A New Gift From God

Cindy and Steve vanLieshout have a new daughter, Emily Claire. She was born last Thursday, September 20. I went to bring dinner to them yesterday and to visit mom and the new baby. What a joy to hold a new one like that again. God bless them both.

Fall Harvest

Fall means harvest time. The corn is ready and before the machines come to pick it for us we have already begun to cut some to feed to the pigs.
Matthew enjoys going up and cutting a load of corn with the machete. It's easy to get carried away cutting and cutting until you look back and there's quite a bit down behind you.
The Mary-Kate and Dad go behind and load the corn onto the wagon.

We started with the little wagon. But Matthew gets so carried away that I think that we need to get the big dump-wagon next time. You can't even see the little wagon under this load.

Mary-Kate thinks it needs to be tied on so it doesn't come off onto the road. Good idea!!!!! Yummy eating for all the piggies. Next we go and pick up wind fall apples. This is going to be some good pork.

A Post for Mr. Collins

This slow-moving vehicle sign is symbolic of my life lately. Much to do and a slow-moving person doing it all.
I'm taking the time right now to stop and appreciate the colors and smells of fall.
More later.

Old Car Show

Sunday, in spite of the rain we went out to the old car show in Wampsville. Poor Doug and Mary-Kate had to put up with all the old cars while Jason, Matthew and I got our fill of looking at cars and trucks.

We saw Edsells. Actually this was the only one.
And Cadillacs. What a beauty.
Check out this ride. Matthew called it sweet.
Because it had rained each car was being lovingly wiped down by its owner.
Here is a Mercury.

Check out this woodie. The whole cab of this truck is made of wood.
I like the white wall tires.
The hood ornaments were a big hit with the kids.
So were the tail fins.
Here is my kind of Dodge. Even Jason had to admit that was a nice looking ride and the hood ornament is very impressive.

The Carousel Mall

After the MOST we went over to the Carousel Mall. Now this is not a shopping family, but if there is a bookstore nearby we are there. So off to Borders we went. It was hard to drag everyone out of that store. Then we went into the food court to have a bite to eat. Then Mary-Kate and I had to have a ride on the carousel which gives the mall its name.
Icould sit on that and ride all day long. A little tame for the men-folk but they were willing to put up with us for a little while. Then we had to make our way home before it got dark. It was a fun day and we got some new books for the effort of it.

Our Trip To The MOST

Saturday was a wet and dreary day so we decided to take a trip into Syracuse and go to the MOST. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is the Museum of Science and Technology. It's a lot of fun. Not only are there a lot of hands on science displays but there is also a planetarium, a motion simulator, and an IMAX theater.

Matthew quickly found the flight simulators and sat down to try his hand at flying an airplane. I crashed a lot but he quickly got good at it and was able to fly just about anything that they had there.

Mary-Kate built this ferris wheel at the K'Nex display. They have a huge K'Nex display with many various things built out of K'Nex and an opportunity for you to build what you want and to buy whatever you build.

Jason built this airplane. It took him most of the time that we were there. All the little kids around thought it was really cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mary-Kate also tried her hand flying the space shuttle. You can see that it takes a lot of concentration.
We always have a good time at the MOST. We saw an IMAX movie called Deep Sea while we were there and enjoyed that a lot. (Doug slept through that)

You Are a Blue Crayon

Your world is colored in calm, understated, deep colors. You are a loyal person, and the truest friend anyone could hope to find. On the inside, you tend to be emotional and even a bit moody. However, you know that people depend on you. So you put on a strong front. Your color wheel opposite is orange. Orange people may be opinionated, but you feel they lack the depth to truly understand what they're saying.

What Color Crayon Are You?

Keep Doug in Your Prayers

Monday Doug has a job interview with Ferris Industries. It will be the first time in his life that he has had to seek outside employment.
Our loan for the barn was taking too long and the money has run out. The initail appraisal did not show enough value to justify the loan amount and the bank had scheduled another appraisal so see if they could not get a better amount. (don't ask me how that was going to work). But that was going to take 6-8 weeks and by then not only were we going to be destitute but if we tried to start a barn we wouldn't be milking cows until well into January. So Doug has made the decision to sell what animals we have left and to seek employment elsewhere.
Please keep us all in your prayers since this is a new adventure for the whole family and much adjustment needs to be made.

Am I Really Worth It?

Ian has been working on putting electricity and water into the pole barn that I use for my pigs. He comes over after he has put in a 12 hour day with Buddy Richardson making hay and whatever else he has to do and then he works on my barn. I wonder sometimes if it is all worth it. Especially after this little adventure.
He dug in my front lawn for a tile that they thought was there to drain water across the road and all they found was a lot of dirt. Now the lawn is all dug up and no tile was found. So he moved across the road and he found a tile and an old barn foundation.
Let me tell you they built them thick in back in those days. Long before my father-in-law bought that part of the farm it did used to be a pig farm and there were other barns on that side of the road. Ian found the foundation of one of them. We think that it burned down because the parts of old tools that he dug up, what handles were left were all charred.
The foundation was 24inches thick. When he finally got to the tile it was to discover that is was only there to drain the barn into an old catch basin and nothing more. So now we are going to hire an excavating company to drive a ram under the road so that we can bring water and electricity across the road.
It was a great diversion for all the cars driving by while Ian was digging. After he gets done then we won't have to carry water three times a day in pails to water all the pigs and the chickens when Mary-Kate gets them. Ian is buying her some chickens to replace what she lost in the fire. He has already built her a nice pen in the pole barn also. Every girl should have a brother like Ian.

This and That

Mary-Kate is not the only scholar in the family. Matthew is also hard at work filling his mind with lots of useful and important information. Here he is learning English Grammar.
You can tell by the look of concentration on his face that it doesn't come easy to him. It is also not his favorite subject. He is eagerly waiting for Biology or Religion class to begin. Those are subjects that he can sink his teeth into. Today he will start a pond scum experiment in biology. In Religion he is learning about the ancient Greeks. We are doing salvation history.
Here is our dog Shadow. She has ADD. (Not really but is seems that way sometimes.) She can jump to the top of her pen from a dead stand still. That is cool to speak in the vernacular of the peasantry.
I had to include some pictures of Jason's roses. These are the most unusual plants that I have ever seen. They go from completely bare with no discernable blossoms to fully in bloom over night. They do not blossom gradually as some plants do, they go from nothing to fully in bloom.
I'm glad he planted them by the deck, then I can enjoy them when I sit out there and when I go out to hang the laundry.

More Piglets

Yesterday morning we woke up to more piglets. Spotted pig was having her piglets. She had 15 in all. As of today 12 of them are still alive.
Last night Matthew and I moved them into the pen with Red pig now they can mother together. Jason and I have found that works best. Red seems to be the better mother of this pair.
This morning I went out and they were all nursing on Red. Of course if you had just had 15 you would probably need a rest too. Time will tell.

Mary-Kate's First Day of School

Yesterday was a day of firsts. It was the first time that one of my children went off to school. (going to college doesn't count) It was the first time that I had to take one of them and drop them off at school and leave them all day long.
Mary-Kate got up yesterday morning early and did her chores, had her breakfast and got ready for school. (she was ready before her mom was, guess who was the most nervous). The she and Matthew and I piled into the car and drove off for Holy Cross Academy. I walked her inside and hugged her by her locker. She was a little nervous but not like I was, but I managed to act like I was cool as a cucumber. The I took her medicines to the office and checked them in and said good-bye to the office staff. (they assured me that they would take good care of my girl) Do they realize that she is my only one? Do they know that she is my precious flower? I hope so. Then Matthew and I went to Mass to pray that she has a good day. Well I prayed for that I don't know what he prayed for. He said that she would be fine and he didn't know what all the fuss was about.
At 1:30 I got into the car and went to pick her up. (I wanted to be there early so that she could find me when she came out. Okay I'm acting like she is in kindergarten and not 12th grade.) She came out all smiles but very tired. It's the first day in several months that she hasn't had a nap in the afternoon. We went to Ebeneezers and had ice cream and chatted about her day. Then it hit her that she had missed what had gone on at home while she was gone. She is after all the one who orders my day for me. That made her sad but she quickly got over that remembering what fun she had at school. I'm glad that today is Friday and we have the weekend together before we have to do a whole week of this in one long stretch.

Piglets Born

Tuesday morning we came out to a pleasant surprise. Red pig had had her piglets. She had given birth to 9 piglets in the wee hours of the morning.

As you can see from the pictures we have a different mix of colors and markings than we have had before. As of today we still have 9 from that litter and she seems to be an excellent mother.
Now the only thing that remains is to cut their wolf teeth, give them their shots of iron and antibiotics, and treating their navels then they will be good to go.

Going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

Yesterday Matthew and I took a day off and went to the zoo. We saw some very strange creatures when we were there. The one on the far left looks a lot like Matthew.
We also saw some creatures that we were familiar with such as this lizard.

The birds were beautiful to see and loud to hear.
We even saw some horses. (sea horses that is)
Then we saw some lions.
And tigers.
And bears. Oh my!!!!!!!
The elephants had just finished their show and were having a snack.

They even had some pigs at the zoo. What a great place to have some of my favorite animals there.