First Fire

 We had a good night, mom slept 11 hours and woke up refreshed. I did not need to call Ruth. After cooking her breakfast I went home to shower and get ready for Bereans. We arrived early but there were already volunteers there waiting to get inside. Skip is still in Florida so no one had the key. My key is on my car key which is in Gulf Shores but thankfully I figured out the code.  If you would like to read about our very busy morning there click HERE. We loaded the Bibles into the back of the wheel chair van along with the studies to be mailed and the studies to be graded.  The Bibles and studies to be mailed were dropped off first at the Bartonville post office then the studies to be graded were taken to Meisters for Amanda to take to her mom for Roanoke church to grade. Roanoke will be pleased to see plenty to grade. We made it home around 12:30 pm and rested before lunch. I went home to get some laundry going before heading back over to cook lunch.  Karin arrived from Florida and gave us an update on John. He is getting stronger each day. He has to stay in Florida until Nov 30th so Karin is going back there in 10 days and will assist in his rehab until he is released.  I left for home but came back on the golf cart to drop off some candy just in case they get any trick or treaters tonight. It IS Halloween and mom has LOTS of grand and great grandchildren! Some GORGEOUS pictures came in from the lady that owns Soul's 2016 filly by Valiant. I think that was the only year we bred Soul to Valiant but looking at this mare we might have made a mistake. 

What is a little crazy is this filly was sold to a lady in California. She must have been sold and now lives back in the Midwest all the way back to Indiana. I'm really happy to see pictures of her. The new owner contacted me for more information. She was sent pictures of the day this filly was born all they way until she was weaned and shipped out. This is a good lesson for me to hang on to past pictures. Below was taken right after birth.

and below is a picture of her at weaning.

Three of our grand daughters stopped in on their way to great grandma's house to show me their costumes.  

Today was really cold for October. I think the high may have only been 35 degrees but the worst was the wind. It was blowing so hard as I was walking from mom's house to my house I thought I might have frost bite. It was so cold that even though it is still October we built a fire in the fireplace wood burner.

Even Mark is enjoying the heat.

 

Jack-o-lanterns

 Mom was up early, about 4:30 am and she had to wake me. At 5:15am Ruth was called and together we got ready for the day starting with a good hot cup of coffee and some coffee cake. Ruth left to get ready for work then. Mom was just getting ready to eat her second breakfast of an egg and bagel when Rachel arrived. Rachel had some fun activities planned for mom and Aunt Jinnie. She brought over 2 pumpkins from her garden. Mom and Aunt Jinnie both drew the face they wanted then Rachel cut them out.

They all helped to separate the seeds. Rachel found and mixed in some seasoning and baked the seeds.they turned out delicious.

When it got dark we put them in the window.

Rachel took pictures of Monday night girls volley ball league. They are all doing so well. It is really fun to watch all these 1st and 2nd cousins play together along with a couple Aunts and a great Aunt.

Rachel is the great Aunt.

We had such a busy day that mom went to bed at 7:00 pm, Aunt Jinnie and I followed pretty quickly. It was a good day.

Good to be Home

 It really was good to be home even though the weather in Illinois isn't the best. We had a wonderful day in church. Tim Funk had the morning message.  You REALLY should listen to this message and can by clicking HERE. There were chocolate kisses on the table at lunch. We looked over at Tina and it seemed she had been collecting them. 

Nope her son brought her 6 extra, Ruth at one and the rest on that plate are fake. Tim Roecker had the afternoon message you can hear that by clicking HERE. I took mom and Aunt Jinnie home from church then left mom with Aunt Jinnie while I went home to get Sunday Supper ready. At 4:00 pm mom and Aunt Jinnie were picked up and driven right into the barn for supper. That turned out ok, there was enough food and they all seemed to enjoy the food. 

After supper I ran home to put the left overs away and noticed Dancer with the 4 remaining weanlings up at the fence line.

When I got back to the barn the volley ball games had already started. 

Below mom and Aunt Jinnie are watching through the bullet proof windows.

Most of the grand kids (those that weren't playing in the games) were upstairs playing in the game room. River and Zeke were downstairs with us.

Today River decided she was a cat so we were teasing her mom about bringing in some kitty litter.

Zion came down and I asked her to show me her new hair. She has sparkles in it.

I took mom and Aunt Jinnie home. Mom settled in her recliner and Aunt Jinnie went to work on her needle point. 

We were in bed by 8:45 pm.

Made It

 Mark left the room early so us women could get ready for the day. By 6:30 am we were ready to walk downstairs for breakfast. After breakfast we started the last 7 hours of our journey. We stopped at a truck stop for lunch but ended up walking over to a Burger King. 

We pulled in at mom's at 3:06 pm. Ruth was waiting and helped with the unloading. Mom's glasses were missing and after searching all of the luggage and van I called the hotel and sure enough they were left in the room. Diane will pick them up on her way home from Gulf Shores. Ruth will spend the night with mom tonight so I'm off duty. Mark and I drove to Aldi for some groceries. The horses were checked and all is well. Evan is now out on pasture. Mike and his guest were very busy while we were gone and finished the fencing.

Joan sent back a couple pictures of their group having dinner without Aunt Jinnie, mom, Mark and me. 

They added Sarah and still need to add Faith but it looks like they are not missing us at all. 

We  had 3.5 inches of water in our rain gauge and it is obvious home had a LOT of rain while we were gone. I'm thankful for a safe trip home and SO looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. 

Home James

Mark and I were up at 5:00 am with everything packed. I sat outside on the balcony facing the lagoon for a few quiet moments. 

Below is Bill and Joan, they put mom's recliner into the elevator to take it down to the van.  Joan dropped her side and quickly sat in in just in case anyone on the other floors would open the elevator door.

We didn't pull out until 8:35am for our 8.30 hour trip to the Drury in Hayti. It took us an extra hour as we had one stop for gas and lunch. We arrived at the hotel at 6:00 pm, had a nice meal and will soon go to sleep in our nice big room with 2 queen size beds.

Last Day

 We had a beautiful sunny hot last day.

Most of the day was spent out on the beach. Even us older folks went boogie boarding but the waves and winds were so strong that I didn't stay out long. We ate lunch out on the beach and the little ones had fun feeding the sea gulls. Bethany made a supper of Philly cheese steak for all of us and that was delicious. Joan is taking all the kids out crab hunting. To see the rest of the pictures from today click HERE. 

UP to 13

 No gorgeous sunrise this morning, the sky was overcast, the wind was strong and the waves were huge. Below mom is out on the balcony watching the waves crashing. 

The clouds started breaking up around 7:30 am.

This morning we watched SO many pelicans. They came by in groups of 3 all the way to over 20 gliding over the waves. One group looked like they stopped and changed directions. Below is that video,

Later the sun came out bright but the wind was still strong so mom and Aunt Jinnie didn't go out on the beach today at all. Instead we enjoyed the sunshine on the balcony. Mark walked all the way to Walmart and back then cleaned up the car. We are leaving the car down here for Joan to drive home and will be taking mom and Aunt Jinnie home in the wheel chair van. We started getting ready for supper around 4:00 pm and got to the Original Oyster House at 4:30 pm. Of course we needed to take a picture with the alligator. 

We met Matt and Lisa's family of 10 there at that time. The food was great as always.

We came back to the condo and found Bill and Bethany and their 4 children had arrived.  We are now 13 staying in this condo. They were all sopping wet, they went down to the beach and one of those strong waves got them all. Joan had some birthday gifts for Joshua and William as she had missed their birthday. After watching them open their gifts they went out on the balcony to see the moon shining on the waves. Then it was time for church.  We watched Peoria on-line.  David had the message. If interested in watching that click HERE. I was working on the blog but needed to move the laptop as  Bill and Bethany are sleeping in the living room and when I unplugged the laptop it died. Even plugged back in it wouldn't turn on. All the evening pictures of the birthday party, Joan's grandchildren, and church from today are on that laptop so hope I can get it going tomorrow.

Wonderful UPdates

 In the last 2 days 2 amazing updates were sent. The first one came on Monday and was of Missy's one and only foal named Amelia. The back story is Missy was and is our ugliest mare, she is a blue roan Tennessee Walker and always loved the babies. She would hang around the mares with foals and stay with the foals. We finally decided one year, "ok we will let Missy have her own foal and bred her to Evan.  The filly was gorgeous but Missy didn't like that thing that came out of her and caused her pain.  We had to force Missy to accept her but once the filly started nursing Missy claimed her and was happy.  Well the lady that bought and named the filly Amelia sent some beautiful pictures and wrote: Greetings!   It has been too long since I’ve reached out to you, but I wanted to send an update about Amelia (by Missy).   She is definitely my equine soulmate.   She is virtually fearless, and where I lack confidence, she pushes until it comes out-yet at the same time, if she spooks at something, she trusts my leadership without question.   Curious, very intelligent, loves water, loves other horses, loves people, the list of wonderful qualities goes on. I know you’re busy so I will keep this short, but here are some recent photos of her now that she’s all grown up. 

I will forever be grateful to you for your kindness, generosity, and amazing animals that you bring into this world.   Thank you!

What a wonderful update and I am thrilled to see how beautiful Amelia is. She surely inherited her sire's hair!  The second update came in last night. This one is from Hannah, the owner and trainer of Soul's colt by Evan we named Gideon. Hannah changed his name to Thor, posted the picture below and wrote:

Thor using his thinking cap today!!! He’s getting the hang of standing on rocks. He was super full of energy today on our ride and did a GREAT flying change. Safe to say I couldn’t be more glad to have a baby out of your farm. The smartest horse i’ve ever met. This boy is by FAR my heart horse and I just wanted to let you know how amazing he is. I feel like the day I put him under saddle it was like he already knew what I was doing. He’s so gorgeous and has brains. Maybe when I’m all grown up I’ll purchase another! I always feel like breeders wanna know how their babies are doing. I still remember driving up there to get him and he was just perfect.

Another wonderful update! How can I retire when I read such wonderful words and see these beautiful horses? When we started this breeding program with Raven I used to tell myself, "I want to make dreams come true as my dream came true."Twenty one years later we can say that this really did happen! Dreams really do come true!