A friend pointed out that it had been a LONG time since I had blogged. Ooops…
Life is just so up and down lately that I don’t ever have much heart to write. When things are like this, I do a LOT more writing in my prayer journal then I ever do online. I tend to retreat and reflect much more then to want to share with the world other then little snippets here and there. My thoughts & emotions go back and forth between feeling strong and feeling defeated, and that’s not a place I care to drag my ‘readers’ back and forth from much. lol So I don’t write, and my blog gets neglected.
On the other hand though, I feel it’s important that us ‘humans’ share our trials and tribulations, our ups and downs, with one another, so I have this constant struggle within me where I want to share, but yet I don’t. Usually the “don’t” wins over the “do”. As proven by my lack of presence here.
So, an update?
Well, we’re still here on our 5 acre hobby farm, still trying to sell our home, and still waiting upon that perfect time to go. Our realtor quit on us a while back, with basically no notice. That left such a wonderful taste in our mouths that we decided to forget about realtors and just go at it on our own. Since that time, we’ve had a lot more positive activity then we ever did with a realtor. Plus, we get to say when the showings happen and when they can not. I don’t know how many times I said “No showings in the morning! We’re too busy with school and animal chores!” yet over and over again, they would schedule showings for 10 am. Now, we’ve had all our showings around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, just the way I like it.
Over the past while our homestead has begun to dwindle, sadly. We’ve had one of our cats go missing, and it’s been about 5 or 6 weeks now. Our hope that she may come back is dwindling quickly.
Here’s Elsa with her kitty Serafina cheering her up, while she was sick on her birthday in 2007. Elsa misses her and I wish she’d come home but I don’t have a good feeling that she will.

A couple of weeks ago, our rooster was killed. We had no idea what happened, we just found him dead one day. I suspected something had gotten after him though because all the hens were hiding out in the hen house but there was no proof of an attack anywhere.

Then the other day, all but one of our hens was found dead and we know it was a mink who killed them. They are such nasty creatures that they leave tell tale evidence of who it was that came and killed the hens. I won’t go into details but I’d sure love to get my hands on that critter. A mink stole or mink coat doesn’t sound cruel to me at all anymore. :p
By the next morning, our last hen had died. I was worried about her and figured she wouldn’t make it all alone.

Amazingly, we’d had most of these hens since spring of 2006! My girls look SO young in this pic!

We had collected our very first dozen eggs July 21st, and here it is!

Our homestead seems so ‘empty’ without chickens. I’ve been truly mourning the loss of them. Not the loss of the chickens individually as we’ve lost one, two or even three here and there over the past 3.5 years. It’s knowing that they are ALL gone, seeing the empty hen house and having NO clue when we’ll ever be able to have chickens again. We won’t buy anymore right now with our home still on the market. Even if we did, they don’t start laying right away so it just makes no sense at this time. Yet, two years in a row we’ve put off getting pigs for this same reason, and now I wish we hadn’t. So it’s a tug of war between my heart and head. My heart and head have tug a war’s quite often.
In other news, school is going really well. I believe this is probably one of our best school years yet, even with all the busyness and interuptions we’ve had. For once, even though our schooling is quite eclectic, I decided that this year I was simply going to revolve the schooling around MY schedule and just make it fit in however I had to, to make it work! And, it’s working! I don’t know why I’ve spent the last 14 years of schooling trying to fit our schooling into some sort of box that seems to work for others when I’ve known all along that our family just isn’t LIKE others. I’ve been trying to fit square pegs into round holes. In the process, I often found myself getting very frustrated.
I’ve actually been feeling that way a bit about Christianity lately. I find that in life, especially in our culture, people are constantly trying to label one another. As a homeschooling, Christian mother of five children, it’s as though others expect that I should be, or am, a certain way.
I am not. I am me. I am not who one assumes that I am, unless they TRULY know me. Even then, often those who think they know me best, still don’t truly know me. Only God TRULY knows me and He tells me He is pleased with me, and thankfully, that’s all I need to know.