I'm back...

 Well hello!!  It's been a while, again. I've just been having too much fun to write.... ;)

I do have a few pictures to share, so I wasn't completely forgetting every technological wonder that there is in the world.

Yesterday afternoon, I went over and babysat Amelia, James & Michael for 3 hours.  

Amelia is my kind of girl----as I love boys with tractors too!

 The twins, Amelia and I played outside a lot of the time, playing frisbee and exploring in their "woods".

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My dad and Andrew are nearing the end of the grain-cleaning season and only have a few jobs left. This has been the busiest year yet for that business. Dad has been working on his air-seeder the past couple days actually, as it's time to be thinking of putting our own seeds in the ground. He's also had a couple farmers ask him to seed some of their land, so he'll be ever so busy again, but that's no surprise.

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My mom went to her friend, Deb's funeral yesterday, and then picked up our beef (an old bull we had butchered) from the meat-locker and brought it home to fill the freezers with once more. YAY!

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Jacob has been busy working for farmer Kyle; farmer Roger; and now he's down by Linton discing for farmer Dave for a couple days (he'll stay the night there). I guess my little brother isn't so little anymore!

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There have been 2 heifer calves (both mine) born already, and the cows aren't due to start calving until May 1st.  More about the cows at a later date.

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 The main reason my blog has been silent is that a tall, dark-haired, handsome distraction was in my life from Sunday evening to Wednesday morning. :)  Michael met up with my Mom, Andrew and I at a Booth Brothers' concert in Valley City on Sunday evening. Lauretta had told us about the concert and said that she and her folks and her special young man friend were going to be attending.  Remember when we went to the Booth Brother's concert in Bismarck last year (in June) and Lauretta rode along with my family? Well, little did we imagine then that the next year, Lauretta and I would be sitting side-by-side still, but this time with very special young men friends on the other sides of us! :)  What an answer to years worth of prayers!

My mom and Andrew were sitting in the next row back, so Mom took this picture of Michael & I...

I rode home with Michael to keep him company, and on the way, Paula messaged me, wondering if I could possibly watch the girls in the morning, as something came up where they needed a babysitter for a few hours. So, after discussing it with Michael, I told Paula that I/we'd be there at 7:00am. The girls slept until almost 8:00, so that gave Michael and I some time to read in the book we're going through together before things got busy in the land of little girls. :)  Johanna and Tracy liked Michael and tried to talk his ears off. Johanna kept accidentally calling him "Jacob" for some reason? 

 Here, Michael is helping Johanna assemble some foam finger-puppets that had come in the mail recently... 

 When Paula's folks arrived to take over the care of the girls, Michael drove us up near Steele to where Andrew was cleaning, as he needed somebody to drive our pickup home. He's doing a very big job up there and had needed some fuel from the tank on the back of the pickup, but then needed the pickup moved back home. While there, Michael had an opportunity to see Andrew's cleaning rig running....

 Andrew explained how it all worked...

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 The rest of Monday was spent doing different things... Jacob, Michael and I went gopher hunting and, yes, Michael got several of the little rodents.

Michael & I helped my mom take everything out of our largest freezer; we cleaned it; then organized everything in preparation for the beef we got yesterday.

Cleaning/cutting some potatoes and carrots for stew...

Want to know what a great guy Michael is??  He helped me pick rocks out of the pasture....that's how great.

I would get some large rocks in the loader bucket and then he'd fill it up most of the rest of the way with medium sized rocks, just leaving room for a bunch of small ones (we had to pick those up by hand) tucked in here and there.  Then he'd fill his bucket up too and go dump them on the pile. We worked on that for a few hours on Tuesday morning.

 Tuesday afternoon, I took Michael and my mom for a drive down memory-lane... We went and visited our old farm near Linton and our old, falling apart house in Temvik. That brought back lots of memories! 

That afternoon, we were going to go back to picking rocks, but then Andrew needed us to bring an auger over to the place he was cleaning and, once we got it there, he asked us to stay another hour until he was done to help with take-down, as the farmer wasn't able to help, so we stayed. It was suppertime when we got home. We watched a movie that evening.

Wednesday morning, Michael left after breakfast. It is not easy saying goodbye...  :(

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I have some news of a really big change in our operation....one regarding the cattle, but since it's so big, it deserves a post of it's own. So, I'll wait with that.  Suffice it to say that God has closed a door on a big chapter in our lives. We will now wait for Him to open a window, or another, larger door maybe?