Moving to the Boonies and Box Elder Battles

We haven't dropped off the face of the earth, but for a while I thought maybe we had.

My family and I have moved even farther out into the "country" and one step closer to our dream of living the simple life. We're now on 5 acres, half-way up a mountain, overlooking a lovely prairie and the rolling green hills beyond. The only noise pollution is the occasional chainsaw and the only air pollution is local burn piles. Deer wander in and out of our yard as if we were old friends, licking our salt lick and munching on apple treats tossed from our deck.

Paradise.

Well, it is... but we have had to make little adjustments (as everyone does) to our new home and it's quirks... the most annoying being box elder bugs. Hundreds of them... maybe thousands. Strange, because we have only moved about a half hour further north than where we were. We were not expecting a big change in weather or "wildlife." Bugs not being my favorite thing (by a long shot), I have not been thrilled with these stupidly invasive, yet harmless, creatures. They have a habit of hanging out on windows and sneaking into the house and shop where, if not squished, they die leaving their dark oval corpses (my husband thinks I am being a bit dramatic here...) scattered on the floors. We were told not to worry- once cold weather came, they would be gone. Apparently they didn't notice the recent ice storms that shut down the Portland airport and most of the surrounding counties. The kids did enjoy the snow.

Another adjustment was the change to a small, rural phone company. For a couple of months we were nearly unable to get online, and when we did the connection was extremely slow and often dumped us off. Such fun. Everything's working fine at last.

It's different being so far from a large town. We have a couple of small stores nearby, but nothing much to speak of. I don't mind the drive in to the city, but it still unnerves me to drive home after the sun sets and the darkness (real darkness, not city darkness) descends. But of course, the darkness also accounts for the gorgeous stars at night. A good trade-off, I think. Still, come 4:00, I'm heading home.

So what had this got to do with homeschooling? Not much. Except when you homeschool, the family adjusts as a team. All for one and one for all, you know. So we're swatting box elders in unison and making our new house a home, together.

By the way, if you know a good way to discourage box elders (short of getting rid of every maple tree on the lot), let me know. I'll be at home with a fly swatter in hand. Maybe the kids can do a research project about box elders... Nah, we've had enough of them already.