New Experiences...

Hey People! Remember me? Yeah, I'm sorry it's been so long since normal blogging has occurred.  We are finally starting to feel like normal people again after our big move {read: life-altering experience}. Since moving to Kentucky, we've been experiencing lots of 'new' stuff. Prior to moving here, we had never even been to this area except for a brief, whirlwind weekend when Hubs and I came to find a temporary home to live in. Every weekend is a new adventure as we explore our new home. I have to say, it's full of so many fun things to do! My husband's schedule allows for a 3 day weekend every weekend {after 7 years of being on call for 24/7} so we spend nearly every Friday and Saturday exploring the Cincinnati area. I had no idea how much history there is here!! We are really loving it here. {Keep in mind, winter hasn't come yet.....hopefully, I'll still love it after Winter.}

Another new for us is living in an apartment. While apartment life is less-than-glamorous, it is kind of nice to have very little cleaning to do. The downside is that we are living among stacks of boxes and cannot find anything. The plus-side is that we will only live here until Spring. Thankfully, our house sold very quickly in South Carolina and we've already begun the building process of our new house. We are so excited to move into our new house! {My pinterest boards pretty much prove how excited I am!} It's been over 12 years since the Hubs and I lived in an apartment and this is a first for our kids. Needless to say, it is very much different than living in a house and presents unique challenges like keeping the noise-level to a minimum.....with 3 kids....on the 3rd floor....  I never realized how loud we were when walking up the stairs or just casually through the house. Someone should have told us we sounded like a stampede! We are learning to be a little more quiet, so that is a good thing, I guess.

Probably the biggest 'new' thing in our lives is homeschooling. I still cannot believe that homeschooling is a part of my life. I specifically remember saying {more than once} I would never homeschool. It's not because I had anything against homeschooling in particular, it just wasn't what God had for our family until now. We were very fortunate to live in an area of South Carolina that had good public schools {we had already tried out christian school, too} and we had very good experiences in our schools there. There are obvious advantages to all three types of schooling, but for this year, we are thankful to be homeschooling. There are moments when I want to pull my hair out, but mostly we all enjoy it. I absolutely love the flexibility. It has been such a stress relief to me not to have to run to and from two different schools doing carline and packing lunches, doing homework all evening, etc. With all the change that happened in our lives in late August/early September, homeschooling has been a blessing allowing us to adjust slowly into our new setting here. As always, we'll take it year by year and decide what's best for each child each year. We're moving into a good school district, so who knows what our future holds!

One thing I keep hearing about is the winter weather. As soon as people hear we are from South Carolina, they seem almost too happy to tell us about last year's horrible record-breaking winter and then they ask us how we are going to survive it. I happened to love SC's mild winters (if one can love a winter) as I'm not a big fan of freezing to death. I don't like to be cold and I don't like to wear winter coats. I'm pretty sure I only wore my wool coat maybe two times last winter. However, I'm pretty sure I will survive my first Kentucky winter. I just won't go anywhere until Spring. ;) Hubs grew up in Massachusetts so he will be fine. I'm praying Kentucky will have an unusually mild winter - who cares what the farmer's almanac says? We did buy our kids their very first pairs of snow pants/coats, though, just in case.

So, that's what we have been doing around here lately. I'll be back to blogging a little more regularly soon. Sewing in this apartment is not exactly 'fun', so I may not get my sewing machine out until I have a proper place set up in my new house. Have I mentioned how excited I am about that?!?

Happy Hump Day to all of you! How are you preparing for your winter?? Any winter survival tips for this southern girl are greatly appreciated.