He Arose

May I be the first to wish you a meaningful Easter. When I went out to milk the moon was rising. Beautiful, not quite full, just past, orange ball in the east. I was thinking about the full moon while milking and I wondered if it was full moon those many years ago... Then, on my way back to the house, I heard my first Whippoorwill of the season. I stood out side listening for 5-10 minutes enjoying the solitude and beauty. At on point it struck me that the lone singing bird was singing HE AROSE over and over and over...

Spring

As most of you know by now, I am doing %90 of the night milking. I really like it... I would much rather stay up till 2:00 then get up at 3... Anyway, I think spring is finally here. I almost didn't need a jacket tonight. There is also a very full moon, very bright. It made the stars quite pale. So what season is your favorite? I honestly don't know if I have one... I am always ready for the next one...

Life

Well, here is a quick update for those of you who are still checking this occasionally. Cows are milking well. Spring is springing. It looks like we are two weeks away from cutting small grain for hay. We have two new families of kittens apparently. Please come and get some... Or at least run over some of them accidentally...
In other news, I have a great wife. Wonderful kids, most of the time... I have to be honest, you know, kids are kids after all...
Of course parents are parents after all as well...
Ok, I think that's it...
Oh, what does it mean to be obedient unto death?

Mending

I am finally on the mend. My family is on the mend. How nice... We finally went in to Urgent Care on Sat. evening. Aleya had a raging fever because of two ear infections. I was on the verge of pneumonia. So, I spent yesterday sleeping and today I worked. I am feeling tired now but still feel better than I did this morning. Wow, it was miserable.
Thankfully the wife never got sick, not even the slightest sniffle. Which is or could be annoying but I decided the benefits from her not being sick while everyone else is sick highly out weighs the fact that she avoided the whole thing...
She was somewhat proud of her ability to remain healthy. She should be, every direction she turned someone was sneezing, wheezing, coughing or some other such thing in her face...

Memories

Rachel's dad is currently looking at a photo album from his childhood. He is reminiscing about his growing up years. Good memories are such a blessing. I have lots of them and I hope you do as well. Memories determine how homey your home really was. There are so many people who don't have good memories concerning life in general. This is a sad state of affairs and we, people, let this affect how we relate to those around us. When we don't move past our hurt and pain we end up causing others pain and the sad cycle continues.

Pit-Y-Full

Sunday night I was getting the cows in when I heard this splash. I knew, right away, what it was and I wasn't happy. An animal had gone for a swim in the manure pit. So, I get this board and poke her and she lunges around. She finally gets out of my reach. So I toss my board out on top of the manure and walk out on the board. I poke her some more. During one of my pokes I lost my balance and fell in the manure. Once again I wasn't happy....
About that time she decided she had had enough of this swimming lesson and I was able to direct her attention to the open gate.
Now, I wasn't covered from head to toe but I was covered from toe to waist or so.... What a mess...

Kaiden James

Spooked

Last night, about midnight, I heard this rumbling noise. I assumed it was ice/snow sliding off the barn roof. The noise spooked the cows and they had a glorious time racing around the barn. The bad thing was they tore a gate down and my high cows got in with the low cows. So about 25 high cows went through the parlor twice. I didn't milk them but it took longer to finish milking. Anyway, today Dwayne, the neighboring farmer, wondered if I had heard thunder last night. He said his wife had seen lightning and then heard this rumbling of thunder about midnight. So, have experienced my first thunder snow. It sounded completely different from a thunderstorm. A more muffled sound. The lightning probably would look different also. Wish I could have seen the lightning. Have you ever seen/heard a thunder snow?

Shock

I was shocked to discover Becky Sauder has kidney cancer. VOP had the privilege of spending the night in their home while we were on our Nov. tour. Richard and Becky lived in our area here in Gladys years ago, when I was a lad. I remember Becky as always being quite cheerful and friendly. I was never uncomfortable when she was around. So, I am in a state of shock.
From the information I have received from Karen, Becky's daughter. They are hoping to remove one kidney. For further information visit Karen's xanga site. reflectthelight.

Blogging

I just noticed I have been jotting things down on this blog for since August of 05. I had no idea it had been that long. What a shock...
I am wondering how long you have been reading this blog?

Korwin Dale

Korwin, my nephew, Jon's son, was diagnosed with a slipped femur. Have you heard of such a thing? I never had. Anyway, they went to see an orthopedic surgeon Monday evening and they threw him in the hospital and by Tuesday afternoon he had been operated on. If I am not mistaken they put three pins in his hip area. I believe this is to keep it from slipping any more. There is a fuse plate that fuses things together at some point in our life. The fuse plate fuses the thingy to the thingamajig. If the thingy isn't right, to low because it slipped, then he would have had a limp the rest of his life.
They operated so quickly because he could have done major damage if he had tripped and fallen on the hip. If something like this would have happened he could have really messed things up and would have needed a hip replacement at some point.
So now you are up to speed on Korwin and his slipped femur. Hopefully this information is accurate. If not I am sure Korwin will have plenty of time to set me straight...

Retreat Roundup

We had a very good weekend. lloyd talked about phrasing of songs. How to communicate the song to the audience. How to interpret the song. How to sing a song in a way that will allow the song to speak itself. If that makes sense...
We, VOP, cornered Lloyd for about an hour on Sat. evening and had our own private critique session. This was very helpful. We learned a few things that made an immediate difference in our sound. We will be trying to use what we learned this weekend to make songs become more real or alive to the listener. That is the reason we sing, to minister...

Concert

We had our first program tonight with Joe in the bass. Went very well. We plugged in several new songs and they went well.
Tomorrow we will know how many folks will actually be here for the retreat.
I am looking forward to it. I have plans of finding it very helpful and am hoping VOP will be able to put Lloyd Kauffman's ideas to practice.
Well, have a good night everybody...

Quartet Retreat

The quartet retreat has come upon us at a rapid pace. I feel totally unprepared for the weekend. Which is ok, because, I don't have anything to prepare for aside from some music. At this point we have around 20 people registered and there are a few coming that haven't registered. So, it should be a decent turn out. If your in the SMBI area we would love to have you stop in for the Sunday afternoon concert. Starts @ 2:00 in the chapel.

Home

Our first flight on the trip home was uneventful. Jack was nervous but nauseous. We had a lovely stewardess on this flight. Really interested in the children. She came back one time and chatted with Rachel for 10-15 min. about the children, adoption, and life. She made it a point to talk to the children. I was impressed. She heard one of the children talking about being hungry so she brought a bag of M&M's and gave them to us. I think they were selling these for $2. I noticed later she brought us a small can of Pringles. I don't know who was hungry this time but they were free as well.
Due to trying to be cheap I had bought my ticket separate using my Father In Laws air miles with NW. This means I only had to pay $10 for the ticket. Well, when I booked it I must of clicked on the wrong flight. Which means, Rachel got stuck with all the kids from Atlanta to RDU. Thankfully this flight is only an hour long. She managed fine aside from being somewhat stressed out.
Oh, I nearly forgot, on the plane from Tuscon to Atlanta they had these TVs on the back of the seat in front of you. You could watch TV, play games, or watch your flight. This was interesting. They told you how cold it was outside. How fast we were going. How much of a tailwind we had. All kinds of neat facts. Plus they had an aerial map showing where we had been and where we were going. Very cool indeed.

Good Bye

For some odd reason, I was totally unprepared for the good bye ceremonies this evening. Rod's family is fairly emotional and apparently so are my girls. I had known this but had forgotten. So, I was surprised when my girls started sobbing and continued for quite some time. I don't have a problem with it but I was surprised.
So, in the morning we will be headed for the airport using the hotel shuttle service. Our flight leaves at 7:30 so we will be heading out bright and early...
Please pray that Jackson doesn't experience such nervousness that results in hurling his cookies, or peanuts as the case may be...
He has already informed us he isn't ready to go home and this is based on his fear of flying or fear of something, what I do not know...

Life After Ugh...

Life has greatly improved, I must say. I was back to normal by yesterday morning. Rachel had a slight illness right after I did. Rod is currently unavailable for comment. He is holding his bed down. He feels right miserable. Apparently this is a very short lived bug. Yesterday we took the children to the Phoenix Children's museum. Very neat place. They had a play store which the children enjoyed. They had a paint room and they had a drum class... Jayden was really bopping around in the drum class... I had to laugh at him... He definitely has something in him my other children don't have... Rachel has two aunts living in Phoenix and we met with one of them at the museum. Last evening we met the other aunt at McDonalds for ice cream. They covered lunch yesterday and the ice cream last night. Very nice of them... Today we are planning to go to a huge used bookstore here. That should be interesting...
Oh, I should mention the hot tub. I haven't got in it yet but I would like to... It is out side.
Also, the backyard is about 20X50. It is surrounded by fences. The girls had these annoying flutes they were whistling on and we sent them outside. So, they are outside whistling away and soon the dogs started to join them. So, I took a peek over the wall to see the dog. I couldn't believe it. On one side we had a huge Great Dane, snarling at us. The other neighbor had three dogs, don't know what breed, yapping at us... The kids thought the Great Dane was pretty amazing...
Ok, enough for now....

Ugh

Well things went well until we had boarded our plane in Raleigh. Jackson, Sierra, and I were together with Rachel, Kaiden, Aleya, and Jayden directly in front of us. The plane was extremely hot and Jackson was very nervous about the whole idea of flying. He kept telling Rachel he wanted to drive to Phoenix, poor kid. So, as I was saying, suddenly Jack has an upheaval in his stomach. I frantically try to catch what I can but I am completely late and have started moaning to my wife when another upheaval comes forth. This is much worse then the other and I am too late on the draw again. We stripn him down to his shorts, wrap him in blankets and land in Atlanta an hour later. We put fresh clothes on him and head for our new gate. We board the plane and everything is great. Jackson wants a snack and a drink. So I let him have a little. He keeps it down so we let him have some more. By then we are feeling quite comfortable about it. He falls asleep. Sometime later he starts moving around and here comes some more. All over the seat and his shirt. I want to yell at him, TELL ME WHEN YOUR GOING TO DO THAT... But I don't I mopped it up took his shirt off and went to ask the unhelpful steward for a blanket. (The first flight we had two very sweet and helpful grandmotherly types of people for our attendants, not this one...) So, this happened several more times but I was begining to be quite good at having the bag ready. You miss some you catch some. Well, we finally land in Tucson and due to the children and the nakedness of Jack we calmly sit and wait till everyone is off the plane before we start dragging our things together. We were just getting up and the steward said "Ok, lets get out of here...) I looked at him coldly and said "Son, our boy has been puking the whole trip and you have done nothing to help. Never asked how he is doing, nothing. Now you want to rush me off the plane... You need to lighten up." Ok Ok I didn't say that, I wanted to but I didn't. I did look at him coldly and, holding up a bag of puke, said "do you have a trash can?" He looked back just as coldly and said "There is one at the front of the plane." I couldn't believe it. So, imagine this. A three old boy straggling off the plane with a thin blue Delta Airlines blanket trailing behind him. A mother holding a five month old. A 8 yearold dragging a backpack. A five year old wanting to do something. Another 3 year old strolling along nonchalantly. And then Dad... Whewee, Dad has a large suitcase, another carryone, and the bag of puke. trying to make it off the plane... I was not happy.... They were extremely unhelpful on this last flight....
Now, I have been spending my day today sleeping and sitting in the bathroom... So, whatever he had it was more than a nervous twitch...

DOA

Last night I had one of the nastiest jobs I have ever had. I had a cow with a dead calf. This is nothing new except for one small detail. This calf had been dead for quite sometime. In fact, it wasn't in one piece when I was finished removing the calf from the cow. Talk about disgusting...
You know, it wouldn't be so bad if it didn't smell. I tried hard to breathe through my mouth which helped immensely...
Another cow had twins one lived and one died. They were both bulls.
I had another cow fall in the holding pen while I was milking last night. I was sure she was never going to get up again. Tonight she was up and we milked her. Answer to prayer...
Whew, I am tired...
Till next time

3 X Milking

After struggling to pay the bills last week I decided it was high time to bite the ole bullet and start milking 3x a day. Our current schedule is 10 at night, 6 in the morning, and 2 in the afternoon. Nobody is overly fond of the night milking so I told the guys I would do this milking. It is taking right at 3 hrs to milk. This puts me back in the house about 1:30 or so. I like it for some strange reason. I think my body is slowly adjusting. I usually sleep till 8:30 in the morning and then I try to take a nap between 4 and 6 in the evening. I would rather do it this way then get up at 3 in the morning. So, for you local yocals, if you can't sleep for some silly reason feel free to stop in and chat with me about life. Come on in and I can put you to work and listen to you ramble at the same time....
All right enough rambling....