Good morning!

Life if good in the Noel household. McKennas quite active. She can scoot up the stairs in no time, and her vocabulary is growing. She can say 'cheese' and 'shoes' and 'outside'. I've given her signs for these things too, which helps out. Noel and I have been hitting yard sales on Saturdays and can I say he is REALLY good at finding deals? He found a soddering kit that they only wanted a buck for and it's worth over $200. he said. It needs one replacement part that's really cheap (under $10.) and it's good as new. I found lots of great clothes for McKenna, some of which I'll use for her this winter. We also picked up a vacuum sealer for food, since we buy a lot of meat in bulk and then re-wrap it. It's nice, and worth at least $50. We got it for $8. So because of Noel I've become interested in yard saleing, which in my former life wouldn't have been an interest I'd have entertained at all!

Noel and I took McKenna to the Boise zoo. She really liked the small animal kingdom. There was a digging rat/prarie dog looking thing... a meerat? I can't remember, but some of them were digging and some were sitting on a ledge with their backs pressed up against the glass... McKenna was trying to give them kisses through the glass! Don't worry, we didn't let her lips actually CONTACT the glass! Ha! Anyway, there were some big animals there too, like tigers, leopards, a sloth bear, camels, zebras, but nothing bigger than that really. Lots of different monkeys and birds and stuff. She had fun and fell asleep in her carseat on the way home!

Other news: I've been doing flylady and some days are better than others, but one thing I'm grateful for is that my laundry is caught up and my kitchen always is clean with counters clean and empty of dirty dishes. And if that was all I ever got out of flylady I'd be happy, but her idea of routines really works for me and the cats are so much happier with their litterboxes scooped every day! I still work on updating/changing/omitting from my routines, but I've got the basics down that I do every morning and night, so that's good. And I've got my meals planned everyweek, which really helps me not to get in a panic every day around 4pm going, 'what am I going to make for dinner?'

So other than that, nothing much going on. Gas is $2.99/gallon up here, but we're still using the geo and Noel is carpooling with a guy he works with on mondays, wed's, and fri's so that works out really well.

I've recently come back to researching homeschooling after taking a break from it to follow other interests (spirituality, etc) and am still sure that it's the right road to go, especially with the schools around here. I just have to decide what kind of homeschooler I'll be, i.e. unschooling, eclectic, Charlotte Mason, classical, etc... but it'll be fun to find out! Gotta end this, McKenna's awake and ready to start the day! Love to everyone who's still keeping up with this thing. Sorry I haven't written in awhile!