Growing, Growing

The garden, grass and baby goats are growing before our eyes. This is the first year I have planted green beans. One large package of seeds from the hardware store has yielded this bed -  three rows, each 20 feet long.

The other plants are growing well also, although I planted several of them later than I hoped to. I have some volunteer corn and tomatoes that I left where they wanted to grow.

The dog is Harley, Alayna's dog.

I am very thankful that the grass in the field is growing. We are planning on a dairy cow next spring.

Speaking of growing, Alyssa leaves for her mission trip to Zambia and South Africa this Saturday. She is actually heading to Texas first for training and then boards a plane, bound for Africa with her team, next week on her 14th birthday. We had her friend over the other night for an early birthday and farewell dinner. While it brings tears to my eyes, I am so proud of how hard she has worked to have the opportunity to serve the orphans this summer!

Cheesecake was her requested birhtday cake.

Today is Moriah, Tori and Julia's last full day of school. We are still going strong with James and Ben's classes, however, since they had a few weeks off to help build the fence. We've had a lot of rainy days that has allowed for indoor fun, like creating large play-dough nests of birds.



Selah and James

When it isn't raining, we enjoy our time outside. Unfortunately, the ticks have been exceptionally bad this year - too the point I may have to consider giving up growing melons so that we can have a flock of guinea hens to roam and eat the ticks. This morning, Elijah headed into the bathroom and I heard him yell, "seriously? are you kidding me?" He then hung his head out the door and yelled, "Mom, I have a tick on my BUTT." He was not impressed! (We have discouraged the use of the word butt, but it hasn't worked so well the last several years with several teens in the house).