Wedding Approaching

The big day is creeping up quickly. This week I have managed to order the foil for the chocolates we are making...yep, we are making them. Mike is obsessed with Oreo cookies, so there will be two chocolate covered Oreo cookies at each place setting, along with a box or bag of chocolates. I am anxiously awaiting our bigger guest gift. It should be in this next week. I have ordered one of the girls items I am giving them and have purchased their jewelry. My friend Tracee is working on the deoorations and they are turning out fabulous! I am so excited to see the hall when it is all decked out. We paid in full for the flowers, cake, and other rented items; including the margarita machine! We are meeting with the DJ on Wednesday to go over the reception stuff. I downloaded and made a CD of the music for the wedding ceremony. I am pretty excited about it as it is not all traditional stuff, but more meaningful for us.

I go for my final dress fitting on the 2nd of July. My mom and sister are meeting me there. I am excited for them to see my dress. My sister needs to know how to bustle up the back. I think there will be quite a few buttons.

It's just a task of cleaning the house for the in-laws that are coming in and getting the little things done.

Other excitement this week was the butchering of our meat hens. I was fretting how I was going to take it, but let me tell you, it is all worth it. I had a friend come out and walk us through the whole process step by step. His method is much easier than what I have watched on TV. Speaking of TV, this is what brought me to raising my own meat hens. After watching several specials on Kentucky Fried Chicken and the chicken in the grocery store, I thought I would go vegetarian. Then, after speaking with families in our area I convinced myself to try meat hens. I know exactly what they have been eating and their pristine living conditions. They are cage free, free range, grain fed, and healthy, healthy, healthy! Tomorrow we are cooking up one. I wanted so bad to cook one yesterday freshly filleted, but Mike would have had to microwave it. We want to try it fresh off the grill. I am sure I will be raising more next spring. Hopefully enough to get us through the year. I am filleted 4 of my 5 and will use the carcasses for soup stock. I am not an avid soup eater, but think I will become one now! It is good for me to know I can keep us fed if times become tough. Beside our meat hens we have the 20 other hens and two roosters. We hatched 15 babies in May. So we have plenty of eggs to go along with our chicken. We also have our garden growing strong. I picked 5 cherry tomatoes today. They are so much better than the store bought!

We are on break from school this summer. Nico still does math and reading, but everything else is on hold. It has actually been very nice! We are planning on staying off until the end of August. We will definitely start up the beginning of September. We have a family camping trip planned for mid-August, so I know it will be after that. It is nice having so much free time and not worrying about getting lesson plans done for the next day. I have been preparing for the next school year by getting our curriculum in order. Luca will be starting a more structured pre-school program. Nico is moving onto 5th grade. I have changed some of our things around to a more literature based program. More the Charlotte Mason style of learning. I am excited about it as several of the classes I'll be able to dual teach in the future years, at the different levels.

That about wraps it up here.