Our week, and the official announcement

Sarah, no I have not read that book, but I will most certainly be checking into it!  Thank you for the suggestion.  I am so excited to be embarking on this new to us way of homeschooling.  It is also a little scary!  We printed out the  list of books that we need to get and are looking into ways that we will be able to take the online books with us on the go.  Ambleside Online does a great job in linking you to all the books on the booklist that are found on the web for free.  That really, really cuts down on the cost of things.  However, I am not always at the computer to do school.  So we are looking into other options at this point to make it more portable.

Thank you Lisa for playing my patterns game!!!!  You were right about the patterns and what they mean!  Yeah!  I wish I had a prize to send you :-)  In case any of you missed it, or were not interested in 'playing', I made up a little game in order to announce the news that we are expecting our seventh child.  However, my sister thinks it will be our seventh AND eighth children.  Hey, Trac, just a heads up, I increased my water intake a bunch and I am not having such a hard time with the blood volume or sickness issues.  So maybe I was just dehydrated!  Of course that still does not explain why my body is trying to increase it's blood volume this soon, but dehydration does indeed affect it.  I think I will have to post a poll to see if anyone else thinks we are having twins.  Just for the fun of it.  I am totally convinced that I am only having one baby boy this time around :-)  But I suppose I could humor my sister!  Ha, Ha!!  Love you bunches my favoritest sister in the whole world :-)  She assures me she is going to hound me about this twin thing, so I have to get her back some how. 

This little peanut is proving to be persistent in making it's presence known :-)  It started only two or so days after we found out I was expecting.  I wasn't expecting any pregnancy symptoms for at the very least another three weeks.  This has made tackling my to do list very much impossible.  Between being green, or my heart pounding due to my blood volume trying to increase (much sooner than its supposed to), or that I fall flat on my face by 3 PM every day....well it makes things difficult.  Drinking a bunch of water is helping some.  I'm not so green, and my heart isn't pounding when I stand, sit, raise my arms, lay down, or basically do anything else!  I'm still tired though.  The due date is January 7th, 2011.  That still gives us some wriggle room for this baby to fall into the even year pattern we were in.  It's a lot easier to remember that way. I am indeed wondering what the Lord has planned for the extended gap between this baby and Jonah.  It was very apparent that the Lord was ever so gracious in giving us a larger gap between Moira and Flannery.  As my longer time readers may remember, Flannery was a very difficult baby, and toddler, well for that matter child!  Ha! So that has made me a bit nervous to wonder why the bigger gap.....of course if could be for no reason at all, only time will tell.  We are all very excited about the new baby coming.  The girls are thrilled and haven't stopped talking about the new babe to be.  I already had my to do list swirling around in my head, but when I saw the blue line pop up (and it popped up really quick!) I made sure to put those thoughts onto paper.  I have a renewed sense of urgency to get these things done, way before baby is due.  I would really like to get the boys into their own room very soon as I know there will be an adjustment period.  Plus, I really don't want to be doing a lot of work right before the baby comes.  I would like those few weeks before to be relaxing.  Ok, I just about laughed out loud after writing that, but it would be nice wouldn't it?

I just found out the other day that Jed will not be having speech therapy during the summer!!  Yeah! Phew!  I was really looking forward to a break for a spell.  Having speech mid day just breaks into our 'groove'.  And I find it hard to get back on track when we get back home.  His therapist will be sending us some packets of materials to review with him over the summer, so we will still be working on speech, just not having to leave home to do so.  His last day of speech for this 'school year' is June 9th, so just a couple more weeks. 

This week was a doozy!  Between the normal stuff (speech, church during the week), we also had to get the van fixed, which took longer than expected.  One of our goats almost died, had to give both of them medicine which means we have to now wait to be able to consume their milk.  I got one milking out of them before they got the medicine and I am very excited to say that their milk tastes great!  I am so relieved.  Some goats will have funky tasting milk, or their milk will taste goaty when put into things.  I was able to use it in some recipes with no notice.  And the girls were thrilled to be able to have free reign of drinking milk...although very short lived!  But by next Tuesday we should be up and running with drinkable milk.  We also had the privilege of having some visitors yesterday.  I made homemade pizza and some cookie bars.  She made a fruit salad and a green salad (that came from her garden).  Scrumptious!!  The extreme hunger that I usually get early in pregnancy has not hit, but my taste buds are on in high gear.  The simplest things taste divine.  I find that so funny.  It's happened pretty much with all my pregnancies and I find it so amazing that our normal, no frills, baked potato now tastes gourmet!  I have to be careful not to over eat because food tastes SOOOO good.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my Saturday.  I obviously wanted to knock off some things from my to do list, but I woke up in slow motion mode.  I need to find that switch, so that I can control it :-)  I just kind of puttered around.  I did go out to clean out the van.  I was thankful that we had leftovers for lunch.  And now it is 3 o'clock and my eyes have been growing heavy.  So after a little rest I do hope I am able to get on the ball.  The oldest three girls have just left to go to a friends house, leaving us with the three youngest.  It is always amusing that years ago when we only had three it seems soooo hard.  But now, when we are left with only three children, I feel like I have a vacation.  How time and number of children can change your perspective! 

I haven't really taken any new pictures, and I still haven't been able to get up the pictures that I told you all I would.  Hopefully some day.  In the mean time enjoy your weekend.  Maybe I'll be back with a poll.