Busy Tuesday

 I went out as soon as it was light to check Blueberry since I had neglected to check her udder last night and we had very cold temperatures this morning. I was glad to see she had not gone into labor. Everyone was fine but there was a hard frost. 

Above Rosaleigh and Sheena are grazing while Evan looks on. Below is Rosalie and her filly by Evan.

Rosaleigh and Sheena were taken over to the cabin field.

Rosaleigh looked into the cabin window and saw her reflection and was standing there admiring that pretty mare in the window.

It seemed like she called Sheena to check out that horse in the window.

They both were very curious. Good thing Diane didn't have guests, they would have been freaked out to see horses spying on them. 

We had a good walk this morning. I got a call from Cumming's Inc to say they found the problem with the motorhome generator. It was the fuel pump, when driving and the generator turned on the psi pressure dropped down to 1 so that needed to be replaced. I left to get ready for the Berean office while Joan, Diane and Ruth helped mom get ready to go. By the time I got back to mom's house Ruth was pulling the van out and Diane was bringing mom down the ramp. We had a very good morning at the Berean office. I only took the 2 pictures below as we were busy.

We had 31 Bible requests and more prisoners are now starting or working on the advanced study. We left a little early as I needed to drop off the Bibles, take mom home and be at Sarah's house by 1:15 pm. I made it 10 minutes early. She was taking a puppy to the vet.

This puppy was not thriving so needed to have his blood drawn to find out why. His white cell count was high so he was started on antibiotics and now was doing great but needed another blood draw to make sure all was well. Sarah shared that it cost over $600.00 each time they draw blood for testing. It has been years since we raised a litter of puppies, no wonder they are now so expensive now compared to when we did it. Our vet bills for puppies was usually less than $100.00 for full work ups. I stayed with the girls while she took the puppy. 

Eden had some homework to finish up while the other girls drew and colored.

Once Eden was done we went outside to play. They have a couple Magnolia trees in their yard that was dropping blossoms. 

The girls made blossom soup.

From there we went to the trampoline.

When it was time to go inside Zion and River did a pretty cool trick.

Eden was able to do this too. These girls are strong.

Rhoda called about then to say she was coming to pick the girls up as she, Iris and Zeke were all going for a hike. Elisabet also joined them as did THREE dogs. Rhoda brought Ruby and I think Millie while Elisabet brought Rizzy.

They all had a good time hiking together.  I left as Mark wanted my car to take the snow tires off but when I got home he and Mackenson were working on removing trees off Joan's retention dam. They got the snow tires off of Mark's car in 20 minutes. Mine will need to wait until tomorrow. 

Is She or Isn't She

It was hard to get up this morning and when 5:00 am arrived I decided to sleep just a few minutes more and was shocked to find it went from 5:00 am to 6:20 am in an instant. Sleep does that.

On our walk this morning we were on Joan's retention dam when the pair of geese accidently showed us their nest. The gander came swimming from by the dam, that startled the goose, she stood up from the nest and we could see the eggs she has been incubating. She is in the middle of the picture below and you can see a part of the white eggs under her. She is very well camouflaged. 

When we got to Ruth's car she told us to stop. She has been down sizing and cleaned out her coat closet. She wanted to see if we wanted any of the coats she brought. She brought out a leather coat and then pulled out MY coat. This coat Mark gave me for my birthday a couple years ago. When it went missing it gave him a good excuse to buy another, this time for Christmas and we put my name on. Well now we have matching coats.

These are water proof wind breakers and are an easy fit over my sweatshirt. I must have left it at her house and it got put in her coat closet. We wore those coats this morning to Bloomington, IL. I drove the motorhome and Mark drove his car to Cumming's Inc to get the generator looked at. the technician came right out and started to examine it, telling us the job scheduled for today didn't show up so he would look at ours. We left there in high hopes we would be returning this afternoon to pick it up. On the way home we stopped at Kroger and picked up two boxes of pecan sticky buns for Berean tomorrow.  After not hearing from the technician by 3:30 pm  I finally called and was told he was not able to look at it but would tomorrow. Since we would not be going back to Bloomington,  I took the truck and trailer to Middle Grove to pick up Sheena, Rosaleigh, Missy and Cookie. Sheena is obviously pregnant and due April 30th. Rosaleigh is due April 23rd and does not look as pregnant.

She looks fat but does not stick out like I expected. So Is she or isn't she?  I put these two in Evan's pasture and will watch them the rest of today and tomorrow. Right now she is ignoring Evan. These two will be moved to the cabin field. Right now both of these mares have flat udders so no worry about them delivering anytime soon.

Missy and Cookie were put in the middle paddock. 

Berlica is going to take these two mares to Co-op for her pony express project. Tonight Mark wanted a hair cut and that was done after supper. The last load of laundry is now in the wash and once that is done it will be bed time. The older we get the more we look forward to bedtime.

Blessed

 We went to bed before 10:00 pm as we were both tired. I heard the mouse trap go off then clatter clatter clatter and then another mouse trap go off around midnight. I did not get up to see what was happening. At 5:00 am when the coffee maker went off I told Mark I had to check under the kitchen sink as I was pretty sure we had caught a mouse. Well we had but the first mouse trap only caught the leg of the mouse, that mouse was desperately trying to get away and jumped right into the second trap which killed it instantly. To get the dead mouse out of the trap I had to figure out which trap should be released first without getting any of those dead mouse fluids on my hands. I think I got that job done but spent a lot of time washing those hands before getting that first cup of coffee. As soon as it was light outside it was time to move the mares out. Today I wanted to try Rosalie and her filly in the field with Blueberry but that meant Blueberry had to be brought out first and locked in the paddock then bring Rosalie and the filly out and put them in the field. That went better than expected. The video below shows first just the two and then when Blueberry was let out. 

I took a couple pictures of the filly.

I watched them to make sure Blueberry would respect Rosalie's wishes about not getting too close. After about 10 minutes I felt it was safe to leave them so I could finally get going on cleaning the stalls and the arena from yesterday. As our guests in the apartment arrived late last night.  I was careful to not make a lot of noise. When done I decided as long as I had the golf cart out I would move all the food for tonight over to the barn and was just finishing that up when our guests sent a message asking if they could meet the new filly. I left the barn and went right over to introduce them. Soon though I needed to get back in the house to get ready for church. On the way back to the house stopped to take a picture of the redbud tree which is just starting to bloom.

Today was the Sunday school Easter program in place of the afternoon message. Mike Kaisner had the morning message on Psalm 104 and Romans 10 and 11. Click HERE to watch that. After church Gertie and Dennis came over bringing gifts. The Morton Fellowship Hall was remodeling and they brought bowls, colorful bowls for the barn. I used all but one of the bigger bowls today for our meal and some of the smaller ones. We had a good group for dinner serving 25 and even more showed up for volley ball. Those games were intense to watch. Below Rachel and her grandson Joey are watching through the window.

Rebekah arrived with even more kids. There were so many kids running around that Micah felt safe crawling under his mom as she was visiting.

The grand kids were having a ball playing with their first and second cousins out on the playground. 

Dan and Susan had dinner at mom's with Karin and Nancy. Dan had mom watch a video of a man singing and had Susan video mom as she was watching. It was so funny. When he came over to the barn he showed it to us. We too had to laugh!

After all the fun was over Rhoda took Iris and Zeke over to see Rosalie's filly.

They were trying to feed her grass but she wasn't sure she wanted that.

Israel came over to see her too.

 Below are lots of pictures taken by either Rhoda or me.

It is so good for these foals to be exposed to lots of children. Today was really special and I'm thankful for getting to spend time in church worshipping our LORD then getting to spend the rest of the day with so many of this large family. My brain just kept repeating, "we are so blessed, we are so blessed" until it came out of my mouth. "YES we truly are!"