Currently- December 2024

Just a little snapshot of where our family is currently in December of 2024. I hope I can look back on this and remember each age and stage!

Orion

• At 21 months old, Orion keeps us on our toes! He is BUSY! He has discovered how to slide chairs around and can reach almost anything on a shelf or on the counter. I feel like I’m on constant offense lately!
• Orion is very much the baby of the family, and we all know it. He has five people doting on him a lot. We all adore him. I worry about his future. Will he ever be able to do his own laundry? Only time will tell haha. Just kidding- we actually instill chores and working together as a family from a very young age and Ori is at the perfect age to start learning some chores! He can throw trash in the trash can, feed the cats, and take the compost out to the chickens.
• Orion loves his family big- but his two favorite people outside of our family is Pepaw (my Dad) and Peter (my friends son).

Ezra

• Ezra is a Kindergartner this year, but we sometimes forget that he is only 6 years old because he acts so much older. He’s very mature and responsible for his age.
• Tomorrow is his first basketball practice, and he is excited! He also applied to be a student ambassador this year.
• His favorite chore is mowing the lawn. He seriously goes out there with a push mower and will mow for an hour or more. He actually does a good job, too!

Kiah

• Kiah is a farm boy through and through and is such a hard worker! He is up with the sun and usually innately finds ways to be helpful.
• Kiah has struggled to read and he is finally be evaluated for some learning challenges. We are only at the beginning stages of this, so I’m interested to see what comes of it. One thing I do know is that Kiah works harder than 90% of the other kids I know at his schoolwork!
• Kiah LOVES sports- all sports. He excels in all of them, too. This year he was approved to “play up” on our school basketball team and is playing on the 3-4th grade team. They have had a few practices and their first game is this weekend!

Tera

• Tera is in 5th grade and this is the first year they have multiple teachers and switch classes. The learning curve has been steep, and it isn’t as easy to score an A. In our household, we preach that effort is more important than grades, but sometimes this is a hard lesson to learn! I am also thankful for a school that starts requiring more of kids at a younger age because once we start to actually learn it, our kids are more prepared for the real world.
• Tera just finished up a volleyball season and is signed up for basketball this season as well! While she loves reading books more than playing sports, but she gets out there and gives it her all!
• Tera loves reading- she loves it! She could sit on the couch and read all.day.long. She gets 20+ books from the library each week, and reads them all as soon as we get home.

Theo & Suzanne

• Ah, this life. We are at 12.5 years married and while it sure is busier at this point in time, it is also wonderfuller than ever. Life is crazy, but I there is no one else I would rather do it with!
• We are currently working three jobs between the two of us, as well as managing our family and homestead. It’s a lot! We are selling off all our rental properties to unload one piece of responsibility from our plates.
• We foresee some big changes coming in our future. It’s always fun to dream, but sometimes life feels more like gripping the handlebars as hard as possible and just hanging on for dear life while big decisions come flying at us out of nowhere. It’s fun! But it’s wild! We would appreciate prayers for wisdom!

The Homestead

• During the winter, we butcher all the meat animals (pigs and sheep) so our chores consist of chickens and rabbits. It’s so much easier!
• We work hard to heat the house primarily with wood. It’s a lot of work, but it sure does save some $$! We shall see how long we make it before turning on the heat, but so far in this extremely cold snap we have managed with just the fire and a space heater here and there!
• We are hoping and dreaming of a little (big) home renovation in the Spring. Our primary objective is to make our kitchen more functional (and add a dishwasher). We are also going to do a big bedroom reset and probably make our bonus room a master bedroom and have the kids split the three bedrooms. We are waiting until Spring to do any of the work, but we sure are thinking and planning now!

And that’s an update on our little family! We know we are overly, abundantly blessed. We are often exhausted and sometimes grumpy, but if I just take a step back and look at all that we have, I am so grateful.

Thank you for reading and following along! I love to hear from you!