It's hard to believe another year has come and gone.  We have spent most of the last 4 weeks with one or more of us sick.  This last week has been the worst with the Eldest sick, then our youngest daughter has been sick for the entire week with a terribly high fever.  Now the last two days I have had it.  I am certain that the old saying "coughing up a lung" applies to me.  I just can't stop.  So, Hubby took the 4 kiddos + 1 friend to Grandma and Grandpa's for New Year's Eve celebration.  Bek and I decided to do an Anne of Green Gables marathon tonight, keeping each other company with our non-stop coughing.  I am looking forward to starting another year, with many plans here at the farm, although some of them may already have been dashed.  Hubby and I found out that our county rules on having animals on our property is quite strict.  We have to have at least 3 acres to have just one goat, and 1 acre for each additional goat....

Hoping you all have a blessed Merry Christmas!  We are heading to my folks house for Christmas Eve and tomorrow we will spend it here!  Next week we have Christmas with my in-loves.  Hubby is off until after the first of the year!  I love it when we can spend time together during the holidays.  For the first time in probably...forever I have all of my presents wrapped!  Yay!  I will not being staying up until the wee hours of the morning doing that tonight.

Yep, I finally had it.  I am usually known for being fairly organized and put together.  With 5 kids, homeschooling, trying to manage a (very) small farm and home business, and a wonderful Hubby who provides for us, I have to have it all together.  Well, all of that went down the tubes yesterday.  I had the worst day of the year (or at least it felt like it) and as bad days go for some people, this was pretty mild.  I am a women who juggles many balls in the air (like most) and usually does a pretty good job with it.  Hubby is not well known around these parts as having a good memory...at all.  I have heard horror stories from his mom when he was growing up, like the time as a boy that he left his wallet, in a hotel room...in Boston.  There are many stories like that and the day I married him I took the reins as Keeper of the Home, literally.  I know his mom was relived to let that one go.  I have ...

We had temperatures in the 40's on Saturday, this morning the temp. is -11!  We had a winter storm watch on Saturday night with predictions of 1-3 inches during the night and another 2-4 inches on Sunday.  Well, in our neck of the woods in Michigan that could mean anything.  The lakes have quite an effect on what kind of weather we seen in the middle of the mitt.  Yesterday morning we woke up to a dusting and I was disappointed! (I love the snow~)  By 9a.m. the winter storm watch turned into a warning a we were hit big time.  We had to do some major animal shuffling to make sure everything was safe and somewhat warm.  The turkeys were the most difficult, as they love to roost in high places and to get them under cover and out of the elements is almost impossible.  We will be switching water bottles every few hours for the rabbits today so they don't go without fresh water.  We are doing a slow down week for school this week, which means...

Well winter finally hit here in Mid-Michigan this past week. Usually by now we have had several serious snowfalls, so it is late this year!  We have started our usual holiday traditions.  This year and every year for the last 10 or so, I have read Storybooks for Advent to my kids (young and old now)  This is a three part book series that includes; Jotham's Journey, Tabitha's Travels, and Bartholomew's Passage.  These stories in each of the books "intertwines" with the other (each of the characters are in the other books, but it is told from the different points of view of each child)  all the stories are about the coming birth of Jesus, and they are wonderful!  They are set up to read starting on the first Sunday of Advent and each night following until Christmas.  They are sold on Amazon and in making sure they were still on Amazon, I found that there is also an Easter book just like it for Passover called Amon's Adventure...um, I am going to have to ...

These are all from our bushes in the yard!!  The stair way is hard to see, but it turned out beautiful, and the kids added some bulbs to it also.