Visual Update

I'm overwhelmed with thankfulness this week, I know, a week early, but I can't help it. My Dad arrived on Tuesday night. I hadn't seen him since May and my mom hadn't seen him for the month she's been here. So, we're all very happy to be together again. Yesterday we had a surprise visit from my aunt and cousin from New Jersey! They were passing through and stopped in for a bit, and had some tea. Such a lovely surprise! I wish I got their picture while they were here!
I'm also thankful for my homeschool kiddos I get to be with every Thursday. We attend a co-op of about 100 homeschoolers who congregate weekly to do gym, drama, science and other fun subjects that supplement their regular curriculum. When my college and careers class fell through this school year, I was recruited to coach gym class to seven 7th and 8th graders. I also sub for other gym classes off and on. I so enjoy these kids! Six of them are boys and boy oh boy are they active! They put up with my structure: warm-up, push-ups, sit-ups, running around the gym before our activity and we always pray at the end, but they won't touch hands -- ewww, gross!

We have done boxing, an obstacle course, and of course, tons of fun games, most of which they have taught me. Their favorite is Poison, which is a cross between tag and dodgeball. My favorite that they taught me is "Missionary Tag", which is like Red Rover only everybody runs from one wall to the other and the "missionary" in the middle tries to tag whomever he/she can as they run across. Anyone who gets tagged joins the "missionary" in trying to tag people. Too funny! Not sure the game is the best way to teach the kids how to be a missionary, but it's just a game. Here's a pic from yesterday of the kids playing Poison Ball, which is totally different from "Poison", it's just plain dodgeball, I'm pretty sure. I look forward to seeing these kids every week. And yes, I usually do all the exercises and play all the games with them. Why wouldn't I? Here's a pic of our lovely hair dresser whom we've had for ten years. She is so patient with our wiggly boy, of course the candy helps. Last week, she talked me into getting bangs for the first time since I was ten, I'll be sure to share a picture soon. I'm having fun with my new look and I'm thankful that my son looks respectable again.

Here's what's going on right now as I write this:

And here's a sneak peek of part of the banner I'm making for church.
I have a LONG way to go and will show you pictures once it's done.

Where to put it

Yay! I'm excited to share that for the past two months we've been composting! We gave ourselves one month to get settled in our new home before starting this new endeavor. Turns out people with septic tanks can't have a garbage disposal in their sink. Turns out we were super duper spoiled. It's taken a bit of adjusting to not putting anything down the sink, but it feels good to know that we're making wonderful compost in the backyard with our rotting food. Ben thought of using our old doggie gates previously used to keep our hairless pooches safe in town. Now they run free and the varmints stay out of our growing pile of food.

It's lovely for everything to have it's place. Food in the compost, burnables in a box to burn, recycling in it's respective bin and just a wee bit of trash left over. It's organized and I love it! I have some friends at church who have been married for over twenty years and have never had trash pick-up (which we don't either now) and have never needed it! They bury some things (like chicken carcasses), put some in a ditch for local animals (other meats), compost, burn a lot, recycle most. I think that's amazing! We're not that good by any means.

Speaking of inspiring, a few days ago I read this post on moving from "disposable" to "reusable". My husband already poo-pooed the cloth toilet paper idea. He does like the idea of a bidet though. I think we're ready to try living without paper towels and napkins. Especially with my mom here for three more weeks and wanting to make cloth napkins with me!

On the topic of organization: When my sisters-in-law helped unpack our kitchen we aimed to create a smarter kitchen too. In my new kitchen there's a cupboard with all the mugs, the coffee, filters, hot chocolate, marshmallows, tea and sugar. There's also a cupboard for bread, peanut butter, honey and nutella. In another cupboard we put all the baking supplies which I had together at the last house as well and inspired the rest of the organization. I would love to hear YOUR innovative organization ideas! I could use some help figuring out where to put our DVDs and things we previously stored in built-in cabinetry and now have no where to put them!

Oooh, check out all new pictures in the slideshow!!! I had a ton of pics to sort through between all of my pics and my mom's. You can see what's been keeping us so busy around here. Hope you have a fabulous week!!!!

A horse, of course!

Good news! My friend gets to come home from the hospital today! She must be walking on her own, as that was the criteria to get to leave. Thank you for your on-going prayers for a speedy recovery and for her to maintain her determined and positive attitude. She's a trooper!


Last week we all got our voices back from being a little hoarse, and we filled our week with a different kind of horse! On Monday, our friends Laurie and Darrell had us over to visit with their horses. Z was happier to have Daddy on with him than being by himself.

Z brushing PeaBo

On Tuesday we went to SkyView Ranch in Millersburg with our play group and all the kids got to ride horses and take a haystack ride. That's our Z riding below. He went around twice by himself and didn't want to get off!

I believe it was on Thursday we took a lovely walk in our back yard and met some of the neighbor's horses. Ben started calling Z, "the horse-whisperer" as he has such a way with the horses.

Yesterday, Ben and I flew to Butler County, PA for the day. My mom suggested it and she watched the kids for us. It was a lot of fun to get out and do something out of the ordinary. It was a beautiful day for flying and seeing the last of the Fall colors. Before we got too far, Ben flew me over our new house. Our last home was in the middle of downtown and it was always hard to determine which street and which house it was from the air. I figured this one out all by myself! We're at the top of the horse-shoe soy bean field. You can even see the horse farm with the pond on the bottom left of the picture.

The farmer behind us just plowed the soybeans today which reminds me that it's time to record a new answering machine message. Yes, these things go together for me, you see. Just a bit of history, here's my old message from our last house (I never did add Juju):

We are the Wigtons, through and through
And though it's inconvenient to you,
We seem to be off gallivanting around,
that or we're laying little 'Z' down,

We've done told you who you've reached,
Now do your part just after the beep.

When we moved, I thought this was a fitting message:

This is the country! Where we live now!
We'd be out making hay, but we don't know how!
We're thrilled you called, in case you can't tell.
We'll ring you back or you can call our cell.

So, now I'm more schooled in the ways of country living and to say we'd be out making hay in the middle of winter is just plain silly. So, I really must come up with another message. Especially now that the soy beans in our back yard have dried and are finally being harvested. I really must think these things through next time and save myself some trouble. :-)

We have a cool God

We talked to someone who visited our friend last night and said she's not quite steady on her feet (normal after brain surgery), but is determined to walk and soon. Also, she can carry on a conversation! Which means she can hear out of the other ear! Praise God! Thanks for your prayers!! I'm confident she'll make a speedy recovery!