Another Month Nearly Gone

The year seems to be flying by because we still haven't slowed down yet. November brought about a very lovely birthday weekend for me. I got some great presents for my blooming little farm. A cute new egg basket, books on keeping dairy goats and backyard chickens were all exciting additions to my book shelf. I also got gorgeous new black pearl earrings from my wonderful husband! We had a nice quiet night out with friends and shared family birthday dinner the next night.

The floorboards have arrived for the kitchen! Mike and I have gotten some work done on the floors, but it has been slow indeed. We are doing the best we can with the time we have. Hopefully once I finish my Portuguese class for the semester we can get the floor wrapped up. And move on to cabinets. Kitchens are definitely hard projects.

This week we will traveling down to Ohio for Thanksgiving with the Keenan's, Dodd's and Stephenson's. I can smell the turkey and pie already and cannot wait to see everyone again.

We finally weened Bell from milk drinking. We are now milking 2 times a day and with all the excess milk our cheese making is hitting new highs! Our second experimentation with Chevre was an absolute success. We also made another batch of feta and plan on making more chevre today to take down to Ohio with us. I also tried my first round of cottage cheese. Not quite sure how that turned out yet. I think that once we taste it tonight it will definitely need some tweaking. I will have to get pictures of all our beautiful cheese up here soon.

Excited for the long weekend! New pictures below.......

11/19/2007

October is nearly gone

October is nearly gone and I haven't written a thing! Well here is an update, late as always.

On the good news side of life: the big transaction I was spending millions of hours on at work has completed! I have definitely learned a lot from this first multi-million deal. Can't wait to do another! (well maybe in a year or so)

The new chickens are laying eggs. We have went from 5 eggs a day to an average of 13!

Vernors is accidentally pregnant! Almost as unexpected as Bell & Heineken upon their arrival. Apparently those that quoted me the 3 month mark for bucklings to be able to reproduce, WERE WRONG! Also, I would like to quell the idea that does go into heat in late October. That also IS WRONG! hehe. Oh well, new kids are coming our way in January-or-so.

The kitchen has not been moving too quickly. But, we may have found boards that we can use to fix our 100 year old floor. Very exciting news, to me! Also Mike has started some of the plumbing deconstruction. One of these days, we'll get there.

On the bad news front: the saddest item I have to share is the loss of Heineken. Unfortunately, he got a urinary track blockage and ended up bursting his urethra. It was a very sad day when we took him to the vet and he had to be put down. I'm a little shook up and I have to admit panicky about the new "little Heinekens" on the way. Just worried that I could lose another one little one and that makes me sad. Heineken and his cute jumping skills will be missed very much.

Thankfully the only other bad news I have is the death of our camera. Silver Lake and the sand, I think, has done it in. So, that means no new pictures! It has been with Best Buy for 3 weeks. I will not start my rant and rave on how ridiculous that is, let's just say that I am frustrated and Best Buy will not be seeing anymore business from us!

Off to Columbus this weekend to visit Mom & Dad Keenan and hopefully, weather permitting, a zoo visit.

Fall is coming...

Fall is coming, well maybe it is already here and I'm in denial, but oh well. I'm not really ready for Fall and all of it's pretty leaves and crisp mornings.

On one of our last super warm weekends, we were fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of it. A fantastic trip to Silver Lake was in store for us last weekend and it definitely turned out to be just that.

Three buggies went up to the dunes and all three came back. To our surprise, not really broken at all. We had such a nice time with Brett, Jeanna, Renee and Will. Can't wait to get the dune buggy tuned up even more and head back up next summer.

We also have squeezed in some work on the kitchen in the last few weeks. Check out the progress with the Silver Lake pictures.

Another adventure this weekend as all of the planning I have been doing for the Make & Freeze group is going to test & tune. We have the first Make & Freeze (where a group of us get together, make a bunch of meals that we can then put into the freezer for future use) this Saturday. I'm excited that it will cut down on the food prep time in our busy household. Plus it will be a fun day!

Silver Lake 2007

Auntie - Nephew Trip 2007

Well, after a small amount of contemplation, I decided that of course I love my nephews as much as my niece. I concluded that in fact I wanted to do a trip with the boys as well. We had a great time this last weekend taking a trip to the Pigeon River Country State Forest Area in northern Michigan. Here is a link to the beautiful area, Pigeon River Country Association.

We had a very adventuresome weekend. We camped at Pickerel Lake. A very nice "rustic" campground. The lake was pretty and Sunday morning Walker and I spotted two loons. Saturday we went on an ambitious 6 mile hike on the Shingle Mill Pathway. It was about 2 miles too long for my companion hikers. After many breaks and one shortcut we made it. We encountered only a little of the wildlife, but we did see many signs of them. I did a very excellent job of not looking terrified when I realized that I was in 99,000 acres of wilderness with two small boys and lots of bears. (See the picture of the bear track! We saw a lot of them. Yikes!) Sunday was filled more hiking and swimming. It was a terrific weekend.

This week will be filled with lots of work on the kitchen. I will definitely post some new pictures soon, because we have walls again!! Hooray for the drywall.

Auntie - Nephew Trip 2007

Kitchen Progress!!

Well the kitchen just might get done one day. We had a big weekend of demolition thanks to our great friends, Nate and Denise. They were an enormous help in the major undertaking of busting out all the plaster & lath walls. Hopefully we can get the re-wiring done next week and then it's time for drywall!!

Check the pictures!

Kitchen Re-Modeling

Goodbye July

Goodbye July... and off to a busy start for August.

We had two fantastic weekends in a row with the Ohio relatives! First Mike's parents joined us for a visit before Momma Keenan has to start back to work. We spent a lovely weekend together and crowned it with an exciting trip to the Mackinaw Bridge and the Soo Locks. We made the Keenans into Fudgies and treated them to their first UP experience.

The very next weekend we took a day off of work and traveled down to Sedwood for Cousin's Weekend 2007. To say that we are proud of ourselves might be an understatement. A half barrel of choice beverage consumed in a little over 24 hours was an accomplishment! We had lots of fun Dodd family bonding. Can't wait for CW '08!

The garden is exploding with produce. Summer squash, peas, beans, cabbage, peppers, carrots and lots of other good stuff is appearing! I'm excited that the sweet corn will soon be ready and I can't wait for the first tomato to ripen! Tomato sandwiches... yummmmmmmy!

August will continue our busy summer as Samone and I get ready for our Annual Auntie-Niece Trip. We will be off to LA this year to visit the final American Girl store! Then we have two more weddings for the season. Check the new photos below.

Click on the picture to see the album.

July 31, 2007

Memorial

A small memorial to the chickens that have moved on to the big chicken coop in the sky.

We had a rodent (of some type) get into the coop and take off with 3 chickens. It puts our loss at 4 for this year including Lucy.

A small tribute to the great chickens that didn't make it. We shall miss you.

Tribute to Spice, Sugar, Salt and Lucy...RIP