm, we left for the mo...