Eric is 1 year old! Yay!

Eric is one today and wants to show off what he can do. He says he can get in and out of this bucket all by himself.

See I told you I could get in the bucket : ) Now watch me get out of the bucket!

Look I did it! I got out and I'm soooooooo proud of myself.

1st Birthday June 4th 2009!

I can't believe Eric is a year old already. He is now walking and climbing quite well. He says bye bye (bah bah) and waves the cutest wave I have ever seen, he plays peek a boo and says (pie pie) while covering his ears instead of his eyes. He loves to bring me things so he can hear me say "Thankyou". One of his recent "fun" activities was to climb in and out of a horse feed pan so I'll post those pics for now and more after we celebrate his birthday. We plan to have a party for him on June 13th since this week we have way too much other stuff going on with VBS etc. (Well, after spending the last half hour trying pics will have to wait because they just won't load for some reason)

Trip to see Katie

This past weekend was indescribable! There is nothing that can compare to the emotions I felt as I reunited with Katie after 19 years! 19 years ago I turned Katie over to God and he allowed me to be involved in the choosing of her adoptive parents. This weekend I got to spend 4 days getting to know Katie and her family. Her parents, Brian and Diane are as wonderful as I could ever have hoped for. Her sister Whitney has a place deep in my heart. God has truly blessed me but more than that God has blessed Katie and I am so pleased to see how he has worked in her life. We arrived in Baltimore friday evening and left monday evening. We spent every minute possible with Katie and her family. Kayla and Eric adore Katie and it appears the feeling is mutual : ). Here are a few pics from our trip. I'd love to share more but for now I'm exhausted and must get some sleep.

Before and after

We endured a storm last night. Here you can see some of the damage.

Its hard to believe there used to be a building right here!

Oh there is the building that belonged at the spot of the last picture its in a pile on top of our new horse shelter! Agghhh

This is what the horse shelter looked like before yesterday. We had planned to put the roof on it this weekend.

Here you see a picture of the "Holliday Inn" in the spot we intended for it to be.

What a mess. If you look back on our blog you can see that the last couple months have been focused on getting buildings for shelter put up. All the work we did and money we spent having buildings moved and assembled is gone.

The good news is that we are all ok. We'll need some repairs to our truck, our back porch, new buildings and a lot of fencing to get back to square one. I guess the bright side is that we got rain for our pasture!

These pictures were taken after it all calmed down. You couldn't see to the front steps during the storm.

Announcing

Grace

6 oz at 10 days old

born 4/10/09 on Good Friday
joined our family on 4/21/09

Ok so I admit these aren't photo contest quality pictures but hey we haven't had much time for taking pics and this puppy needs to stay in an incubator most of the time. These are some pics we shot real quick a couple days ago.

Grace joined our family on tuesday April 21st. Yes she is a rescue if she weren't with us she wouldn't be alive since she was scheduled for euthanasia the next morning.


When we got her she was hypothermic/ hypogycemic and lethargic. But by the next day (when these pics were taken) she was doing pretty good. One of her problems was that she didn't know how to suck properly or so swallow right. (suck, swallow. breath order) After a few days of being syringe fed she is now back to a bottle and doing well as long as we go slow and careful at feedings.

She's pretty tiny isn't she? She is now up to 8oz in weight. AND she has now opened her eyes as of today. I'll post more pics when I can.

Her mommy is a pekeshu (pekingnese/shih tzu) and her daddy is a pekingese. She was the runt of the litter and about 1/4 the size of her sister and 2 brothers. Her mommy didn't know what to do so she attacked her and poor Grace lost a couple toes but those will heal and she'll be fine.

Easter baskets and more pictures

I'm finally getting a chance to blog again. We had an interesting Easter this year. Our plans had to change since we couldn't get our kids to sleep at Grandma's house. At almost midnight we ended up loading up and driving home. We enjoyed the very small amount of time we had in Austwell sat. afternoon and Kayla got to color easter eggs for the first time but we would have liked to stay til the sunrise service as planned. Kayla and Eric did get their Easter baskets Easter morning just before church

The night before Uncle Phil and Aunt Joy left we decided we better get a picture of all of us. The kids were pretty tired and wiggly but at least we got a picture of us all together. We all had a good time while they were here but I think Kayla had the most fun of all.

Kayla wanted to ride Kanuk which surprised me since she hasn't wanted to before. However he is a huge horse so she didn't want to stay on him long. I like this picture because it shows the scenery around our house as a bonus to seeing such a neat picture of Kayla at 2yrs old riding Kanuk.

I love this picture of Eric. It was taken while he had to hang out in the stroller while we worked with the horses. He was a pretty good sport. You can tell the sun was bright. He's just a few days shy of 10 months old in this picture.

horsin around

I haven't been able to ride for a long time but now that we finally got my saddles and horses "and us" all at the same location I plan to make it happen more often. I had to spend a while working with Kanuk and Cheyenne before letting my Aunt and Uncle ride. Greg rode too but unfortunately he missed out on getting his picture taken.

Kayla loves the horses. She is doing a great job riding Cheyenne. She prefers short rides.

Eric got to ride for the first time and he liked it too. He doesn't show any fear and he smiled most of the time.

Here I am organizing the horses so we could get a good picture of Uncle Phil and Aunt Joy. This was great!

I know I really need to do better at updating this blog. I have a lot of pics to catch up with so maybe I'll post some pics of the last few months on here during the week. For now you get to see us horsin around. We did have fun.