Update.. Family Life.

Well I haven't done this in a while so I thought it was time. Papa is still working from 8 to 7ish Monday through Saturday week one and Wednesday through Saturday week two. We really enjoy having 3 days off in a row and are trying to make the best of them. We are trying to get ready for the 6 or more months of winter we have here. Lately he's been putting the finishing touches on the area between the house and the road in what we are calling our Orchard area. He worked several nights with the chain saw until it got to dark to see (about 45 minutes now if he gets home at 7ish) then burnt branches and crap wood in the dark. All the wood that was down is now cleaned up and the area is cleared with the exceptions of the few poplar trees we left and the firewood he just cut up. My job now is to load the firewood onto the pickup bed trailer and haul it closer to the house (where we cleared this spring we have a new 'firewood spot'.) where we'll be able to plow right past it which will make winter firewood a lot easier. I have so far done 3.5 loads and have 5 or 6 to do! We've decided against the "wall of wood" that we did last year as it was hard to get the wood past the drip line of the roof and this year the roof is so much bigger that it'll bury any wood there. He also recently fixed our hot water heater which thankfully was only a element and a easy fix! Our wood stove pipe decided to rust out on us and that is also in the works. The last few days we've had chiller weather and have been heating the house with electric heaters and the oven. Oh and piling on sweaters and slippers. Tonight he should be able to finally put it all back together. He's had some fun trying to get parts that work and is actually getting one made special! What a mess!!

We had our 1st frost of the fall on Sept 27th almost a full month later then normal. It was great and gave us time to get a lot more tomatoes and for the pumpkins to grow bigger. The biggest one was about 15lbs!! What a lot of work for such a small reward but the kids loved 'their' pumpkins and are looking forward to making pies. I think we got 8 good sized ones and a handful little tiny ones that I left out in the garden and will feed to the pigs with the rest of it.

The boys have been busy with everything as little boys like to be!! J recently told us he was going to marry Girl T who says NO WAY!! So we've had a couple of talks about marriage. After one of these talks L told me that he was going to marry E!! I explained to him that he couldn't marry his sister so then he wanted to marry R. More explaining. Oh well then he'd marry ME!! More explaining. Then he'll marry Mackenzie! More explaining about marrying someone your not related to, like sisters, mom's and cousins. By this point he was getting a be tired of this whole marriage mess. FINE says he... I'll marry Brianna!! Ok I told him you can marry Brianna. He looked so relived that I laughed and laughed!! We then had a talk about sometimes you marry people that you won't even meet until your an adult and that you don't need to decide now. J and T are funny though. She says she's not going to marry him she's going to marry another little friend of hers and he sticks with it. He's going to marry T!! When she told him that she wouldn't marry him he calmly told her, in almost my exact words, the speech I'd given L and him about not knowing who you were going to marry until you were an adult. They play "family together" and 'getting married" But with NO KISSING!! A rule T's mom had to reinforce several times!! Papa told the kids a long time ago about how our bodies are Gods and how we need to keep our bodies for God's use and for our future mates. And J has completely adopted this for himself and sticks to it. It is really neat to see. I've also heard him give the T girl this talk but she must have liked kissing him (cheek) because it took her mom to tell her several times before she stopped. BTW they play with in sight of us almost always so we know exactly what's going on!! They are very cute together and miss each other when they are apart. When the T family was gone T girl missed J so much she cried!! Sweet to see them but we are not planting celery. LOL. (The Amish supposedly plant celery when they are expecting to have a wedding. )

E is sprouting like crazy and out grew all her pants again. She's still light but now is tall. Crazy!! Amazingly R also grew and is now wearing E's dresses!! They just stretched!! I cut both the girls hair and now they both have bangs which is super cute on them. Thanks to Girl T E also has a new 'play dress' that she loves. Actually it started with my sister Ria. And she doesn't even know it. We went over to her house about 3 weeks ago and as we were leaving we borrowed Beauty and the Beast from her. It went over well. Really well. They LOVE it. All of them. E practically swoons when Belle walks down the stairs with her 'BEAUTIFUL' dress on!! E HAD to wear her yellow dress after that. Actually I think it's safe to say she's been wearing dresses almost as often as pants lately. And it's not me. She asks for them and often gets MAD if she can't have one. Even little R MUST wear a dress.. and loves it. R always picks the same one. A red topped Christmas type dress with roses on the waist and a black skirt. E floats between her yellow one and anything else that catches her eye at the moment. The boys love it too and pretend to be Beast while he's fighting Gaston and they all sing the songs til we all a bit crazy!! J and L also love to do 'funny parts' which is them parroting the parts they really like back and forth. They have about 1/2 the movie memorized!! Anyway I promised them a movie night (for once not Beauty and the Beast) and they are waiting for me to be done!! I have some pictures of the girls in their dresses with 'pretties' in their hair and one of girl T and J and I'll try and put them up later!!

Chip!

Well it all started with a old school friend who visited us a bit this summer. Sonya and David came over a couple of times for supper and a farm tour. She even tried to come help butcher chickens but ended up coming the next day to help clean up instead as we were too fast and got them all done in 1 day while we had wisely left 2 open. The couple was only here for the summer as they both are in school. She worked with the school's lawn/clean up services and he worked as a firefighter. We really enjoyed getting to know them a bit this summer. Anyway after we returned from our trip we had them over one last time to say goodbye as they were going back to school (about 9 hours from here.) So they arrive and Sonya is super excited. SUPER!! And not about school so much as her parents black lab just had 2 puppies. A male and a female. This was Sunday and they'd been born on Wednesday. OH we just HAD to take the kids to go see, they would be the PERFECT dog for you!! She really does speak in capitals :) So we gave him a week or 2 to grow and called them up one Sunday afternoon. No he wasn't taken and yes we could go see him. So we piled in the Travelall and headed out. They live about 20 minutes from us so we had a nice little drive and since I'd only been there once a very long time ago and Papa not at all, we looked for a bit but found the place. The puppies were about 2.5 weeks old and SUPER CUTE!!! The female had already been spoken for that same morning which was fine with us as we really wanted a male dog. The kids pet and talked to the older dogs, throwing sticks and playing with them and all around having a great time. E, who is quite scared of dogs even relaxed enough to pet the puppy and said several times in a very surprised voice. "I DO like dogs!! I DO." J and L quickly got bored with the puppies, at that age they really don't DO much, and went to play with the big dogs. They had a female with the same parentage that was 18 months old. Nice dog with nice fur instead of the thin lab hair. His dogs stay outside unless it is VERY cold. She was a nice size as well. The mother is a black lab and the father is a St. Bernard. So size was a issue. We didn't want a dog that would be too big but she was perfect size! And from the sounds of it the other pups these two dogs had together were about the same size. The man also told us that so far none of them drooled.. which was my worry. YUCK!! After about 20 minutes both Papa and I knew this was the dog for us. So we chatted with the them a bit and Papa asked how much they wanted for the puppy. The man stared at him for a minute and said. You can HAVE him!! For Free!!! WAHOO. We thanked him and told him that we would take him!! After saying good bye we headed out and took a fun Sunday drive. Up the mountain! As we drove along we talked about the responsibility a puppy is with the kids and names for the puppy. L wanted to name him 'puppywupy' 'cause he's a puppy Momma! Then when we told him he'd grow up into a dog it was 'doggywoggy'. J didn't really know and neither did E. But a name had been sneaking around in my head, very much like Maggie's did later, and I said. Chip! Papa looked at me and said Yes. Chip it is. And for some reason it fits him. Or it did. Hopefully it still will when we pick him up in 2 weeks.

Maggie Update!!

We've had Maggie for 2 weeks now and she is doing well. All things considering. LOL. She spent 2 days in our milking parlor settling in and was so very UN COW like that we were shocked. We called her our 'machine milker' as she has very little COW about her. She walked on dirt like it was a rolling ship deck. She wanted IN TO the house so badly that she broke a cracked window into the living room. She tried to crawl right into the house!! We ended up making a fence across the bottom under the window so that she could not come inside but could still look in. I had a frustrating afternoon the day she broke the window and ended up calling Papa at work just to see what I could do with HER!!! I took everything out of the pen that she could possibly stand on at first ( she had no respect for things like our other cows and walked on the pallets that were on top of the grain bag of sweet stuff) and when that didn't work (she is VERY tall) I made a 2x4 fence to keep her out which lasted less then an hour!! I ended up getting her in the stanchion and putting a halter on her. She likes people up close if she has no choice and she didn't fight the halter at all. Shook her head once and that was that. She did not like the halter pieces jangling as I walked up to her with the halter and tried to KICK me. That is that only time we've seen her kick! When I finally got up her her (holding the jangling pieces still) she turned her head away from me for quite a long time. Finally I got the halter around her neck and pulled her towards me. Then Maggie did something I've NEVER seen a cow do. I think it was because she was SO lonely those first few days. She turned her head into my arms and snuggled with me!! She closed her eyes and just hugged me. It was strange! She finally opened her eyes and I put the halter on and after that she settled down a lot. By that time Papa was due home in an hour so I left her in the stanchion and he milked as soon as he got home.

We did have a interesting few days as she was VERY used to a strict routine and we didn't know what it was!! All they told us was hay in the evening and silage in the morning. She was very much not used to eating while being milked. But after milking she BAWLED and BAWLED. We've since figured out that they gave her grain after milking and now that she's getting grain while milking she's happy. The leg lifting has slowed down to between 3 and 10 times a milking instead of constantly. She stands very nicely even when her food is gone.

The 1st time she went up a hill she crow hopped up it!! She's likely never seen a hill before! She doesn't know what ice in her water is and doesn't break it with her nose like Bindy does. She didn't like our grain free sweet feed Papa mixes up and so she's on a mixture of half grain and half ours in an attempt to get her used to it. She won't eat the grass in the mornings when it's got a frost on it so we are feeding hay already. She is very lonely and loves to watch the house. We are bringing Bindy home in about 2 or 3 weeks which will be nice for both of them.

She still is not halter trained or electric wire trained and so far has only jumped the eclectic netting fence once!! We did buy a cow chain to attach to her halter so training can be done now. We've instinctively grabbed her halter a few times and she panics so it will be stressful for her and so we've been letting her get used to everything first. Papa has this weekend off again and we might do it then. The 1st few days were challenging for Papa and I as we had a heck of a time getting her to put her head in the stanchion. But now that we are giving her the grain mixture she goes in and eats and we can walk up and close it on her head. Before there was a rope on the head gate and we'd wait til she was in and pull the rope (from a long ways away) and hope we got her. She's also learning that she likes to be scratched but is still head shy.

As you can see in the pictures she is VERY skinny and we are still trying to fatten her up. You can count every back bone and ribs and her hips stick out like wings on a airplane!! Her feet were pink and sore, cracked and bleeding when we got her (Papa says from walking thru 6 inches of cow poop all the time) and have since healed nicely. She walks better now and has even ran a few steps. She still does not chase chickens but will push them off the fence with her nose!! And mostly tolerates them being around her and under her and every where. Maggie learned her name VERY fast and comes when called. She loves to be around people just not too close which is nice.

They shaved her bag but thankfully the hair is growing back quickly. She is very thin and doesn't have much for hair cover so we are trying to keep her warmer then we normally would. We are building a new cow barn soon and there will be the 2 milk cows and a 2 year old steer here this winter so we are hoping they'll help keep her warm. If all else fails we might end up making or buying her a blanket. Like a horse blanket just to keep her warm!!

Another strange thing that we have had to get used to with Maggie is how very tall she is and how we milk her. With Bindy we got our bucket, sat on a 6 inch stool, dug a hole under her bag with a foot, stretched our legs out and milked normally with our hands hitting the top of the bucket. Just because Bindy is so short. With Maggie we sit on a 5 gallon bucket (and I've been tempted to double the buckets up and make it a bit taller!!), put the bucket on a 3 gallon bucket and AIM to hit the bucket!! Our hands don't hit the bucket at all unless she picks up a foot :) and our knees are at a nice angle to the ground. Papa actually holds the bucket between his knees and milks that way without the 3 gallon bucket but I'm too short and I can't do it.

All and all we really like Maggie and are enjoying having milk around the place again. We've made ice cream, butter, 4 batches of cheese, and some other milk treats that we've not had in ages like cream gravy, biscuits, moos (pronounced mouse; a German cooked thick milk that we eat with fruit), and cream sauce to go on pasta!! I find it amazing how much our diet changes with just that one addition of MILK!! The 1st days milk went to the pigs because it had brown cream. YUCK!! We think it was a mixture of what they were feeding her and her habit of picking her foot up that caused it to be brown.We had even double strained it. Which is actually 4 times as we strain it 2 times normally. But every jar full is a bit more sweeter and the cream has tripled since that 1st day. She's still giving just over 4 gallons a day which is plenty!! We've truly been blessed!! God is good!!

Maggie.

Our sweet neighbor Jim came to pick up Boss and Beauty as we finally found another milking cow and bought her. We had a bit of fun getting Boss in the trailer. She turned out to be a bit of a pain as she didn't chase at all. The calf was a wild little thing that scaled a fence as tall as my nose!! Because of this we could not separate them long enough (without a big battle that we weren't sure would be worth it.. putting a halter on the calf.) to get any real amount of milk. So yesterday Jim took them both to auction to be sold today and took Papa out to a local dairy to pick up our new cow. She's a Holstein. Purebred. Papered!! Her birthday is the 21st of August so she was 2 then. She's super tall. And will make Bindy look the half jersey she is. She had never been off their dairy and Papa figures never off concrete. She seems very unsure of herself on dirt. She also moves slow and easy and will GLARE at the chickens but not chase them. When they pulled up she was almost shaking from fright! She seems to be a really calm cow all in all as she was fine and eating in less then 30 minutes. She is like a big calf. Really curious about everything. She loves to see us in the window and has licked the window where she can reach it. Papa got up early to milk her this morning. He was very careful to find out what she's been eating when and then got some of the silage they'd been feeding her to transition her over. She is really mild mannered and sweet. Last night after we'd gone inside she'd come to the window as close as she could get and try and look in. She was very happy when I opened the window and talked to her. That's when I named her Maggie. Her papered name starts with a D and doesn't suit her. This morning the biggest problem he had milking was getting her head in the stanchion. He had to tie a rope to the stanchion door and pull it shut from a ways away because every time he got close she's leave. She had her calf very close to her birthday so has been milking for less then a month. We are hoping she will adjust well to hand milking and this morning was a great sign. She would only pick her feet up, not to kick, but just up slow and then Papa would push it back down. It was interesting watching him milk her as she is so tall. He sat on a 3 gallon bucket to milk instead of a small 6 inch stool. His knees were at right angles and his back straight. He's hands slightly above his shoulders. And the bucket way down there. With Bindy we have to dig a hole to fit the 3 gallon bucket under her. With Maggie we are thinking about putting it on a stool!! The outside of the bucket was a real mess of splattered milk as it's hard to aim when it's so high up. She gave him a full 2 gallons this morning. Which is great as that is what they were getting. I expect the amount will go up. She is very thin which is going to be a challenge. We are hoping that our non grain mix will fatten her up a bit like it did Boss. Boss gained a fair amount of weight her in the short time she was here. What with no competition, all the grass she could eat, and a bucket of sweet stuff every couple days. When she left we could no longer see every bone on her back or shoulders. We are both hoping that Maggie will do the same. Boss was farther into her lactation so it might take longer. I'm watching Maggie out of the window here as I type and she has finally found the bucket of sweets that Papa left for her. She wouldn't really try it this morning but now she really likes it. That is a great 1st step. She'll have a lot of stuff to get used to. Eating grass, chickens, hand milking, children, being out of doors, electric fence, being the only cow on the place til Bindy comes back. She stands in our milking area (our secure pen) and stares out into the yard. She can't keep the awe out of her big black eyes. This weekend is Papa's 3 days off in a row so we are going to slowly let her adjust to us and farm life. I'm planning on being on hand with the camera as she gets to go out on pasture for what is probably the 1st time in her life. I know that lots of dairy farmers now raise their heifers up on grass but Papa took a good look at the farm and just didn't see this guy as one of them. There did not appear to be any outside pens. I find myself feeling like we rescued Maggie from a life of indoors-ment and opened the world up for her. And all because she'd ONLY give 4 gallons a day!! Ah well... we got what we wanted, needed and so did they! And I'm very sure that, we'll give her a bit, she'll fit right in and enjoy farm life. Here she is on grass for the 1st time that we know of. The boys had been feeding her grass the day before and so she knew it was good!!

Here is Maggie trying to crawl in the window. This is NOTHING compared to what she had been doing. That 2x4 you see is holding her back!! Her whole neck was inside at one point. She loves to look in.

Girls Night.

About a month or 6 weeks ago I went on a girls night that was really special. 6 of us went to The City to go out for supper, then bowling, then out for dessert and then home in Di's van. We had a great time. What was really great about it is that these 6 girls have never done this together before and many of us hadn't seen each other in years. While others see each other monthly or more. We all have children with the exception of one who has the care of a little boy semi permanently. Between the 6 of us there are 13 children... all under the age of 5. J is the oldest. The youngest is only 6 or 7 months old. The really neat thing about us getting together is that 5 of us went to grade school together for several years. And all of us went to high school together but we all went our separate ways and now met up again, and 4 are living in the same town after living away. One is from Australia and visits with her 2 kids and another lives in the City with her husband and 2 kids. We've all been married for different lengths of time. (I'm not positive but we may all have been married different years.) Anyway we had a great time and really got to know each other again. Next time we get together we want to get the kids all together too. Should be a blast!

Pictures of Chicken Butchering.

Later is better then never I guess. I forgot I had these and just found them a bit ago. We had the perfect day for chicken butchering. Not too hot and just windy enough to keep most of the fly's away. There was 3 couples, my mom who just showed up and helped, and Momma T who brought her 3 little T's. Daddy T joined us later just in time for a store run and supper. So we had 7 adults and 7 children and we did roughly 200 birds in 6 hours. 2 of our cleaners only stayed until lunch then had to go. 1 came back later to help finish up. Not too shabby!! We used a hooded plucker and the maul gropen for a scalder. Papa did all the eviscerating and us 5 cleaners didn't even fall too far behind. My Mom and B, the above B's wife :), had never chicken butchered or hadn't in YEARS so we had a small training drill too. Everyone did really well and soon I stopped re-checking birds which made it go even faster. 8 hours after we started all the birds that needed cutting up were cut up and everything else except 10 were gone or in the freezer!!! Slick!! We cut them up for ease of use. With 4 people cutting up and 1 bagging this in incredibly fast. We cut up 65 birds in about 40 minutes... with delays and switch ups. That last 10 went the next day as planned. Momma T and I cleaning birds at the end of the day. Mrs. B took the pictures. Papa is in the back cleaning out the scalder. That black thing on the right is the plucker.

Mr. B, Glen and the 7 children enjoying a cool treat at the end of the day. Yes they all washed first. :)

J caught this chicken all by himself.

B and Uncle R making the switch from block to scalder. That's half of Papa you see.

J and Glen catching chickens with Girl T looking on. She caught a few too.

Here is our friend Mr. B carrying a chicken to the block. Mr. B learned a valuable lesson this day. He went to catch the 1st chicken of the day and jumped in there and scared the flock so bad that they just ran right over the fence and we spent the next 3o minutes trying to get them in!! And he missed the chicken!! We all laughed at him he was so excited to get this done. He laughed too. This is right after that mess. Yes we chop heads instead of hang in cones. Our cones got lost in the shuffle of too many moves and we find this works just as well.

Beans

Well for the 1st time EVER I used my pressure canner!! And actually I've used it quite a bit since then. We planted 2 rows of beans late this spring and with the help of some white row covers we got 18 jars of green beans put up. It would have been more but we ate a bit and I was saving some in the fridge in jars ready to be canned when I had enough and they 'went' on me. I'm not sure why?? Anyway now I know not to store them, just can them. The 1st time I used it I started it when the kids were up but watching a movie in the living room and finished it at nap time. When we weren't blown to bits and nothing else bad happened I started using it whenever and whenever I needed too. But the kids still stay in the living room. That's a constant when we are cooking anyway so they know the drill!! I also pressure canned Pork'N Beans and I'm planning on doing kidneys as soon as we are done the salsa and perishables this fall. I already have the dry beans and we never use them because I forget to soak them before I need them or don't have time to cook them so I thought why not? My beans are still producing but mostly we are eating the little bit they are giving. If we get another bigger batch I'll probably do some more quart jars full. At 1 quart of beans = roughly 2 meals for the 6 of us we've got enough for about 36 meals. Not so shabby for 2 little 25 foot rows!!

Day 6

The Train!!
A black bear.

The 7 Sister Mountains.

The Nechako River? Either that or the Fraser??

Some mountains on the way home.

Papa asleep in the window seat. What you see out the window is what we saw a lot!!

The Pictograph's

Our hotel room. Above is the entryway, mini bar and coffee pot. Below is the bathroom with it's TV mirror!! In the top of the mirror was a TV with a remote and everything.

Day 6 had us leaving our plush hotel room early and heading downstairs to our waiting taxi. We arrived at the train station right on time and entered the mostly empty train lobby to get everything ready for the train ride. Within minutes the place was crawling with people. And when we finally did head onto the train we found out why. The train car that we were on, economy, was pretty much FULL. There were only 2 or 3 seats left on the whole car. Groups of people got to go on first so that they could make sure and sit together. Some people we know happened to be on the train with us and we chatted to them for a bit. They were hoping to get dropped off on their own train crossing and later managed this very well. She has MS and has a scooter which was most of the problem. The scooter drove right out on to a pickup bed and there was no problems at all. This was really nice for them because they'd had to start out over a hours drive from home when they went to Rupert and this made their train ride several HOURS longer!! (There is, we're told, several hours of wait time between the 2 towns.)

The train had 2 stewards or stewardess that proved to be entertaining and enlightening. They made regular announcements over the intercom about the towns and areas we went through. They also alerted us to a bear on the side of the tracks and some pictograph's on a rock wall during the trip. They also brought a cart of 'goodies' down the aisle every few hours. Later in the day Papa bought a micro brew off them to enjoy while we rumbled along! We headed out of Rupert and found almost instantly that it's not at all like driving in a car except that your moving. LOL. The highways up North are cleared for fire lines and also for animal sightings. It's nice to be able to see the moose on the side of the road instead of just hitting them when the come blasting thru the bush onto the road. With the train they don't clear the sides unless there is another track or a natural open spot. Or a town. So you see a lot of green trees and branches right beside your window. If the trees are thin you can see mountains, streams, towns, fields through the trees. I found that I could not look out much at all as it hurt my eyes. Papa felt the same way and so must have a lot of others because a lot of them, including Papa, fell asleep. I dosed once or twice but mostly stuck my nose in a book and looked up every once and a while when people started moving. Others must have been looking out because every time something cool would come up they'd get up and cross the aisle and take pictures so I missed very little of the 'good stuff' and still finished my book. By the time we reached Smithers the car was only 1/3 of the way full and it made for a nicer friendlier atmosphere. We had a 40 minute wait at Smithers so Papa and I dashed down town and got an ice cream and dashed back to the train. Papa wanted to saunter but I was really worried we'd miss the train and be stuck in Smithers so we dashed!! It was nice to get out of the train and get some fresh air. After that we started looking for landmarks we knew and tried to figure out where the train went compared to the highway. We totally enjoyed going around Fraser Lake (the Lake not the town.) which I had no idea that it was that BIG!! We saw our favorite swimming beach and the backs of several Log Mills. We saw some beautiful streams, mountains and rivers. Then we were pulling into McCall crossing and our friends were getting off and heading home. Soon it was time to get our bags together and get ready to get off. As we pulled into Town we saw our bags heading down past us to disembark and we looked ahead to see if we could see Grandma and Grandpa and our children. We could not! But wait there they are!! Grandpa in a white shirt holding J and L's hands. Grandma in front of the stroller where R was sitting with wide eyes and holding E's little hand. All the kids dressed up and waiting. E in her little orange dress. J and L each holding flowers, freshly picked. And all of them with a aura of wonder on their faces. Then smiles as Papa and I walked off the train and hugs all around as the people on the train waved and some took pictures and the kids waved back and the chug chug we had heard all day started up again and then the train was gone. And we stood and chatted and laughed and smiled. Happy to be home. R looked at both of us with a funny sort of shyness on her face. She ducked her head but smiled at me when I picked her up and kissed her. Then she grinned back. It did take her a while to really beam at us like she normally does. But by the time we got home that night she was back to herself. J and L and E had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa and several times that night we heard, "Grandma, oh I mean Mom." or "Grandpa oh no Papa!!" We heard all about the movies they'd watched, the people they'd seen, and the things they had done all week. Then we broke open the surprises and shared them all around. Finally we headed home both Papa and I eager to check on the place and the kids happy to be going back to our family and our life. The pigs were fine and IN which is important. The cow was well fed and also IN. And my green house and garden had grown well. We fixed and ate a simple supper and tucked everyone into their own beds and I slept soundly for the 1st time all week.

Blessing Box

My sister Ann blessed me the other day with a birthday gift. About 3 months late but I SO did not mind!! She knows that Papa wants 12 children and that I want at least 8 so she made it big enough to fit. It's a little box about 5 inches by 8 inches and inside it has a card for each of the kids. Each card has a baby picture of the child, their birth date, weight at birth, length at birth, time of birth and their full name!! And each one has a half circle cut out of the side (each one in a different spot ) so you can get them out easily!! She told me too that she got lots of stuff to make more cards and put them in a box labeled with my name so that she can make a card for each of our new babies. What a great gift. A great way to show her support of our choices. Thank You Ang!! The verse on the top underside of the lid.

The top.
The open box with J's card.

Chocolate Covered....

Child!! She loved the brownies I made with Ch. chip icing.