Thoughts

So it's been over a week since I last sat down to write here.  There's really no reason for being gone that long, other than I've been doing other stuff...don't even know what all.   Last time I wrote I was getting ready to travel to Iowa for a family reunion with mom's side of the family.  There were 16 cousins in mom's generation, so this reunion was the 16 cousins and any of their offspring and any of their offspring (I think that's all the farther offspring goes).  There were 50 some people there ranging from 18 months to 80 years, including three sets of twins:

Three sets of twins: ages 80, 18 and 4.

One of the twins, Kalvin, really loved playing with my crutches:

One of the most impressive features of the reunion is that I ate out 3 times and didn't get sick.  This quite the accomplishment given my restrictions.  Granted, I was very limited in what I ate, but I still ate. And one place was even a buffet...I called it a death trap, since it was a Chinese place with lots of shell fish everywhere.

The best part of the reunion (aside from quality family time) was that one of my Central friends was in the area and came and spent a few hours with me.  It was good to talk with her and "freedom fight" Wal-Mart (we prefer that to "terrorizing") together.  We also may have sent an e-mail to a couple of our professors from last year...They don't have to put up with us in person together anymore, but they will never be safe from us causing havok.

When we got home from the reunion, there was an alpaca baby waiting for us:

He doesn't actually have a name yet...we call him Stupid 1 since he likes to lay out in the rain.

The next day, Stupid 2 was born:

He has since been named Eaton, and we'd really like him to be doing a better job of eatin' right now.  He hasn't been gaining much weight, so he's on a bottle a couple times a day to help out. He took the first bottle really well, but since then it's been more of a fight. 

So aside from dealing with babies and recovering from the Iowa trip (travel wears me out) I also had a small bake day and canned 2 pails of pie cherries (28 quarts and 12 pints of juice).  So nothing has really been happening here :)