Thursday, January 29, 2009

Winter -- an amusing musing time.


 Whether busy with my daily chores or just sitting, gently falling snow outside will always catch my eye. I find myself pausing at the top of the stairs to just stare at the fluffy whiteness. When we were littler, we used to say "God dropped whipped cream all over the woods!" when we took in a freshly snow covered forest. Amazing how the whole world looks different when those white fluffy flakes start gently dropping. The woods, ravine, creek, east ridge, pine grove, cabin site, and other places we commonly explore in the summer now look very different, I noticed during my daydreams at the window. Everything has been coated in a fresh, peaceful, clean, waist deep, whiteness. Crossing to the other end of the house, I find I've forgotten what I'd originally entered the room for, as my attention is glued the slowly falling snow. The cows and horses spend a lot of time in their front pens by their shelters now that it's cold. A twitch of the mule's ear sends the snowball that was gathering there onto the ground, disturbing the serenity. A pony is scratching her nose on the post by the watering tank, knocking the snow from it. The boys start to roughhouse, and snow falls from their backs. The little paint mare is scratching her butt back and forth on the rail of the fence, cleaning the snow off that section of the rail. As though just waking up, the pony laying in the middle of the pen suddenly rolls over kicking the fresh snow up in a cloud of whiteness and hoofs as he does so.... And still the snow comes gently down...
The cow watches the ponies idly from her pen across the fence, with one of those 'blank cow' expressions. (Just imagine the snow falling in this pic. )
A few yards to the south Stephen is coming out of the chicken house with an egg in his glove. There are a few chickens huddling around the door. They return to the warmth of their home after Stephen leaves. A bunny jumps back into her hutch, kicking the snow from her feet. Behind the chicken house, the long rolls of round bales looks like white graves, completely covered by the snow as they are. Still the snow gently falls on it's course to the ground. The sheep lifts her head to watch Stephen, causing the pitiful snowball that had gathered there to fall. The trees in the woods beyond are edged in the whiteness, as it had been blowing around the night before. Taking in the whole picture, I find I am releasing a sigh from somewhere deep within... And I am happy. There are some days when I long for spring. There are other days when I'm just happy. I try to encourage those days to stick around and wait out the winter with me.

Wishing you those days as well...
Mary

P.S. Yes, when the snow dose finally cease, we are left quiet buried--but well equipped to deal with it... with sleds, smiles and, of course, snow shovels!


Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Baby Fix...

Consider yourselves fixed:

Sorry it took us so long to get this slide up... I could probably come up with several excuses but they're pretty lame... so I'm not going to.

(BTW, if you thought Stephen's running horses or house at night picture (in my last post) were worth casting a vote for, you have the opportunity to do so. He has a chance of winning a new camera if one of his pictures wins the contest.)

Until next time!

Friday, January 16, 2009

Good, albeit chilly, morning!

Everyone is talking about how cold it is these days. I've heard -14, -28, -40, etc. We're a toasty -2 here! Despite our warm temperatures we have been staying inside at lot lately. Andrew is building cabinets under the stairs and Dad is building closet doors for the loft. They alternate days between heating the garage and working out there and filling the living room with tools and working in here. The kids usually take some encouragement in the mornings to go feed and care for the animals. After that they pretty much disappear into the loft for the day, doing school, playing with their homemade little people and doing board games. If it's a little warmer (or sunny) out, they'll go out and sled too, or wait until the evening when Andrew finishes his work so he can go out and tackle them into snowbanks in their nightly football games. Johnny usually follows them around but it seems like lately he's been on my coat tails more. I guess watching me burn and cut myself in the kitchen is more entertaining than watching Michael do math. I'm still finding plenty to do in Mom's absence, learning a lot of cooking skills in the kitchen, like what's hot and how things burn when you leave them on the heat too long... lol. I'm getting some much needed practice, not only in the kitchen but in all lines of domestic duty. I've found it suits me just fine too, and I would be perfectly content to do it the rest of my life if that's what He wants... The girls are filling their days with baby sitting. Not only with dear Donna Marie, but with the little neighbor boy that we're always baby sitting too, so his Mom can work. They're both cute as buttons but even buttons can be handfuls. We've been picking up our instruments more now that we're inside a lot. It's fun, but after 5 months leave, we stink! We've all been thoroughly enjoying Donnie's babyhood. She's a month old today, and such a precious princess!! It's been decided that she most resembles Annie, with Theresa's eyes. Pretty cute.


Donnie and Johnny. Big brother is happy to finally be a 'bigger than somebody' in this world!:


Donna hasn't really smiled yet. In fact, usually she just looks at us like this:
Should we be alarmed? Really, I didn't think we were that crazy of a family...

The ponies love every fresh snowfall. They have to run and kick up a cloud of the fresh snow behind them at each new addition of whiteness to their pasture.

"Whaddya, *pant*, lookin at, *pant*?"


Signing off with a cool picture of Stephen's that he took of the house the other night when we had a huge full moon and the kids were playing outside:


My nice brother took the hint and is almost finished with a slideshow of Donnie.... should be up soon.

Until then!

Friday, January 9, 2009

Sledders on the Roof

This is what the kids do when their normal sledding hill becomes to boring...

They were doing this yesterday after shoveling the driveway. Andrew took the clips and put it together in this short vid. We recorded the music over it last night. The song is an original diddley by our family band.


I know this is a pretty short update after such a long break... I also have several pictures of baby Donna to share, but I'd kinda like one of my nice brothers to put them together in another handy slide show for me.... hint hint. So maybe you'll see those soon and I'd also like to share more of our music with you... eventually. I'll see what I can come up with. An update in short would be: we're all well here and enjoying our snow!

Thanks for stopping by!