The case of our disappearing Dad and the return of the Founding Fathers.

Dad has been disappearing.

It all started with the removal of his 27 year old beard. We all were shocked as none of the children had ever seen him with out a beard in person.


Next his 30 some year old mustache was removed. That was a little to much! Even mother had never seen without some facial hair. The reason for the facial cleansing, was.....

that Mr. Ervin had been asked to put on a production on the constitution at the 11th district, US, Federal court of Detroit. After a few auditions, about 8 men were chosen to dress up as founding fathers and give a presentation on the constitution. One of theses was Dad, and as none of the founding fathers had any facial hair, Dad had to get rid of his.

The date for the presentation was Thursday, October 29th and on Wednesday evening there was a dress rehearsal at Mr. Ervins house. Mom and I went along to help with wig styling and costume fixing. I was fortunate enough to get pictures of the men in their costumes. This is John Adams.

Let me introduce you to the the Virginian, Thomas Jefferson.

John Adams during his speech.

Now my fine friends, I am pleased to present James Madison,

and the Honorable John Jay AKA Paul Sauve. (Looks different doesn't he?)

This is the fiery patriot, Patrick Henry.

Unfortunately I was not able to photograph George Washington in his outfit, but here is his outfit without him=)

I was not able to go with Dad to the court house, but Dad was allowed to take our camera with him, and after they were done with the presentation he got some pictures of some of the men in the Million dollar court room.

Check out all that marble behind him.

Dad standing in front of the incredibly ornate door of the court room.

Here is the group together, left to right they are; George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Adams.

Chs

The dog house feud.

Fiona kicked Java out of the dog house and took it over as her personal residence.

Java protests while Fiona simply turns away. Poor Java dear.

~Chs

Falling Leaves!

It was a beautiful fall day when I headed out back with our goats to rake the leaves around our huge "Winnie the Pooh" Maple Tree. Fiona and Java loved the leaves, and Java's favorite thing to do was stand in the middle of my pile and as it mounded up around her pick out the best and juiciest leaves from the bunch.

It wasn't long before Josiah joined me and suggested that we rake a big pile under one of the tree limbs and jump from it.

Our outdoors, barefooted, farmer boy.

Another one of Josiah's favorite things to do is scoot out to the end of our sturdy straight branch, and then grabbing hold of the branch above it slide down until the branch bent to the ground. Quite the little Monkey!

Java loved being buried in the leaf pile. Here she is laying on my lap, at one point Josiah had her whole face and head covered with leaves, and she didn't care one bit.

We all had great fun (goats included) and got quite a bit done in the process.

~Chs

Our Artistic Boy=)

Saturday morning we had what Josiah calls in duck "Oh Boy" Waffles. Otherwise known as waffles with strawberry sauce and whip cream. Josiah always being a creative thing, wasn't satisfied with a neat plop of whip cream on his waffle.

No, he had to spread and shape his whip cream into this lovely pumpkin in honor of the season.

Later that morning I was cooking up one of our pumpkins and left the top with the stalk laying on the counter. Josiah seeing quite a lot of flesh underneath the "handle" and not wanting anything to go to waste, cut it off and set to work.

Pumpkins being on the mind, he decided that would be his objective.

Being a bit of a perfectionist, he did not stop until his work was the perfect replica of a half 3D pumpkin, complete to the grooves on the vine. Talented fellow isn't he?

His older sister wanted to get in on the fun too and created this slightly not so 3D perfect, horse head.

~Chs

The goats winter abode.

As the days got colder, we decided to move the goats pen a wee bit closer to the house and prepare the ground where their old pen was for squash next year.


First we moved out the incredibly heavy, back breaking, goat shed. Then we moved all the posts and fences.

The old pen area.

Our chickens were out and were very intent on watching and "helping". This is the impressive Goliath, one of our young roosters.

Everything must be precisely perfect=)

Robin demurely looking on.

Mean while the goats waited "patiently" for us to finish.

Notice the annoyed expression on her face.

Hanging the gate. Almost done!

Dear "Cheep Cheep" tried out the roof of the shed.

When we let the girls back in, Fiona had to check out everything.

After taking a while to sniff around, the goats gave their approval on the new arrangements.

~Chs

Oh Deer!! ;)

It was a calm cool evening last Friday and we had invited over some friends for a campfire with cider and doughnuts in honor of the beautiful season of fall.
Just before the company arrived the phone rang. It was Joshua who had been out hunting on public land. Everyone held bated breath and leaned eager ears toward Dad who had answered the phone, hoping that the message being relayed was that Joshua had "harvested" his first deer of the season. Watching Dad's face intently, our hopes were realized with Dad's raised eyebrows and rejoinder of "You did!". Pandemonium of high joy broke out around the house, and before dad had a chance to set down the phone he was bombarded with questions, "Is it a buck or doe?" "Did it run far?" "Is it a big one?" "Do we need to go help pick it up?" When he finally was able to answer all our flurried questions we were handed down this information: It was a doe. He was just tracking it and therefore did not know how far it ran or size of its body (when Faith called him a little later, Josh, who had just found the doe, exclaimed "holy smokes, she's a cow!") and no we did not need to go just then, some other friends were going to help him.


When we did get the deer home several hours later, our eyes confirmed Josh's opinion of her body size especially the length of it. After some deliberation, we hung her in the garage. That's right, this poor doe was not only shot, but also hung, and then later quartered and chopped up. Cruel aren't we=) The next day we transported her to the processor.

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Now lets jump to Sunday morning. I had gotten up to milk the goat and wandered bleary eyed into the kitchen to get the bowl and other implements I needed. Glancing out the window I saw Fiona on top of her dog house in a statue-like position staring fixedly at the back yard. I sleepily wondered if she was frozen=) it being a very cold morning, and in my stupor did not think to check out back and see what she was looking at. When I did glance in that direction I was shocked to see a half dozen or more deer wandering around our stream and pond.


The deer had never visited our pond in the daylight before, always just leaving their hoof prints behind at night. The reason for this sudden change, is that we have very smart deer! You see Joshua was gone that weekend to a pre-training camp for the National Guard, and the deer just to make positively sure there would be no danger, came on a Sunday morning when he wouldn't have shot them anyways. Very religious deer don't you think? ;) Seriously It was probably the cold snap that persuaded them to stay out a little longer, but we still lean toward are first theory just a little, because we haven't seen them since, the deer things.

~Chs

Chickens and Potatoes.

Despite the misleading title, I am not talking about a casserole
or dinner combination.

Real live chickens, I mean, not cooked. Just the other day Josiah wanted to do a portrait session with our ladies. Let me introduce you. This is Lightning.

This is one of our unnamed Rhode Island Red Chickens. Isn't she pretty?

Napoleon (one of our baby roosters) wanted to know what was going on
and to get in on the action. Handsome fellow.

A day or so later, it being a beautiful sunny day, we decided to dig up
our potatoes, and the chickens decided to help out.

One of the "Crow Sisters" helped look for any potatoes we may have left.

We got a little less than a bushel of Kennebec potatoes, some of which
were smaller than golf balls while others were baseball size.

Our red potato came in all shapes and sizes (there were some that look liked Mickey Mouse, others resembled Snow men and still others reminded us of old fashion perfume spray bottles) filling up half a bushel.

Josiah diligently searched for the very last potatoes which might have been missed, with the help of a pitchfork. We are very thankful for this "crop" of potatoes, and all the other blessings God has given us from our garden.

~Chs and Josiah