Sevens

We lost a great horse today. Sevens first came into my life about 9-10 yrs ago. I was helping out as a trail guide at a farm in NH. They got a bunch of their horses off of a tractor trailer truck coming from god knows where. The truck would pull into the yard, full of a ton of horses and we would walk & trot them up and down the drive way. The owners would say keep or not. Some stayed some went back onto the tractor trailer to I don't want to know where.

Sevens stayed. Then my friend Denise decided to buy him. I remember my first ride on him. Sevens certainly wasn't a small horse. Probably about 16-ish hands. And Denise and I went out on the two horses she was thinking of buying from the farm that came off that tractor trailer. I was on Sevens, she was on a smaller bay...I can't remember his name. We galloped through the woods on these very over grown windy trail. I just stuck close to his neck and hung on. He soared over those trails. He was an amazing trail horse.

Sevens came back to me almost 5 yrs ago now. He was older (the vet guesses mid-late 30's) and starting to get a little arthritic but he was still a great trail horse and full of energy. But as the years moved on he became more arthritic and harder to keep weight on. He got a pretty bad cold part way through winter & just couldn't get rid of it. His nose was still running into the summer. The last few years we've been able to turn him out on green grass during the summer and get him nice and fat going into the winter but this year he actually lost some weight.

Erik and I have been thinking about putting Sevens down for the last 2 yrs. We are so afraid that he will go down hill fast and end up suffering. With his condition this summer we decided that we just couldn't put it off any longer. One of the hardest things I've ever had to do. It was especially hard because he had started to grow in his winter coat...so he was actually looking pretty good. That's one of the not so fun parts of horse ownership. You can't always wait until they are obviously sick to let them go. There is a great poem that I just love.

I'm not sure how the first 30-ish years of his life went but he was always a kidn thoughtful horse with us. Even today when I went out to catch him in the field for his last visit with the vet he just turned his nose to me and nuzzled into me a little, hoping for a little snack I am sure. Always the quiet, kind, patient old gentleman.

Horse's Prayer

I'm only a horse, dear Master, but my heart is warm and true,
And I'm ready to work my hardest, for the pleasure of pleasing you.
Good corn and hay and water are all that I wish to ask,
And a warm dry bed to rest on when I've finished my daily task.
Don't strike me in needless anger if I'm slow to understand,
But encourage my drooping spirits with a gentle voice and hand.
Finally, O my master, when my health and strength are gone -
When I'm getting old and feeble and my long life's work is done -
Don't sell me to cruel owners to be slaved to my latest breath,
But grant me the untold blessing of a quick and painless death;
That, as you have always found me a patient and loyal friend,
The years of my faithful service may be crowned by a peaceful end.
I plead in the name of the Savior,
Who cares when the sparrows fall,
Who was born in a lowly stable and knows and loves us all!

- (Author Unknown)

Rest in peace my friend. I know you will enjoy enless green pastures with fresh mowed grass, the way you liked them best.

My Little Pirate

Aiden has been a total pirate addict lately. It is too funny. I am not quite sure what brought it on but it is here. So, I just recently earned $100 in free books from Usborne (one of the many perks of selling their books is getting some for free...plus my commission!). We bought just about every pirate book that I thought Aiden would like from our catalog. And they are too cool! The see inside the pirate ship with lift the flaps, pirate jigsaw book and the Pirate things to make & do are favorites. We have plans to make all kinds of things from the Pirate Things to Make & Do book in preparation for halloween. :)

Well, we stopped into Walmart on Monday to pick up some poster board and of course all the halloween isle are right up front and low & behold what is on the very end of one of those isle for a Pirate loving 3 yr old to see as we walk by...a pirate hat and kit with the patch and hook. And when he brought it over and I saw that it was only $4...how could I say no. When we got home he wanted to wear everything so I put the eye patch on (which didn't stay on for long) and he was walking around say, "Arrrr I'm pirate Aiden." It was the cutest thing in the world!! He even did it for Erik when he came home from work.

What an imagination this little boy has. He is just so much fun!!

http://www.pushedbirth.com/

You have to check out this website. Great information about birthing and other issues surround babies, midwives, breasfeeding, etc. It is excellent!

Common Ground Fair

Now that I have rested and recovered from the Common Ground Fair I figured I'd jump on to share a few quick photo's.

These are just a few shots of the children's area this year. We had some great happenings and all in all the weekend went well. The nail banging as always was very popular. Kids and hammers...you would think more people would have gotten hurt but we only had a few mishaps between hammers and fingers or hands. It is amazing that when you let a young child play with a toollike that...they really do use it appropriately.
One of our new crafts this year were newspaper hats. They were amazing. Thanks Mary Ann and girls. They came up with this idea. We also had lots of donations of material and yarn which the kids used their creative genius and made some most amazing hats. I was very impressed and also saddened that I was not able to take a moment to make one myself.

Friday & Sunday we also did pinwheels for peace. That was also a huge hit and we even put the pinwheels around the children's area as decoration.

The last crafty thing that we did was we received a donation of brown bags from the Hannaford in Belfast. We asked the kids to decorate the bags and leave them and we would return them to Hannaford and they would use them to bag groceries. How cool was that! And the management at Hannaford was so excited when they got them back! They all wanted to look through and check out the bags.

All in all it was a great time. We had some great performers and some ...well not my favorites. And fave painting. Wow...what lines we had at times.

The boys enjoyed it. unfortunately no pictures of them at the fair. I never seemed to have much time when they were there. No coordinator for me next year. I will volunteer but I want to enjoy the fair with my family!

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!

Today's Parenting Quote

Hi There,

I am part of a daily parenting quote email list. Most of the parenting quotes I really don't find all that great but today's. Well, today's was a perfect example of why we parent the way we do. We don't try to "teach" our kids. We try to be the way we would like our kids to behave and when they behave in a way we don't like we look at ourselves for the reasons. How can you tell your kids to say please and thank you for things when you don't, or how can you tell your kids not to hit others when you spank them? Here's the quote...

"Children are natural mimics -- they act like their parents in spite of every attempt to teach them good manners." ~Anonymous

Don't teach. BE!!

You're Jurassic Park!

by Michael Crichton

You combine all the elements of a mad scientist, a brash philosopher,
a humble researcher, and a money-hungry attracter of tourists. With all these features,
you could build something monumental or get chased around by your own demons. Probably
both, in fact. A movie based on your life would make millions, and spawn at least two
sequels thatwouldn't be very good. Be very careful around islands.


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