Update on the MIAness

I have been doing a horrible job blogging! It's been busy here though. Last week my pretty princess turned 5! We had our biggest birthday party ever with 11 kids (including our 4) total and 4 adults (including us). I made her a Rapunzel dress, which is still not finished, I'm just stuck...it's missing something, but I'm not sure what. And I need to lower the neckline a little. In my effort to make a modest version, I put the neckline all the way up to her neck...and she's got a great big head like Momma. So we need a little more room up there to pull it over.

I bought and started reading The Backyard Homestead. I'm loving it!! The wheels in our heads are turning about how we'll maximize our gardening potential in whatever house God blesses us with. We have been planning on buying next summer for quite a while now, but we may have the opportunity to rent a larger home from the same people who own the house we are renting now (it's getting toooooo small for us, we really NEED a third bedroom), so we're going to look into that. If we do, I guess we'll just keep up with container gardening for a few years until we decide to buy (they told us to buy that bigger house, but it comes with more property than we could afford next summer). But I'm already thinking about what next year's garden will hold.

Our garden this year was late getting planted, but it's doing awesome. The 4 tomato plants we have in one 18g tote are going crazy, with leaves anyway. I'm waiting for the flowers. The 2 tomatillos we have are just covered with flowers! It's amazing. Our peas are doing ok, they're teeny, I hope they grow up some soon. Our cucumbers are doing pretty good too, and I can see a few small cucumbers growing! The strawberry plant is filling the bucket up with shoots, which I hope means we'll quite a bit to show for it next year. Our carrots and scallions aren't doing all that great, which is a bummer because the carrots are one thing I know we'd eat the heck out of. Oh well.

We all had a small cold this week. We knocked it out quickly with homemade elderberry syrup. Well, ok, not so much syrup. The recipe I found calls for honey, but I didn't have any, and I wasn't going anywhere, so we used just a little xylitol. It was not yummy, but it worked REALLY well and I encourage anyone to try it! It was super simple too. 1/2c of dried elderberries to 3c of water, bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes. Mash the berries, strain, and done. Even the baby (7mo) took it.

We "started" homeschooling back up. We didn't take the summer off, we chugged along through, just at a slower pace. We did take last week off so we'd have time to prepare for the birthday party (mostly so I'd have time to sew). I think I have a new plan for working through this year though, for my oldest. He really has a hard time staying focused on his work for extended periods, so I think we're going to break it up and do Math, then Bible, a break, and then Language on M/W/F, then History and Science on T/T. My 5yo only has Math and Language to do, and at this point, I just have her do as many or as few pages as she wants in each book as long as she does at least one page.

I've also been trying to reopen some mental issues with my parents and work through them. I was challenged recently to consider reaching out to them sometime in the future, but after thinking on it a lot and talking it over with my husband, we've decided that it's not the best for our family at this point in time to reconnect with them. Our original plan was to step back and give God time to soften their hearts and keep an open heart for when/if they try to contact us with a genuine apology (not the usual snippy "I'm sorry...but it's all your fault I treated you that way")...and I think we're going to stick to that plan. I've wondered this whole time if I had truly forgiven my parents for the way they treated me, and I know I have for the childhood abuse-minus the sexual stuff...I'm still having a hard time with that, but I'm also having a hard time with fogiving them for how they treated me as an adult, undermining pretty much EVERY parenting decision I made, and trying to be a wedge between my husband and I...and I'm just not over that yet. My husband asked "what is forgiveness?" and we talked about it and he asked if I wish for bad things to happen to them...and I don't. So I'm on the right path. I'm not keeping my kids from them to torture or punish my parents (though I know they'd say otherwise). I'm keeping my kids from them so that I can protect my kids from all their "crazy". So yeah, my mind has been very occupied this last week.

And for my "excuse" reason for not blogging...my internet and/or my computer hate me. It seems like everytime I think of something to blog and sit down (or stand, I don't mind) to type it out, my internet cuts out or my computer locks up. I know my computer is "old" (4y), but I'm not sure why my internet cuts out everyday between 11am and 3pm.

So there you have it. That's what's been going on with us here. Maybe I can get back on track in the next week and start blogging properly again. Maybe.

Media Monday

On Mondays, I will be sharing a bit of media-Bible verse, song, television show, movie, cartoon, news article, blog post, anything media-ish that has inspired, convicted, or encouraged me.

Philippians 4:8
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.






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My Garden! The inspiration for this post comes from my friend, this homesteading blog, a new friend, and Amish fiction.

I'm finally getting around to sharing pictures of my little container garden. We rent here (hopefully we'll be buying a house in about 10 months), and we have this great back "deck" (read sliver giver) that just begs for a container garden. I had it all planned out, and then I got lazy and bored waiting for the last freeze and changed my mind about gardening this year. But we made some new friends at the kids' VBS this year and they gave us some of their plants so I had NO choice but to garden.
I had planned on a 5 gallon bucket for each plant, but then while I was at the store looking around, I saw 18 gallon totes for just about the same price! You can beat 3x the container for the same price. So I got a couple, some soil, and had my husband drills some holes for me.

In this first bucket, we have one strawberry plant. I know that strawberries come back and send off shoots, so I figured one would be good and we'd just be careful with this bucket for next summer too. I also stuck some honeydew seeds in it, not expecting them to grow at all, and they did (3 of 4)! I'm sure I'll have to pull them or move the, but it was fun seeing that they would come up.


This one has tomatoes in each corner, plus a green bean, yellow bean, and purple bean in the middle. This one needs to be split up I'm sure.


This one has two tomatillos, a row of peas at the top, a row of scallions in the middle, and a row of carrots at the bottom. I think this one probably needs to be split up some too.


And our last little bucket has 2 cucmbers.


Linking with the Monday Link-up at Joy Filled Living and the Homestead Barn Hop #22.