A long awaited summer vacation

(Photo by Jack)

This is the last week of school! We are all very excited and ready for a long break. Kindergarten got out a week early and graduation was last Thursday. Our little girl graduated and is so happy to be done. She is also sad that she will not see her friends for a while.

The rest of the kids have school this week. I am still working, just giving end of year assessments and packing up my classroom. We are expecting a sweet babe in the fall and I have decided to stay home for the next few years with the wee one. I am thrilled to be a stay at home mama again, but sad that I will be not be teaching next year. Jack, Christy, and Hannah are going to attend school next year and Toby is going to do a combination of home schooling and participating in a home school program at the school. I am excited for all of us! Lots of changes are on the horizon and I am looking forward to it.

The way things change, and balancing it all

(photo by Jack)

I have been away for awhile. Life has brought many changes to our household. Last spring, my older children decided they wanted to go to school. This was hard for me to hear, but I have worked so hard to raise children that were confident and strong and ready to make their own decisions. I started looking around at schools and found a fantastic charter school 35 minutes from our home. It is a K-12 school and small. I love the school, and when my littles decided they wanted to try it out too, I let them. I enrolled all four of my children in school and got a job interning in a kindergarten class at the same school. This stay at home mama now works full time and goes to school full time.

It has been a huge adjustment, with many tears all around, but things are going fairly well now. I miss my children horribly, and life seems so much busier now, but I have seen such growth in us all. The older children are adjusting better than the younger, and I expected that. We keep plugging along, and my littles are doing better every day.

There has been no baking, or knitting, or Making of any kind (except at Christmas, what a glorious break!) and we are all feeling the absence of it. Our lives are lacking simplicity, and my struggle now is to find ways to simplify, while living our current situation.

This lovely long weekend will be devoted to Making and reconnecting and getting back to our family roots.

Slow start

It has been a pretty cold wet spring thus far. We have had some nice warm days lately but it is has been raining 4 of the last 5 days here. My little garden was very slow to start. Everything is growing now but soon it will be too hot for things like my peas and spinach. They are just getting started. As soon as it warms up later this week I will plant the tomatoes and peppers, beans and squash.

As far as knitting goes, well it's laughable! I have so many projects going at once that I never finish anything. I believe it is time for another UFO-a- thon. I need to get these finished.

I have been working on de-cluttering and I feel good about it. Right now I am in that horrible place where I have worked my tail off but there is still so much to do, *just keep working, just keep working* and, we will be debt free by the end of this summer. The end is in sight!

Seeking Simplicity

Simplicity.

I really feel that our family needs to move forward in this direction. There are so many facets of our life we can simplify that I am having a hard time deciding where to start.

Along with simplifying I feel the call to be more green. I feel it all goes together, at least for us. We already cloth diaper and I knit all of the diaper covers we use(longies, shorts, soakers).

I have read of compacting and I am considering that. I only have a loose understanding of it but I think you make a Compact for yourself and family. Basically you are trying to reduce consumption and waste. You refrain from buying things new if you can avoid it. You focus on supporting local business. Anyways, I am butchering this I know. I will post more when I actually know what I am talking about.

De-cluttering is another thing we really need to do. We live in a small basement apartment. We are a family of 6 living in 900sqf. I like living in a little home. We are overrun by clutter though and our home will be so much more enjoyable when it is clutter free!

I have another sponge started for sourdough bread. My last attempt was pretty good but I am still working on baking the perfect bread.