7 Years of Being Dumped On
That is, having insane blessings dumped on me/us!
Today marks Randy's and my 7th anniversary. 7 is the perfect number, so I can conclude that we've arrived, right?? Ha!
It's also a good day to log a few things that have been happening in the past month or so.
That means I get to post cute pictures of a little man who turned 1! Andrew Joel is a somber kid most of the time, but when he gets wound up, he's quite the clown. He's our snuggliest kid, so I'm milking that. He'll snuggle with just about anyone if he's tired. He is, overall, a very content "baby" and the nursery workers usually love him because he is usually so content! (The girl with him in the tub is a relative of Randy's, from the reunion we attended this summer. We hung out with her a lot.)
I can't remember if I mentioned that Randy finished the Teamcycle that is now being rented out from the Lifehouse Coffee shop (below), but he did, and it is! He decidedly built fenders for the rear wheels after an incident in late July, involving the dog's leash, the brake disc/wheel's spokes, and my hand. He was undecided before that. My finger/hand is still healing, but I'm happy to sacrifice my comfort for the business-building venture. He's currently building the next one in the garage (just like it, but with a custom trailer-hitch) when he has a spare couple of hours.
We were visited by a journalist from the Lake Country Journal Magazine a couple weeks ago, as the editor had recently come across one of Randy's business cards he received at the Pequot Lakes 4th of July Parade LAST YEAR, and he decided to do a story on Randy and his cool bikes! It will be in the June/July issue, and I will be keeping in touch with the journalist who came to ask questions and take pictures, to give her more "current" info (as it develops) before the story is published. We have no clue how this could effect the building of the business, but it's definitely one of those things that we would not have even thought to pursue (have a Lakes Area magazine write a story), let alone try to make it happen if we had thought of it! God has plans, and we are encouraged by stuff like this to keep waiting and watching, in His timing, as it unfolds.
There's also a connection through one of the regulars at the coffee shop. His niece owns and operates the A&W in Nisswa, which is situated right next to the Paul Bunyan Trail (paved, used to be railroad). She had been talking to her uncle about wanting to get some of those "surrey" bikes and rent them from the A&W. One week later, he's chatting with me at the coffee shop and learns about what Randy builds. Ding! He talked to his niece, and they're going to get together with Randy/us in October after they close the A&W for the season, to plan for next summer! Cool!
This fall/winter, Randy will be assisting Chas in building an ICF house 3-4 days/week, and building bikes 1-2 days/week. That's another way God provides, as the work is good and consistent yet flexible, and provides US with another close-up learning opportunity on building an ICF house, if that is going to be in our future!
In my home-making world, the kids and I are getting along fine. Bridget pretends she has a baby in her tummy (right) as she prepares corn-chicken-banana-carrot tea for a "sick" Teddy. Riding the Milwaukee Co Zoo train during our visit to my folks recently (right). They are all growing up so fast! The clown to the left has started (home)school, and loves the Friday morning community group we do. I'm tutoring a class of 8 4- and 5-year-olds, and Bridget and another 3-year old get to "audit" the class, as they're not old enough to be official students. It's a lot of rote memorization work, with a science project and a Fine Arts project thrown in, but I have a few moms in-class to help manage it all. It's going to be challenging, fun, and it's definitely stretching me already.
On the other 4 days of the week, I'll be fitting in 5 days of kindergarten (and pre-pre-school for Bridget). At this age, Teddy is mostly doing math activities and getting better at reading and writing. But there are fun science, art, history, literature, culture, geography, and music things to learn too. I'm glad he already has a huge head start on reading, as that gives these initial school days a lot of flexibility as his MOM becomes familiar with the material and the routine. His school is a combination of the Classical Conversations (CC) memory work (that's our Friday group) and Memoria Press (another classical education curriculum) work. I'm starting the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book over with Bridget (we had gotten to lesson 8 or so, last spring), and she gets to use a wet-erase marker in an activity book. But she has also been singing the CC Timeline Song and history songs along with Teddy, which is adorable and funny! In our first real "school day" at CC on Friday, Bridget was reminding Teddy to "sit down!" and "Teddy, shshshsh!" when he failed to raise his hand and wait. So cute! She's going to be a good helper in class I think!
In other news, we have sauced a LOT A LOT of apples this year, and after giving a lot of sauce away, I'm planning on saucing as much as possible as long as there are free apples lying around! We've gotten it down to a great system and it goes quite quickly. We also used a peeler/corer/slicer, which was fun! We rebuilt the back deck (left). For the railing, we dismantled reclaimed patio doors (tempered glass) and framed them in. I like it a lot! (Sorry, it's not pictured).
We have also successfully driven a sand-point well on the land with a cute red hand-pump (right), and will soon be tearing down my raised-bed garden and moving the perennial plants (raspberries, strawberries, grapevine, and herbs) to a spot at the land because the garden here is actually halfway across the lot line. Oops. Definitely thought it was 10' away when we built it. Thankfully we have a really wonderful and chill neighbor, who's fine with it! We just can't be selling our house with it there, in the spring.
Besides all that, we are just taking things ONE DAY at a time! Ciao!
Today marks Randy's and my 7th anniversary. 7 is the perfect number, so I can conclude that we've arrived, right?? Ha!
It's also a good day to log a few things that have been happening in the past month or so.
That means I get to post cute pictures of a little man who turned 1! Andrew Joel is a somber kid most of the time, but when he gets wound up, he's quite the clown. He's our snuggliest kid, so I'm milking that. He'll snuggle with just about anyone if he's tired. He is, overall, a very content "baby" and the nursery workers usually love him because he is usually so content! (The girl with him in the tub is a relative of Randy's, from the reunion we attended this summer. We hung out with her a lot.)
I can't remember if I mentioned that Randy finished the Teamcycle that is now being rented out from the Lifehouse Coffee shop (below), but he did, and it is! He decidedly built fenders for the rear wheels after an incident in late July, involving the dog's leash, the brake disc/wheel's spokes, and my hand. He was undecided before that. My finger/hand is still healing, but I'm happy to sacrifice my comfort for the business-building venture. He's currently building the next one in the garage (just like it, but with a custom trailer-hitch) when he has a spare couple of hours.
We were visited by a journalist from the Lake Country Journal Magazine a couple weeks ago, as the editor had recently come across one of Randy's business cards he received at the Pequot Lakes 4th of July Parade LAST YEAR, and he decided to do a story on Randy and his cool bikes! It will be in the June/July issue, and I will be keeping in touch with the journalist who came to ask questions and take pictures, to give her more "current" info (as it develops) before the story is published. We have no clue how this could effect the building of the business, but it's definitely one of those things that we would not have even thought to pursue (have a Lakes Area magazine write a story), let alone try to make it happen if we had thought of it! God has plans, and we are encouraged by stuff like this to keep waiting and watching, in His timing, as it unfolds.
There's also a connection through one of the regulars at the coffee shop. His niece owns and operates the A&W in Nisswa, which is situated right next to the Paul Bunyan Trail (paved, used to be railroad). She had been talking to her uncle about wanting to get some of those "surrey" bikes and rent them from the A&W. One week later, he's chatting with me at the coffee shop and learns about what Randy builds. Ding! He talked to his niece, and they're going to get together with Randy/us in October after they close the A&W for the season, to plan for next summer! Cool!
This fall/winter, Randy will be assisting Chas in building an ICF house 3-4 days/week, and building bikes 1-2 days/week. That's another way God provides, as the work is good and consistent yet flexible, and provides US with another close-up learning opportunity on building an ICF house, if that is going to be in our future!
In my home-making world, the kids and I are getting along fine. Bridget pretends she has a baby in her tummy (right) as she prepares corn-chicken-banana-carrot tea for a "sick" Teddy. Riding the Milwaukee Co Zoo train during our visit to my folks recently (right). They are all growing up so fast! The clown to the left has started (home)school, and loves the Friday morning community group we do. I'm tutoring a class of 8 4- and 5-year-olds, and Bridget and another 3-year old get to "audit" the class, as they're not old enough to be official students. It's a lot of rote memorization work, with a science project and a Fine Arts project thrown in, but I have a few moms in-class to help manage it all. It's going to be challenging, fun, and it's definitely stretching me already.
On the other 4 days of the week, I'll be fitting in 5 days of kindergarten (and pre-pre-school for Bridget). At this age, Teddy is mostly doing math activities and getting better at reading and writing. But there are fun science, art, history, literature, culture, geography, and music things to learn too. I'm glad he already has a huge head start on reading, as that gives these initial school days a lot of flexibility as his MOM becomes familiar with the material and the routine. His school is a combination of the Classical Conversations (CC) memory work (that's our Friday group) and Memoria Press (another classical education curriculum) work. I'm starting the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book over with Bridget (we had gotten to lesson 8 or so, last spring), and she gets to use a wet-erase marker in an activity book. But she has also been singing the CC Timeline Song and history songs along with Teddy, which is adorable and funny! In our first real "school day" at CC on Friday, Bridget was reminding Teddy to "sit down!" and "Teddy, shshshsh!" when he failed to raise his hand and wait. So cute! She's going to be a good helper in class I think!
In other news, we have sauced a LOT A LOT of apples this year, and after giving a lot of sauce away, I'm planning on saucing as much as possible as long as there are free apples lying around! We've gotten it down to a great system and it goes quite quickly. We also used a peeler/corer/slicer, which was fun! We rebuilt the back deck (left). For the railing, we dismantled reclaimed patio doors (tempered glass) and framed them in. I like it a lot! (Sorry, it's not pictured).
We have also successfully driven a sand-point well on the land with a cute red hand-pump (right), and will soon be tearing down my raised-bed garden and moving the perennial plants (raspberries, strawberries, grapevine, and herbs) to a spot at the land because the garden here is actually halfway across the lot line. Oops. Definitely thought it was 10' away when we built it. Thankfully we have a really wonderful and chill neighbor, who's fine with it! We just can't be selling our house with it there, in the spring.Besides all that, we are just taking things ONE DAY at a time! Ciao!
I just started Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons with Aaron, too! He is eating it up so far, and can't wait to do his lesson each day. Loved this update - thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteWonderful! My friend recommended the book to me and now I recommend it for anyone wanting to teach their kids to read. It has given Teddy a wonderful foundation on phonics and he's sounding out and figuring out words everywhere. He also would do 1-4 lessons in a day, so as long as Aaron is still retaining everything, you can do more in a day!
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