...the way it is.

It is time to write a post, I guess, as some of my friends are worried about me and my lack of posting!  What sweet friends you are!

No worries, though, all is well at our home.

I just must come to the conclusion that at this stage of life - having 9 children still at home - is all consuming.  That's understandable, and I am certainly NOT complaining, simply explaining!  It's life, and it is good!  :)

I know that many of us think that when our kids enter their teen years, we will have so much more time!  I used to think that, but have found the opposite to be true.  Teenagers are FULL of life, and Jeff and I are caught up in their lives, their interests, their friends.  There is almost *never* a quiet minute around our home, and that is no exaggeration.  The minute I sit down, someone needs me.  I'm no Walter Cronkite, but that's "just the way it is."

I think that someday I may have moments of solitude where I am able to think and write (and actually make sense...) but mostly, online writing looks more like a monthly report or a letter to the folks at home.  :)

Since that is how it is, here's how we have been spending our days:

*Spring is almost here in Southern Indiana.  This means that I feel compelled to do many things at once.  Finish school! Sort thru the clothes and see what I'll need for summer and next winter (for eleven people!) Spring clean! Plant things!  If only we could quit school by mid-March.  Some of the kids are almost finished.

*My attic is very organized and well-labeled.  Nothing else is.

*Regarding planting things...I always say that I'm not going to garden, that life is too busy, that I just can't do it again...but along about March I see that green things are beginning to sprout up and out and I feel a sort of desperation that I am "behind" and I need to get "out there" and shove seed into the soil.  It's indigenous, baby, so ignore anything I said last year.  This all might be related to the wanting an actual home-grown tomato, not a super-market "so called" spray-painted bit of fakery.  Yesterday, as my mother and I rode the ferry across the frighteningly flooded Ohio River to pick up supplies in Amish country, she pulled some tomato seeds from her pocket.  She'd saved them for me from the year before, as she always does, with the seed dried on a paper towel and the names of the tomato scrawled across the bottom.  "This one, I call Henry's tomato.  It's a big, beefy, tomato - so good for canning.  Henry's my neighbor, you know, and this one, is Norman's tomato.  It's pear shaped.  And these are from those little yellow cherry tomatoes you like....and this one is a pink and white candy striped...."  Oh my goodness.  I could taste the sun-warmed goodness right there on the cold, grey, wet ferry.  So, yeah, I plant.  I can't help it.

*lots of doctor's appointments lately.  Some for my parents, some for the kids, but mostly just standard things, nothing really serious.

*and as always, laundry, laundry, laundry and food, food, food.

*I spend a lot of time grading papers, reading essays, and assigning the next week's work - at least 3 hours every weekend.  I am so looking forward to completing this school year.

*I've been sewing some Huggable Memory Bears, too.

*Gabe cut his first tooth last night.  That's always so exciting.  :)  There's more to say about him, but he's almost five months, so I'll do that in the next post.

It's so good to stop by and say hello - if you have a moment, be sure to stop by the comment box and let me know how you are doing!