Sydney got a new piano teacher recently. For several years, she’s been tolerating lessons from Liz, but wasn’t making much progress. About six months ago we decided to try farming her out to an outside teacher to see if taking Mom out of the mix would help. Two teachers and several months later… boy did it ever!
Syd has found her soul-mate in the music world, and is enjoying learning and playing. We almost can’t get her to stop practising. Her teacher is working with her on creative stuff like improvisation and arranging pieces herself, which has really touched off … Read the rest
Nippa, the milk machine, generally produces almost exactly the amount of milk we tend to drink every day as a family. However, when one or more of us aren’t here, the milk can begin to pile up in the fridge. Recently I spent several days out of town for work, and Sydney had spent a week at summer church camp. That translated into a couple gallons that were threatening to go bad if we didn’t do something useful with them. To add to the problem, Liz had bought a half-gallon of cream from the dairy down the street, but had … Read the rest
Liz has never really liked the idea of an “inside dog,” coyotes were wreaking havoc on our chickens, and we were planning on going on a family vacation for two weeks and leaving the Dog outside to “protect” the other animals and to make it much easier on the family who was going to be feeding and watering the animals. The dog would need somewhere to get out of the weather. Because the barn is behind the back pasture fence and I don’t like the idea of the dog hanging out in the chicken coop I decided the best option … Read the rest
Liz came home the other day with a new definition. I doubt it would show up in Webster’s or any other authoritative dictionary, but anyone who has ever had boys will almost certainly recognize it.
Since we took a rather long break posting updates, I’ve decided to go back over old pictures and pull a few out to share. A little over a year ago, I took the two boys and went hiking in a large natural area not far from where we were living at the time. Michael, being two at the time, wasn’t much of a hiker, but had fun when we stopped and he could get down and play around.
Good things come in threes, so I’ve been told. So when we had spent a few days dealing with Michael getting hives and being up all night itching and Isaac cutting his finger bad enough that I had to glue him back together with Derma-Bond, Liz and I were holding our breath for something else. It didn’t take long.
We were invited over to a friend’s 150 acre homestead for an easter-egg hunt, BBQ and bonfire. The combination of food, fun, and fellowship is hard to resist, so I took the kids and off we went. It was great fun … Read the rest
