Back in the Saddle!

Well, I am delighted to announce that my beloved husband found my camera! For this phenomenal feat, he has once again firmly cemented himself as my personal hero. I have a ton of things to cover, so here goes! This is a shot of the kids and a bunch (not all) of the kids in our homeschooling group at the first field trip of the year. We spent an afternoon at the zoo and had a great time! You can't beat having the place and all the people that work there entirely to yourself! This is one of the new hands-on exhibits that they've added. It recreates living in the bush in Africa, and some of the things a scientist might study and use there.

Now this is something entirely different! This is just a couple of shots of the work we did to change our garden into a duck pen. It took about a week of really back-breaking labor to make it happen, but I am happy to say it was worth it!

This is our new flock! We were so excited to get the call from the post office to come and pick them up. One died in shipping, but the company sent an extra just in case, so we got our flock of ten. They were so tiny I thought that they would break apart when I took them out of the box!

They are a month old now and aren't so little. We unfortunately had a terrible pond accident yesterday, and two of our ducklings drown, so we're down to eight. The kids were very upset, but we plan to replace them in the spring.

For those of you who haven't heard, I've been really ill lately. I am getting better, but here's a quick recap. A little over a month ago I broke-out in unexpainable hives head to toe. The doctor put me on immune supressing meds to try to fix it. In the meantime, I discovered I have a bleeding ulcer and was put on meds for that. The meds for the hives didn't fix that problem, and they supressed my immune system so much that I developed shingles (chicken pox on your nerves-very painful!). So, they put me on high doses of anti-virals and anti-convulsives. Thankfully it knocked the shingles out of the park! My meds for my ulcer are doing wonderfully, and hopefully in a couple months I'll be healed of that. The hives are still head to toe, but I think I may have a handle on what's causing them, so cross your fingers! I am so grateful to my family and friends who brought in meals and minded and taught kids while I was out of commission.

I have also recently joined an online group called asamom.org, and lessons are going well for the little people. That about covers it for now!