Happy Friday, friends!
The weather is slowly making its way to spring over here in Maryland! It’s not sunny San Diego, rather it’s a high of 51 degrees here, but it WILL be sunny with blue skies. We’ll take what we can get! 😉
This is the post I get the most excited about each month! I love the idea of being able to go back and look at snapshots of what we were up to in our normal every day routine of life. Albeit boring most of the time, but it’s the good stuff!
Here’s a little look at life lately…
We’ve had quite an eventful few weeks around here lately…
We had to take Naiya in to the ER two weeks ago, and she ended up needing appendectomy surgery. Poor girl was rushed to the hospital from the ER via ambulance (with Ryan), and all this, on the tail end of having the stomach bug (so we think). And being the stellar parent that I am, before realizing this was a serious issue and just trying to care for her during what I thought was still the stomach bug, I was telling Naiya that she was going to be okay and that it probably wasn’t necessary to be so extreme about it. Whoops.
For the record, I’ve been through four pregnancies with extreme nausea, that wound up with me being in the hospital, then on a zofran pump for almost the entire pregnancy…so I thought Naiya being sick for 24 hours wasn’t going to kill her. It just well might have! 😳 Ironically, three weeks after I birthed Naiya in 2009, I too, was rushed to the ER needing appendectomy surgery!
So while Ryan was at the hospital with Naiya (he does better with the medical stuff, clearly), I whisked the other three kids to a soccer game. This year, the girls both tried out for and now play on the same travel team. It’s been super fun to have them on the same team, as well as super convenient to consolidate schedules! Win-win.
While the team was warming up, I was in constant communication with Ryan as to the status of Naiya. News spread to the rest of the team as I processed the fact that she had to have emergency surgery. The day after their game, this sweet gift showed up at our door with a note from our soccer family…
Our girl is healing up quickly, and is anxious to get back on the soccer field!
Earlier this month, we had a Brazilian soccer coach arrive to stay with us. It’s an exchange program of sorts through the soccer organization our girls play for. The program is organized and run by coaches from Brazil. So we now have Coach Paulo as a part of our family for the next few months. It’s been fun to learn about each other’s culture, language, and with technology being the way it is, we’ve been able to get to know his wife and family back home through FaceTime. The best part is watching Paulo and all the kids play soccer outside in our yard.
Other big news recently, is we had the opportunity to send Josiah to school with the big kids, to finish the year out in first grade. I had homeschooled him for the past two years, but he is now three weeks in at all-day school and has never looked so alive!
Except for in this picture! 😂 One minute he’s crying his eyes out that I won’t let him have a study playdate with his cousin (who is in his class), the next he’s asleep on the floor of my van. Which he remained there sleeping until 6pm!
This kid LOVES structure and knowing what to expect, and has laser focus, like no other. It will be the first and last year that ALL of our kids are at the same school as one another! Ryan and I keep joking that we’re finally empty nesters!
Every March, we buy new chicks to add to the mix. This year was no different. However, we told the kids they were fully responsible for taking care of the chicks, start to finish, if they wanted to bring them home. So far, we’ve had one casualty, and that’s all I’ll say about that. Other than that, we have four healthy chicks and one duckling (there used to be two). Once they’re a little bigger, the kids will transfer them to our chicken coop with the other mature hens.
The turnover rate for our hens have always been speedier than we’d like. But this year Ryan installed a portable electric fence and it’s been doing the trick!
We let the hens free-range outside during the day within the confines of the fence, and then turn the fence off once the girls go back into the coop for the night. And since the fence is portable, Ryan is able to move the hens around to different areas of our yard, so they’re not destroying any one area.
If you follow me on stories, you probably saw Ryan’s tree projects. He has been hard at work transplanting trees, and also recently planted an orchard.
So in a few years, we will have various varieties of apples, pears, nectarines, and cherries. We chose to plant the orchard in the part of our property where the original orchard was planted (which we had to ultimately take out because they were in such bad shape).
Ryan plans to protect the orchard from deer and other wildlife, by installing another electric fence (we also have one around our garden).
With springtime, comes mowing chores! The kids each have a section of our property that they are responsible for mowing each week. Sometimes, if they’re lucky, their grandpa mows their section for them. It’s such a gift (for us and them) to give them work!
On the horizon, one of our major projects is putting in a pasture for horses. The plan is to have Alexia’s horse, Selah, here on our farm (with another horse, as they are herd animals). We are just waiting on a fence to be installed. This last weekend, during our “work day” that Ryan requested, the girls helped him plant pasture grass seed.
Of course we celebrated Easter with Ryan’s family. This year we hosted Easter lunch, and Ryan’s mom pulled off another year of egg hunts for both the kids and the adults.
Ryan’s brother, Ty, was the winner of finding the golden egg (filled with cash)!
This last week, a new project got rolling…we are renovating the smokehouse that is right outside our dining room. We’ve been told that the smokehouse’s original function (of this 1866 farmhouse), was to preserve meat.
Ryan has always had a vision for this building, but needed time to make sure what he wanted to do with it, was the right thing to do. Almost five years later, he’s ready to make it into what he envisioned (adding two windows and french doors on two sides of the building).
Up until now, Ryan has been using this dark, dirty space as a tool shed. It was mostly always a wreck, as it became a dumping grounds for kid toys, bikes, etc.
As for what it will be turned into, Ryan and I are still rock-paper-scissoring who will claim the space. I’m contending for it to be my office, he is vying for it to be a pool house of sorts. We’ll see…
I’m going to be so sad once these beauties are gone…
This place is starting to look alive!
The last little tidbit I’ll share, is about a fun opportunity I had…
I joined a good friend of ours, Ray Leight, for an interview on his podcast. We have been friends with him and his wife since 2014, as they were an integral part of the beginning of me experiencing some massive inner healing. I have learned so much about the Father’s heart, from these two friends. It has been almost nine years of friendship where God has intersected our lives in beautiful, amazing, and fun ways. So joining Ray for a conversation about those details of my journey, was meaningful and such a blast! (To listen to this interview, search for “Your True Identity with Ray Leight” podcast, Season 1, Episode 28, aired on Tuesday, April 19, 2022).
Whew! This month has certainly been a whirlwind!
Hope you’ve enjoyed seeing a bit of life lately. I hope you all have a WONDERFUL WEEKEND! xoxo
