Fall 2025

Summer Highlights 

After an epic trip to Hawaii in March, there's not much we can do to top it, but we had a pretty decent summer with Swim Camp in Idaho with Michelle Smith and Mark, Lydia and Sabine, a camping trip in Fish Lake, trips to Shriner's that included the Zoo and This is the Place, and the Wayne County fair. where the kids all entered art and creations and each won ribbons, including Alida's fairy garden that went to the Utah State Fair. The kids all did mutton busting and rode all the way to the end, and the oldest 2 won the 3 legged race. Alida, Caleb and Jacob even showed some of Stetson Lamb's goats in the Richfield Stock Show. Things felt pretty crummy during the Monroe Fire that burned up 73,000 acres and went on for a month during July. Our power went out for a couple of days and our highway got closed down, with a close call on one of our trips to Shriner's. But we made it unscathed, and our county and power company came together and cheered on the fire fighters and no homes were destroyed, just a few cabins on the mountain.

Full Time Employee?

At the beginning of August I started a new full-time W2 job. :/ That's been a bummer. I've so enjoyed the freedom of being a contractor and setting my own schedule. Now an employer owns my time every day. I decided to try to make it work and see if I could pull it off, but it's looking like it's not gonna work.

Heroes and Horses in Montana decided they didn't want to pursue the SSG Fox grant they hired me for, and they hired an in-person Director of Development so my contract with them has kind of fizzled out. I've done some work for Jake VanDyke and the Mt. Pleasant Animal Hospital- applied for a Utah BLM grant for Burros and Wild Horses for him, and also applied for the VA SSG Fox grant for an organization called Join-Up International, but haven't heard back from either of those grants yet. 

Michael went back to work in May at Harward and Rees, after taking almost a year off. Unfortunately, his income alone isn't enough to cover our family expenses. It used to be! I miss the days when $80k/year would take care of a family. Now with inflation, we need about $120k/year. After depleting our savings over the last year, Michael went back to work, and I was hard pressed to find something new, but after months of searching, hadn't been able to get any work. When I was offered a W2 position at a consultancy firm in Arizona as a Senior Federal Grant Writer, I was desperate enough to take it, and wanted to see if I could still do the work needed but in the time I had available. After 2 months, it's becoming clear though that it's not fair to a team to have someone who doesn't have a dependable schedule. And it's also not fair to my kiddos. So far we've made it by with babysitters, Toni with Jacob, and a lot of stress, but it's felt suffocating to our family. I hope to put in my 2 week notice in the next day or two.

ABA Services for Jacob

A major development in our family has been having in-home ABA services. Toni Lamb has been coming to our home for 30 hours/week since July, and it has been amazing for Jacob. He has made tremendous progress with walking, stairs, communicating, and just being so happy he has a dedicated friend. It also gives the family a little more ability to leave the house and do some things that aren't always a good fit for Jacob. So that has been so nice. Although now we are fighting a huge battle of trying to get his RBT (Toni) to be approved for in-school services. So far it's not looking good. For whatever reason, having ABA services in the school is not approved for most insurances without a lot of loop holes. But we're working on it still. Jacob is such a social child, and he loves interacting with other kids. Having him in school also guarantees him services like OT, PT, SLP and whatever other resources he needs, so that is valuable. I feel like public school would be a good thing for him. But we'll see if we can work it out with the school district.

Sagebrush Academy

Another big development for our family is me becoming an official microschool for the UFA scholarship. And not just a school offering services, but a full-time, tuition bearing institution. That means I have to certify that the kids are receiving 20 hours of educational classes per week. As a result, they get $8,000/year scholarship, which goes to the school in form of tuition, and that I disburse back to the families and use for the school. So far the plan is to renovate the basement into 3 classrooms, and then to pour a foundation for a building to use eventually. It's kind of exciting and fun to be able to put my skills toward homeschooling and benefiting the local homeschool community. We have 10 families and 34 kiddos!