There was a small window of sunshine yesterday in the last week of rain, and Aaron and I put it to good use! We spent all day burning four huge piles of brush/brambles/wood from the trees we had to trim to get temporary construction power out to the farm. It felt really good to get rid of all that, and the drive in to the house now looks so much better. I tried to find a photo of the piles from before, but wasn’t able to – so just imagine four piles of yard waste at about six feet tall each! All of the brown, patchy areas in the picture are where the piles were – all the way up to the branches of the trees! The chickens loved scratching around in the newly-unearthed dirt and found lots of grubs and things to eat. There’s also a picture of us at the end of the day – unshowered and haggard! But happy. As you can see, Aaron’s mission to grow his hair out into a man-bun is coming along nicely. 🙂
Other recent happenings:
- Rachel, Gavin, and kiddos surprised us a few weekends ago with a visit! They hadn’t seen our farm yet, so it was fun to show them around. We have little Aaron coming up to stay with us for a week during his spring break, and are looking forward to going to NW Trek, visiting the Tacoma vintage car museum, and taking a trip to Seattle if we have time.
- This week is my spring break. Several months ago, I was summoned to federal jury duty and tried to get out of it – no one else is available to teach my classes in our program. They said that wasn’t sufficient, and all they could do was postpone it. So I scheduled it for the week of this break, BUT got the best surprise when I was dismissed before even having to show up. So I am using this unexpected week off to get a lot of other things done!
- I’m teaching a new class this summer for the DNP – doctorate in nursing practice – program at PLU. It’s been so fun to collaborate with the nursing department on this. Students in the program have to take one class on family therapy for the psychiatric component of their degree, and that’s the one I’ll be teaching! I just finished up the syllabus for it, and am excited to see how it goes. It will only be four students this first round, so I’ll get plenty of time with each of them.
- Aaron and I are going to Washington DC in a few weeks for a work event – I am going for the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapist’s to lobby for MFTs to be included under Medicare coverage. MFTs are one of five federally recognized mental health disciplines, and the other four are already included – so we hope to be on it soon too. After the event on Friday, we are taking the weekend to explore. High on our list is the new Museum of African-American History. Happy to hear other recommendations too!
