More pictures to update you on our wonderful life....

About a month ago, Michael decided it was time to butcher the sheep wether we'd kept for that purpose. Doesn't he look slightly intimidating in this photo? ;D

 Andrew and Marie bought a jet-ski at the last Orr auction near Jamestown so we spent a couple afternoons out on the lake with them, taking turns driving the jet-ski and riding in our boat. Here are Andrew and Marie. It was pretty funny when they tipped the thing over and got all wet. We were there to rescue them, but they probably didn't even need our help since they got it tipped back up while in the water.

 Michael went really fast...

 ...and I didn't. :)

 We took the boat over to a little island that's in West (McKenna) lake near Napoleon.

 Marie took several of these photos using my phone, since I was riding the Jet-ski at this time.

 Skipping rocks...

 A & M

 M & C

 My mom went out on the boat with us the 2nd time we went. She had a good ol' time!

Have I mentioned yet that Beretta had another littler of puppies?! They were born on July 14th.

There are 4 males (1 lemon colored) and 1 female. We now have homes for 3 of the males and we're keeping the female for ourselves, so just 1 puppy is for sale yet. They're 5 weeks old already and ever so cute!!

 

Michael took the following 3 pictures right before a storm one evening when the lighting was really neat.

 

 It's been a very dry Summer (a severe drought really) but we've had over 2" of rain recently and the grass is greening up nicely now. PTL!  We've had to water the garden and flowers a LOT in the last few months.

 

 Jacob bought one of these at the Pifer consignment sale....

 The garden has been producing pretty well and I was amazed at this big potato I dug up...

 It took a while, but we finally decided on a name for our female puppy: Medora.

She's a real sweetheart!

And now, I need to post this and go pick cucumbers from the garden while I wait for a family to come from Bismarck to visit their future puppy.

Just a FYI: Yesterday was Michael & My 3-years-from-the-day-we-met-in-person anniversary. It was also 2 weeks until our baby's due date!!!

Sheep, Pearl, and our nephew's baby dedication...

 Michael and I enjoy stopping at garage sales when we see them.

This 4-person chess board was one of our purchases. :)

 This must have been back in June when we still had green grass for the sheep to eat. We're feeding them hay now, waiting for it to rain...

 

 A few of our white sheep, enjoying the shade from the barn...

 This is Twister, our little blind lamb. We found a new home for him a few weeks ago. He was a very friendly little guy since I milked one of our goats and fed him the milk twice a day.

 Our milk cow, Ivy calved a couple months ago and had a beautiful heifer calf. We named her Pearl. We were sorely tempted to keep the little lady, but really didn't see the need for having 2 milk cows someday, so we sold her to our good friend Heather C.

 

Pearl has a very good new home! :)  I think Heather was pretty excited to get her very first calf too.

 

 

 On July 1st, we went to church at Alfred and enjoyed a potluck meal after the service, then hit the road again, heading for MN. We drove right by this beautiful church near Christine, ND.

Does it look familiar to anybody? ;)

 

 Took this picture by the tiny church out behind the large church...

 

 Yes! This is the church we were married in! :)

 The reason for our quick trip to MN (we went on Saturday and returned Sunday afternoon) was to witness our nephew Everett's baby dedication in Michael's home church in Cushing, MN.

 Everett thought Uncle Nicholas had a great tasting knuckle....

 The happy family with Pastor Dan...

 The proud Aunties...(me, Rachael, and Jenny's sister, Kristy).

 Trying to get a good family picture is always interesting... :)

 ...and then the camera goes all blurry. Good thing there were several cameras going so they did get a good picture of everyone.

 The very happy Grandparents...

 Everett can hardly wait to dig in!

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Lastly, a bouquet from my flower gardens...

Pictures from a couple months back...

Here are some of the happenings in May and June....

Kids! Peanut had triplets and Buttercup had twins.

 Making new ropes for the swings...

 It was mostly my dad, Michael and I working on that project.

 Michael cut and sanded the boards and he and I painted them. My dad lifted Michael up on the telehandler to put the new swings up. Now that some time has passed, we need to readjust the ropes and melt the ends, then give the seats one last coat of paint.

Back when we were still getting rain (we're in a bad drought now and most everything is brown), Michael was putting up small sections of fence for the cattle, moving them around every few days.

 

 We bought a hay-bine at the Orr auction sale!

 It's been working well, except for when going through gopher mounds...

 The flowers up by the front door... The Morning Glories are blooming now.

 Michael and I replaced about a third of the deck boards and repainted the whole thing....

 My round flower garden (where the swimming pool was last year)...  I'll have to get a picture of what it looks like now and post that at a later date.

 

 The garden quite a while back.

 

 

 Early garden delights....  We just ate our first sweet corn this evening. Yummy!

A photo shoot...

 Life is very full of blessings right now. I should say that life is very full, period. :) However, this morning while attending a ladies' tea at my mom's house, I realized that I miss blogging and how many people I've been blessed to get to know or know better through blogging.....and when our friend, Edna commented on how she used to read my blog every day, well, I decided to try to be more faithful about posting things here again (in a somewhat regular fashion). :)

Maybe I just won't write so much about each photo, but we'll see.

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Michael and I asked Andrew and Marie to take pictures of us a few weeks back, when we were at 32 weeks gestation (now I'm at 35). Here are our favorites from the many photos that were snapped:

Enjoy~