If you follow me on instagram, you may have noticed that the background of my photos has changed.  No longer do you see the boxy, 1904 cottage (ok, not a cottage, but with 4 kids, it felt like living in a cottage) that we lived in for almost 8 years in the center of our college town.

The blog has been *incredibly* quiet for the last few months, so let me give you the quick run down…

This past summer, we moved out to the country, about 20 miles away, to live with my husband’s parents, whose health has progressively gotten harder for them to manage on their own.  We’re living in their beautiful barn house, surrounded by fields, and built on the family farm, and we’re here to help with their daily care, cleaning, cooking and joyfully providing the entertainment (read: noise) that only 4 kids, 2 dogs, 3 chickens, 3 ducks and 2 rabbits could produce. Granted, the rabbits aren’t very loud.

So these last few months have been a literal blur.  Until recently, home has been the rickety fixerupper we bought when we only had 2 kids and weren’t going to have anymore (ha!),  but for the last year, home has been straddled between the old and new – our old life in the city and the new one we’re building here in the country.

We packed up and moved at the end of last school year, missed enough school days that we needed to continue over the summer, and then picked back up in August, now with a 7th grader, 4th grader, 1st grader and a toddler.

Flexibility has been the name of the game, as we are adapting both to country life, as well as to caring for my in-laws, all while reading Shakespeare and memorizing times tables.

I can’t even begin to tell you what it means to me that the blog has kept on truckin!  Each day I’m getting notifications of new subscribers and to those of you that reached out during the quietness, a deep heartfelt thanks! I read and reply to every email myself, and the little notes of encouragement are worth more than you’ll ever know!

If you’re a new reader, welcome!  Thank you for joining me! And to those that have been here since the beginning (back in 2012!), thank you for hanging in during these last few months.  I’m back now and have notes upon notes of ideas and projects that I can’t wait to share!

If you haven’t yet, make sure to subscribe so that you can catch all of my posts in my weekly newsletter!

I look forward to catching up with all of you!

Kelsi