Thinking About Next Year

I am so thankful this year is over. Lately all I can think about is the upcoming year, our "fresh start". I feel pretty optimistic about 2013.

We are moving to Indiana. I am thrilled because to me it never stopped feeling like home. I am going up ahead of J and the kids to secure a job and rent a house. I am dreading it because I've never been away from Peanut more than 3 days and I've never been away from my little guy. As happy as I am to move I am really dreading this part.

Once we get settled in and it warms up a bit outside we will be getting everything set up for our chickens. I am so excited about the chickens, they are the first step to get our farm. We need three years of experience to qualify for a USDA guaranteed loan and they are pretty flexible with what they consider "experience". We are also joining the Farm Bureau and will be attending classes and workshops.

Peanut will be doing all of her evaluations as we transition from early intervention to the school district and we'll be completing her first IEP. I am a bit nervous about the IEP because I've heard school districts are hard to work with because of funding issues. I am hoping we will get through it easily. They want her to start a special preschool in the fall. Since we first discussed children we knew we wanted to home school. We still plan to after preschool at this time. Schools tend to push to mainstream now and we don't believe a special ed classroom would be a good fit either. Peanut tends to learn better by watching or doing an activity and we feel that we can take advantage of this and teach her through experiences. We plan to do a lot of field trips based around our lessons and I am excited for when that time comes. But honestly I kind of look forward to preschool to get a much needed break. Both kids can be exhausting and a little time to get stuff done around the house will be nice.

I am looking forward to having seasons again. I am sad that autumn is so far away. The kids are going to love the changing leaves, playing with them, crunching them with their feet. I am hoping to get the kids get up there in time for them to see snow. The last few winters have been kind of odd and dry so I am really hoping for tons and tons of snow.

I am looking forward to being closer to my family. I've missed everyone very much over the past twelve years. Even more after having a family of my own. I am trilled to see my brother. Sometimes it makes me sad that I have such a large family and never really got to enjoy it. A thousand miles is pretty far.