I want to apologize for the brief hiatus. I tend to take a month long break about twice a year, and I felt that since I just reached DL's 5th anniversary, I had earned a month off.

So much has happened in the last month. First an update on the bus... it is still in Blaine. Like all adventures, there's no way to plan ahead for everything, least of all extra bills and sickness and not being able to get days off work. The bus project has always been about doing something really big without getting into debt, and we paid some bills and bought an RV (for the bus) and a minivan, all of which totaled somewhere around $6000. So much effort went into paying for those things within a 2 month period that it seemed we had little energy for anything else. Incidentally, if you ever get a telephone rep from your bank or a credit card company offering you more credit, just say, "I don't believe in debt!" and they will apologize profusely for asking you. It is quite entertaining.


In the meantime, Rainn turned 6 months and Autumn turned 4. Annie learned how to read well, which was my number one goal for the year, and then.... I.... put her back in school. Actually, this was her choice. With me going to school full time, and her issues with whatever it is she has issues with (and which she will see a pediatrician next month for so we can get some answers - finally!), this has turned out very well. Homeschooling is a wonderful thing, and I loved being homeschooled. I was talking to my Mom about this recently, however, that homeschooling changes your relationship with your child from that of simply spending quality time, to having this attitude that we must always be learning. It's a more authoritative mode, a work mode. There seems to be less time to just... play. Not that that's a bad thing - but I think in Annie's case that situation was bothering her and hurting our relationship somehow, and in that respect, life has improved.

I started another semester of school and let me just say that learning feels good and it hurts at the same time. I am taking Human Resources, Microeconomics and Finite Mathematics. The economics class is by far the most difficult, but what is interesting to me is that I read a lot of things about the recession and why it happened and I blamed banks and economists and all kinds of government people, and what I'm finding out is that on paper, what they did makes sense. I read that one reason Canada did so well through this is because we have such a highly regulated market, but on paper a completely free market makes more sense. So to sum up, I suppose getting an education is in many ways helping me throw even more assumptions about things out the window, which is what I love to do. Don't assume anything! lol

It is rainy and cold, the garden is long done and I have a freezer full of tomatoes and beans and fruit. There's actually even more going on but it's all up in the air and I don't like to say stuff until things are for sure. Suffice it to say life is exciting as always. :)