Bye Bye Beautiful weather

Oh what a weekend! It was SO nice - I hate winter so much. (OK, besides ice skating there is nothing good about it.) We were so busy Saturday my body still hurts. Tim was even taking Advil after hauling about 8 loads of manure out of the pasture. It was SO cute watching Gloria proudly going back & forth with Tim on the tractor between the stinky pile & field to unload the rich compost. Yuck! We got plenty of apples picked; leaves raked into piles & then wildly spread out again - mostly by Owen & Sylvia. I moved a shrub to a new location - I'm interested to see if it survives - this isn't always a successful thing for me - still not much of a natural green thumb. :s Most of the time I was trying to salvage this wonderful flower garden we inherited with the property. We'll see what grows next year. Its amazing how the kids want to help when you bring out the big trimming equipment. Then again on such a beautiful fall day it can't all be work, work, work...

OK, I am cheating here a little but this is one of the pictures I caught of Daren when enjoying the gorgeous weather on Saturday. We did snap a perfect-to-be-his-1-year picture but you'll have to wait for your Christmas card to see it.

Did I mention that it was really, really nice this weekend?! (Oh, I am going to miss it & really feel spoiled if I pray enough for 1 more weekend like that and actually get one!)

Life goes on I know!

Below is an unedited picture of Sylvia during her photo shoot last week for her 4 year snapshot. She had fun with it, and her sisters were pretty agitated that they weren't getting their pictures taken. The "final cut" will be in your Christmas card too.

And I can't believe it has been about 10 months since we have taken a picture with our entire family in it (yep, all 7 of us). We received a gingerbread cookie/Halloween house kit from a dear neighbor. We had a GREAT family night last week in working on this (when it was fairy chilly & dark by 5 - great reasons to stay inside). I am starting to get pretty excited for taking a family picture for our Christmas card. No animals this year - Tim says anything would be better than the overalls & pitchfork idea I have for including every living being we can get to be in front of a camera for a picture. You'll just have to wait & see.

We've been trying to instill in Sylvia already that Jesus' birthday is why we celebrate Christmas Day. It is quite funny. She knows Jesus and Christmas, but you can just read her face - "they're really connected - are you sure?!" Too funny!