Seven Quick Takes Friday

1. After months of not blogging, I feel like I'm walking into a quiet library and screaming, "Hello!! How is everybody!" *blush* I've been blogging a lot, in my head. :)

2. We almost bought a house. We came SO close! But in the end it was just too quirky for dh. Because I couldn't refute his logic (he's half Vulcan, I think) I had to agree with him! Tomorrow we see another house, a short sale. Looks good from the pictures.

3. In gardening news, our raised bed is a bust. Well, at least anything where we eat what touches the soil, like the lettuces. We may be able to save a few peas, and some tomato seeds voluteered themselves from last year and seem to be sprouting into nice plants. But you see, a certain animal has decided to use the raised bed as it's personal bathroom. By the looks of it, it could be a raccoon. Possibly a large cat. Both are bad. It was several days in a row, but I've cleaned it all up and it seems to have stopped. Hence my new "don't eat anything that has touched the soil" rule. :-P Google "racoon latrine" and you'll see why.

4. In a similar vein we found two mulberry trees on the edge of the little acre of woods behind our backyard. I was so excited! Problem? There is lots of poison ivy back there, and I'm trying to be very careful to I.D. it and stay away from it. I'm a very poor poison ivy identifier. It seems to look different in each plant! The mulberries we *have* picked are yummy though. We get about a handful a day that we can reach without touching anything else.

5. School has come to a crashing halt. I seem to do this every May after getting our yearly review done. We'll pick it back up soon, but the girls have been doing their own thing and (other than their usual constant bickering) have seemed happy about it. Juliet has been drawing up a storm, and Maggie reading everything in sight. Grace just soaks in the whole world. And the other two, well, they've been having fun and driving each other crazy at the same time. Jeffrey's really talking so much now, and it's so cute what he comes up with.

6. This seems like an awfully boring post after three months off. Really, things happened in that time! Like, I crashed and burned. God seems to be carving deep into me to teach me new things. It HURTS but I feel like we are coming out the other side a bit now. (famous last words)

7. I've been reading Fr. Walter Cizek's He Leadeth Me. It is definitely teaching me about trusting God, and helping me to see what is meant by "Doing God's Will" - God's will is the people and situations he puts you in every day, and accepting that graciously IS doing His will. That being said, I *still* don't totally understand how it works. Like, when you have many big decisions to make. Do we move? Do we buy this house or that house? What curriculum should I use? Maybe none of that stuff really matters, and if it *did* God would stop me. I'd love to talk more about this or this book if anyone is willing.

Wow, I actually hit 7 things. :) Hopefully this will keep me blogging more regularly. :)