Birthday Party

The snow wasn't too bad this morning, probably only around 3 inches but what did come down blew around and pretty much everything needed plowing. Mark took first the small Kubota to open up ours and mom's driveway then finished the other lanes with the skid steer. Joan borrowed the big Kubota to split some big logs in Diane's drive. This was from a huge tree near Mike and Diane's office that had to come down. Below they are rolling one of the logs to the log splitter for splitting.

 Once the logs were split Faith would stack the wood in mom's Kubota and drive it over to their house.

 They kept busy most of the morning.

 When Mark was done with the drives he wanted to take the mower he had purchased yesterday out of the truck bed by using the skid steer and a chain. Joan was returning the tractor right then so the three of us worked on that and were able to get it out of the truck without damaging anything.
The temps have been dropping all day so we brought more wood inside to keep the wood burner going strong. This evening we all met at mom's house and celebrated Joan's birthday. We picked up pizza from Casey's for supper.  As Ruth's was yesterday they had to blow out their candles at the same time. Below are a few pictures of the evening.

 We had a lot of fun. The kids had a ball playing downstairs together. They had the downstairs all cleaned up when it was time to go. 

We had a good productive day and a fun evening. With this big of a family there is usually someone having a birthday which always gives us an excuse to get together.
With comparing Evan and Valiant's pictures as a foal and then as a 9 year old we needed to do the same with a mare or two. Below is Indy at just a few hours old July 4th, 2010

and below is Indy January 11th, 2019. She is a big mare standing 16.3 hands.

 Her dam Ylse was our full papered FHANA registered mare that stood only 16 hands tall and her sire was Raven who was 16.2 hands so we were surprised when she grew taller than both her dam and her sire. We actually sold Indy as a weanling but when the person who put down the deposit let us know he was not going to be able to purchase her we were glad to keep her.  She is the sweetest mare we own, she is so emphatic that if she sees another horse in distress she will go right next to that mare to comfort her by nuzzling her and staying with the scared mare until that mare calms down. Indy is truly a gift from God and we are thankful!

It is getting cold outside and is suppose to drop below zero and yet our wood burner is keeping us very comfortable. Thankful for free heat!