Thursday, October 25, 2012

Getting older...

My baby is nine years old. Yesterday was Cora's birthday and I couldn't be more proud of the beautiful, intelligent, hilarious, sweet, and wonderful young lady that she is. I am so thankful for my amazing family. Cora had two of her best friends overnight on Saturday (so we had a night full of giggles) and then we celebrated with lots of sugary goodness (pumpkin pie, pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, Halloween candy, and candy corn/pumpkins) on Sunday. It's so nice having a home that we can be proud of - having family come over and celebrate is wonderful. It's so fun to have everyone come and play with the animals. Some are still a bit nervous - but my Aunt Linda got a kiss from an alpaca (Blossom, of course) and that was a huge accomplishment. :-)
In other farm news, Chip, our "man-whore" visiting goat, has been very busy in the barn yard. I've had the unfortunate opportunity to witness him "going to town" with two of our ladies. I have yet to see him show much interest in Mabel...I don't know if perhaps it already happened, when I wasn't looking? I'm not sure. But some day, Chip will need to go back to his farm...and we'll just have to see what happened and who got pregnant.
The weather has been absolutely amazing the past couple of days - sunny and in the 70's...although not very representative of fall, it is definitely nice not having to worry about turning on the heat. In fact, last night we slept with the windows open, listening to a pack of coyotes yipping and howling...such an eerie and beautiful sound.
Oh! We also figured out that one of the trees across the street is a Sugar Maple! Which means, we are going to try our hand at tapping for maple sap this Spring. We've never tapped before and I look forward to learning about the process. Mmmmm homegrown maple syrup...yes please!
Our Japanese Maple is looking gorgeous - I love the view sitting on the front porch.

Cupcakes I brought in for Cora's class.
 
Some of the attendees from Cora's birthday party - look out Nana! There are bats behind you!

Happy birthday dear Cora...happy birthday to you...

The birthday girl getting a birthday hug and kiss from Mabel.

Cora's friends learning about being a farmer :-)

Cora's friend, Hannah, getting her first alpaca kiss.

The two Hannahs - with Steve :-)

Saturday night we did homemade jack o'lantern pizzas....Delicious!

Making pizza!

All the kids get along so nice - my kids have great friends.

Our front porch!

Ready for Fall - with 100 bats flying around our house. (Yes, we cut out 100 bats!)

The corn stalks are leftover from our garden.

A view coming up our driveway.

Me and my honey.

Me and the birthday girl.

4 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday Cora!!!!! Oh Shelby, do you know how much you are giving them - such wonderful memories of their childhood. Absolutely priceless. Imagine them, when they are young parents, telling their children how they grew up. I know I love telling people about living on the farm and being self sufficient and having lots of family and friends. Well Done both of you.

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  2. Hello there! Hopping over here from the comment you left the other day. Are you preparing to tap trees this winter? It is so much fun! Yes, those pictures on my blog are from Yellow Springs. We live in Illinois, but Yellow Springs holds a lot of history for us. It's where my husband and I began, where we went on our honeymoon and many other times. We love it there! You are lucky to be so near to it!

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  3. Amanda - yes! We are planning on tapping this winter. It'll be our first time and we're really excited about it. How funny that I ran across your blog and saw pictures of Yellow Springs. It's such a neat area - Ha Ha Pizza...Youngs Dairy...all the neat little shops - we love it too!!!

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  4. You did such a great job with Cora's birthday event :) Everyone had such a great time, especially Cora! Mommy Rocks! (I Love you!)

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