Healing and Holidays.

 Holidays. Family. Relationships. 

Last year one of our members was not here for Thanksgiving.

Last year we celebrated thanksgiving with my extended family for the first time in many many years. 

This year I had my entire crew home for the holidays. 

This year we didn't travel for the holidays. 

I invested a lot of time and energy into making our holidays memorable and fun for everyone. I scheduled a 5k race for the active ones and left the ones who prefer quiet sleeping in at home. We put up lights and the tree. We watched a movie. It worked super well and everyone had a great day.

We have an entire weekend at home. I have a couple kids who need scheduled activities and kept busy. I have some kids who would prefer to not move at all. We have a house to maintain, food to cook, and laundry to keep after. 

 We had scheduled cooking baking and decorating today. But momma is just done. Done. Done. I'm done making everything wonderful for everyone else. I'm done pouring out. 

I took a long nap, then I put on headphones with music and washed the mountain of dishes and deep  cleaned the fridge. I thought deeply over what the holidays mean for me. 

There are multiple levels and parts to every holiday. 

There is the mom part..the biggest, strongest part of me. I will do my very best to make sure my kids have wonderful memories of holiday fun. I will adapt and modify and make it a fun day. I set boundaries for anyone creating drama. I don't allow complaining or negativity. You have two choices, participate or shut up. 😂 But at the end of the day all of this is worth it because my kids have a secure loving home where no matter what they know momma loves them. 

There is the widow part of me. There is not a holiday that goes by that I don't miss Mesh, his big personality and the way he made me laugh. I think of what it would like if he was here to balance me on these special days and walk this road with me.   I think of how different life would be. The secondary losses that come with widowhood. When you are the only adult in the house. 

There is the daughter/sister part of me. There is much I don't share publicly. There are two perspectives to every story, I've chosen to not share that part of my story.  But just because boundaries are important for my mental health and good for my children, doesn't make one wish things it didn't have to be that way.

There is the friend part of me. The one who knows that without all my amazing friends who know how hard the road is. The friends who keep me focused on the good and listen to me vent and help me remember that in this fallen world we all have our struggles. 

I was listening to a podcast by Nancy Demoss Wolgamuth on gratitude this morning. She said this might not be the way you imagined life to be. But this is the story God wrote for you. The hard things ,the rough edges of life are what is making you more Christlike. 

The world tells you to live for yourself, to protect yourself, "you do you". But God asks us to let Him work in our lives even if it doesn't look like you think it should. 

This should probably be a separate post but it falls under the same umbrella..

Raising young adults from hard places is a rough road. Turning 18 is hard and scary when you have been abandoned and rejected by the people who should have loved you the most. Adulting can be hard and overwhelming when you have had multiple mothers before the age of 5. That little person inside you needs to heal before you can fly. Healing that little child inside is messy hard and painful. 

Being the anchor for these young adults learning to navigate the adult world and the emotions that come with all of that is not for the faint of heart. I'm thankful to be entrusted with their hearts, but it's a heavy job. One that I couldn't survive were it not for my Father who promises to carry us through the hard days. There is def power in a mothers prayers. 

I always go into the holidays with a bit of melancholy. A good bit of sadness and pain. I reflect on relationships and Healing. It's a time when I am extremely grateful fory crew. My people. My crazy bunch. This year as I reflect I see a lot of healing and growth. 

Chickies....

21 days ago, on Feb 8 we put 12 chickies into our havo-bator incubator.
We marked an x on one side and an o on the other side. Twice a day we would turn those eggs. Checking the temperature and the water level.
On day 18, we stopped turning the eggs. We closed the lid securely and left the eggs alone.

On day 21 we heard cheeping sounds.... WE could see the little beaks pecking at the egg shells, working on getting out. Everyone camped in the living room, right by the incubator, waking up to scratching sounds...
The CHICKIES HATCHED!! There was 3 new babies, when we went out to the barn. By the time we got back, another one had hatched.

WE transitioned the 4 babies to the homemade "brooder" where we had a heat lamp set up to keep them warm. They were happy and healthy.

Another baby hatched soon after...

We loved watching the babies peck away until they escaped from the eggs...

It was an amazing experience to see the miracle of birth right in our own living room. We took eggs that could be eaten and simply put them under the heat of an incubator, where God performed his mighty miracles in creating the chickies.

Farm life

Novemeber 2011 God blessed us with a beautiful 3 acre farmette to rent. It has a big barn, a big meadow and a nice garage.
Its on a semi quiet country road on a hillside,overlooking a beautiful valley. We can sit on our deck and see for miles and miles.
We had 2 golden retrievers we brought with us. Izzie and Marley... a couple cats that later ran away...

In  Decemember we bought a dozen hens. A couple weeks  later we got another dozen. Another couple weeks later 6 more... We also got one rooster to fertilize our eggs.

In January we purchased Rosa... our beautiful, grassfed jersey cow. We gives us amazing milk and all the good things that come with having raw milk.

The kids got a pregnant mini horse for Christmas. Brownie is our lovable Momma, due in July.

When our mice problem got overwhelming, we got Lulu the cat from the local animal health store.... Lulu is a little loony but she loves mice so we love her.
A couple weeks ago, Blackie and Minnie, two medium kitties showed up at the back door....

That completes our zoo.

Oh except for April, the neighbors mini horse that comes to enjoy our pastures a couple times a week....

This is my dream. To teach my kids to be self sufficient. To teach them responsibility. To work with them and to build a strong foundation for generations to come.