18 February, 2009

New possible storage shed

There is a guy over in MS that has shipping containers for sale. These boxes are 8 ft by 8.5 ft and 40 ft long. I think that I could put everything in the house in that and be happy. The price isn't to bad 2300.00 including delivery.
We currently have a garage stall in town because our house is just way to small and my love of books is way to big. I keep saying that if I took all of our homeschooling stuff and my sewing stuff out we might have more room.
Now all we need to do is figure out where we are going to put the thing and then probably paint it once it gets here they are very orange and say Hyundai, yep that blends so well with my quiet country side.
What will we do should we move though is the really big question, I wonder if the guy selling them will move them for you? I guess I will have to ask.
But then there is also the fact that Deanna mentioned this to Dewey and he might have a contact that I can get something bigger for less. Need to pray about it either way, which would be the wisest use of our funds.
Of course if we just got rid of everything I wouldn't need the storage shed. To much stuff in my life, I really need to just simplify. It was so easy to get the stuff, but so ridiculously hard to let stuff go. I just don't understand why.
And the bigger point here is I came into this world with nothing, I shall leave it with nothing, but if I don't do something soon, my children are going to have a huge mess to sort through someday. Which is not something that I want them to do.
So what would you do?

13 February, 2009

Fruit trees and berries

Our extension office is having it's annual tree sale.

We are looking at several apple, peaches, pears, plums, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries. I would also like to get a couple hydrangeas and a shade tree or two for the front yard. The afternoon summer sun makes the house so warm.

I think that our total was around 250.00 but now I don't know what the total tree count was. I need to find my list. The last day to order is on my birthday so that should be fun order our orchard, but picking up a lot of trees is going to be interesting.

I am thinking that I need to get a battery for the pick up and then take two of the children with me. Thomas has proven himself reliable in staying home for a short amount of time, with one brother who was asleep the entire time. If I run into town get our trees and other plants and come straight home he and his brothers should be fine. Need to pray about this some more.

No matter what I will get this all home, it just might take a few trips or something. Not really sure yet.

I do also plan on having most of the holes dug, that way once we get home with the trees we can just drop them into the ground and keep them healthy so that they will give us fruit faster. I can't wait till we can pick our own fruit. Jams, jellies, applesauce, apple butter, yummy.

Archery

This is something that all of my boys are very interested in.

So tomorrow we are going to our first 4-H Archery meeting.

I am praying that they will all listen and learn a lot.

The instructor has a catalog that I can order bows and arrows from, which is good.

I was looking at getting two compound bows that were very expensive. This should be a cheaper way to go and then I will be able to get more equipment for our own practice times at home.

I just feel that with so many sons that I have a better chance of them learning how to hunt this way than with a gun. They will learn to hunt with guns later, but for now this is a start.

I found out about this because I had stopped in at my county extension office, and asked about the homeschooling group-sadly they are meeting up towards Decatur which is too far for us. But then she mentioned Archery so it ended up good.

12 February, 2009

So a somewhat normal week has begun.

Sorry I haven't posted but it has been a crazy week or two. Since Richard came home on the 1st I feel like we have been on the move.
We got some cleaning and big stuff done around here, made up our fruit trees and bushes list, I will place the order on the last day one can order. It should be fun to see how I am going to get all of these trees home.
We took Richard back over to Atlanta Sunday night.

I had to go pick him up from Drill, then we were going to leave straight from there, but a neighbors dog that likes to hang out here decided to chase after our cat Midnight. When he went after her, he ripped the breaker box off the side of the house and messed up the wires. So we had to come back here so that Richard could fix it.

I so want to be off of the grid. Then I wouldn't need that box and wires back there.

Anyway we finally made it to Atlanta around 10:30-11:00 our time, got everyone in the room and went to bed.

Monday we loaded back up and went over to the terminal so that he could get his truck. Well I'll give you the short version. We sat there for 4 hours only to be told that he needed a drug test and to come back tomorrow.

UGGGGGG!

So we went over to IKEA!!!

I have looked at and shopped from IKEA for 6 years now, but this was our first time in an actual store.

We ate lunch at the cafe and it was really good. We walked around and looked at everything.

Wow what a great store.

We found our dream kitchen, with the appliances and sink too.

They had real apartments with various square footage, so that you could see what you could do with that amount of space. I have hope for making this little house that we have been blessed with work.

Now all we need to do is figure out which room we are going to start in and then how we are going to get everything home.

After spending 4 hours in there, we were heading back over to the hotel to unload Richard's stuff when I saw a Walmart, and Starbucks. Well this Walmart was underground with a parking garage that was so big a Semi truck went through it. I was amazed. I stayed in the van with the sleeping ones and Richard took the others that had to go potty inside. They said that the food was in the middle and all the other stuff was around the perimeter. Once they came out I went up to the ground level/street side and got myself a Venti Pumpkin Spice Latte, yummy. I still had to make the 4 hour drive home.

I would have stayed the night but Jadon had an early morning Dr's apt.

Once we got the hotel we unloaded the van of Richard's stuff, repacked it down to a more manageable size(he still had a ton). I finally got on the road around 7:30pm our time. I made pretty good time, only stopped once to get another cup of Pumpkin Spice Latte near Talladaga. You would have thought with that much caffeine in my system that I would have had a hard time going to bed but I didn't, once we got home I got everyone in and changed and straight to bed.

Tuesday we got up went into town and had the shop that did my brakes look at them, seem I have a really bad alignment and if I don't get it fixed soon I am going to loose my front right tire. So next week I am going to get that done, an oil change, the tires rotated, and the main belt changed.

I also got our taxes done. We are getting a pretty nice bit back, and plan to if it is God's will, we will be getting a new van.
I got an ad in the mail for a local dealership, so I called to see if they would be able to help us. Unfortunately we will have to get a loan in order to get a van. But they are offering one of those checks to help you, plus with our trade, and some more cash, we should have a nice down payment and then only need to finance a small amount, that I intend to pay off quickly.
Yesterday, Richard finally got on the road headed this way to Florence, so he stopped in town and we took him the rest of his stuff, then he came home for a couple of hours, then we took him back to his truck and came home. Most of the boys went to bed, Rachel did too. Thomas, Aric, and I stayed up for a little bit. Talked to Richard a couple of times then I went to bed.

So today we are trying to get our normal routine back into place. We are going to do laundry, get the kitchen cleaned up, and get our Valentine's made and into the mail.

To bad it took me all week to get this posted.