It’s been a hot minute since we posted an update. Life has finally gotten to a point where I can slow down a bit and post!
In November, we got back from the trip to home base in Florida.
Immediately, we were into the holiday rush between Thanksgiving, Yule, New Year, and missed birthdays.
My helpers helped me build a little patio deck for the RV.
Randal is very busy, taking a call here.
Here is the “lanai” set up with the Mk 1 side walls, which weren’t that great. I later replaced them with a proper sidewall kit, which was important as the weather soon turned cold and wet.
Of course, there was no slow down with activities. Straight into camping with Scouts, they kids got to climb the tower and shoot bow and arrow.
The elves were up to their usual shenanigans as well.
Of course, one of the most missed things was the digging pit. Which they promptly got yelled at for making it too deep.
I smoked a few turkeys for Yule dinner.
Presents on the lanai.
New Year’s Fireworks with friends and neighbors.
January brought more cold days.
We had given notice to the tenants to move out, but it would still be a little while before they were out and we could move back into the house.
More homeschooling and book work, but there was still camping with the Scouts. Alan and Jarek went to a winter campout that actually had snow!
February brought Evan’s birthday party and a pinata for the kids.
Late February brought animals. Baby chicks and preparation for dairy goats.
Randal inspects the neighborhood Tom.
March brought the goats!
March also brought the Pinewood Derby for the younger kids.
Arya and Evan work on their cars.
Arya sits with randal while they watch the races.
Garrett worked to build his own car at the lego table.
The end of March also brought back our house! The tenants were out April 1st, so it was time to pull our belongings out of storage!
April
April brought boxes, boxes, and more boxes. And furniture assembly, and all the other assemblies.
Alan and Jarek went to the Sun N Fun airshow with the Scout Troop.
Garrett thought that the empty boxes were the best toys!
Goats doing Goat things.
Evan got into soccer again, doing his favorite thing, running around!
Baby goats!
Evan and Garrett feed the baby goats
We added a couple goslings to our collection!
Jarek earned his Tenderfoot rank.
More boxes await!
Randal helps with the chicken feed!
Evan and Arya complete another year of Cub Scouts and move up in rank.
June brought more projects. Alan began work on the mobile chicken tractor. Garrett helps to assemble it.
A visit to the lake with family!
Unfortunately, afterwords Alan picked up some bug and got sick for a few days.
Chickens and Geese all grown up!
The end of June and first part of July, Alan and Jarek went to Woodruff Scout Camp.
It was a great time and a lot of fun! Jarek learned a lot and got to knock out a lot of rank requirements and earn several merit badges.
Arya gets some snuggles in with the goats.
Randal celebrates his second birthday with a rice krispi cake, as is tradition. Garrett is there to help him blow out the candles!
And that brings us up to August! We are mostly moved in, but still have a bunch of stuff to go through. We’ve been working on sorting out stuff that is too small or no longer wanted. Fortunately, we are finally able to age out of some baby clothes!
Alan has been working on several geeky IT projects, including moving the website hosting to a new server and getting all of the photos cataloged and accessible. That project is also moving forward, now that there is a little bit of breathing space.
I still have many posts from the trip to go back and catch up on. I am going to make a point to get some of those published out here by sheer force of will, so expect to see dribs and drabs of those now that some of this administrative overhead is done.
We are also gearing up for our next year of homeschooling, which will be a bit less exciting than last year!
Scouts is getting ready to start as well, and Arya will be moving up to the big Scout Troop later this year, so she will get to do more camping and activities as well.
Meagan is on the hunt for a buck to breed our goats again to refresh their milk, so that will be a new experience for us as well.
We have the chickens set up in a pastured rotational grazing, and that seems to be working out. They are almost all laying eggs now. We got some baby turkeys as well, and that has been quite the adventure. They are a bit different than chickens and have some definite opinions on where they want to be!
I hope you enjoyed this update. I’m looking forward to getting more updates out about our adventures soon!