4H Banquet 2009

The PEC 4H Sheep Club was in charge of hosting the event this year. It's such a small club that they have never been hosts before, but the kids (and leaders ;-) ...) did a masterful job. I just have a few photos of the event. My favourite is this one :-).


MC's for the evening were Katlyn and Mikaela (centre); Shannon and Alison assisted by gathering up awards and passing them to the appropriate presenter.

The theme was "4H Members are Stars" and one of the things the club did was prepare stars showcasing each of the clubs, ranging from 6 weekers to yearlong clubs, that happened in Prince Edward County in 2009. Here is the Wall of Stars.



Getting ready (Katlyn, Mikaela, and Mikaela's mom, Patti, who is the head Club honcho ;-) ...)


Getting ready ...


It was such a delight to watch the event ... the club members did a fabulous job. My only regret was not getting a photograph of the three guys in the club (Iain, Jaret and Mitchell) -- by the time my camera came out the three lads (all 12 and under) were starting to look pretty disheveled ;-). But at the start they were all in black dress pants/cargo pants, blue dress shirts and dark blue ties! They also threw themselves wholeheartedly into the dance portion afterwards, which impressed the leaders no end.

Lastly, Alison once again won the Top Member award for the 2009 Sheep Club. Here are the two trophies she received:


4H sign-up night is tonight. Claire has decided that she is done with 4H for the most part. She may continue to occasionally do lifestyle clubs, but she is no longer interested in livestock projects. Iain is looking forward to 4H sign-up night this Wednesday; he has been wanting to do the beef club for two years and I wouldn't let him until he proved his ability to persevere with an animal in the sheep club. He proved it this past summer, so I suppose I may have to consider letting him have a go at beef next year. In the mean time, he will be doing wool club this fall, along with Alison, and is quite pumped about the weaving emphasis this year.

Alison is not sure what to do about livestock club next year. Because of her planned mission trip to Brazil, she will be hard pressed to work with a lamb. As well, after having won the Top Member award two years in a row, she will not allow her name to stand next year. She may try to aim for a junior leadership position instead, if it will work out with her busy schedule.

That's it for now! More later :-).

Introducing WillowGarden Daniel Day-Lewis :-)

We once again borrowed a ram lamb from Bill Stearman this fall. He's a cute little (VERY LITTLE) guy ... a lovely fawn katmoget. Here is is all decked out in a marking harness, a device that is supposed to allow us to know who he has covered when. However, we had a few issues with the harness, including size, and Jasmine (who kept untying it with her teeth ... sigh). Because he is brown (moorit) - based, any lamb that Kivu has will be some degree of moorit in colour, and either katmoget (like the ram) or gulmoget (like Kivu) or a gul-kat. Katmoget and gulmoget are patterns, not colours, and are co-dominant.


I have had much encouragement to find a large, meat-type ram to breed to the flock. As much as it makes sense, though, a few things keep me coming back to the smaller animals. For one, I get great joy out of cool fleeces (see pic below). Additionally, our sheep are easy to handle, and easy to transport (we use a dog crate in the van).


His fleece is not super-fine, however it is nice and crimpy, and quite a nice colour. Once spun it should result in an oatmeal coloured wool. However, he will be going back to Bill, so we can only hope one of the babies duplicates his colour :-).

You can see the orange crayon well in this photo.

We didn't pick him up until mid-November, so our lambs won't start arriving until mid-April in the spring. And although we only planned on breeding the ewes, we had a lot of rain over the past week and the fence separating the two ewe lambs fell over. Sensibly, they decided they should rejoin the main flock. We may try to move them again later on ... I don't think WillowGarden Daniel Day-Lewis has paid them too much attention yet :-).

Jasmine will once again produce white lambs since her genotype is Awt/Awt. Lambs from Rosemary or Loralei could be Awt/Aa B?/B? (white in colour) or Aa/Aa (brown or black). Lambs from Babette will likely be black, but there is a remote chance she could also have brown-based lambs. The genetics of colour inheritance is fascinating :-). The fuzzy babies are cute too! ;-).

Belleville Christmas Parade, November 13 (!!!) 2009

Our family volunteered to help with the UCB float, passing out candy canes. Despite the incredibly long wait, and sore feet, we had a lot of fun. So much so, that on our way back to the van, Kevin was stopped by a police officer who told him that our group was the most cheerful and "Christmas-like" bunch in the parade. She asked him "So what is UCB Canada?" Smile.

A couple of fun things ...

Number 1: Family photo taken for our church directory ->



Number 2: Family picture after bored Kevin subjected it to Photoshop ->


Number 3: Last night at a 4H event (annual banquet) one of our lovely senior farmers mentioned that our family was Youtube'd after squaredancing at Allisonville Hall in May. Our friend Blake found is fiddling, and his mom Michelle is playing the piano. Embedded here for your amusement/entertainment lol. ->

Death by theatre ... lol

Just quickly stopping by ... so busy!

What's new? Hmmm ... the main news would be my theatrical family. Everyone but me has auditioned for something this month, and there has been much success.

Alison and Claire tried out for the PECI performance of Romeo and Juliet. Alison is thrilled to report that she is neither a spider or a cow this year, but is playing Lady Capulet. Claire gets a boy part, but she is excited anyway to play Mercutio, which is quite a large role. Kev, Iain and Claire tried out for the County Theatre Group production of "Guys and Dolls". Kev was a little (a lot) shocked to find out tonight that he has been cast as one of the leads, Nathan Detroit. Iain was cast as one of his gang members, and Claire was cast as one of the HotBox girls. She, however, will decline the roll and concentrate on Mercutio. Additionally, Iain will have parts in Christmas and spring productions at Sonrise.

It's a good thing I don't "do" theatre ... I think our family would implode or dissolve or something :-).

We had two beautiful wee girls stay with us last week ... I will pray for them nightly for a very, very long time. We all fell in love with them, and as much as it was very busy, we would have taken them long-term in an instant.

I have joined Regal as a representative ... not planning on making a huge deal out of it, but we need wrapping paper, and there are quite a few of my friends that are missing Regal as well :-). More info to follow on that.

This is short and disjointed ... but it's something :-). Blessings to all of you!

Monumental moment last week ...

I popped upstairs during school to make lunch for Iain and myself. Going for "fast", I popped hot dogs into boiling water and prepared for a very excited boy (we don't have them often because I loathe hotdogs, but we were pressed for time). Just as they were done, Iain sauntered upstairs and asked what was for lunch. I said brightly "Hot dogs!" expecting cheers, high fives and a hug. What I got instead was ... "Huh. Okay." I said to my youngest man, "You don't sound very excited about hot dogs. Why is that?"

He said ...

(drum roll please) ...

"Yeah ... I dunno ... I just don't really feel like them today."

MY LITTLE BOY IS GROWING UP!!!!

Seriously, this boy has loved hot dogs his entire life. Serving hotdogs to him has been an act of love on my part, in his opinion. My mom world tilts again :-).

And other family news ... Kev had a day off yesterday, and we had a VERY productive day. We managed to get the garage all cleaned out and ready to put the car in for winter. We sorted through and organized the storage area, removing things for the dump. We took a van load of junk to the dump (Wednesdays are a GOOD day for Kev to be home; the dump is only open Wednesdays and Saturdays.) Not a particularly exciting day off for my big man, however it's been tough to find time for these pre-winter chores. Another one looming is our lawns .. they have yet to be mown for the last time. We have a waving wheat field on our front lawn. It mocks us when we look out the living room window. We have had so much rain that it's still wet on the infrequent sunny days ... by the time it's almost dry, it's raining ... or hailing! ... again.

Falling asleep and must go :-) ...

Alison was quoted last week in the County Weekly News

A friend of hers did an assignment for a journalism class, then her teacher asked her to submit it to both local papers. So, just for fun, here is one of the articles :-). If you double click on the photo, it will enlarge and her quote is in the top right corner.

A short school day here today; second fire of the season (why do the fires keep putting me to sleep???), then I'll take Iain in to Sonrise for French, Music and Phys Ed. Other than my time spent picking up Claire for her guitar lesson in town, I will be at Rosehaven Farm Store skirting some of my fleeces. My awesome husband has actually taken a day off next Wednesday, so I will be able to get to a Spinning Guild meeting :-). Hurray!

Feeling prepared for winter ....

We just got given a very old, but working, freezer, which is now ensconced in our garage happily freezing two lambs and 1/4 cow for the winter. We were able to get a really good price on 1/4 of one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_cattle

Supposedly the meat is divine, but we'll wait and see. All I know is the only time I've had a t-bone steak since we moved back to Canada was at a friend's party a couple of years ago, and we have three packages now!

I managed to locate our first firewood supplier by looking through my old day planners. They had taken a couple of years off, but the nephew is back in the county and really trying to make a go of his business. He is a GOOD supplier -- was able to custom order my wood from what he had available (beech = good, hardwood maple = good, ironwood (aka eastern hop hornbeam, not the ironwood of the South) = EXCELLENT! We had lousy softwood last year from a neighbour (but were in a pinch so we were grateful :-) ...) plus some donations (thank you guys!) but it was a patchwork kind of season. We just had our chimney cleaned and this is the first year it has actually been dirty; too much low temp burning wood. And oh, the ash build-up with softwood!

School is going well all around. Claire is LOVING grade 9 (do they make Grade 8 really boring on purpose I wonder???). She has a great Venture class, and the subjects she has been worried about are not an issue at all so far. Alison is enjoying her classes, although doesn't get any anatomy this term in science and the rest of her favourite subjects are next semester. They are looking forward to trying out for "Romeo and Juliet" next month. Alison continues her Saturday job, and is also helping out at Blumen for Taste of the County, a big "eat local" promotion that is county wide. Both girls are presently getting their passports ready for possible trips next summer.

Iain is having a great school year as well! I've chosen pretty much the perfect curriculum for him in every subject we do at home ... his attitude is getting better and better and (YAY) he really is getting interested in what he's learning. Not sure what about institutionalized school killed his desire to learn, but it's so good to have it back :-). It has also been awesome that he can attend Sonrise Christian Academy for their home school program. The new teacher they have is awesome, and Iain came home last week saying that he LIKED soccer (let's not talk about his public school phys ed experience, where if you're not skilled, you are ridiculed by the other kids and in some cases, even by the teacher :-( ). They are also using amazing (and very boy friendly) curriculum for French ... Iain spent over an hour last night studying it for fun!

Life is good ... and fun :-).

Sigh.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/09/22/ottawa-.html

Those of you who pray ... please do. The woman who was killed left a 7 month old baby (she was a single mom)and is the niece of my good friend and neighbour (just around the corner).

And since I just received my first ever request to become part of a jury panel in town, please know that I in no way want to be part of a jury in this case. I checked out a different news article than the one above, and a certain sentence, if true and not sensationalized ... well, I am not that strong.

I am grateful that the pair decided to break in to some place in Quebec, and got caught. Not so bright of them.

Please pray for Karen, my friend, her daughter Julie (who went to school at the same time as the one fellow charged) and Steffany's family and son.

Sigh.

Music to my ears :-)

There has been a resurgence of all things musical at our house. Any given minute I may hear Iain on his electric guitar (currently working on Viva la Vida), Claire singing or on her acoustic (she saved up most of her earnings this summer, and a portion is paying for 20 guitar lessons), or Alison learning great music on the piano. I'm grateful that this generation's music is amazing, even though I'm not, as a good parent, supposed to love my kids' music. Hello? Coldplay? The Frey? Even some of the alt bands' commercial stuff is awesome. Alison is also learning to play the djembi and playing with the worship team, and Claire continues to sing, as usual. Iain has been writing songs like crazy since he learned a few chords on the guitar as well. I love it :-). Life is good.