I'm still here . . .

Bloggy update time again!! Boy, do I wish I had the time to blog a lot more often. I have so much to say and not enough time to say it all! The story of my life, I guess . . . ;)

Anyway, this is going to be really random and I figured I’d just ramble about this and that. Things that have been going on, things that are going on now, etc.

• Josiah is working on “ridin’ the potty train.” I’m super excited about this, as he seems really ready. Neither of the other two trained till they were around 3, so it will be really cool if Josiah “gets it” earlier! My goal is to have him completely daytime trained by Christmas, maybe nighttime too, but we’ll see.

• I’m making apple mush for the chickens today. My parents gave us a bunch of apples from a tree in their yard. We were going to make applesauce for ourselves, but we ran out of time and the apples are getting kind of oldish, so we decided to cook ‘em up for the chickens and ducks instead. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it. :)

• Speaking of chickens, I just remembered I haven’t yet introduced you all to this guy. This is Rooster Cogburn (named after the John Wayne movie and character of the same name :)).
  Isn’t he handsome? I love his coloring!! We thought it would be good to have a rooster to help watch over the hens. He’s around 6-8 mos. old and we got him free off of Craigslist, just like the hens and ducks. He seems to be pretty easy going and is fine with the kids, which was important to us. When he first arrived on the scene, Lucy (the boss chicken) got in his face and showed him who was boss. ;) Since then, they seem to have formed a truce and he gets along fine with all of the birds except Josie Pye. Josie is either his most favorite or his least favorite; we can’t figure out which. At any rate, whenever he bothers her, she just flies out of the pen and that solves the problem. We mostly let her free-range since she stays close to home and can fly in and out of the pen whenever she feels like it. However, we might run into a problem with this because she’s started laying--just a couple of eggs so far, and several days apart--but if she starts laying them somewhere outside, we may never find them!

• Jim borrowed a friend’s excavator for a couple of weeks and did a bunch of yard and driveway improvements. At the same time, he decided to dig a small pond for the ducks. The next day he brought them down to the pond. They were quite happy to swim there for a minute or two, then they headed for the brook and spent the rest of the day snuggled up in the water, under some brush. I guess they felt safer that way? We plan to eventually make a pen for them by the pond and move them down there--probably next summer. In the meantime, they get along fine with the chickens, and they have a large tub of water in the pen that they can swim around in. They seem perfectly happy with that!

• I finally started my Christmas shopping yesterday. :) I took advantage of the great sale Old Navy was running on their performance fleece yesterday, and bought some stuff for a few of our family members. $5 apiece can't be beat! Today I've been working on putting together our annual family calendars on Snapfish. We give these to our parents and grandparents each year. It does take some time to get them set up, but it's worth it to me because I think they're pretty useful and fun gifts!

• We just finished going through a Total Money Makeover class at church, and it was really helpful and encouraging . . . especially as we're going through another lean time with Jim's work. Praise God for His provision in other ways! We've been able to sell some things--even some big things--and have been blessed with gifts from others. And we keep praying for more work and for God's direction. :)

• Julia had her last dentist appointment for a while!! That was another big blessing. When we took her in for her post-op checkup (a week after her surgery), Dr. B was concerned about one of her top teeth that he had had to cap--it was wiggly. :( He expected he might have to pull it, but told us to give it another week and he would check it again. Her appt. was last Tuesday, and praise the Lord, it had tightened up! She doesn't have to have another checkup for 3 months. In the meantime, she's *almost* back to eating regularly, aside from still avoiding anything very crunchy or chewy. Yay!

I suppose I need to wrap this post up now, since I started it earlier today, but now it's almost bedtime. I hope to get some more posts up this week . . . I have a few "topical" ones to blog about--homeschooling, etc., but no promises! Hope you're all having a good weekend!