Lots of Things to Write Today

And the most exciting one is...

BENNETT IS WALKING!!!

He just all of a sudden took off the last few days. It's only been since about Thursday or Friday that he took his first steps and today...he's been walking everywhere. He did the most walking this evening before bed. He was in our bedroom and he walked from in the bedroom down the hallway into the boys room to me. It was probably about 20-30 steps! It's amazing how he's just taken off like that.

Uncle Keith is up visiting until late Wednesday. He went for a walk with Bennett this afternoon. Aiden & Bennett had lots of fun playing with Uncle Keith today. The boys certainly kept him on his toes all day! And two more full days to go!!



In other exciting news we finally relocated our chicken house. We use electric net fencing so we wanted to be able to rotate the chicken pasture to 4 different locations but with the house right up against the tree line it made it tough to rotate. So we moved the house out into the open. Erik thought it would a great idea to hook the house up to the truck and drag it (don't we LOVE our F250!!). I wasn't so sure this idea would work...but oh did it. Check out these photo's.

I don't always share this but sometimes my husband can be a most brilliant man. After a few seconds of concern the house started to drag along beautifully and it didn't even dig up the yard! We did lose one of the center support beams under the floor so the floor is a little squishy when you go inside.

But as long as we don't do jumping jacks inside the house it should be fine. It is in a fabulous spot right in front of the garden so after we harvest all out vegi's (when we actually plant them next year) we can let the chickens in to clean up and do some tilling for us. They are already doing a great job turning our compost pile for us!

And last but certainly not least Erik finished shingling the front of the breezeway! We also started on the land scaping we had wanted to get done before the winter. Still have some work to do there but at least it is started. We are hoping the roof will be done in the next month or so then Erik can finish shingling the breezeway side of the house and we will save the other 2 sides for next summer. Once he finished the back of the breezeway (should only take him 2-3 days) we can focus a little in the basement and maybe get started on staining the front side of the house.

Oh! And I almost forgot. Here is a photo of the fruits of my (& my mom's) labor this weekend. 23 jars of canned tomatoes and 14 jars of apple sauce (and I still have a huge pot off apples to still be put through the food mill...but I am thinking of turning those into apple butter). I am hoping to get another 10-15 lbs of tomatoes to can up a bunch of salsa and there are still TONS of apples on our trees and they are just PERFECT right now. I haven't sweetened any of our sauce and I still plan to make apple butter, jelly, juice and can some sliced apples for pies and crisps through the winter. Then it is on to tomatoe & broccoli soups (and maybe more). Our house has been smelling amazing this last week!

So, all in all it has been quite a busy week for us with still more business to come!

Oh and the Common Ground Fair is this weekend. For those of you not familiar check out http://www.mofga.org/. I am one of the coordinators for the children's area so will be there all weekend. Aiden is going to have SO much fun this year I am sure. We will have a houseful for the fair this weekend. Erik's mom is coming and Heidi & Jack. Mary Ann & Justine are also helping out as co-coordinators so they and Janelle may be staying a night also.

Have I mentioned yet how much I LOVE this time of year!

HUGS!