I am back online! :) It is so nice to have our computer connected to the internet again! We have been back and forth in the trailer this past year making it difficult to be consistent online due to not having internet in the trailer. After our 3 months in PA (Dec-Feb), we came back to NY and stayed in a 2 bedroom cottage while we hunted for a house to rent. God kept us on our toes! Every place we went to see was very wrong for us. Then after 2-3 months of staying in the cottage a good friend of ours told us she had a house she rented to someone else for many years but they left last year and left the house a bit of a mess. She said in exchange for cleaning it we could stay there. Well we parked our trailer on the property (2 acres) and started cleaning. It took about 6 months and hiring help to get it livable. We moved in a few weeks ago and still have work to finish! But it is nice to have room to move around! :)
We are on our mission to get to Kentucky soon. We will be going out there in March to speak with companies that sell manufactured homes. In the meantime we are saving for the down payment! It looks like we could be there sometime this summer or possibly fall depending on the progress of getting a house on the property. We had a small garden here in NY this past summer and got only a little fruit out of it. But what I lacked in produce, I more than made up in knowledge through mistakes made! All I know is whoever rents this house from our friend next will have some pretty awesome strawberry plants for the years to come!
The kids are growing and maturing! I cannot believe just how much they have grown this past year! And I am not just talking height here! They are beginning to talk more and more of what they want to do when they get older....of course it is all subject to change and I am sure it will change many times, but it is amazing to listen to them talk about things such as having children of their own, working in the real world, and so on. They have been doing an online school program called Time 4 Learning. I have had no time at all to do full time school with them with remodeling the house and working. The online program gives them the nuts and bolts of an education and now that we are done remodeling, I can go back to the Charlotte Mason method and giving them a higher quality education. The good thing is they all enjoy reading and read all the time. It will just be a bit of an effort to get them to do some writing and thinking on their own.
E had a few piano lessons this year. She just didn't like practicing - she decided she was not as interested in it as she once thought so we ended the lessons but kept the keyboard. She loves playing with it and once in awhile she will play a song she had practiced. I think maybe someday she will go back to it - but it's ok if she doesn't. Now her and G are interested in taking gymnastics classes. They have their first one this evening. R is going to try it too just to see if he will like it. He is more interested in karate but I have yet to find a place I feel comfortable taking him.
Well that is all for now! Until next time!
