Kelly Farm in the Making

It's been quite a while since my last post. What followers I had are long gone now! That's ok this has always been for me, ok maybe for family to keep up with us. SO let's see, in the last four months we have adopted two female bunnies.

Snickers (L) and Trixie (R)

Trixie just gave birth to 6 precious babies on Sunday, of whom we plan to keep one and sell the rest.

                    

We adopted two kittens after our Tommy cat ran away and never returned. Elsa and Charlie are now 12 weeks old and are so much fun to play with. They bring lots of joy into our home.  We also now have four Leghorn hens and 4 Silkie hens (we hope). They are just 4 weeks old and let me tell ya, chickens are a hoot to watch. They also love to snuggle. We love our chickens.

Sadly, we have said farewell to two of our family pets. Taffy and Jojo both have died. It's been hard on all of the kids. Those two guinea pigs were such a delight to have.

School is just about over for this school year and I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited about it. This has been a tough year for us. Moved in Oct, I fell braking my ankle and spraining my knee in Nov., the long extra cold winter we have had this year and Sean just had surgery. I am still dealing with knee problems as well. I am looking forward to the long summer days that is for sure!

Happy New Year

Five weeks ago I took a step and down I went, without warning and never had a chance to stop it.  It ended with 2nd degree sprained knee, 2nd degree sprained ankle and an avulsion fracture of the talus.  This accident has cost us over $1500 in medical bills and now we will be fighting with the property's owner's liability insurance to get them to pay the bills and reimburse us for what we have already paid.
   Not how I wanted to end the year or how I wanted to start a new year.  But God is faithful and we know he will provide one way or another. The best news is after five weeks the fracture has healed completely. WOO HOO!  The not so great news is that the ankle and knee sprain are not healed.  But I no longer have to wear the boot unless I am out of the house. Makes a huge difference let me tell ya.
   SO it's a new year!  2013 present our family with many challenges, surprises, joys and pains.  I am glad it's over and I am looking forward to new adventures with the kids this year.  I hope this year will bring many new opportunities for us as a family to travel, to experience new and wonderful things.  I am believing for a year full of peace, love and joy as well as better health for all of us.  The kids will be starting their classes again next week and we have a goal to read through the whole Bible with our church but also for our family to do so.  We will also be setting individual goals for the year and we will work as a family to help each other achieve those goals. No resolutions here, just goals for bettering ourselves and challenging us to reach for higher things.
   So from our family to yours HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The Misstep

Two days before Thanskgiving and I am heading to the doctor's office with one of the boys.  WHY?? Because my boy decided to wait 3-4 days before telling me he had something hurting on his bum.  It was a nasty spider bite that looked infected.  A lot of pus and nasty stuff came out of it but I was worried it was infected.  So off we go, the whole time I was thinking, we'll stop at the store before heading home to make sure we had everything for our Thanksgiving meal.
 So we arrive at the doctor's office and as we are walking into the lobby my left foot slips out
from under me and down I go.  Now if you have read this blog for any time what so ever you will know that I have arthritis really bad in my left knee.  So much so that 4 years ago my ortho. informed me that I would eventually need a knee replacement. Oh yay ....NOT!!!  Well what did I fall directly on in a not so friendly position...my left knee and ankle.  OUCH!!!!!  Let's say that again....OUCH!!!!!
   Definitely not the way I wanted to start the day or the holidays. SO I call Sean to let him know what I have done and to meet me in the ER. I dislike going to the hospital!!!  I do not have insurance, can not afford insurance and we all know what the cost of a trip to the ER is like. YIKES!  I get there and call home to let Jaron know what has happened and to make sure to watch after the other two kids.  Well Kris my autistic son, answers the phone.  The conversation went a little like this...
 
 Kris:   Hello
   Me: HI Kris it's mom.
   Kris: Mom dad's not home, I don't know where he is, I think he is lost.
   Me:  Kris Dad is with me.  I fell and am at the hospital.
   Kris: I am really worried about where dad is he is lost I just know it.
   Me:  Kris Daddy is with me at the hospital and so is Eli.  Take the phone to Jaron, please.
   Kris: OMG  you are at the hospital?  WHY?  
   I hear him running up the stairs taking the phone to Jaron and the next thing I hear is, "Jaron moms on the phone shes in the hospital and dad is lost and I can't find Eli!"  all in a panicked voice.  I can't help but laugh as Jaron gets on the phone and says, "ok what in the world is going on!"  ...

Needless to say I ended up waiting an hour and half to see a PA who was just plain wacky.  I am sitting there in a wheel chair, in severe pain and was offered no ice, no pain meds and crying.  NOT A HAPPY CAMPER let me tell ya.  Once we got in and they took the xrays all the PA wanted to do was talk about how bad my knee was ate up with arthritis...uhm yea I KNOW THIS!  After 10 mins of explaining I know how bad it is she finally says well let me go look again. Ok so now I have been in the ER  two hours, it's been about 2 1/2 hrs since I fell and I still have not received any ice or pain meds.   About 20 mins later she comes back and tells me I have a avulsion fracture of the talas bone in my ankle and she thinks it will heal ok on its own but recommends I see a specialist.  Oh great another major bill before Christmas and not a present has been bought.
    I was in such pain I never asked her about my knee again, it took another 15 mins  before I got an ice pack and another 10 mins before I got pain meds.  By this time, I was in so much pain they could of cut my leg off and I wouldn't of cared.  So 3 hours after my great fall I finally get the pain meds and they DIDN'T help.
   Ok so here is the funny part in all of this...

Goal: They want to put a temporary splint on my leg.
Problem: I am wearing jeans because it is in the 30s outside and raining.  Pants won't fit over splint and I was NOT going to let them cut my jeans.
Solution: Remove pants, have splint put on, and cover myself with hospital gowns.

Do you see the issue with our solution?  Let me tell you it was not pretty!  Here I am with two gowns wrapped around my waist like a skirt that was not attached being rolled out to the van where it is cold, sprinkling and in pain.  The whole time I was thinking, "Please let the parking lot be empty of people!"  Was it?  NO!  Not at all.  In fact in two separate cars sat two men.  The thoughts that ran through my mind at that point were not pretty.  But being in the kind of pain I was in I really didn't care if they saw my big naked butt trying to get in the van!  Sean did his best to make sure I was covered but let me tell you that cold rain was not refreshing!  It was quite comical.
   So I have shared all of this to get to this point, here I am it's Thanksgiving and I am the one that usually does all the cooking.  Well it was a great time for Sara to learn how to prepare her first Thanksgiving dinner.  She did FANTASTIC!  I am so proud of her!  She helped on Wed. to prepare all of the different dishes so it would be easy to just put them on the stove or in the oven the next morning. Thanksgiving morning, she set the table, cleaned the house (all without being asked) and then helped chop veggies and put the turkey on.  Remember she is 9 years old!  She basically took over the duties the house, making sure things were done.  Just so proud of her.

Sweet Sixteen...or would have been.

Today marks SeanPatrick's 16th birthday (still birth).

Things we we never got to do...
Hear his cries, see his smiles, hear his laugh, watch him take his first steps or say his first word.  So many firsts we never got to experience and this year is a mile stone.  Sixteen... girlfriends, drivers permits, high school football games.....  and of course all the future things to!    SIGH!

What we do have...

Pictures of his precious birth, pictures of us holding him, memories of the pregnancy and how he responded to his daddy's singing, feet and hand prints, a lock of his beautiful brown hair and pictures of his precious sweet face.

Time doesn't heal it simply makes the pain bearable.

Puppies

So we moved into our new house and not only did we bring our four guinea pigs, rabbit, two small dogs, three turtles and an oscar (fish), we brought the neighborhood alley cat.  Tommy (or Ninja as I call him) is a remarkable little feral cat.  Our neighbors befriended him and you would never know that he was ever just an outside cat.  Ninja is the most loving little cat I have ever had that was a street dweller.  He has taken to our family, plays with the dogs and the rabbit and never tries to harm the guinea pigs.

Sara with her best friend and Tommy the Ninja.

 Then last week we adopted two precious little lab mix puppies.  They have brought so much laughter to the house.  The kids adore them and they adore the kids.  I have seen such a change in Kristofer.  I have read many articles about how dogs help children with autism but to see how he has responded to these two babies is amazing.  He cleans up their potty accidents, takes them outside, feeds them, plays with them and never complains.  It was the craziest but best decision we could of ever made.

Our new babies...Chloe and Molly

We Bought a House...

and are making it a home!  It's official, we are home owners.  WOOO HOOO!  What's even better is that our mortgage is $225 less than what we were paying in rent.  Which is such a blessing.  As I sit here in my living room listening to the kids play and I look around I can't help to be overwhelmed with emotions.  Owning our own home has always been a dream of ours.  To be sitting in that dream is a bit over whelming at times.  This broken house that we bought, a diamond in the rough as I call it, has transformed into a beautiful home.  We have more space than we have ever had.  When we got married the first place we lived in was a shoe box, literally 3 rooms and barely that.  You practically could touch both sides of a room by standing in the middle.
 Sixteen years later here I sit in this remarkable home.  It's a 70 year old house that has all the updates a new home has.  It is just wonderful!  We truly are in love.  We could never of done to this place that we did in one weeks time without my parents help.  We ripped out flooring in the kitchen to stabilize the floor (it was sagging, the home has all wood floors) and then put it back together. We took out the nasty carpet in one room and replaced it with new wood flooring and totally redid the walls by putting up new drywall.  We did the same thing in the living room to another wall.  The whole house was resurfaced as well as repainted and it has turned out beautifully.
 At the end of that week, a group of wonderful church friends came and helped us move into our new home. All within 2 hours we moved from one place to another and we could not thank them enough for all of their hard work. What a wonderful church of servants we have.

   The unpacking, decorating and settling in has come to an end.  We are settling back into the routine of school during the week, play during the weekends. Our children did wonderfully well with all the repairs and painting.  Each one of them have learned valuable tools and watched my parents as well as my aunt and uncle work on the home.  They take great pride in their new home and love it just as much as Sean and I do.  With all the unsettlement  taking place the last few weeks I was truly worried that Kris would have some meltdown.  He took it in stride.  He has changed so much that sometimes I have to remind myself that he is autistic.  Oh we had moments where he asked us the same question repeatedly, he would go over the plan of what was happening each daily repeatedly, and then there was the constant need to organize what everyone was doing and he had to know why and when it would be done.  Many times we could answer him and it would settle him other times not so much.  He has settled into his new routine and home very well.  In the past when we have moved he has gone 8-10 weeks to adjust.  In that time period we would have behavior issues, attitude issues and lots of insecurity.  This time around he has adjusted quickly and really loves it here. Which is such a huge blessing to us as a family.  You see autism does just affect the person who deals with it, it affects the whole family!

Dreams Coming True

Nine years ago this coming February Sean and I had started praying about our future. We were praying about ministry and where He was leading us and buying a home. One night the Lord gave me a picture of what our future home would look like. It was a white country farm house with a big back yard and had a clothes line in the yard. For the last 8 months I have been looking online and driving by homes in the community. Trying to find the home we wanted to make ours. We have been praying He would lead us to the home.
Last month we walked unto the property of a potential home. As we walked around the home to the back yard we were taken away by the large back yard (1/2 an acre) and there in the yard stood a clothes line! The first time we had found a home with a clothes line already installed.
  God's promises are yes and amen! He never backs out of those promises! It's always in HIS timing that those promises are fulfilled. Well on Friday we will be closing and will be handed the keys to our home, our promised land. It will be a promised fulfilled! God is amazing! He blows my mind at how much He loves us and how much He wants to bless us!

My Response to a Negative Comment

Recently I had someone comment on a post during the summer.  I did not publish the comment because honestly it was so negative, judgmental and bias that I didn't want to give this person who didn't even have the guts to sign their real name, a soap box on MY blog!  But after thinking about it a few weeks I have decided to address this person's negativity.

Here is this person's comments, "I am a SUCCESSFUL Manager of a large store in a nationwide retail chain. . Cut to the chase -- young people who (like your kids) are bright, engaging and who learn quickly, who have been home-schooled, usually do VERY POORLY in entry level positions in companies of all kinds. They have not been socialized in the NO-HOLDS-BARRED competitiveness, the nasty bullying, as well as the ugliness, hatred and sheer rank stupidity of public schools. . You are doing your kids a terrible disservice by home-schooling them. PUT THEM BACK IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS IMMEDIATELY! . Your kids will get "eaten alive" in the real world! Loving them is NOT coddling & pampering them!"

First off, what right do you have to judge all home schooled kids based on what you have seen or experienced?  Have you not met a public schooled kid that has the same issues.  My children are very social!  They are not sheltered what so ever and they have experienced enough bullying in the public school system to last them a life time.   My children do live in the real world! BTW can you explain to us why colleges are actually seeking out home school students?
   My husband works with troubled teens who have ALL attended the public school system, and most of them have truancy issues as well as behavioral issues.  How is the public school system teaching those kids social skills?  Apparently not so well in my book.
    Why would any parent willingly submit their kids to the "the nasty bullying, ugliness, hatred and sheer rank stupidity of public schools?" Do I believe all public school systems are as you describe, "NO!"  In fact, the public schools our children have attended have been good schools, but over sized classes and student to teacher ratios have not been so great.  
   It is up to every family to decide what is best for their children.  For us we have chosen to remove them from public school and home school  them.  Do we feel that we are hurting them socially?  NO!  Do we feel they are not learning enough?  NO!  In fact they are learning more, they have one on one teaching, they are not being pushed to move on in subjects they are struggling with as they were in public school.  In the last year, we have watched two of our children catch up and excel to the next grade level.  Now you tell me that public school is better for them.  I don't think you can!
   We do not coddle or pamper our children!  You sir have never met our children and honestly I am not sure I would ever want them to meet you.  Our children are well rounded, social, intelligent children being taught by their parents, who I might add have college degrees.  
   Home schooling has been the best thing we have ever done for our children.  They no longer have to fear going to school, fear of being bullied, beat up, have their lunch stolen from them (yes this happened to one of children when he was in 1st grade), or made to hate going to school.  That sir is and was a dis-justice to our young children.  
     
If people are going to comment on something I post, specially something that is negative, I would appreciate it if you would at least have the balls to sign your real name!  Stop hiding behind a fictitious name!  Oh and one last thing, you stress you are a "successful manager of a large store in a nationwide retail chain," if this is true then why not share what store and where you are from?  Apparently you are fearful those above you may find out about your judgmental attitude and dismiss you!


For my faithful readers....as you can tell this person's comments have set me off so to speak.  Thank you for reading and whether you agree or not with me or this person I would love to hear what you think.