Jake Turns Nine

This Saturday we celebrated Jake's 9th birthday with a bowling party and a few of his school friends. We all had a blast with bowling, pizza, cake, and presents!

An intimate party with only a few friends.

The birthday boy makes a face for the camera.

Opening gifts. This one was a stack of Boxcar Children books!

Look at this itty-bitty egg laid by one of our chickens. It’s the cutest thing we’ve ever seen. It looks like a toy egg! We wanted to keep it around just to enjoy its petite beauty; but one day, Asa decided that he wanted to know what it tasted like as an over-medium egg.

After cracking open the egg, we saw that it wasn’t quite formed right. I chose to pitch it instead of eating it.

Then we cooked one of our other more normal eggs. Beautiful! And yummy too!

Happy New Year 2007

Happy New Year! Can I go to sleep now?

John and Sass

The boys at midnight. They went to be at their normal time.

Christmas 2006

Over Christmas we were visited by Grammie and Granddad and the Blums. Here are a few pictures.

Asa and Lily are crazy about each other. They spent a lot of their time with Lily sitting on Asa's lap.

If there is an instrument in sight, Lily must play it.

Josh in the "Future Chair"

Cherie makes a pumpkin pie. Do you see my new KitchenAid mixer? It's pistachio. I adore it.

I made this apple pie. It was as delicious as it looks.

for the birds

Asa is making a cranberry string to feed the birds. He threaded the cranberries onto the red string all by himself. He loves to give food to the birds - and loves all animals.

This was hard to let him do by himself, but he made it through the project without injury.

Great concentration was needed to get the job done. Good work Asa!

Christmas Tree Hunting

We are lucky enough to have a Christmas Tree Farm right in our neighborhood. We just hop across the creek to Wayne and Irene's place and trudge up the steep hill to find the perfect tree for Christmas. It didn't take us very long to find it. In the background, to the very left of the tree, you can see our house and mill.

The boys wanted to take it down in their own way, but John felt that it would take a lot less time to do it his way.

Asa encouraged John while he sawed away. Last year we brought our new chain saw with us; that turned out to be a disaster - and luckily a passer-by took pity on John and lent him his handsaw. This year, no question - the handsaw was the tool of the day.

While John and Asa worked on taking down the tree; Jake enjoyed the beauty of the valley from up in the sky.

Kitties in a box

Cream and Millie enjoying the simple pleasure of an empty box.

Codorus Creek overflows its banks

The storm system that blew through here on Thursday was a doosey! It rained hard all day long and then suddenly at about 4:30 in the afternoon - it just disappeared! Gray clouds blew away revealing beautiful blue skies and a beautiful clear rainbow above the valley hills. When the boys got home from school, we went to check out the damage at the creek. The water was really high. This little side pool is not usually there. That is typically dry area where the goats play. You can see the remnants of their haystack and the wood pallet they walk on.

At one point we saw a metal barrel floating downstream.
It got caught up at the bridge until a gigantic tree branch dragged it through the bridge along with it.

Millie joined us on our walk to see what was so interesting about the creek.