Update July - September

Catchy title, right?  I know... I do what I can. So I haven't actually posted anything but five-minute Friday posts since July (!) so there is a lot of ground to cover!  So a summary will have to suffice.
July: Everyone in the big house was gone for Canadian Jamboree (big Scout to-do out West) and David and I ran the farm.  We dealt with a pneumonia outbreak among the crias and lived to tell about it!  Though the learning curve was steep for both of us.

This was one of our sick crias - he's healthy and rambunctious now!

August: David and I built a changing table for Bean. We also celebrated our first wedding anniversary and David left to return to school in Iowa for the year.

The unpainted finished change table

Celebrating our anniversary at the Lego store

Waving good-bye at the train station as David left to go back to school

September: Mom and I went to an alpaca seminar in Ohio and learned how to assist alpacas in difficult births.  Later in the month we went to a wedding in Iowa and got to visit David and other friends!

Alpaca course - learning to deliver difficult crias

Wedding in Iowa

David-Monkey waking up David-Human 

Sad good-byes (notice the growing belly!)

Visiting Summer

Visiting Chelsea Bell

Paying a surprise visit to Kathy

Visiting with Talia

And that's all for this post.  Hopefully I'll get October's update up soon...No promises though.   Facebook, of course, has more pictures!

Five Minute Friday: Tree

This blog has fallen on the wayside...far too long without a post.  I'll try and get a post up in the next few days and let you all (if anyone actually reads this) know what's been going on.  However, it is Friday, and I'm sitting at the computer, so I'm going to participate in Five-Minute Friday.  You can join the party here. This week's prompt is "Tree"

Start:
When I hear the word tree I think of two things - first I think of the plant that grows in abundance around our house... tall, straight, pointing to the sky, fallen down, dead, chopped for firewood, covered in leaves, bare, sticky with pine sap...  And then I think of the other kind of tree.  The family tree.  Family trees have always been important to my family, on both sides.  Family trees tell us where we came from, who we came from, what our history is, and how we are connected in this world.  But what they don't tell us is our future.  A family tree only looks back - it cannot look forward.
However a plant-tree can look both forward and backward.  If it were sentient, it could look back and remember what it was like to be a sapling, a slender shoot coming up from the ground.  And it could look forward to what it will be - big and strong, growing both in height and diameter and weather, space and time allow.  For a tree, there is only one path it can take, and that is the path of all trees.  It will continue to grow, grow, and grow some more.
Our family trees are different.  We can look back but not forward.  We have the whole world in front of us and can grow to be whatever it is that we want to be.  There is no set path for us.  We can be astronauts or doctors or mothers....

Stop.

Five Minute Friday: True

I've been absent the last few weeks...Number of reasons why, none of them terribly important and most only semi-valid, except for the one Friday when my wrist/hand were so flared up I couldn't type. Pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel syndrome decided to show its head as I entered the third trimester.  A reduction in the amount of typing I do and splinting have helped immensely.
So this week's prompt for Five-Minute-Friday from Lisa-Jo Baker is:  True. So here comes five minutes of unscripted writing...

Start:
True.  It sounds simple.  Four letters.  On the surface it's what everyone wants - the truth.  Openness, honesty, transparency, true-ness.  But how often do we actually get a glimpse of what is true, what hides behind the facade that we all put up?   I wonder why we throw that mask up, the one that hides the true-ness so easily.  Is it because we are afraid to be confronted by the deepest realms of ourselves?  Or is it because we are afraid that others won't be able to handle it if they new the true-ness of what goes on inside our heads and behind our masks?  
The thought of baring my soul, of sharing the bald true-ness of my life, my experiences, my opinions, my secrets, is terrifying.  What would people think?  What would people whisper behind my back?  Would people see it as a plea for attention?  An attempt to draw pity or sympathy towards myself?  Or would they be able to see it simply for what it was/is - the truth?
Stop. 

No picture this week.  I'm tired.  It's time to call David and leave him a video message with tonight's devotions and crawl into my bed.

Five Minute Friday: Worship

So, for the last couple of weeks I've put off writing for Five-Minute-Friday until the evening and by then I'm too tired or too busy to make a proper post, so it doesn't happen.  This week I decided to bite the bullet and do it now, while I'm awake and not currently occupied.  I've got lunch in my belly and Bean is not currently demanding that I go to the bathroom.  So here goes, this week's word is "worship"

Start:

Worship.  What comes to mind is not just being in a worship service with other believers, though that certainly is a form of worship I often engage in, but it's so much more than that.  It's what happens when I look up at the stars on a clear night on the farm and wonder in amazement at the details there.  It's what happens when I'm in outside in a beautiful countryside or out on a lake and see the life around me.  It's what happens when I pick up a new cria and and note the perfection with which it was made.  It's what happens every time (or at least often) when I feel Bean kicking in my stomach or hear the heartbeat at the midwife.  Those times and many others fill me with the desire to worship the Creator and Author of life.
Worship is also being in church or at camp and signing and singing songs and lifting praises towards the heaven, but it's also so much more.
Sometimes worship becomes corrupted and I begin to worship the wrong things.  I worship ideals.  I worship things.  I worship my image - both physical and otherwise.  I worship other people.   When I worship the wrong things I'm not singing praises to them in song, I don't pray to them, but I do put an improper emphasis on them and devote too much of my time to them....

Stop.

Five Minute Friday: Broken

I'm joining up with Five Minute Friday again this week.  Today the prompt is "broken".

Start:
When I read today's prompt I wasn't quite sure where to start.  So much around me is broken.  This world is broken.  I am broken.  And today is one of those days where I'm feeling my brokenness in a large way.  The headaches have been pretty intense today, the pain in my hips has made every step hurt, and the exhaustion draws my eyes shut more often than I would like.   It's just been one of those days, one of my more broken days.
But when I look at the larger world around me, my brokenness seems insignificant.  There are whole social systems that are broken, whole nations that our broken.  The educational system in many senses is broken.  The justice system is broken.  In many parts of the world even the political systems are broken.
Yet in all the brokenness of this world, there is One who was more broken than any other and because of His brokenness, there is hope for wholeness in spite of the brokenness.  That hope is pretty hard to hold onto this side of heaven though.   When there is so much brokenness, when I am confronted every day by the brokenness in me and the world around me.  It seems like there will never be wholeness again.   It's all broken.

Stop.

No picture this week... I'm too tired and my headache is ramping up again.

Summer Saturdays

During the summer my Saturdays have a predictable rhythm, and technically start Wednesday nights when I receive 6 data files from local swim team coaches. They continue on Thursdays when I sort about 200 swimmers into heats and lanes in 72 events. They pick on Friday afternoons when I make any last minute changes then print, cut and sort about 600 entry cards, (and typically only lose 2-3 of them).  They pick up speed in the wee hours of Saturday morning when we get up extra early to do barn chores and leave the farm in time to be at the hosting pool by 7:30am (sometimes it means leaving at 6:30am).  But it all becomes worthwhile at 8:30 on Saturday morning when this happens:

A pool ready for swimmers!

Swimmers being sorted (marshalled) for their races

More swimmers getting ready

And they're off!

 Coming in for a turn...

Turning...

By about 1pm all 600 entries have swum, the meet is scored, and I go home and take my nap.  After nap time, I post the results online and e-mail all the coaches.  Then I get a few days off until Wednesday and we start all over again!  

It's a lot of work, but watching the swimmers succeed (a couple took 2+ seconds off their times this week!) and have fun is well worth it!

Five Minute Friday: Belong

Our internet is currently being uncooperative (read: not working at all), but I do want to participate in five minute Friday, a blog party put on by Lisa-Jo.  I missed last Friday for various reasons (long story), but I’m here today.  Before the internet crashed I got the prompt and I will post my entry as soon as we have internet back.  The prompt for this week is “Belong”.

Start:
Growing up I often wondered what it would feel like to truly belong.  I became an expert on being on the outside and looking in.  Everywhere I went I was on the outskirts somewhere.  To adults it may have looked like I was on the inside, but really, I was on the outside.  I never quite fit anywhere.  There was too much about me that made me different and I didn’t know how to embrace those differences.

I still often find myself on the outside of things, never quite fitting in.  I think that’s because I’m a product of my past experiences and my unique biology.   On good days I’m okay with not fitting in perfectly and can embrace what makes me different.   On less than good days – I cry.  I get lonely.  I long for even one or two close friends, who are actually physically close, not just emotionally and mentally close.  I’ve got “peoples” on the internet, groups that I belong to, but here, on the ground…  there are few to no people who I’m actually very close to, who I can sit down and share parts of my life with.

Except for my husband.  When I am with him I truly belong.  I belong in his arms.  I belong laying beside him, snuggled up in bed.  I belong walking through the grocery store with him at my side.  He belongs with me when we go to the midwife, or the doctor, or the social worker. And I belong with him.   His arms are the one place on earth where I truly feel like I belong.

Stop.*

*My timer malfunctioned after 35 seconds so I’m guessing that I was about at five minutes.   Next time I’ll have to remember to look at the clock when I start my timer, just in case it misbehaves.