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.