Archive for December, 2005
December in Review
Hello December, Goodbye 2005!
The last month of the year has come and gone for 2005. Here’s my review for posterity:
Egg Report
Once again, let’s get this pathetic tally over with. Remember, this is for my sake - no one else’s. 
7. That’s right. Total = 7 
Lacey laid all but one (that was Fluff). *shakes head* I know why but wish it weren’t so. Hoping things turn around for them in the New Year… Really, is this silly or what?! 
Things are still as of this writing up in the air for us in many ways. At this point I can’t say (dare I hope? 
)whether we will be able to start a new flock or not. I hoped all last spring and summer and it didn’t pan out. I don’t think I can build my hopes like that again. I just really want to be content with the hennies we have because they really are nice chickens (as far as chickens go ) and I’d like for them to produce to the best of their ability. 
Snow/Weather Report
12/02 = 2 ”
12/07 another Chinook begins! Temp is 40 ° F at 3am or so when I get up to get some water and take the children to the bathroom.
12/08 the temp climbs to 43 ° F - WoW! 
So nice! Wish it would stay… Yeah, right!
12/13 = 5 ” Snow to make up what melted the previous week. Temps are still mild though (hi 20s, lo 30s) and that’s a big relief considering the situation we are in.
12/15 a Chinook comes through again! What whacky weather! Temp 44 ° F @ 9am!
12/16 Weather whackier than yesterday! 48 ° F @ 1:30am this morning! High winds through the night before…higher than this year’s previous Chinooks…but not has high as other storms.
12/20 = ¼ ”
12/23 = 3 ¾ ”
The temps have been mild again up to the end of the month.
Total Snow Accumulation = 11 “
Whew. What a year. Not a good one for us. I didn’t write about our woes here in depth. No need to. God willed it this way. He continually sustains us and waits patiently for us to learn lessons of humility, contentment, meekness, quietness, listening (for His still small voice) and so many others. It’s hard to not ask “Why?” Job has been and continues to be my favorite book of the Bible. Oh, to be as righteous as Job and as confident that the trials we are suffering are through no fault of our own!
Children
12/3/05 P. started consistently saying the “ba-ba” sound. I think she means it as “baby” as it’s very purposeful when she does it.
12/29/05 P.’s 1rst tooth is in!! Bottom right central incisor. She was cutting this tooth the entire month of December! Her relief can not be greater than ours. About equal I’d say - and very great! A real crabmister on the days it was bothering her the most. Absolutely no predicting which days would be her worst though…of course. Off and on constantly for a month…ugh. Like I said, her relief can not be greater than ours.
Maybe now Mama can dare to sleep… *yawn*
Celebrations
12/18/06 The annual Caroling Party @ Uncle H. and Aunt P.’s house. Once more a ton of fun was had by all and once more one of the hilights (for our children) was successfully figuring out who was playing Santa. (We don’t “do” Santa in our home but they make a great game of it elsewhere.)
12/22/06 We had a great time at Aunt J.’s house making a bunch of Christmas cookies! *yum-yum*
12/25/06 Christmas! We spent it in what has become our traditional way - mix with some non-traditional that a new baby brings…my parents arrived Christmas Eve (earlier this year though as Mom had the day off), stayed up way too late, slept in (yes, even the children ), Advent, stockings - munching on chocolate all the while , break for breakfast, present opening, get ready to leave, visiting and dinner @ Uncle G. and Aunt J.’s house, more opening of gifts, stayed up way too late, go home, collapse into bed - thankful that the baby is too tuckered out this year that she sleeps well this night despite still teething!! *whew*
12/31/05 I end this rough year in the most appropriate way - with an agonizing migraine!! So, bad that I feel sick to my stomach, have to lie in my room with the lights out and absolutely noone making noise!! Yeah, right. In a household of 6 children and one an 8 month old baby that is still nursing strong… *sigh* Eldest child was told to call Daddy at work and tell him that he must come home earlier than he anticipated. Not a problem basically working for himself…put it did put a damper on the project that he said they were an hour or two away from finishing. After 2 Tylenol and 2 extra strength valerian tablets, I’m ok by about 11pm. Manage to eat the late dinner dh made around 10pm, so that helped too as my stomach settled once I was able to rest. Dh watched a movie with the kiddos while I rested in bed some more. Eldest dd didn’t want to watch the movie so she laid next to me quietly reading. Had a good show of fireworks from our front porch from around the neighborhood despite them being illegal. Think all of those settled by 12:45am and dh got all the children into bed by about 1:30am. (Obviously, I’m writing this last little bit on the first day of the New Year but I’m going to keep it Dec. 31, 2005 for organizing’s sake.)
Good riddance 2005! May God be meriful and grant us a better 2006!!
November in Review
As usual another month flies by…
To begin, my dear friend Grace loaned me an extra grain mill that she had. This was a month of experimenting with freshly ground flour. I’ve enjoyed it immensely and my family has enjoyed the fruits of my labor! Another dear friend, albeit online and not “irl”, wants me to do a photo post showing the process and my adventures. I would love to do that - and will - as soon as the holidays are behind us. With Thanksgiving over and beginning the Advent season, etc., I’m a little too preoccupied to lay it all out right now. I did take the pictures already…it’s just having the time to arrange them and whatnot without distractions, interuptions… I’m sure you know what I mean eh Rebekah?
Egg Report
Ok, let’s get this pathetic little accounting task over…
A total of 38 eggs laid with Fluff and Lacey being (at a glance) pretty equally consistent and Miriam lagging.
Snow Report
11/6 = ½ ”
11/15 = 2 ½ ”
Night of 11/17 (close to midnight) assures in a Chinook - temp is 36 ° F ! The next morning (11/18), all the snow on the deck has melted and the temp is up to 40 ° F ! The following day (11/19) temps are still warm but we received some snow to replace what was lost.
11/19 = 4 ”
Then, we get 3 days of snow fall on top of that! Most of it occuring on Thanksgiving Day when we needed to head out of town to celebrate at friend’s home. *yikes* We were nearly in a couple of pile-ups…but God was meriful and had His protecting hand on us. We did see at least 3 other accidents and lost count of the numerous vehicles in the ditches.
11/22 - 11/29 = 11 ½ “
Total Snow Accumulation = 18 ½ ”
Celebrations
As mentioned above, we celebrated Thanksgiving with some friends. My father was out of state for the month and my mother didn’t have any time off - particularly the holiday. The aunt and uncle who we usually spend it with had other plans too…my uncle was working and my aunt had previous commitments with her daughter involving swim practices and stuff. Not on Thanksgiving day of course. But, they have a pretty busy schedule and really wanted to “chill” and having our large family wouldn’t have been that for them. Not that she said anything…but I could tell and we agreed to make seperate plans this year. So, off to Palmer we went, and despite the snow and yucky driving conditions we had a wonderful time at our friend’s house. A homeschooling family of 9 (still at home)…which made 15 children to 4 adults! Never fear…all very well trained and it was a blessed time rather than chaotic…as some would think. Even during the meal, peace reigned and except for one cup tipping, manners, etc. were superb! A Thanksgiving dinner we will remember for a very long time.
Homeschool
Same ole, same ole. Pushing hard to finish up the studies we’ve been doing for about a year now. Pregnancies/postpartum can really slow a Mama-Teacher down. The basic plan is to finish up our math and Ancient History studies before the end of the year so we can have a fresh slate to begin new things at the beginning of a new year. I think we can do it if we keep our noses to the proverbial grindstone…
Children
I noted on 11/10 that Q. called an Oscar (Sesame Street) toy of P.’s “grass” when asked what color it was!! LOL (Forget the name of the character - we don’t “do” S.S. around here.) He knew most of the other colors of the toys with the exception of pink (dark pink) which he called red as well. Pretty clever though to associate that name with something he hasn’t seen for months! 
LOL
On that happy note, thus ends the November in Review post. Took me long enough huh? A whole month! *sheesh* I’ll try to be quicker with the Dec. one.
Until then, blessings to all!
Solstice
Ok, one more post. (Besides the other two mentioned.)
Hurray for the Solstice!! The shortest day of the year has arrived and that’s good news for us daylight deprived AKans!! Tomorrow we start gaining again…a whole whopping 7 secs…but gaining never-the-less! Makes me one happy lady.
Statistical Data
December 21, 2005
Rise times first. Set times second.
Actual Time 10:12 AM AKST 3:42 PM AKST
Civil Twilight 9:10 AM AKST 4:44 PM AKST
Nautical Twilight 8:11 AM AKST 5:43 PM AKST
Astronomical Twilight 7:17 AM AKST 6:37 PM AKST
Moon 11:01 PM AKST 1:01 PM AKST
Length Of Visible Light: 7h 33m
Length of Day 5h 29m
Tomorrow will be 0m 7s longer.
Yup, today will be just 1 minute less than 5 ½ hours of usable day-light hours long. Makes it hard to feel like you are totally awake before the day is even over. *yawn* But, all that will be a-changin’ on the ‘morrow - slowly yet steadily.
~*~ A Blessed Christmas to All! ~*~
As well as New Year!
Thought I’d pop in and let everyone know “officially” (rather than simply not posting ) that I’m taking a blogging break through January sometime. I know this isn’t earth-shaking or anything as I don’t blog consistently anyway. But, maybe I’ll be missed a little bit and thought I’d inform those who would do the missing.
That said, I do have a couple of posts I’m working on that I hope to get done before the end of the year. Since I keep this blog mainly for posterity’s sake, they will simply be November (can’t believe I haven’t finished it yet! ) and December “in review” type posts.
Again, may God bless you as you celebrate the Incarnation of His Son and praise Him for His wonderful plan and gift of salvation! We pray He looks favorably on all of you and blesses you for His glory in 2006!
~ In Christ’s Love,
Tamara (for the Hunt family)
Update: This post is now a “sticky.” Look for possible new posts below this one.
Redecorating
I’ve done some redecorating in the schoolroom today finally! I’m not done but stop by and let me know what you think anyway.
Update @ 4:13pm: FYI - The comments aren’t working over in the Schoolroom so if you want to leave a comment please do so here in this blog. Thanks!
Advent Changes
My dh has been working looong hours and therefore was unable to keep up with Advent readings with us. So, since the children and I fell far behind anticipating his participation with us everyday, we switched our Advent activities to these:
Gathering Around the Advent Wreath
We spent about three days “catching up” and are now on track and enjoying ourselves much more.
I remember I had linked to this site last year and made a mental note that I wanted to do the Jesse Tree activities using a small tabletop tree for it. Each child has now made at least two ornaments (taking turns) and I must say I enjoy looking at their simple yet colorful ones much more than the store-bought-some-how-aquired-conglomeration of small ornaments we had on there before.
Advent has now come alive for us!
Except, we still miss Daddy…
I’m not sure what we will do next year. I intend to save these ornaments…too precious to think of tossing out right now. I’ve heard the Jotham’s Journey “series” is good and may use that next year. I’ve been unable to find them via Inter-library loan though and am hesitant about purchasing anything I have not perused yet in this regard.
Ah well. This Advent isn’t over yet! Plenty of time to decide…
Weather
As you can see, I’ve added my weather plugin again in the sidebar. I had deactivated it because, although it looks fine on the front page, it does weird things behind the scenes in admin. We’ll see how long I suffer with it…before I either find a way to fix it or bag it entirely again.
Speaking of the weather though ;-), a chinook is passing through! You know what that means right? The snow is melting! Yay!
Now, I’m not foolish enough to think we won’t get any more and cold weather won’t return…but it’s been downright frigid for the last two months and this is a very welcome break!
It was 40°F at 9am this morning! (Reminder: We seem to average 10° warmer than the sidebar indicates.) We don’t seem to be getting the light freezing rain but down the hill in town it probably is. Will make for some dangerous roads today…
