Ah . . . finally time to blog!!

Well, some of you may have wondered if I dropped off the face of the earth since I haven't blogged for 1 1/2 weeks . . . but I am still here, just busy. :) I've decided to stop doing the homeschool hump day posts for now. I haven't been doing school consistently with Sam, and consequently haven't been taking the time to research homeschooling sites. I do hope to start it back up again in the future, though.

We had a busy busy weekend. On Friday night, Jim and I left the kids with my parents and went off on a date to Burger King (had coupons :)), then shopping to Kohl's and Lowe's. I got a couple new shirts for fall and Jim got a few shirts off the clearance racks, too. Our main goal was to get some sheetrock and shelving at Lowe's, for the purpose of bringing some order to our very unorganized garage. We accomplished our goal and spent a few weekend hours starting the project. It's starting to look a little better down there!

On Saturday, we took a family trip down to Dublin, NH, for homecoming at my old high school. They have an alumni vs. current soccer team game every year. It was fun to watch, and I got to catch up with some of my former teachers and a few old friends. There were tons of people there who I didn't know, though . . . made me feel old! :) After the game, we had supper with some of our friends who work there. It was really nice to visit with them, and our kids played well together. It made for a late night, and I ended up with a killer headache after the busy day, but we were glad we could go.

We ended up staying home from church on Sunday, as I was still not feeling too good and the rest of the family was really tired, also. We were sorry to miss church, but I think we needed the day at home. Yesterday, Jim took the day off and we spent a few hours at the Sandwich Fair in Sandwich, NH. Sandwich is (in my opinion) one of the prettiest little villages in the state, and even more so in the fall. It was a somewhat gloomy day, but we still had a nice time and got to see a lot of beautiful foliage. Of course, we couldn't go the fair without sampling a bunch of yummy fair food. Quite possibly the most over-priced food anywhere, but hey, it's not like we do that every day. :) Jim and I had buffalo cheese steaks and the kids shared a piece of pizza, and we also shared some fries. We also tried some fresh-squeezed lemonade, which was mostly ice, but still very good. We discovered that buffalo meat is delicious. In fact, if we could afford it, we would probably switch to eating buffalo instead of beef. It tastes great and is way lower in fat, and actually can help to lower bad cholesterol. For only about $1400 we could order a side of buffalo with enough meat to feed our family for at least a year. Maybe someday. :) The meat we had was from this local NH farm, Yankee Farmer's Market.

Sam tries out a tractor at the fair

Another neat thing we got to see at the fair was the "Forever Locked" battling bull moose display. A few years back, a NH man found the remains of two bull moose with tangled antlers in the woods. The idea for a project was formed, and now there is this great display of two mounted moose with the original antlers. They look so lifelike. This site has a bunch of great pictures of the whole project, including the taxidermy process; I thought it was very interesting. Here's one of the pictures I took of the display, but the ones on the website are better.

After we left the fair, Jim took us over to see the progress on the barn he has been building all summer. They're actually starting to raise it this week, so hopefully I'll have more pictures to post soon. In the meantime, here is what it looks like right now. Jim in front of one of the barn walls

Barn rafters

Double trouble :)
I hope no one minds, but I just have to brag on my hubby a little bit. I think he is so talented and just plain smart to be able to figure out this whole timber-framing process. It boggles my mind to look at all those joints and pegs, yet he knows just how they are all supposed to fit together. Incredible! It will be really neat to watch the whole thing go up over the next couple weeks or so.

I guess that brings me up to today! It's been a very pretty, cool fall day. My favorite time of year, but it's all too short. The leaves are about at their most colorful around here, right now. The kiddos have been having lots of fun playing outside lately. I want them to get as much fresh air as they can before the real cold weather gets here. We've really had an extra warm fall this year, though . . . 2 of my rosebushes got new buds, and my hydrangea started blooming again (its first blooms were gone by sometime in May or June), so I was pretty excited about that. I will probably cut everything back and mulch it within a week or so, though . . . don't want to take a chance with frost.

As far as pregnancy news, there's nothing much to report yet. I'm hoping to get a post up on my pregnancy blog within the next week or so. I haven't gained any weight yet, although I can tell that my tummy is going to get bigger, faster, this time around. Oh well, hopefully I can actually lose ALL the baby weight after this one. :) I'm not feeling sick at all anymore, but I'm still a bit tired. I'm looking forward to hopefully gaining a bit more energy when I hit the second trimester.

Well, hopefully that catches you up a bit on my life! Sorry my poor blog has been so quiet lately. I'll try to get more posts up, more often, in the coming weeks. :)