Really Random

Be careful when walking down our stairs.

Sometimes they are dangerously cluttered

with dogs.

This picture was languishing on my camera.  I am finally downloading and sorting!

The dogs are as good as any sundial.

They start the day in the living room windows with the morning sun then progress to the stairway for noon sun and finish the day in the office soaking in the afternoon rays.

Unfortunately I don't need a sundial.  This cool new invention called a clock works much better and doesn't leave me at risk of breaking my neck at least twenty times a day when I must step over two hundred pounds of mutt sprawled on my stairway!

I finished the final page in this book a few weeks ago.

For almost fifteen years we have documented every pound, inch, step, word and event in the lives of our kids in baby books that covered from birth to seven years old.

Our final baby is seven years old, and I am happy to report that my baby-book-filler-outer duties are complete.  Books are stored away for some random day in the future when our kids have an overwhelming urge to know what day they first ate green beans and other mind blowing accomplishments.

I am not saddened by the passing of this milestone.

Okay, maybe just a little.

We have been working at the farm this weekend. 

The menfolk took a coffee break to discuss cattle prices, corn futures and the weather.

The younger menfolk might or might not have been drinking hot chocolate instead of coffee.

For the record, he was barefoot outside, and it was all of thirty degrees.

Later in the day I cracked open the hives for a peek while it was warmer.

All four look great.  We should have lots of honey to share this year!

The main activity was tapping maple trees.  Last year we tapped fifteen trees for a four week span.  From that we collected eighty gallons of sap.  Eighty gallons boiled down to two gallons of  syrup.  That was a LOT of boiling in my poor humid kitchen...a kitchen that was already water logged from a leaky bathroom valve a few weeks earlier!!

This year we made some changes.  We tapped forty trees. (what are we thinking, right?!)  In the first day we collected twenty gallons of sap.  David wired two stoves into the garage at the farm, so I will not have to turn my kitchen into a tropical rain forest this year.  We will be boiling in the garage.  If things go smoothly, we might build an outdoor evaporator (think oversized fire pit) for future use.  First we have to figure out if there is a market for that much maple syrup!  I don't think our family can consume five gallons of syrup in a year.

Let the maple insanity begin!!!

Grace is home today.  No fever, but definitely not feeling well.

She is enjoying a quiet day watching television and holding cats and napping.

I might have to join her this afternoon even if I'm not sick!  That sounds like a might fine way to spend a few hours.

Happy Monday!