Look what flew in to our basement window tonight!

Poor little guy was stunned ... I was able to pick him up and take photos, and place him gently in the tree. A few minutes later he flew off happily. In the meantime ...

Why I love small towns :-)

So Kev usually leaves at 4:30ish in the morning. This morning, he had to get up obscenely early because there was a worldwide conference call -- generally the eastern hemisphere is the one put out by middle of the night phone calls, but this week they had it in the middle of our night. So he's driving through the county middle of the night ... and here's his story ...

Left home at 2:45 this morning. Got pulled over by a police officer. Officer: "is everything OK, sir" Me: "yes, why?" Officer: "we have our regulars, and we don't normally see your car until quarter to 5" haha!

This is why we love living here ... even the police officers are watching over us, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! :-)

And yes, I've been blog post deficient. I suspect no one will read this since I haven't posted anything for months and my readership is down to zero lol. I might have to get back to posting. It's been hard though .. so much of what is going on in our family since February involves two lovely little girls who are staying with our family -- however posting photos/info in a public place is not allowed. I will say that there is a court date in June, and whether they stay with us (and their future BEYOND us) is currently resting on that court date. I would covet prayers from those of you that do :-).

Any may I add, just briefly, that I love fostering. Those of you who know that I'm not a "kid" person will laugh at this ... but I am a "parenting" person and these little ones need LOVE and parenting. We're all over that ;-). This can be really, really hard, and I've had moments of frustration (and I suspect June will be the real test) but I'm so glad we're in this place doing this thing.

Just a really nice shot of Dickens from December ...

Dickens on a walk in December:


Dickens this morning feeling sorry for himself. He managed to remove most of a toenail during a trip outside last week, and has been all bandaged up by the vet. Every time he is let outside, his bandage must be wrapped with Glad Press and Seal, then followed up by a Gore Tex boot (borrowed from the vet, thank goodness!).


Dickens at 10 or so weeks old (awwwwww :-) ..)

Yes. I am a Bad Blogger :-P

and I continue to be .. will be back!

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 :-) ...