September Rewind

September was jammed full to overflowing with so many FUN and WONDERFUL things. I am so thankful to finally be feeling better in my 17th week of pregnancy. I still don’t feel great, but I do feel BETTER and I will TAKE IT!

Let’s take a look at our month of September….

We started the month out with an over the top FUN weekend! Theo went out of town to help participate in a childhood friends marriage proposal to his girlfriend. While Theo was out of town, I spent the weekend at my parents house! And I threw a bridal shower for one of my favorite people- Corinne! I was in charge of this shindig, but mostly a lot of other people did all the work. It was for sure not a solo effort!

Tera is going to be a flower girl for the wedding and she could not be more excited. I’m telling you…she is going to look back on this year as one of the best of her life!

And here is a really fun story for you! Corinne’s family and my family go way, way back. When I was about 7, I was the flower girl in Corinne’s Aunt Carlene’s wedding (Corinne wasn’t even born haha). Now it feels like full circle that Tera gets to be a flower girl in Corinne’s wedding!

I was about 13 weeks along that weekend, and still SO sick, even though I tend to put on a smile when I’m in public. But after the shower I went home and CRASHED and basically couldn’t function for another two days. Sigh. Thankfully that was the worst of my morning sickness, and it has slowly gotten better since then.

After a full weekend where both Theo and I were gone, I arrived home on Monday morning to find that there had been a flood. This is fairly “no

The next BIG event was Theo arriving home from his trip….with our PUPPY! Even though I am not a dog person, we thought it would be a great idea to get a working dog to add to our farm. She is a Great Pyrenees and will be raised/trained as a livestock guardian dog.

This is how Patience feels about the dog…. STRESSED. Please note that Patience is an inside dog and Peace is an outside dog so their actual interaction is limited. STILL STRESSED.

Of course Tera and I also had our big weekend complete with school homecoming and a True Girl mother/daughter night at Cedarville! I blogged more about that weekend here.

Homesteading is not always easy, but we sure are loving it! This is the view from our front yard. And our Kiah is basically made to be a farmer. He wakes up at the crack of dawn, he is such a hard worker, and he can get the animals to do whatever he needs them to. Theo is gone at work often during chore time, and Kiah is my wing-man. Actually, if I’m being honest…Kiah is probably the one who is really in charge and *I* am his wingman. For the record, he is 5- almost 6 years old.

We also had Grandparents week at school, and my parents got to come eat lunch with Tera and Kiah! They also visited Ezra’s class, but he doesn’t have lunch with the big kids so that is why he is absent in this picture.

One of the biggest fiasco’s of the month was my laptop completely dying on me. It wasn’t usable at all. I use my laptop A LOT, not just for blogging and pictures, but for teaching, too! And I don’t have personal access to any other computer. I spent an entire morning waiting for an appointment at the Genius Bar Apple Store only to be told that they couldn’t fix it. They recommend Gem City Digital, who admitted my computer to their hospital for 6 days and FIXED IT. Hallelujah. It wasn’t cheap, but it was cheaper than having to buy a new one (and remember all of my passwords haha). While waiting for our appointment, we grabbed some lunch at Panera. We NEVER eat out, so this was a total treat!!

Even with all the exciting moments in a month, there is mostly just real life moments. Reading books, catnaps in the sun, playing with animals (both real and pretend haha), moving along in my pregnancy, taking the kids to local festivals, reading books on the couch to them. It’s these moments that really make up life.

We had one more super exciting homestead thing happen when we found itty bitty kittens in our barn. The Mama was present, but not very much and the temperature dropped 35 degrees in one day. We were worried that the kittens wouldn’t survive, so we brought them and started to mother them ourselves. PHEW, BOTTLE FEEDING KITTENS IS SO MUCH WORK!!! I did not realize how much work it is, but it is A LOT. They are so cute and so entertaining but did I mention they are a lot of work?

It was also a big month for Tera because I finally took her to get her ears pierced! She had been asking at least 15x a day for months now so I finally took her in. How cute is Kiah being her support person? She also got her first locker at school!

The last week of October was a FULL week for me as a teacher as we had parent teacher conferences. Parent teacher conferences are usually very draining for me- both physically and emotionally. It’s always intimidating for me as the teacher to be able to say what needs to be said using the right words. Sometimes I have a really hard conference and then a great conference, but we don’t have any break between conferences so it can feel like whiplash. I never want to be fake or harsh, but I also need to make sure that I am communicating what I am seeing as the teacher (and sometimes that is not easy to say/hear). I overall do not mind parent teacher conferences, but there are usually a few that make me very nervous or throw me off, and no matter how great the week goes I am DRAINED by the end of it.

In the end, I cannot help but look back at this month and be grateful. There are so many abundant blessings filling up our lives. It’s not always easy, but God is always good to us.

Bring it on, October! I honestly just looked at my calendar for October/November, and we pretty much have major events every weekend from now until December. Then we will be bored out of our minds with nothing to do from January to March haha.