ANOTHER LOOOOOOOOONG Week: And Some GREAT News!

Here's how it went down...

Sunday (just after I finished up another childbirth class), I get a note from Dough Rittenhouse over at CCM: Teen Mania's Center for Creative Media.  It just says, "Hey... need to ask you something.  Give me a call."

So I called.

He informed me that he needed new acting coaches for the acting track and wondered if we'd be interested in talking to him about it.  We said we were.  So we scheduled a time to get together on Tuesday.

Monday came and went.

Tuesday afternoon we drove out to talk with him.  We discussed what he was looking for, what we had to offer, and what everyone was willing to give/take to make it work.

We drove home to pray about it for 24 hours.

Wednesday morning I went to MOPS.

That afternoon informed Doug that I'd be interested in the job (My Man will just be a helping hand/fresh persepective... really the job is going to come down to me.).  We discussed a few more things and made plans to meet the acting team.

Thursday I had coffee with the gals and taught a friend to bake bread.

Then I drove up CCM to finalize a few things with Doug about what he needed from me specifically.  It was a great meeting.  I think we really are on the same page as to what needs to happen.  We also discussed the first Professional Encounter Retreat coming up in early December in L.A.  I'll be thinking hard about the details and whether or not I can manage the trip with two kids in tow.

That night I slept like a rock.

Friday morning I managed to haul my tired butt out of bed by 6am to feed the kids and scoot over to the CCM studios.  My Man and I met the actors and just spent some time getting to know them.  They all seem like really great kids and I'm super stoked to get to start working with them!

I spent the afternoon cleaning house and arranging for Turkey-prep day.

Today we went out again and spent some time doing something a little more "class" related.  I think we still had fun, but I really wanted to get in here and begin getting some work done at the same time.  They'll be leaving for Thanksgiving break by Wednesday, and I'd like as much "get-to-know-you" time and work time started as humanly possible.

We got home and slaughtered/dressed our Turkey.

We weighs AT LEAST 25 lbs.

And there's only one friend coming over for Thanksgiving.

We're going to be eating A TON of turkey very soon!

This job is JUST what I've been praying for.  Flexible, part-time hours with decent pay, doing something I'm passionate about, and with the freedom to take my kids with me.

God truly does answer prayer!

A LONG Week!

Whew!  Can I just say... THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY!  No joke... this has been a ridiculously long week.  I knew going in that it would be, but whew!  I'm glad it's nearly over.

Last weekend, My Man and I worked at finishing up the chicken coop.  It's been getting cold and rainy around here and it was past time to finish putting it together.

A couple of weeks ago, I took Goober for a walk.  I only intended for it to be a short one, but then I remembered there is this trail that runs parallel to the busy street near where we live.  Since our road isn't very "walkable" due to narrow shoulders and no sidewalks, I decided to explore this an an alternative to my current trend of packing the kids and the dog in the car to go to the local nature trail.  Too much hassle.

At the end of this trail, we found this!  Dump site!  Woohoo!  There was so much material we were able to salvage and use to side our coop with.  I had planned on going to the lumber store, but free and recycled is always so much better!!!

Here's what it looked like to start with.  Just recycled pallets nailed together.  The doorway had been facing the other way, but we moved it to make it more accessible from the house side of the yard.

Goober McGoo was a huge help.  He made a wall out of bricks.  Oh yes... very useful.

Here's My Man in all of his studliness!  I wasn't much help with the hammering since I had Critter on my back papoose-style.

I worked at clearing out the mess inside and re-filling it with fresh pine needles.

That day, we also got our greenhouse finished.

 So lovely (and warm!!) inside.  In just a week I've begun to notice a difference in how quickly our plants are growing. The peas are starting to bloom, and the yellow beans will be producing soon!

Then there was MONDAY: I spent all day cleaning house in preparation of the coming week.  And studied.
Then there was TUESDAY:  I was supposed to go do some maid-work, but had to stay home because Critter was cutting another tooth.  I also studied.
Then there was WEDNESDAY: I spent all day teaching a childbirth class (it went GREAT!!!).  Didn't study so much.
Then there was THURSDAY:  I went out to do the maid-work I intended to do Tuesday.  Also went to the bank and took McG to Sonic to play for a couple hours.  Also did some studying.
Then there was FRIDAY:  I'M SO FRIGGIN' POOPED!
Then there was SATURDAY:  I was supposed to teach another Childbirth class, but that got moved to Sunday.  I'll be doing housework and grocery shopping tomorrow.

Today we had to spend time fixing the green house.  A storm came through the other day and did this...

Way bummer deal.  None of the plants seem to be hurt, but we lost a fish - probably due to stress.

The water collected right over the top of the fish pond and caused a collapse.  I knew we should have glued the PVC better and tied it off to the fence posts.  Oh well.

It was just a simple matter of popping the pipes back together.  But lesson learned, we'll need to get things glued properly before the next big rain.

Guess what else happened today????







I wasn't expecting chicks for another couple of days!  I went out to see if I could hear any tapping/pipping coming from the eggs.  Sure enough, they'd already hatched!  As of this afternoon there was at least one more egg that has a chick trying to hatch in it (could hear the pipping).  I'll be going out later this evening to see how it's coming along.  Enjoy the pics!

Candling the Eggs

Today should have been the end of day 11 for any potential chicks.  Our mama is still sitting contentedly on her nest, although it's getting pretty foul in there (no pun intended).  Every time I poke my nose in to check on her I think, "Good golly woman!  I'll bet you can't wait to get out of there!"  I'd read that chicken poop from a brooding hen smells NASTY.  They weren't kidding.  Since she only gets up every so often to poo, it really comes out gross.

Anyway, I realized just after I put my kiddos to bed that I had not done an "official" candling of the eggs.  I tried to do it last week, but my tools proved to be unusable. I thought putting the old heat lamp under an empty plant pot would do the trick.  However, it was a plastic pot that let too much light through.  Using my phone only worked moderately well, and I knew it might be too early in any case.  Oh... and I didn't get to look at all the eggs that time.  I tossed three and decided to do another candeling later.

Tonight was later!

This was really all the more detail I could see.  Four eggs looked like the bright one on the top.  This meant they didn't grow. 

The other eight eggs looked somewhat like this.  Dark, with a bright spot where the air bubble is.  I could only see viens in about 2-3 of the eggs.  The rest were just too dark to see through.  I don't know what this means specifically (other than it might be nice to have a better egg candling device), but I hope that it means we've got 8 potential chicks!  With 10 biddies and one cock in our current flock, 8 new chicks would nearly double our flock!  Hip Hooray!

We're at about day 11 or 12.  I thought I'd toss this in so you could see how big our little ones should be. 

The next few days can't go by fast enough!  Our next big update will be in about another 8 or 9 days when I listen for "pipping"... the little cheeping sounds you can hear in the shell before the chicks hatch!

Assesing My Goals and Getting Started

So today marks the official start of my "certified by Christmas" goal.  I'm really excited thinking about it, but I know that there are going to be two things that might make it feel "rough".

#1) I still want to do the whole no sugar/daily yoga/time in the Word "fasting backwards" thing.  I sort of tried to start doing it without saying, "Today I start".  Go figure I didn't get very far.  The only bonus is that I DID manage to start cutting more sugar out of my diet.  However, raging hormones and two uncooperative kids caused a sudden surge in the size of my chocolate stash (went from none to two bags).  I don't know when I'm going to "plan" on starting this thing for real, but it's something that's still on the forefront of my mind.

#2) I've already proven to myself before that balancing housework, homework, and kids isn't my biggest forte.  For some reason I tend to only be able to focus on one of those things at a time.  However, one of my biggest prayers lately has been, "Lord, please help me 'get it together'".  I know I'll probably never be perfect at it, and there will be seasons when I do better than others.  However, I think for the most part this is something I COULD and SHOULD succeed at.  And it's something I"m going to for sure need to get better at if I plan on running two businesses and raising a house full of kiddos!

This week I plan to finish reading one of my books, and write the review for it and another one that I've finished already.  I've got two classes coming up, so I'll also be working on the lesson plans for those.

Busy week ahead.
Nose to grindstone.
I can do anything for a short amount of time.
I can do all things through Him!

Why I Need a Craft Room

I've been doing quite a bit of sewing the past couple of days.  Many friends are having babies, and I've been working like a maniac to get some gifts made.  I often tell people that I hate sewing.  I accidentally mentioned this to one of my pregnant friends as I asked her for her address to ship her gifts to her.  She told me I didn't have to make anything for her - so I had to revise my statement.

I hate sewing.  I CAN sew, and do it pretty well.  But I pretty much dislike it. 

HOWEVER

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE making gifts for my friends.

It's kind of like talking to people who hate to exercise but look like super models.  They don't like the exercise, but they do it because they like the benefits of it.

It's like that... only with sewing!  Haha!  Somehow, I just find it tedious (which is odd, since I LOVE to knit.  Contradiction?).

The other reason I don't care for sewing (probably the biggest reason, actually), is that it TAKES OVER MY LIFE.  When we first moved into our house, I worked hard at being sure that everything was ORGANIZED and had a "place to live" figuratively speaking.  I didn't want to have random junk start piling up with no place to go.  We just don't have the space for that kind of thing.  This included my crafting things.

But when I start sewing, there's no other place for it to all go other than... EVERYWHERE!  This in turn makes it harder to organize the general day-to-day mess (toys, clothes, cheerio litter) and before I know it, my house is a chaotic zoo of sewing notions and baby litter.  It also makes it a little overwhelming to clean up afterward.

I keep dreaming of a craft room.... a place where I can not only store my fabric, yarn, and accessories neatly, but where I can retreat, relax, and craft in an organized manner.  There will be a fireplace and comfy chair for working on knitting projects, as well as a large quantity of desk/table top space for sewing.  There will be drawers to organize fabric, scraps, yarn, and other tools.  Everything will be on hand.... easy to use, and easy to store.

The Next Eight Weeks: Putting My Nose to the Grindstone

The next eight weeks are going to be like giving birth again.  

Lots of hard work, 

Lots of sweat, 

Maybe some tears, 

Lots of wanting to quit, 

And no option of giving up.

I decided yesterday as I was folding nine loads of laundry that I was ready to stop whining and do what I needed to do to get my certification finished for my Childbirth education.  Part of this was sparked by a revelation I had while folding laundry.  The inner dialogue went something like this.

"Why is this so hard?  I mean, college didn't seem this hard."
"In college, you had due dates, and if you didn't get it done, you got a lower grade."
"Yeah, but in college, the curriculum was mapped out for me.  There was a syllabus and everything so I knew how long a task was going to take.  It's not like that with this home study stuff!"
"So?"
"So I wish I had due dates, or some good way to prompt me to finally finish."

So I did what any good girl would do, I called in the girlfriends for encouragement.  I sent out a text message that read something like this...


Ok... I REALLY need a massive butt kicking or I'll NEVER get my childbirth certification!  Can I count on you guys to not only bug me about it daily, but to be encouraging when I need it, and not afraid to harass me when I'm making lame excuses for not getting at least SOMETHING done every day?

As always, my best friend responded promptly.  And she had a plan.


How about every time you don't meet your goals you owe me $20?

$20?!?!  That's 1/3 of my grocery bill!!!  I almost texted back immediately to tell her she was off her rocker and that I would do no such thing.

But I stopped myself.  Why was I so worried about making such a deal?  Because I was PLANNING on failing... often.  Often enough to make $20 become a HUGE deal.

We compromised at $15 with a "get out of jail free" card in case I get bogged down one week where it really will hurt us to lose the money.  Then today, I got busy.  I went through my curriculum and itemized the things that I still need to finish.  I figure there are eight weeks until Christmas.  If I can check three things off my list every week, I'll be done before Christmas rolls around.  Then I also went through and did a rough mapping of what I should try to get done each week.  Some things are bigger than others, but the bigger things (like massive amounts of reading) I'll be able to do over time as I check off the little things.  I also made notes of some of the other "life things" I'll have going on in a given week - like the classes I'll be giving, holidays, and weeks where I know I'll be doing maid work.

These next few weeks might be really rough.  I'm hoping not, but they have the potential to be really, REALLY busy.  But just like giving birth, you can do anything for a short time.  If I can get all this THROUGH then I'll finally be able to start marketing my classes more, and begin focusing on getting online prenatal classes running.  It's time to put my nose to the grindstone!!!

A Chance to Redeem Myself - Plus a Chicken Update

As funny as I find my "Angry Bird" post, I really don't want people thinking that all I do is make my kid angry then snap pictures at him while I laugh and he screams.  I'm not THAT mean! 

For your viewing pleasure:

Hi mom!  These little "O"'s sure are tasty!

Aren't I just so cute?!

I love flirting with mom!

Uh... what's that in your hand that keeps flashing a light at me?

I love you!

He was actually REALLY ready for a nap.  Tired boy...

But not before a few more Cheerios

He looks like he's dancing or something in this one.

And an update on our hen.  We moved her successfully to her new brooding box (the old coop).  She's got food, and water, and is contentedly sitting on her clutch.  Every time I go out to check on her, it looks like she hasn't moved.  I tell ya' - she could give every pregnant woman in her third trimester a couple of tips on waiting.  And speaking of pregnant, whenever I look at her I get the same giddy feeling I have when I talk with other ladies about having babies, the same excitement and love I felt when I was waiting for the birth of Critter.  Sometimes I feel like I'M the one hatching chicks!  Is that slightly psychotic?  Never mind... I don't want the answer to that.

Oh, and by the way... when we got her moved out of her first nesting area, there were....

23 EGGS IN THAT NEST!!!!

Can you believe it?!  For nearly a month she's been squirreling away eggs from us!  I only let her keep the 16 warmest eggs from the top... the rest got put to the "good egg/bad egg" test.  Three of those we threw away, and I'll be baking with the other 4 just ensure they don't make us sick.

I'm interested to see if we can keep her from doing this in the future.  I'm just thankful that none of them went bad enough to explode!!!