Giveaway at Apron Girls sponsored by great cookware and beautiful desks!
I love these baking dishes, and to stack the deck in my favor (since I’ve never ever won a blog giveaway), I’m passing it along to you. How’s that for irony… I selfishly want the dishes, so I’m letting you know about the giveaway… ha!
Good luck!
Let’s cover the bad first, so we can end on a good note, shall we?
We lost 5 chickens, including four laying hens, in one week to an unknown predator. Two of the losses happened while we were gone at camp. The other three took place all in one day last week. Sick. Disgusting. Frustrating. Infuriating. Expensive.
We have four laying hens left, along with a young hen, a young rooster, and our Big Rooster. So we’re down from 5-8 eggs each day to 2-4 eggs each day. Hopefully the young hen will start laying soon.
For now, we are keeping the chickens (along with their buddies, the ducks) in their coop/pen unless we have someone outside to watch them. Fowlherd is the newest title around our place.
The ducks are doing well. We definitely have a mallard drake, and it is fascinating to watch him develop his colors. In a couple of recent pictures of the ducks, you can see that how much he changed in just one week.
Since we lost the third duck up at the pond, they won’t go up there, and they have become yard ducks. But they love playing in this tub of water. This shot was taken on August 2nd.
And here’s the drake a couple of days ago on August 9th. Jonathan got a great shot that captures the color change in progress on his head. Looks a little rough right now, but he will be gorgeous soon, I think. His tail feathers are also starting to curl up, another drake trait.
The guineas are doing well. We let them out of their pen as often as we can, and they love walking (and occasionally flying) around the yard looking for goodies. Our garden is fenced, and I’m thinking about letting them run around in there, since that’s the biggest reason we got them. We’re just a bit uncertain of getting them out and in, so we’ll see. They have much more of a herd mentality than the chickens; they are rarely farther apart than in this picture:
… is a book that has been recommended to me more times than I can count. Well, after doing some clean up and helping with the most critical portions of today’s school, my tummy (which is still not quite happy after dealing with a stomach bug earlier this week) is saying, “Sit a spell!”
So, I’m finally going to dive into Stepping Heavenward, thanks to Google books, which has a public domain copy of Stepping Heavenward in a free .pdf download. I love my laser printer, which lets me print in booklet form, so it’s the size of a real book!
Off to read a bit…
I mention Noah Estes from time to time, asking for prayer. If you’re not familiar yet with Noah and his family, he is darling little (almost) 3 year old who is very ill. I have been reading his family’s blog for over two years now, and though I’ve never met them, they have become a blessing to me as they share God’s work in their lives.
Right now, Noah and his family really need your prayers. You can read more about what is currently happening on their blog, as well as learning some background on their family by clicking the “New to Our Blog?” button on the right of their page.
Many thanks to Mary for sending me a link to this very worthwhile post.
We had a fun time at Ozark Family Camp last week, and I have lots of pictures to show you! I decided to do the Picasa album link this time, so here’s the slideshow. You can click on it to go see larger versions of the pictures. If there’s any you’d like a full size copy of, just let me know.
It was so fun to see folks whom I hadn’t seen in years, many of whom Jonathan and the Blessings hadn’t met (if you go to the album, there will be captions). We were blessed by the terrific speakers – John Heller was the main speaker, teaching about the Holy Spirit, and J and I attended Steve Price’s sessions on the Believer Priest. The children all enjoyed their classes as well. Davey was in the teens class… that felt strange!
A few of the highlights –
Monday afternoon we went on the trail rides. Eight years was the minimum, so I took Ellie and Kate on the first ride. Jonathan, the boys, and Grace met us at the Hitching Post and J and the three older boys went on the second ride. Later that afternoon, Grace and Stephen got to ride around the playground as well. No pictures of the big boys and Jonathan on their ride!
Tuesday, we had a picnic lunch down by the camp lake with the group of families to which we’d been assigned. After lunch, our family all went out on the lake in paddle boats, with varying degrees of enjoyment.
Wednesday night was actually our last night at camp, as we needed to come back and get a few work jobs done. It was also banquet night, which made a nice opportunity to roam the dining room getting pictures of friends. I missed plenty, but here are some of the shots I did get:
We were late registering for camp and the waiting list was not moving, so we were planning to tent camp. But several days before departure, Aunt Karen (who is my aunt by love, not by blood) emailed and invited us to use their downstairs bedrooms. We were thrilled to accept! Next year, I think we’ll mail our registration right away, because it would have been lovely to be in the thick of things instead of a short drive away. I’m also praying that we get to stay the whole week next time!
Our time at Ozark was delightful. There was lots of personal learning that I haven’t even touched on here. Perhaps later this week…
This is a phenomenal performance by Phil Keaggy of Salvation Army Band. Rick, from Cumberland Books/Dry Creek Chronicles, posted it out of his current fascination with “looping,” a technique that allows a solo artist to “turn his solo guitar into a guitar army.” I sat here with my mouth open through much of it – great stuff!
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