i've always been a fan of this time of year...a new school year, new paper and freshly sharpened pencils....a new wardrobe all neatly laid out for the first day of school (what? you didn't lay out your first-day-of-school outfit the night before?).

we've been busy the past month nesting. i love to nest in august because it makes me feel as though i'm getting ready to go back to school again (bound and determined to get a straight-A report card!).

last saturday morning, we woke up and kenny decided to clean out the garage. that didn't sound fun to me at all, so i suggested painting our back porch. that didn't sound fun at all to him, so we went our separate ways...the three boys bouncing back and forth between his work, my project, and my parents' house. he was done by dinnertime, and i finished three days later.

in addition to painting and sorting out the garage, i've been organizing all our school supplies, learning areas, and planning lessons for each child. it's a bigger task this year as i've moved from a complete curriculum to different curriculums for different subjects. and i have two different "levels" as adam will be with us each day. this is his decision, not mine. :)

i've entered the "no more nap" era of parenting. i fondly remember naptime when both rowan and sawyer would fall asleep after lunch for two hours each (it took rowan two year to learn to love naps...he never took a nap in his crib until he was two years old). when they would slowly grow out of their nap, adam still took one or two a day. i would still have a few hours of free-time to spend with the two older boys while the baby slept.

and now, from 7:30 until 9:30, there are three boys underfoot...wild and crazy, active and ENERGETIC! there are days i don't know how i will make it until dinnertime. somedays i can't quite figure out if i'll make it until lunch! but through all of the craziness, there are several times a day i look at those three joined-at-the-hip brothers and can't quite believe there isn't a baby among them anymore. three full-on kids who talk, run, fight, laugh as brothers are meant to do. and in the blink of an eye, we'll be feeding three elementary-aged boys...and then three teenagers...and i don't want to believe it, but i have to: eventually all three will be out on their own. and i can only pray that i've done the job of a good and faithful servant-mother.

so...it's a new year: older boys, a busier homeschool, and dozens more memories to make over the next several months.

what does your new year look like?

...but wow! has time gotten away from me, and i think i'm ADD now. :)

i just started this post and something on PBS suggested grabbing a cup of coffee and now i forgot what i was going to blog about and all i want is to make a great big tall glass of ice cold decaf iced coffee....mmmmmm.....

i've been spending most of my "free time" preparing lessons for the upcoming school year. i can't stress enough how much i LOVE lesson-planning, and how much i can't wait for our lessons to formally begin for the school year (Ifirst week in september...).  if you're interested in our schooling plans for the year, subscribe to my homeschool blog at http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/smithical/ and i really hope to update it soon with our fall curriculum and update it throughout the year of all the fun we're having!

SHEEP!
we're really enjoying having sheep under our care. daisy and violet are getting more and more used to us. if i can't find sawyer in the house, i look outside our windows to the pasture and see him just sitting as close as can be to the sheep. when i ask him why he doesn't tell me when he leaves the house, he answers, "i just want the sheep to get used to me! i love them, mommy!"

violet (the brown romney) eats from all of our hands and daisy (white, border leicester) lets us pet her only when inside of her shed, with violet right next to her. she really wants to like us, but she's still a bit cautious. every time i pet them, and feel how thick their wool is getting, i get more excited about washing, preparing, and spinning their wool. i'm eager to see how it spins out...

this week is our county's farm show and last night, we met the suffolk sheep farmers during their animal set-up. they are showing a cow, some sheep (rams, not ewes), and chickens, so they're very busy. but they were nice enough to give us free tickets to thursday evening's sheep sale. kenny is SO EXCITED to bring home his suffolks. i'm happy with my two "woolies"...he'll be happy when his "meaties" are in the pasture. :) we hope to get a good deal on two more at the auction this week. i told him their names will be "chops" and "curry." 

kenny is proving to be a very caring sheep farmer. he spent over to an hour at a local grain mill purchasing several (like 13 to 15?) ingredients for a healthy grain mixture for the sheep. we're very eager to grow our sheep on just pasture in the spring/summer/fall and hay in the winter, but a grain mixture is necessary for training purposes (and necessary for the ewes when they're mating and just after lambing). in order to get the best nutrition from a grain mix for sheep, we have to be careful about the ingredients. we got full corn and oats (not chopped or rolled) and then a bunch of vitamins, minerals, and pure molasses...mixed it all up and 100 pounds later, we're good until at least christmas! grain mills can only mix up tons at a time (and normally no less than 2 tons), so we had to purchase a small amount of the ingredients list and mix it up ourselves. it took a good part of saturday afternoon, but the sheep are now happy with their new grain mixture. we're still mixing it with the grain mix that their old farmer brought to us as you need to ease them into any new feeding habits.

SPINNING!
last week, i attended my first meeting of our county's spinning and weaving guild. it was rather intimidating...there are some incredibly talented people in our community. the show-and-tell section of the meeting was truly inspiring: two of the women raise their own silk worms and spin their silk and make fabrics out of said spun silk! this is something that i'm not in the least interested in, but wow! who would have thought to actually spin silkworm silk by hand and then weave that into a fabric that you can make clothes from? incredible.

i'm more inspired to master the drop spindle and then move onto my spinning wheel again and get to know how it spins. right now, i have three spindles going with three different wools - one sheep wool that i washed and am drafting to spin, one alpaca wool that i received when i had a spinning lesson back this past winter, and one with some roving mom picked up for me at the local yarn shop (we're not sure if it's pure wool or a blend). i'm getting there...slowly!

...now...where's my iced coffee?

here is my first skein from a roving of alpaca wool i finally got around to preparing for spinning.

it's done purely on a drop-spindle, and not a wheel. it's completely "chunky" and not at all even. like i said, i have a long way to go, but i've caught the spinning bug. i look for 5 minutes to steal away every so often just to get some spinning in. i'm getting the hang of the drop spindle enough now that it makes it an enjoyable little hobby for me. i'm halfway through white alpaca roving that i'm getting very thin as i've learned to rove it thinner.

this isn't a lot of yarn - it would get you about 3 rows of  15 stitches of a scarf. :) eventually i'll spin off a great big skein...of our home-grown wool!