+What a week. What a week. What a week. Just want to acknowledge that I posted our announcement on Election Day as my own quiet way of adding a little happy into the crazy. And then while watching the results come in I decided to write the story of telling Rory about baby #4. My cousin recently posted a quote that said, "society radiates from the family out, not from the government down." A guy named Christopher Check said that, and though I have no idea who he is, I love those words and I believe it so much. I was sad at our voting choices to begin with, so here we are.
+Monday we bought a ram. Not a truck. A boy sheep. So sometime in May we should have little lambs on our farm. What a kick that will be! When the farmers delivered the ram, they brought shots to vaccinate our sheep, as well as the new ram. They had Rory give the shots and at one point, he was holding a sheep with the sheep sitting upright on it's hiney, as Rory held the head between his legs and lifted the front hoof to administer the shot between the correct layers of tissue. We caught eyes and he said, "I'm actually doing this right now." Sometimes the hobby farm learning curve is so steep we can only shake our heads and laugh about it later.
+Like Friday night when Rory was gone and I looked out to find the sheep in the garden. They had gotten out of their electric fence. This happens sometimes when we move the fence around and parts of the wire end up higher than we can tell, because the land slopes. Anyway, they were out and I had the kids. So the kids got to watch a show and I went out to unplug the fence, take part of it down, get some sheep treats, grab a long stick and gently guide them back to their pen. That's the short version. It actually took me about 40 minutes of trial and error to figure all of that out. But thankfully animals know the barn is their safety, and know to stay near. So they gave me many tries and eventually we all heaved a sigh of relief when they ran into their stall. Then all I had to do was reset the electric fence. Ha! But I did it. Add shepherdess to my list of hobbies.
+Tonight we painted the red room with a grey primer. And tomorrow we will paint over the primer with Benjamin Moore's Revere Pewter. Pinterest said it was the best grey, and I took Pinterest's word for it. The red was just never right. We knew that eight months ago when I painted it the second time, but it took a while to muster the chutzpah to get painting. And truth-be-told, neither of us have any real chutzpah this time around, but earlier this week I wrote on the calendar "painting begins!" and this morning I obediently began moving furniture and prepping the room. Sometimes you just have to do it for it to get done. I figured that out after eight months of not doing it.
+The kids and I have been doing a bird unit all month. We've learned about all sorts of birds, their calls and made bird feeders. We are genuine birders. We hung a feeder out the kitchen window and the kids have step stools to see who is eating at their feeder. So far we've had downy woodpeckers, black capped chickadees, song sparrows, gold finches, cardinals, robins and blue jays visit our feeder. It is so fun to watch them and even more fun to watch them with my enthusiastic kids. You can add bird-watching to my list of hobbies too.
+So there's the update. Life is good. I know the reason for the hope that I have. And the forecast is for another glorious fall weekend, right here in the near middle of November. Thank you, long-lasting fall!
