I cannot believe how fast this year is going!
My niece Corrin graduates High school tonight, Katie will officially be a Senior at Southridge in a week, Monica has worked her tail off for three weeks and will now be a Sophomore at ACMA in the fall, Jeremy has almost done 4 years of his 6 in the AirForce, Amie is getting great grades, Amanda seems to have her sights set on being an advocate for something she feels strongly about, PJ & TY are both going to be 14 and Freshmans in HS this fall, and I get to start homeschooling our youngest boys this summer!!
Katie and Mo will be taking BYU independent studies this summer to make up for credit they need-since the schools are so horribly over run now. I just want to scream at how selfish our politicians are-$37 million dollar short fall equals 18 less teachers/staff, 45 students/class, loss of language studies and consolidation of choir classes-those are just a few of the new trials public schools are putting on our kids now.
. I am so afraid for the future with the lack of education kids are getting. And I'm SO glad I'm homeschooling the boys!!
Jeff's already worked at Terminix for six months and it's time for the father/son camp out this weekend, which means he'll be in CO for actual Father's day so he can attend his big training camp. I'm always very nervous when he flies out of state, so I am planning on keeping myself very very busy that week.
I'm praying the weather here in OR will warm up soon-like by next Thursday, since I'm gonna have 5 rowdy kids to entertain daily. Plus we have SO much remodeling to do on the outside of the house-my rose garden and patio out front, the side area for Belle so Tyler can start helping us get her repaired, my shed/greenhouse in the backyard, chicken paddock for our fowl, pool area for the kids in July.....it's never ending-and we don't own the house yet so of course it's difficult to spend the time and money on this house.
And our neighbors don't exactly make us anxious to find a way to buy this house. We live near all these snooty, well off, older people with no kids-so they call the city on us or our landlord and say our place looks like $#!@- one rude neighbor even sent me a letter in the mail with a horrible, obscenity filled note inside last summer. I was so upset that I took the kids' sidewalk chalk and drew big letters at the end of our driveway that said "BITE ME!".
ok, venting here: We are not well off, we have 5 kids, Jeff works two jobs, I have health issues, and we are the only ones working on this house. We cannot afford to pay for someone to do the work for us, we have very little help so things take a LOT longer then what our neighbors like apparently.
I just don't understand how people can be so mean.
Even the city guy that had to come by after a neighbor said we had "garbage" in our driveway said that our place obviously just looks like it's being remodeled. We have a pile of fill dirt in the driveway we're moving slowly into where my rose garden will be, we have concrete chunks on the side of our garbage trailer for our future fire pit in the back yard. Our front lawn is torn up in places as we prepare for my garden to be increased and the lawn to be reseeded.
UGH!
And there goes my neighbor to the side of me with his lawn mower trimming the small perfect lawn he has around his small bushes and flowers. They don't have kids running amok, they don't have to worry about finances obviously with what I've seen them buy, and their places have all been remodeled/taken care of for the last decade. Ours hasn't had anything done to it before we moved in three years ago other then the roof and gutters-so we've been remodeling the house little by little since we moved in.
Several of my neighbors cutting beautiful trees down in the last year & the new snotty neighbors next door smoke so all that doesn't make me happy either.
I miss the country-where my neighbors were trees, cows, squirrels, and other beautiful things-instead of grumpy, mean people.
Rawr.
OK, there's my rant for today.....
Well....except my usual rant of why can't organic whole food cost less?
I hate that all the crap that's bad for you and causes cancer/diabetes etc is dirt cheap but organic whole foods that actually nourish my family is 4x as much! And of course now that I know how bad the cheap food is for us I cannot bring myself to buy it. The boys are learning it all so well that now when they're given a 'goodie' from someone they check the ingredients first to see if it has any of the bad stuff I've taught them not to eat. Like Red 40 or Soy anything. I do feel very blessed to have a lot of organic options in our area, as well as a hubby willing/able to work two jobs to help fund our insurance and an organic diet-and that I have the time as an at-home Mom to research whole food living as well as pricing out the least expensive stores.
Life can be so overwhelming!!!
But-Happy news is that it looks like we'll get to spend 4th of July in Florence again this year with Jeff's Aunt/Uncle-the kids are SO excited! Hopefully we'll have at least 6 of our 9 there with us. We'll see-it's just so difficult to get the older/out of state kids home anymore.
I've been trying to make Dr, Dentist and eye appointments for all of us now that we have insurance through Jeff's day job. It's expensive-costs us 1/2 his salary a month for the premium.
But it's nice to finally have insurance.
We're trying to get everything together for our date of August 2nd to be sealed. It takes a lot of paperwork and apointments to get everything together. Much more complicated for us then two young 20 somethings getting hitched. But, then, nothing in our life is simple or easy.
At least we finally have eachother though-for that we can go through all these trials, and it's still worth it all.
My sweetie took me out to see Prometheus at midnight- it was AWESOME! and gross and scary and explained lots of questions about the Alien series, as well as give you questions too. I'm sure there'll be another movie as it was left wide open. Theron and the Swedish actress did a great job.
I'm very tired today though lol.....I walked for 5 hours yesterday in the rain with Quien on our Pioneer trek, was up til 2:30 and now watching a friend's 3 yo.
TGIF though....
ok, that's my blog for today....mostly just a hodge podge of our life in the Hoagie household :)
off to get the guys all packed up for their camp out :)
hugs/kram
~Fawn
