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.