Fall

This bug posed for me....then the dog chased it off the brick.We have the most beautiful trees in our yard. This year the colors are showing up slower and lasting longer then last year. This picture is from our front porch. I love the contrasting colors.
I fell in love with the way the sunlight was dancing through these leaves. The picture simply does not do it justice. I love the fall. The colors, crunching leaves, and crisp air are so refreshing.
What a wonderful time of year.

Service Project

The boys helped with a service project, painting a chain link fence. The paint in their hair had to grow out, and their clothes were trashed. They had fun and the fence got painted.

Chickens

Heads Up!
Heads Down... These are our chicken friends. They love people. When they hear us coming down the hill they run out to greet us. Rilynn loves all the chickens. They let her carry them around. Silly girl.

Tornado Damage

On Thursday we had some severe thunderstorms move through the area. We received 4 inches of rain, 20 hours without electricity, and an F2 tornado. The tornado was about 4 miles from our place and here are some of the pictures of the damage. Fortunately there were not any injuries to anyone here but we did have 4 Amish children killed in a flooded creek about 50 miles away.

Look at the trunk of the tree that was snapped. There were lots of trees that looked like that.

The picture below shows a couple of barns that were destroyed. The only reason the building on the right has a wall standing is because of a haystack that was inside.

Here is just a little bit of the debris field. We wondered why it took so long for our power to come back on until we saw that roughly 10 telephone poles needed replacing because the old ones were snapped in half.

Isaac and I went for a drive to grab some fuel and found more damage a mile down the road.

Baby Chickens

Our baby chicks arrived this morning! Yes, on a Sunday morning. The mail lady called at 0602hrs and said that she had a chirping package for us. We weren't expecting them until sometime next week so we had to rush and get a temporary box put together until tomorrow where we'll make things a lot nicer.

I don't think the kids showed any sort of excitement as you can see from the photos below. Mook and Oscar don't see baby chicks, they see food. Hopefully they won't do anything drastic.

Bridger asked, " What are we going to name them all?" Any ideas? Bridger is stumped to find names. Rilynn says one of them needs to be named Happy Jump because one jumps. Maclain is calling one Smiley Head because of the markings on the back of its head.

Here is the newest picture of our family standing outside our front porch. It has been a good month and a half. My folks showed up in mid December to hang out for a week. Unfortunately, a sick bug went through the family and everyone got it. That put a few plans on hold until the next visit.

A couple days after my folks left, Brydie's folks came for a couple weeks. They got the sick bug too. We don't know what it was other than miserable.

Just so you know all the photos are in reverse order. That's what I get for thinking they were in the right order. Anyways.....
We planned a visit to Mammoth Cave National Park. It was a lot of fun. You pay by the tour you go on. Because of the little ones, we chose a nice leisurely historic tour that lasted 2 hours and covered two miles. Believe it or not, this picture was taken at a bathroom 1.5 miles from the entrance. I guess to many people couldn't hold it for the whole tour.

Darcee got heavy after a while. She had fallen into a deep slumber. When we took a break I sat down on a pile of rocks that were adjacent to a big rock that looked like an old coffin.
By the end of the tour, Darcee was awake and happy.
Dixie made a hat for Maclain and Bridger while some neighbor boys were over. They asked for one also and she did. Now everyone runs around in these cool hats.
The boys weren't the only ones that got hats. Here are my two happy girls sporting their new hats.
Just before Christmas a neighbor's house burned completely to the ground. The cows in the back still needed some water so we used his backhoe to dig a quick water line. The stairs you see were what went to their back porch.
Here is my Dad turning fifty something. And yes, we gave him a candle for every year.
Here is Bridger turning 6. Instead of buying a cool cake, we made a cool cake.

Chicken Coop

We are building a chicken coop! Sounds exciting doesn't it. The boys were more than willing to help. For some reason I never could find the hammer I wanted when i wanted it.

It is a work in progress. I got shingles put on the roof yesterday and added two walls. I just don't have pictures of that part yet. I hope to complete it in the next few days while my parents are here. And they thought that they were coming on vacation.

The work was hampered a bit when I decided to put a drill through my left thumb. 9 band aides later, the loss of a little blood and 8 more hours of work,I called it a day.