Regular Life

Oh, these days are flying!  How is it already mid-April?  I feel like it should still be somewhere around Valentine's Day.  I'm hardly used to writing "2012"--slow down, year!

This last week was a blur of recovering from Easter, figuring out the sheep, getting back into school, and enjoying as much time as possible outside.  Spring here is beyond beautiful, and from morning til bedtime the kids are outside, except for school hours.  We've weeded garden beds, drawn on the driveway with sidewalk chalk, and done a lot of scootering up and down our long driveway.

I've spent several evenings with the sheep, plopped on a bale of straw in the stall, cooing to them and feeding them alfalfa from my hand.  The lambs are still skittish, but Clover is not at all afraid of me and will come up for an ear scratch.  It's very peaceful in the dark barn at night, hanging out with sheep and listening to the chickens sleep.

Last night was a little less peaceful--Ivy went for a swim in the horse tank before bedtime and had to be rescued.  I was more shaken than she was, and I sat in the barn for a long time, cuddling her in a blanket.

Last week I hit the second trimester, which seems impossible.  In a matter of weeks we'll find out what we're having, and this little person will have a name.  If it's a girl, the name is already chosen, but we're fine-tuning boy options.  Everybody is hoping for a girl, so Addie will have a sister, so we're holding off on boy choices until we know.  Oddly, I can imagine another daughter but can't imagine a boy who's not either Caiden or Grayson.  Maybe because I've had the two of them for so long that another boy seems unimaginable?  Addie says if it's a boy, she's naming him "Junior," after the asparagus on Veggie Tales.  I'm pretty sure that name is not in the running, though.

Other than school, sheep, and regular life, the only thing I've really had time for is sewing curtains for our little guest house.  It will become our school house sometime later this spring, to make room for the baby, so I've been steadily working on redoing it.  The treadmill has been moved, the loveseat found a home in our family room, and my husband graciously gave his TV to a friend of his from church.  I was very happy to see that behemoth leave!  All the furniture is now in the right places, and I ordered 50 yards of fabric for the curtains, pillows, and guest bedroom bed linens.   I'm 20 yards down, now, with just bedroom curtains, a duvet cover, bedskirt, and some bed pillows to go.  None of those is crucial, though, so we may be moved in before they're finished.  I'm still tired a lot, despite sleeping a ton at night, so productivity comes in small spurts that don't last long!

Tonight we're heading down the road to a neighbor we've only met on the phone.  We've long admired his sheep but had never met him, and we found out this week that he's also a veterinarian!  He invited us over tonight to have a little banding/docking party for all of our lambs.  He's had a bunch born this week, and he said he'd be happy to educate us.  Talk about a great neighbor!!  He'll also come over to shear our ewe, and after You Tubing it, I'm pretty excited to have an expert do it!  So I need to go make dinner before we load up our lambs and head over.

Sometimes I'm not sure whose life I'm living, but I really love it.