6/11/2006 Wonderful Saturday

What a blessed day at home with my family this day has been! Pat & I got up early together to have coffee and talk by ourselves. I love it when we do that. I had Sunday School to teach this morning and Jonah came with me. Everyone else stayed home. After the class, we came right home, picking up local strawberries and asparagus from a farm stand on the way. I also got some flowers, tomato plants and basil plants.

When we pulled in the driveway, Pat was mowing the lower horse pasture with Susanna riding on his lap. It was such a cute picture.

I made beef stew for lunch from a leftover beef roast that was in the freezer and then got Susanna down for a nap.

Two of Jonah's friends came over then and those three played hunting in the woods all afternoon.

Hannah & I read a little out of Beautiful Girlhood by Karen Andreola. We are loving this book. It will take us forever, though, because as soon as I start to read it to Hannah, she starts talking-LOL-which is what is supposed to happen!

She asked me if I ever had problems when I was young with friends who were raised differently than me. It turns out that when she was at a friend's house(this was last summer, actually) another girl was there and they were trying to decide what movie to watch, but most of the movies the other girl wanted to watch Hannah couldn't watch and told her. So, finally the other girl told Hannah that her mother was dumb to not let her watch all these great movies. So, we had a good long conversation about that, which would be too long to long to put here.

I didn't know about this at the time, but when I met this girl, something about her made me uncomfortable. Hannah hasn't seen her since.

I did some sewing while Hannah continued to talk to me and then we went down to the horse pasture and brushed the horses while they ate the grass Pat had just cut. I really enjoyed that. I don't spend enough time with the horses. The kids do, but I always feel guilty when I do. I should probably be doing other things like cleaning or weeding or something. There's always something.

But, I'd really like to get to know Retro better. I think there is something really special about him. He acts like he wants more attention, but then when you get close to him he acts like he doesn't need or want it. He was really friendly today. He rested his head on the top of Pat's head and he was giving me horse hugs.

Bonnie loves getting brushed-she won't move the whole time. Slugger doesn't really care about getting brushed and he usually rolls in the mud afterwards anyway. LOL He likes it when you sit down on the ground and pick grass for him, though.

I came back up and did a little weeding. My garden is really growing great! Something is eating my mustard greens, though. They're full of tiny holes.

By then Susanna was up and we all stayed outside to do a bonfire. There are a ton of fallen branches in the upper cow pasture. We worked on cleaning that out and we're burning it up.

We also let our 25 chicks that are bigger now out of their pen for the first time to roam loose in the yard. That was fun to watch. The two older hens are not being too nice, but those 15 roosters (for meat) gave it right back to them and they ran away. I think it is going to be a hard day when we butcher them. Plus, we've never done that before.The other 10 chicks are hens for laying eggs.

The kids all roasted marshmallows over the fire and then Pat took the two boys home. He ended up taking all the kids. He was going to leave Susanna home, but she said, "Daadee, pease go tuck!" So, he went and got the carseat to put in the truck. He really cannot resist her and it is so adorable.

So, I am getting dinner going. Since we got all that beef from our cow yesterday we are having porterhouse steak on the grill, salt potatoes, asparagus and watermelon.

After dinner we're going to a farm that has agreed to not sell us raw milk-LOL. They're going to show us how to not get it from the tank and then we are not going to enjoy raw milk whenever we want!