Happy New Year

Happy New Year friends!

It's been quite a year for our family with lots of changes and adventures.  As we start this New Year we have a long list of "honey-do's" in mind.  The top three are finishing our garden plans outside, finally completing Cory's office, and completing Isabella's room.

The garden is off to a great start. We bought the Square Foot Garden book, our seeds, and have scouted around for a variety of container gardens and greenhouses.  Now we are reading all things garden related in the hopes that our brown thumbs turn the most vibrant green this summer.

Isabella's room finally is not a kitchen.  When we bought our home we were short a room or had too many kids..LOL  Either way we found ourselves using our second kitchen downstairs as a bedroom for our adorable third child.  We added a door this past summer and yesterday ripped out the counter tops.  YAY for progress.  This summer we will paint, do the floors, and finishing the base boards.

Cory's office is our second garage.  Gotta love our creative resilience to make our beach house work no matter what!  Well, after a year we have decided that he likes his office in the garage and now we need to make it more office like.  This will require some, okay a lot, of ideas that insist I think outside the box.  I am excited to step right into this project.

BUT...first,

I need to finish my next semester of school.  Can you believe its been a year?  Holy cow where did the time go.  I still love it.  I did really well with 42 credits and all A's.  Not too bad for a girl who thought her whole life she wasn't smart enough to go to college.  Never give up on your dreams!

Our kids are great.  We finally had a bit of snow this past week.  The little girls loved it and the big kids had to drive in it.  That was a love/hate relationship.

We got a couple of cats!  Saki and Oreo.  They are awesome.  Except for Saki refused to take a selfie with me--what's up with that?

Oreo, well, she is our princess cat.  She is an older cat that we rescued and her days are spent finding the warmest place in our home and laying there for hours. Rescue animals are the best!

Tomorrow we drive Drake, who also turned 20 last week, to Oregon State University.  CRAP--when did that happen.  Rye is now a manager where she works.  Isabella quit gymnastics and jumped into ballet with zeal. Finnley started preschool.  Our little family is growing up.

I'm hoping to write more on the blog this year.  Nothing fancy or planned out in advance. I simply don't have time for that with 16 credits this semester. I started this blog as a way to document our life for my kids. I need to return to that style. With that in mind, it will be filled with pictures, random thoughts, our daily adventures, and my ups and downs as a mom, student, wife, and pagan.  Expect to see a bit of everything this year.

I cook every day. Our plant based diet is exciting and I have learned so much with this new journey into preparing our meals without meat, dairy, cheese, and eggs.  Are we perfect yet?  Hardly.  It's still challenging sometimes, especially when we travel.  But you know what,  its okay.  We are moving forward with our goals and doing our best.  We still live by the 80/20 policy and find that our tummies are full and happy.

I'm not sure how many readers I have left but thank you to those that are still finding their way to our little bit of paradise at the beach.

Happy New Year!

Sherron