It’s been 3 years since I have written a blog post. Why?! Because I got locked out of my email that was linked to my blog. And it took me this long to finally get it back in my possession. Let’s be honest it wasn’t a high priority because I was so busy living life. But every so often I would get an ache to stretch my fingers and write. Then the pandemic hit and I had time to fight to get my blog back.

So let’s catch up..

The girls are grown now. All 20 years old and up. My 2 younger daughters still live at home while my oldest moved back from North Dakota and now lives 30 minutes away from me. Which is great because I see the grandbaby, which turned out to be a precious, spunky redheaded little girl, 5 days a week.

Brianna, my youngest, was attending a school that was great until it wasn’t. But she was still doing wonderful! She was even training to be a teacher’s assistant. We were all just saying just one more year. Then the pandemic hit and we saw exactly how school was being done and what they were learning. On top of finding out that they were adding foreign language. I mean, come on, they are special needs for goodness sake. And we just decided with so much uncertainty in the world we would just homeschool her senior year.

Dakota is now 11! I can’t believe how fast time flies. He has kept me very busy these last few years. Minecraft classes every week, homeschool field trips and activities a few times a month. I was even in charge of the elementary age kids activities for one of our homeschool groups. As far as schooling, he has been a handful…as in so smart! He can do math very quickly in his head, faster than a calculator. He reads extremely well and all the time. Science really catches his attention, especially space travel. Last year, we started History and that became his next love. Honestly, writing is the one subject that I think he could live without.

While life was so busy, farm life kinda stood still. We still have our chickens and every year we added a few more layers each year. We still have our ducks and added a couple more here and there. But we never built a new coop and my garden turned to grass.

During the last 2 years, we have found a new hobby that we absolutely love. Camping! Well it’s more like glamping. We bought a truck and a 5th wheel. And we started traveling to different areas. We’ve been to Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and different parts of Florida. Our love for traveling started after our granddaughter was born and my Hubby, Dakota and I took a cross country road trip to go see her.

I think that pretty much sums up my life that last few years. I will go into more details on some events in future post. And now that I am back, I don’t plan on disappearing again.

4 months ago I planned on making this blog a priority. I was going to write more and get back to my old self. I had huge plans. But of course life had different plans for me. About 5 days after my last blog post, on my birthday no less, my oldest daughter called to tell me she was expecting. Not the birthday present I wanted or anticipated. A few weeks later, she came down for a visit with her boyfriend and they stayed for a couple of weeks. She is doing okay. But they are not prepared for a baby in anyway and that scares me. But it is what it is. I am still not ready to be called Grandma though. My hubby is running around telling everyone who will listen and I can’t even wrap my head around it quite honestly. Especially when I still would like to have another child myself. I am only 35 and even though my girls are older, I don’t feel like I am in the Grandparent stage of my life yet. But I guess I better get there because the little one will be here in about 5 months.

Brianna, my special needs daughter, has been doing great. She found this awesome school and even manage to get straight A’s twice! These are things she never thought she would accomplish. Public school always mainstreamed her and labeled her as a bad child. But then we found Hope Learning Ranch Academy. And everything was wonderful…..until it wasn’t. Politics and money got in the way of the true mission. Power hungry people came in and took over the school and pushed out the founding members. It’s an autistic school. They don’t handle change well. And for these students to come to school on a Thursday and have everyone they felt comfortable with gone was completely unacceptable. Then a few days later they changed the entire set up of the office. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?! Kids were melting down and couldn’t handle it. Needless to say a lot of parents removed their children opting to homeschool the last 7 weeks of school. I was one of those. Brianna is now home with me. But still has contact with all of her friends. And the founding members are working hard to set up a new school for us parents who will not return to Hope Ranch.

Brianna also has got a little volunteer job. She goes to a horse rescue and cleans the stalls and grooms the horses. She absolutely loves it and feels like she is being a normal functioning person. And that’s all she really wants is to feel normal. But with all that said, she has been having more medical issues popping up that we are in the process of figuring out. Behavior wise, she has been amazing. But now she is having memory issues, stomach issues, full body tics. Hopefully by the end of the month we will have some answers.

My middle daughter is doing great also. She is really becoming an adult more and more everyday. She has been working with Hubby in the his cabinet business. And takes culinary classes twice a month. So it will be interesting to see which one she pursues.

Now an update on Little Man. Oh my goodness…what can I say about him other than he is going to be the death of me. LOL He just knows he is spoiled and runs this roost. So he’s starting to get a little mouthy but I chalking that up to the fact that he’s 7 1/2 and he has teenage sisters that he learns it from. But he is also smart…too smart. He is going to give me a run for my money homeschooling him. This school year he could barely read, then he decided I am going to learn to read. This very moment he is sitting next to me reading a chapter book that he is almost finished and just started reading yesterday. He is a wiz at video games and Minecraft. And he has been making a lot of friends at our homeschool group meetups. This was a kid that a year ago I couldn’t get him to even talk to anybody. Yesterday we had a family picnic with families from Brianna’s school. I never even saw the kid. He played and got along with everybody of any age.

Now an update on my little farm. I am very proud of myself. I have managed to control my chicken craze and have just 2 roosters and 12 hens. All of the babies that I have hatched this year I have sold. And I have even been selling a good amount of eggs. I still have my 3 ducks. The girls haven’t been laying much but I keep them around anyways. Dakota is trying to convince me to get more ducklings and Brianna is trying to convince me to get her some bantam chicks. But I am resisting temptation. After last year and all the illnesses and loss, I feel like I have a healthy flock and I am nervous to do anything to mess up that balance.

I do have a lot of projects that I am going to start working on once I get past all these medical appointments. I am turning a small playhouse into a duck house. I am hoping to get my neighbors bigger playhouse and turn that into another chicken coop. My plan is to move my chickens so my original chicken area can regrow the grass and get some chicken friendly plants in there. I am remodeling my garden and changing it into a beautiful raised garden area. I also want to get a meat chicken pen ready to raise meatbirds in the fall. I am hoping to have all of these projects done by the end of summer and ready for the fall planting season. Right now I have sweet potatoes and some okra sprouts that I just planted.

BTW I just want to note that Dakota had his book done before I got this blog post done. YIKES! I’m in trouble.

2016 was probably one of the hardest years I’ve ever had. I had a lot of changes come in my life and a lot of turmoil.

My oldest daughter finished her senior year of high school. But never it made it to her graduation day before leaving the state to live with my brother-in-law and his family. This was hard. I felt like she hated me. And like I was a failure or a suck ass mother. I mean it’s already hard when your kids grow up and don’t need you anymore. But for her to leave like she did was gut wrenching. BUT I am happy to report that in the last few months, we’ve had more contact. We’ve had some really great conversations and she sounds amazingly happy. Happy like I’ve never heard her before. She is so happy that she has booked a ticket to come down and visit us in a few weeks!!!

Then 2 weeks later, I lost my Grandaddy. My Grandaddy was 95 years old. And I know everyone will think well he lived a long life. I know that….but my heart still misses my crazy old man. He was a strong father figure for me. I treasure every memory that I have of the 34 years I had with him. He always made me laugh even when I was crying. We had a memorial for him and I froze when it was my turn to share a memory. I had so many that I didn’t even know where to start. I have to admit that I was angry after his death. Very angry. And I’m not sure why. I just…I don’t know always thought of him as immortal. Everlasting! But he lives on…in my brother and me. Hell, at the hospital while we were in the waiting room waiting for news, we were pushing buttons and cracking jokes and getting in trouble. Just like our Grandaddy would expect us too. As we said good-bye, we told him that we were going to be okay and that it was okay to go be with Grandmom. And to not worry we will give our mom hell just like he always did.

A few weeks later, my youngest daughter started having issues with her meds. She was mentally unstable for months. She was running away and having meltdowns that would last for days. She became overly obsessed with her friend. It was a living nightmare. I really didn’t think I was going to survive it. My family didn’t think I was going to survive. My mother in law thought I was going to have a nervous break down and my mom thought I was in danger of having a stroke one time. But great news, we have switched meds and things have been wonderful for the last 3 months. She is stable and much happy and peaceful than she had been in forever. She has also started school at an Autistic school and she is thriving. Never has she loved school as much as she does at Hope Learning Ranch. She even made honor roll and student of the month. She has never had that kind of praise in a regular education school. The school is a little bit of a drive everyday…. twice a day. But completely worth it to see her thrive.

Business was rough there for a while. We actually didn’t even know if we were going to be able to have a Christmas for our kids. But jobs started coming in and we finished the year strong. We had a lot of down periods but they came at times in our lives when our attention needed to be somewhere else.

On the homesteading front, we had a lot of lost. Every time we turned around we were losing a chicken to a disease. I realized that I hadn’t been putting in my most effort and was half assing their care. I went back to organic feed and back to my cleaning schedule like I use too. I ordered one last batch of chicks and I am happy to report that I have not lost one chicken since then. They are all thriving and doing fantastic. I also have my rainbow eggs like I always said I wanted!

So yes 2016 is a year I don’t wish to relive anytime soon.I may have even shed tears at midnight. Tears of relief that I made it. Tears of sadness for the ones who didn’t. And tears of happiness for what’s to come in the new year.   It was also a year of learning, growing and changing. And when you are Growing a large family….that is expected and even welcomed.

Happy new year!

 

One day Hubby came home talking about this puppy. Who was not really a puppy…he was 9 months old. He was potty trained and well behaved. So I caved and we went and got the puppy. Everything was great and then Max met our other dogs and everything went crazy. Our Golden retriever was terrified of him. And Max had short course hair that made me and my daughter itch. And Max’s Mama missed him. So we gave him back to his original owner and all was right in the world.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about getting another puppy. One that I could train to be a livestock dog. And one that was protective. Now don’t get me wrong I love my Harley, but he is ranked number 2 as friendliest dog and he’s more of a lover than a fighter. I really wanted a LGD, Livestock Guardian Dog, but those are really expensive. So I found an ad on Craigslist for mixed breed puppies. Mama is a golden retriever and Daddy was a Labrador/Great Pyrenees mix. Perfect, may not be full bred but the LGD is in there. And I specifically wanted the long hair so I wouldn’t itch. When we got there, she had 3 males left. Hubby had given me a hard time about them being mixed that the one we really wanted was spoken for. But just to be sure we waited around. The other long hair puppy he didn’t like the color of the fur. And then the last one was a short haired black and white puppy. But the hair wasn’t course, it was so soft.

While we waited to see if the other people would show up for the fluffy puppy, this one puppy just kept staring at me. Sitting so nicely, very alert and calm….just watching me. I feel like he knew he was going to be the one we took home.

Quick side note: A week before was my Grandaddy’s memorial. My Grandaddy loved dogs. He always had at least one. He also loved his grandpups when he would come over to my house they would go crazy.

So looking at this puppy, it almost felt like my Grandaddy sent this puppy to me.

I am happy to introduce our newest family member, Zorro!

This adorable puppy has come into our family already knowing his place as king. He loves playing with our other dogs. He has no fear and was immediately comfortable being here. He hates his cage and will bark to death until he is let out. I like to say he is a people puppy. If people are home, he wants to be around them. This makes potty training really hard but he is getting there.

He just fits right in with the rest of this crazy bunch.