Oh, I love a Sunny Sunday!

Hello my lovely readers!

Sorry for the 'rerun' sort of post mimicking last weekend's, but I couldn't resist sharing these cute pictures from our sunny Sunday! :o)

 
 This is how this home-bound family (recall that our car is in the shop) decided to entertain themselves on a hot Sunday afternoon:

 Walking to the river...

 Smallest one gets a lift.

 Our version of "Abby Road" ;-) (actually, it was softer barefoot walking in the center)

















 After swim snack; Stephen found the first wild strawberry!

 Headin home...

 

 Hope you all had a lovely weekend! Thanks for visiting :o)

Oh I Love a Rainy Sunday!

Yesterday was a rainy Sunday afternoon. That really good kind of rainy afternoon where the internet is unplugged (for safety reasons) family casually spends the day on the porch watching the rain with the younger kids jumping and screaming at that loudest booms of thunder.  :-)

 

 Sunday actually started out with pretty nice weather. As I potted my flowers, however, I starting noticing the darkening skies and flickers of lightening in the distance. I shoved the rest of my flowers into their new soil and put them out in the yard for watering just as the heavens opened. And to my surprise, the opened with hail first!

Those of you with faster internet, check out this video Stephen took during the storm! Note my flower pots, the cows heading for shelter and the hail turned rain by the end.

 
After it settled down some, the kids went exploring out in the back pasture. Some thought they saw lightening strike the field and wanted to see if they could detect any evidence of that. (There was none.)

 But, their curiosity did earn them some wet clothes as the 'on and off' rain struck up again!

  The rest of these pictures are 'just because' kind of pictures. I thought this was a really handsome picture of this boy...

 And his daughter looks just like him!

 Baby Kynna has a lightening bolt blaze fitting in perfectly with this stormy weather.

 And as long as we're into sharing cuteness, here's a few pics of our new kitten.
 
 Annie's cat, Cindy, had a miscarriage so Annie bought a kitten to help console her. It seems to have worked well--both for Cindy and the younger kids. ;) Everybody is happy now and getting along well.

 She has the neatest coloring!

 And, true to her kitten-curious nature, she found her way into my flower bed straight away (sigh--don't know what to do about that!).

 Kittens are very destructive when it comes to flower beds, but perhaps not as much as baby goats...

 Oh yes, our free style, go lucky crew of baby goats have finally been captured and penned in in a (dare I jinx myself by actually saying it aloud??) baby goat proof pen!

(For the moment anyway. I'm pretty sure they're scheming something of an escape plan, involving buckets, the baby cow's help, a hay bale, some rope, milking time, a rooster and their cute faces. Heh, hope it doesn't work!) Lastly, and just because, here are some robin eggs spotted in a nest out in an old piece of farming equipment left in the field...

 Not as cool as the hatched ones we have under the eve of our porch roof, but alas, that Momma won't let us get to close and we're trying to respect her privacy.
Sorry about the random and odd assortment of pictures lately... I think I've been burning out my photographer with getting pictures for our shop items so he hasn't been as diligent about capturing our projects and process of late. Hopefully more on those in the nearby future! BTW--some of you long time blog readers may remember a very similar post end of May 2011. It's interesting (for me at least!) to look back in the blog and catch so many similarities years apart.

Anyhoo--thanks for dropping by and visiting with us!!

A Mothers' Day... Surprise?

Mothers' day dawned beautifully, as it should be, just the sort of way mothers like it best. In place of flowers, we gifted Mom with a fruit tree, knowing our practical mother would appreciate its lasting qualities over those cut flowers. We had a big breakfast and all went out to plant Mom's pear tree together. Afterwords, Mom said planting a tree together as a family should become an annual Mothers' Day tradition. She's really happy with her Mothers' Day pear tree. :)

Next, we piled into our 15 passenger van for a hike in the Porkies, at Mom's request. The Porcupine Mountains are lovely this time of year, just after the leaves bloom but before ground cover makes hiking and sight seeing difficult.

 
 Our hikes are leisurely and fun; stopping to play and explore the natural beauties.

 It's also nice to get out and hike before the bugs and heat arrive.

 Although Lake Superior, to the left there (can you see it?), helps keep things cool.

 Wait, are you seeing that big van alongside the road there?

 Now why do you suppose that would be sitting there, unmoving ...in the middle of nowhere?
 Yup: because it stopped working.

(These pictures were taken in fun, I'll have you know! ;) The boys were bored as we waited for Dad (who hitchhiked back down the mountain) to come back with a borrowed van to pick us up. In case you didn't know, the boys play football and take silly pictures when they're bored.

(Those muscles came in handy when the boys needed to push the suddenly dead van off the road!) Everybody was enjoying the adventure of being stranded in the middle of nowhere... except maybe those that had to use the bathroom. ;)
 The end of the story: The family made it home safely; the little boy was sad because they didn't get to go swimming, the little girl was happy for the bathroom and the little dog was happy to be home! The repair place towed the van and diagnosed a broken transmission. The van isn't due back for 2 weeks so this family is glad they never have to go anywhere. :) (We do have the truck for small errands.)  Now, onto some cuteness... The horses were let out on pasture last week, which is always a big deal...

 With lots of running...

 And prancing...

 And whinnying...

 And looking pretty...

 And regal...

 And... sloppy.

Guess a mule is a mule. What are you gonna do?  And that adorable little calf we had is doing very well.

 She has taken up residence with our 4 month bull calf. We're grateful for these little babies to be cutting down on the abundance of milk we're getting! 10 gallons the boys are milking out every day. These two can account for 2 of them, anyway. The rest is going into cheese, yogurt, kefir, ice cream, etc. etc.

 Fat, healthy and cute to boot! Her eye lashes have won Mike over. ;)

 Thanks for dropping by!