Random Days

Whew! What crazy days we have behind and ahead of us.
First - after an extremely close election, I'm happy to announce that Obama will represent this country for another four years. I like him and his wife. I think that they are good people. Genuine.
Second - my Drake celebrated his 12th birthday yesterday. 12! I am so honored that my children picked me as their mother. I just honestly have the best kids. Drake was born at 36 weeks and two days, meaning four weeks early. His lungs weren't developed enough when he was born; however, since I was having my second bleed out from my placenta previa, they knew it was time to take him via C-section. He had a rough start - he wasn't breathing well on his own and had to be ventilated and medicated. He blew out some of the alveoli in his lungs and developed a nasty case of jaundice. He also was born without his sucking instinct. Drake isn't like other babies...he pulled out his vent tube, he pulled out his IVs (several times) - he was strong and even as an infant, we wouldn't let anyone tell him what he was and was not capable of. I'm proud to say that Drake is just as strong now. He's caring, beautiful, intelligent, kind, adventurous - he's a great soul to have in our lives. He has no lasting effects from his rough start, you would never know that he was a preemie. So with that said, we had a party at the farm for him yesterday - we had family and friends out to celebrate Drake and all his awesomeness. His friend, Eion, came from Dayton (their birthdays are just two days apart - Drake spent Friday night at Eion's to celebrate HIS birthday and Eion came here Saturday night for Drake - they are a good pair, those two and we really like Eion and his family). Of course I wasn't prepared with my camera, but I know that Mark got a couple good pictures - so I'll have to steal his and post them later. BUT what I did have my camera ready for is a few of the other cool things that have happened here over the past week.

One fun thing - we fed our pumpkins to the animals to see if they would like it...Um...they did!



We fed our Halloween pumpkins/gourds to the animals - this is Jester enjoying his.



Jester and Itty enjoying brunch together

Ollie, pretending that he likes pumpkin...(he really doesn't Shhh!)

This might be the first really good photo I have of Flora :-)

Ollie Loves Daddy

Ollie says "Mmm...this pumpkin is delicious?"

Everyone loves the pumpkin! Except Steve - he's in the barn...but isn't a pumpkin fan.

Another group shot!

Feeding frenzy

 I was pretty sure that Captain, one of our outside kitties (Runt, Bella and Lockhart's mom) had ANOTHER litter of kittens...I was right, but we could never figure out where they were. FOUND THEM! During Drake's birthday - I was walking with my mother, to show her where we had found a foundation to a shed that was part of the underground railroad, and as we were walking back toward the house, I saw two little kittens near our blue shed. Check out this cuteness...

Four kittens - three black and that sweet little back and white one.

Captain has striking yellow eyes - she's just beautiful.

Eek! Look at that face!

Yup, I'm a cat person for sure.

Mark and I have also been working on clearing out the back corner of the property - it was about chest high with sticks, twigs, logs and trees (and some trash, from the previous owners) - I know that there were several trees tossed in that corner along with a mess of broken sticks. We've had two burn piles going and I think we've done a pretty good job (Mark did an AWESOME job...and well...I helped a bit).

This is Gage standing near the far end of the pile, last Jan.

Mark and burn pile number 1

What a mess!

It's coming along

Ohhh la la - artsy picture of the smoke!

Burn pile number 2 - it was easier, once we had a portion cleaned out to just start burning right there, that way, we could rake right into the fire.

Ahhhhh!!!!! SO much nicer! Yes ladies, that's MY man working on the burn pile in his PJ's - I think he's so sexy :-) But the pile has been taken down (mostly) to dirt/compost. It is supposed to rain tonight and we are hoping that will loosen things up a bit and allow us to flatten the space out even more - but I'm SO happy with the progress we have made. It's hard to tell in these pictures...but trust me - it was a HUGE task!

Off topic - but another awesome thing that happened on Drake's birthday...we saw three deer in the field, right behind our house, near our well. Gorgeous!

Gage, Drake, Cora and Drake's friend, Eion took the metal detector out in the field and came back with this HUGE horseshoe, along with another smaller horseshoe and misc. metal tractor pieces. It's pretty cool to own pieces of history (there used to be a blacksmith shop in that field behind our house, so from time to time a shoe gets turned up in the field.)

Speaking of history, our town was a significant stop on the underground railroad. We had heard that there was a concrete base of a shed in the wooded area behind our house, that was used to hide slaves when they would come and do a sweep of the homes in town. After taking down that wood pile - we finally found it! Um how awesome is THAT!?

I thought I would share how my cat, Freak, likes to sleep - as long as you are comfortable Freaky!

And to counteract the not so attractive picture above, I thought I'd add a nice picture of me too LOL

I apologize for this post being so random, but that truly is how our life has been lately, very, very, oh, so, random! This Saturday, my cousin, her husband and their three little girls will be coming to the farm and staying for a week! I'm SO excited! I haven't seen my cousin in a very long time. It will be nice to have her family her and celebrate Thanksgiving.

Vote!

Proud to be an American today. Being a female and having the ability to vote, especially in a swing state - I'm honored that I'm able to voice my opinion. Go Obama!!!

I voted to protect the rights of women. I voted to protect the future of my children and their education. I voted to protect the rights of the LGBT community in hopes that we'll continue to move forward to marriage rights and human race equality. I voted to show that there are things more important to me than money.

This is Halloween

Wow everyone...what a crazy time for the East Coast. I feel very fortunate that our family and home only experienced high winds and cold weather and no real damage from Hurricane Sandy...I wish that people closer to the coast could say the same. It's heart breaking to see the photos of the complete devastation. My heart goes out to everyone and I hope that the recovery process for NYC and NJ is quicker and more painless than I think it will be.

We've been in Halloween mode for the past week...last Sunday was pumpkin (Ok, this year, everyone got large gourds instead of pumpkins) carving, followed by costume making and trick-or-treating. We debated on where to trick-or-treat and decided to walk through our own town and visit this homes of our neighbors. It was a nice, calm walk with lots of laughs, cute kids and yummy candy. Now, our focus is turning to Thanksgiving - a holiday where we host everyone at our house. This year, we'll have my cousin and her family coming to stay with us for the week and it will be so great. It has been a while since we've all gotten together like that. I'm excited to show her our home and meet her youngest daughter.

Just wanted to post a quick note and share some pictures - Hope everyone is doing well in BlogLand...

Hi Ollie!

Ollie is getting to be such a big boy!

We harvested two pounds of pecans from a tree in our front yard - originally, we were told that the tree was an Elm tree that needed to come down - THANK GOODNESS we didn't take it down...because it actually grows delicious Pecans that taste like warm honey!!!

Last week was Halloween - Drake (left) was Dr. Who, Cora (middle) was Fluttershy, My Little Pony and Gage (right) was the Happy Mask Salesman from Legend of Zelda. We had a nice walk through our town - it was definitely one of the coldest Halloweens that we've had in a while...thanks to Hurricane Sandy.

Hurricane Sandy also brought a beautiful sunset.

Drake's pumpkin

Gage's pumpkin

Cora's pumpkin

Kait and David's pumpkin

 

Mine and Mark's pumpkin

Our kids are awesome LOL

I just love how much they love each other.

Pumpkin Love

I leave you with the look I usually get from Josie LOL

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.

Haunting

In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd share an experience that we had out here on the farm last night. The Southern Ohio Supernatural Team came out to our house for an investigation. Everyone has their own beliefs on the supernatural and we believe that ghosts are real. We've had some strange experiences here at the homestead...smells of perfume, the feeling of being watched. Particularly while we are working on the barn, we feel like someone is watching, making sure that we are doing a good job. So we invited the Southern Ohio Supernatural Team out to do a private investigation on our home.
We are waiting for the complete results, but I do know that they took photos that contain several orbs and the EVP detector picked up someone saying the name "George" several times. It was very interesting indeed.