Autumn Time

I'm sure I say it about every season, but I love and adore Autumn.
I love warm sweaters, and scarfs.
I am getting excited for knitting and just need to come up with a project using some of the yarn I already have.
I love the brillant colors of the changing leaves.
I love seeing squirrels running around burying snack for winter time.
I love watching the birds devour the sunflower we grew. I look forward to feeding our cardinals and other non migrating birds this winter...

The summer so far...

This summer has seemed to be flying by! We enjoyed this past weekend on the coast in the Wilmington area celebrating Layke's birthday and Joey and I's second anniversary. It was so nice to get back to the ocean! and it was fun to be in an area where the ocean is more swim-able than in Oregon. We spent almost all weekend in the water. Body boarding, skim boarding, swimming, searching for seashells, building castles... The beach is our favorite play ground. I can't wait to get back!

Well it has been awhile since I posted. Since my last post we bought and moved into a house, (yay!) and I got licenced as a home daycare and now have 4 children enrolled (double yay!)

Our house is wonderful. We got it for a really good price, it is small, about 700 square feet, but it is all we need. 3 bedroom, 1 Bath, and on a 3/4 acre lot. We have slowly gotten settled in, planted small vegetable garden and herb garden and a few peach trees. Our house also has a "breeze way" or car port that connects the house and the garage. We spend a lot of time there where it is always shady and always has a breeze going one way or the other.

Why home day care you may ask? Well after we moved here to North Carolina I was having difficulty find employment in the field I was working in previously (I was an activity director at an assisted living facility for seniors) so I looked for jobs working with children, and ultimately decided that if no one would hire me, I would make my own work. I eventually wanted to do home childcare once we eventually get pregnant and have a baby so it worked out to transition into doing that now and get everything set up and running now.

The licensing process was relatively painless, just a few things we had to do around the house to pass inspection, and now I am officially in business. Life is never dull with lil' munchkins running around. I remember once recently my husband asked me how my day was going... and I told him "Well.. got laundry washed and on the clothesline, breakfast made, got Raine to soccer camp, only to realize he hadn't brought any of his stuff and had to come back for it, a child care boy threw up in the car, and .. well its a normal morning..." All he said was "WOW" It is a lot of work, but I feel the opportunity to work with these wonderful children every day is worth it.

I love working with children, they help remind you what is really important in life, and give you plenty of opportunities to remember to stop and smell the dandelions. Children help you notice an be enthusiastic about small things that otherwise would have been missed. I also love their enthusiasm for learning, and reminds me to continue my own learning.

All in all a busy but nice summer.

Hope your summer is going well too!

Oh Happy Day

Today I completed the purchase of my car. I am so so excited. It has been 5 months now with out a car and I have to say it has been tough. It is a 2000 Ford Windstar. Yes a minivan. Can you believe it? It is part of my ultimate goal of having a home daycare so I can stay at home and have babies. So I am very excited. Funny how tastes in cars change. I never thought I would be dying to own a minivan...

But I do have conflicted feelings On the flip side of my excitement is this: My mini van doesn't get the greatest gas mileage and I feel like a big time failure to thrive without a car. In my defence there are not bike lanes or sidewalks. There is a decent bus system, but it is so time consuming. Trying to go grocery shopping for a family of 5 taking the bus? Didn't work out for me so well. I hate being dependent on oil. I just watched I heart Huckabees, and it reminded me of my carefree college days without a car, and not missing one.

I do hereby solemnly swear with you as my witness to use my car for trips worth going on, and too far to walk, IE 20 miles to work, hauling groceries. I will coordinate my trips to be mileage efficient. I will walk several parking lots rather than drive 500 yards.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years! We sure did. Christmas day it started snowing at 8am, and snowed all day. Leaving us with our first real amount of snow. We enjoyed it. Sledding almost everyday with the kids. The kids got a practice snow board for Christmas so they practiced using that. Raine is already a pro, and is already going off jumps and getting air. We had fun taking pictures, and being out in the snow. Me and Ocean had a lot of fun using an extra snowboard with no bindings as a sled. It goes SO fast, part of the fun is being thrown off or throwing yourself into the snow to stop before the briar patch, and the road. Layke built a really cool round snow fort. Ocean, Layke and I made a Snow Woman, complete with a baby. It has been so long since I have experienced "real" winter weather and I love it. I even got new boots for christmas! Yay for snow, and Yay for Christmas!

For New Years Joey and I went downtown and walked around enjoying each others company. We wanted to go dancing but not really feeling the crazy party scene so we watched the fireworks downtown and listened to the clock striking midnight (my favorite part), kissed (always great), and went home. It was fun to enjoy the first moments of the new year together. It is funny reflecting on the past New Years. This is our forth together. I look forward to all our future years and adventures together.