We are still here, never fear. We had busy year last year and this year is shaping out to be the same. Hopefully this year we can update everyone a little better. We have a lot of stuff coming in the next 11 months, but first a short recap of 2023. Our oldest son and I (Luke) played in our first paintball tournament together on Don’t Suck Squad. The two youngest continued with their homeschool education with no sign of stopping. Between library days at a local library and field trips to Dow Gardens, various zoos, and annual membership to the Mt. Pleasant Children’s Discovery Museum; they stayed pretty busy. Our oldest son also played varsity soccer for his school in the fall. We had a big garden for the year by adding two more four by eight raised garden beds to our main garden and a two by six raised bed for specifically pepper plants in a full sun area. Michelle’s father and I finished fencing the back yard in during the spring of ’23 so we could let the kids and dog roam without as much fear of stray dogs or strangers. For 2023 we also tried a few new varieties of crops in the garden and they all did pretty good. *China Jade Cucumbers were a decent crop that avoided the mosaic virus that we had troubles with in the past, unfortunately not a good canning breed, but great fresh. Purple Dove bush beans did really well, but were not as big a hit with the kids as we thought because of the color. A less food production crop that we added was *Daikon Radish that ended up giving us some fresh flavor to some dishes. The Daikon was purchased less for food and more for soil building and Michelle forgot and planted them in the garden, but we ended up harvesting more than a few of these giant white radishes to add to salads. Of course another add on to our garden that we added in 2023 was our bee house and few hundred leaf-cutter bees.

Inside the house, Michelle and I also added on to our urban homestead. At the beginning of the year, we bought an electric pressure canner that I had heard a lot of great reviews for years about, and we will probably type up a review in the near future. Michelle has dived right into crocheting after getting some pointers from her mother and is trying to get better and faster at it. I also bought her a new Singer sewing machine that she wanted. To add to more hobbies, we also now have a *Cricut Maker for more projects. All it has been used for so far though is vinyl stickers for my paintball team and stencils for etching some glass tumblers.

I’m sure there is there is more that has happened since our last blog post which happened in 2022, WOW. Anyways on to the coming things. We have a new baby coming this spring, you will hear more about her when she gets here. Our two sons have their own web projects planned for this year. The oldest would like to learn web design and coding, so we purchased a new domain for our homeschool and he is going to design and build the site. Our youngest son has become really good at some challenging video games, going as far as beating some games faster and before Michelle and his grandfather that is also into gaming. He is also a fan of a few different YouTube gamers that we approve him watching, so he is going to try his hand and gaming and video production with his own YouTube channel and a coming website for that as well. We have our first order of garden seeds coming this week and plan on having another big garden this year. With the big garden though, we plan on growing more flowers and herbs compared to past years to sell and locally and maybe make some homemade tea blends to sell online. For 2024, Michelle and I have also started some not so much new year resolutions, as much as goals for the year. We both have started a physical journal to write down our thoughts as often as possible. We both would like to get to the point where we are writing in them everyday and the purpose is not only to help clear our minds, but to also have something to hand down to our children and grand children after we are gone that will give them a better understanding of who we were. Along with journaling, I am continuing with my quest to eat healthier after cutting carbs and sugar from my morning routine last year, now I’m trying to bring down my average daily carbohydrates to hundred grams a day by the end of the year and trying to cut all seed oils from our diets.

There is a lot more stuff to come, so stay tuned. I know I say it with every post that we are trying to share more with those that want to follow, hopefully this year we will finally do better. We have a lot of irons in the fire and hope to share as much as we can. Thank you all for the support.